Re "Need To Know"

In a previous life I can recall being constantly reminded regarding the need to restrict information sharing to those with a "need to know"--regardless of whether the other persons had a clearance or not. The urge to share information, to discuss and debate, is strong, but we took "need to know" seriously.

Eric Felten has a nice discussion of this basic principle of security today in an article (which I picked up via Powerline) titled: Whistlegate Reveals Some Very Chatty Minders of State Secrets. Felten makes the point that strict enforcement of "need to know" rules can be  difficult or even counter productive, for the simple reason that information sharing in an intelligence setting is often more than merely gossip--it can serve a useful purpose. Sharing information and points of view can be essential to making sense of complex factual patterns.

However, none of those concerns were at play in the Ukraine Hoax. The breakdown of adherence to the principle of "need to know" appears from all the known circumstances to have been motivated by strictly political motives. Felten writes:

As Democrats in Congress assess a CIA analyst’s “whistleblower” allegations against President Trump regarding Ukraine, one thing already seems clear: There has been a breakdown within the government of traditional restrictions against sharing intelligence beyond those with a need to know it. 

Unlike most whistleblowers, the CIA analyst was not a witness to events. Instead, he functioned as a kind of investigative reporter who worked sources to develop the information detailed in the complaint. While some have praised the informer for unearthing questionable behavior by the president, some experts in national security law say that the whistleblower and his sources may have  violated regulations aimed at preserving state secrets.

Experts also say this breakdown was almost inevitable. Restrictions on information sharing were reinforced in response to some of the biggest spy breaches in U.S. history – involving Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames and Harold James Nicholson, among others. But they were undermined after 9/11 when government officials concluded that closer communication among various agencies might have helped it prevent the attacks.

Here I take issue. President Trump's conversation with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine was about foreign cooperation in law enforcement matters. There was no intelligence to be gleaned, no need to share the details of that call beyond the circle of knowledge determined by the president himself. In fact, as we have learned, a very real issue is not even the sharing of details but the invention of details. We are far beyond the issue of "need to know".


Felten makes that clear enough when he states that the CIA complainant(s) were acting in the role of "a kind of investigative reporter who worked sources to develop ... information." He develops that line of thought later, writing:

His complaint also makes clear that he was not passively accepting reports from others but actively pursuing information.  “Over the past four months,” he writes, “more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort [to pressure Ukraine].”

This gives the game away. The CIA concerns are about policy, but essentially about domestic politics--about the upcoming 2020 presidential election.

Consider. Felten compares the CIA operatives who were spying on President Trump to investigative reporters, digging for information. It's an interesting comparison, but inexact. Investigative reporters work for private firms. CIA officers work for the government with responsibilities that are circumscribed by law and regulation. The CIA is charged with spying on foreign governments. Policing security concerns within the US is the province of the FBI. With that distinction in mind, it becomes clear that the CIA in this situation was neither spying on Ukraine nor truly usurping the FBI--if there had been a real counterintelligence concern raised by the phone call, the CIA could and should have turned to Chris Wray at the FBI. Instead, they turned to Democrat staffers in Congress. Coming on the heels of concerted efforts, "actively pursuing information," we can see that this was precisely a spy operation directed against the POTUS. There was no "need to know" involved, only a very strong desire to know and to fabricate a scandal for domestic political reasons.

This point is reinforced by what Felten relates concerning the experience of Robert Eatinger, a former senior deputy general counsel at the CIA who now leads the national security law practice at Dunlap, Bennett & Ludwig:

If the whistleblower had a need to know the information, he likely would not have needed White House and State Department “officials” to provide it to him surreptitiously. But information such as read-outs of presidential phone calls are not normally left out for just anyone to peruse. Eatinger says that in his time at the CIA, which included interacting with the NSA, “I never saw a transcript of a president’s call with another country’s president.” He finds it “surprising that contacts shared that information.”

In other words, the CIA went in search of that information, and when they couldn't get all that they needed for an accurate reading, they invented the rest. It thus seems clear that "need to know" isn't an issue in this situation--except that the violation of the applicable need to know rules needs to be punished to the full extent possible. And then a full scale review of all laws and regulations pertaining to the CIA needs to be undertaken. Our republic cannot endure if a Deep State assault of this sort goes unpunished and the intelligence services are allowed to act without constraint--even to the extent of ousting an administration. This is the true crisis we are facing, that our elected officials appear unwilling to seize this bull by its horns.