FBI = Feds Bulk-Up by Injection

The WaPo has an alarming story today about the arrest of four FBI employees in connection with their use of anabolic steroids.

Three Washington area FBI agents and an analyst were charged Wednesday with covering up their use of steroids and human growth hormone, officials said Wednesday. The unusual federal investigation comes as U.S. authorities are bringing high-profile prosecutions against baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

The special agents and investigative analyst, all living in Northern Virginia, made false statements by omitting mention of their use of the performance-enhancing drugs as part of required disclosures in annual fitness reports to the bureau, the FBI alleges. The charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine or both.

-- snip --

In the FBI case, according to court papers, Katia Litton, 42, a special agent with the Washington Field Office since 2003 and a former bodybuilder, used steroids and HGH along with her husband, Matthew Litton, 39, an agent since 2001 whose FBI medical file describes him as "5'8' and 190 lbs." and "muscular."

Along with Special Agent James Barnett, 42, also with the Washington office, and counterterrorism analyst Ali Sawan, 45, the four allegedly met with doctors and received fake diagnoses for conditions including pituitary dwarfism beginning in 2006.

Husband and wife bodybuilders? Okay, I can understand their motivation for using steroids. (I just don't want to visualize them.)

But a counterterrorism analyst? I can't quite imagine a juiced up analyst. Aren't those guys supposed to be pencil-necked geeks? Actually, I guess it could be a good thing. An analyst on steroids would shuffle papers with superhuman strength, suck up data dumps with hypermanic intensity, and might not even mind the testicular shrinkage. The only downside would be having to put up with bouts of roid rage when his spreadsheets won't format just right. I know how much I hate that.

Diplomatic End Game of the Vietnam War

The Department of State's Office of the Historian released today a new Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume, one that documents U.S. policy toward the war in Vietnam from October 8, 1972, to January 27, 1973. From today's press release:

This volume documents the marathon four-day negotiating session between Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho in Paris (October 8-11, 1972). The peace agreement they reached was rejected by South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. The United States attempted to convince Thieu that he was wrong, and in November Nixon sent Kissinger back to Paris to renegotiate 69 points on behalf of the South Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese, fiercely disagreeing with the U.S. move, decided that they too would renegotiate issues previously agreed to. By mid-November, the talks were on the verge of collapse. Consequently, the central goals of U.S. foreign policy over the next few weeks were to compel both South Vietnam and North Vietnam to accept, in its main tenets, the agreement that the United States had negotiated with the latter in October.

A cynic might say that the central goal of our policy was to compel the South to accept terms that would more or less ensure it's eventual destruction, while also compelling the North to wait a decent interval after the withdrawal of U.S. forces before continuing its war against the South.

This was high drama. Our special negotiator was Secretary of State Kissinger (who was dual-hatted, serving simultaneously as both SecState and the President's National Security Adviser). His meetings with delegates from the North were conducted secretly in Paris. And the tools of persuasion he employed included thousands of naval mines dropped in North Vietnam's harbors to interdict Sino-Soviet bloc merchant shipping, and 741 sorties by B-52 Stratofortress bombers that dropped 15,237 tons of ordnance on 18 industrial and 14 military targets.

I remember being a high school student with a draft card in my wallet in 1972, absorbing every bit of news I could get about the last act of the Vietnam War, including listening to the reports put out by Radio Hanoi. It was exciting stuff then, and it's even better now that I can read the internal documents.

You can download the new FRUS material here. Well worth reading.

The Tweet Heard Round The World

So International Burn a Koran Day has been called off. I'm sure that comes as a relief to Emergency Action Committees in U.S. embassies around the world. But, before IBAKD becomes yesterday's news, it is well worth taking a look at how the whole brouhaha got spun up in the first place.

One of Foreign Policy's bloggers completely missed the point when he remarked about the ruckus:

All it takes is a few crazy people to command public debate. Which, if you think about it, is pretty nuts. When, exactly, did U.S. leaders become obligated to comment on the actions of a few nutballs?

Wrong! What IBAKD teaches us is that all it takes to command public debate is a few crazy people plus Twitter and Facebook. Fortunately, the WaPo is on top of the situation and has a great article today about what we might call Publicity Stunts 2.0, or, how social media is indispensable to creating an international incident today.

From the WaPo:

On the afternoon of July 12, the Rev. Terry Jones fired off a series of messages on Twitter, decrying Islam as fascism and President Obama's support for a new Kenyan constitution that could permit abortion and codify Islamic law. His final one for the day said this: 9/11/2010 Int Burn a Koran Day.

With that abbreviated declaration, the fringe pastor from Gainesville, Fla., began a crusade that two months later culminated in deadly riots in Afghanistan, threats from jihadists and pleas from world leaders that Jones call off his inflammatory stunt.

-- snip --

Two days after Jones sent his tweet and started a Facebook group, an organization that monitors news about Islam rang the first alarm bell. EuroIslam.Info, a collection of news and analysis headed by a Harvard professor of divinity, picked up the Dove World mission statement - "To bring to awareness to the dangers of Islam and that the Koran is leading people to hell" - and posted it on its "Islamaphobia Observatory" section. By July 21, the Council on American-Islamic Relations was calling for Koran education sessions to refute the burnings.

On July 23, Jones was tweeting about having more than 700 Facebook friends for his International Burn a Koran group ... Still, the stunt caused little commotion domestically, even as senior officials within the FBI, the State Department and military intelligence watched warily for the news to inflame sentiment in the Middle East and Asia.

-- snip --

About the same time, in early August, Muslim Facebook users began receiving chain messages asking them to join groups formed to decry the plan to burn copies of Islam's holy book.

Shakir Stanikzai, 29, of Kabul was one of them. He said the issue didn't spark widespread anger in Afghanistan until about a week ago, after news media outlets in Muslim countries replayed that first Jones television interview, which also circulated on the Internet.

Notice how social media was indispensable to both sides in this conflict. The foreign Muslim opposition to IBAKD organized itself via Facebook and e-mail, the same way Jones organized his 700 fiery friends. Interest groups such as the Council on Islamic-American Relations played a role in Washington, but it was spontaneous virtual networks that called people to the streets in Afghanistan.

Next, General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, further elevated public attention when he appealed for cancellation of IBAKD during an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Today's WaPo story quotes an official close to Petraeus who "said Petraeus didn't dwell on whether weighing in on the issue could backfire by amplifying the reach of the story" because he saw it as a matter of force protection.

Huh? You would think that General Petraeus would have a crack media adviser who would make him dwell on exactly that. As in, "you do realize, General, that you might create the very reaction that you fear if you discuss IBAKD during a press interview?" What's up with that? Did he retain the same media advisers who worked for his predecessor and green-lighted that famous interview with Rolling Stone?

The WaPo points out that within days of Petraeus's interview even more senior U.S. officials weighed in:

Pleas for an end to the Koran-burning plan came in short order from the highest levels: Secretary of State Clinton; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who made a curt call Thursday to Jones; and Obama.

It started with one little tweet from a pastor who was unknown outside of his 50-some person congregation, and before it was over, Cabinet officials were calling him in person and the President himself was making public appeals.

To answer Foreign Policy's question: when did U.S. leaders become obligated to comment on the actions of a few nutballs? When those nutballs learned how to use social media to have an effect all out of proportion to their numbers. And, I might add, when one of those U.S. leaders joined the fracas without giving much thought to whether or not his actions might backfire.

"Thou All-Destroying But Unconquering Whale"

I received the sad news from ever-on-the-ball Domani Spero this morning. Jared Cohen has left the building.

Inspector Javert had his Jean Valjean. Captain Ahab had his great white whale. And I have had @Jared as the object of my relentless pursuit - well, more like, my mild cyber heckling. Perhaps it's for the best that @Jared has moved on now, before I become further obsessed with his destruction.

Cynics will be tempted to see @Jared's career move as just the latest swing of Washington's busy revolving door between government and industry:

Most disturbingly, more and more leading practitioners of "21st century statecraft" at the State Department are jumping ship and leaving to work for the very CEOs they have just been escorting around the globe. See Katie Stanton's departure to work for Twitter and Jared Cohen's announced departure to work for Google -- the two career moves that, in my opinion, did not get the level of public attention that they truly deserve. (In all fairness, Stanton came to the government from Google -- but I think this only strengthens the overall argument about the mostly invisible revolving door between Silicon Valley and Washington).

And, of course, there is no shortage of acts and blurbs by American diplomats that take a completely uncritical attitude towards Silicon Valley. Jared Cohen once again is a case in point: from his decision to reach out to Twitter during the Iranian protests to his statements ("Facebook is one of the most organic tools for democracy promotion the world has ever seen" -- quoted in David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect), much of what he does and says fits the pattern that seasoned observers of U.S. foreign policy would easily recognize.

They have a point. But I see it as the fated matching of man and mission. @Jared was born to be The Google Idea Man. You can see his genius in the way he described his new job:

FP: Going forward, tell us about your future work at Google.

JC: I am going to be director of a new division at Google called Google Ideas. And it's basically a think/do tank. Much of the model for it is built off of my experiences on the Policy Planning staff. It's not designed to be, "Let's pool all of Google's resources and tackle global challenges."

In the same way Policy Planning works by bringing together a lot of stakeholders in government, out of government, and across different sectors, so, too, will Google Ideas do something very similar. And the range of challenges that it may focus on include everything from the sort of hard challenges like counterterrorism, counterradicalization, and nonproliferation, to some of the ones people might expect it to focus on, like development and citizen empowerment.

What I'm interested in is the SWAT-team model of building teams of stakeholders with different resources and perspectives to troubleshoot challenges. So the reason I say it's a think/do tank is you need a comprehensive approach to think about and tackle challenges in different kinds of ways. In government, we used to refer to a "whole of government" approach, meaning work with multiple agencies to leverage ideas and resources; Google Ideas will take a "whole of society" approach.

So @Jared's new gig is a “think/do tank” where he will provide the thinking about tackling a wide range of hard challenges, and the doing part will be provided by ... some guy in a lab coat, I guess. That really isn't clear. But it will all be super, and awesome, and will involve lots of exclamation points and emoticons, I'm sure.

Now I shall reduce my sails and turn back to Nantucket.

Another New FRUS Volume is Released

The Office of the Historian has announced the release of another volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, this one Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970-January 1972:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972. This volume documents U.S. policy towards the war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from July 1970 to January 1972. It is the second of five volumes covering the end of the Vietnam war under Presidents Nixon and Ford, 1969–1975.

During the period covered by this volume, July 1970–January 1972, the Nixon administration expanded the Vietnam war into Cambodia and Laos as part of its strategy. This volume covers South Vietnam in the context of this larger war in Southeast Asia; therefore, the volume begins in July 1970 in the aftermath of the Cambodian incursion.

-- snip --

In late 1970 and early 1971, the focus shifted to decision making regarding plans to implement a major South Vietnamese out-of-country operation called Lam Son 719, launched in early February 1971.

-- snip --

In the waning months of the period covered by this volume, deadlock had set in. Neither side appeared able to win militarily, or even to weaken his adversary sufficiently to make him negotiate in good faith. There were signs, however, that Hanoi might be preparing to mount a major military effort in 1972. Its purpose would be to break through this impasse without having to travel a diplomatic path. The volume concludes at this point.

Reading this description gives me the funny feeling of realizing that events I lived through when they were daily news are now bona fide history. Wow, am I old!

Requiescat in Pace

Tom Maresco, the Peace Corps Volunteer who was tragically murdered in Lesotho last week, kept a blog called Two Star Hotel. His friends and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers are leaving comments after his last post.

Sad News - Peace Corps Volunteer Killed in Lesotho

The incident occurred last Friday, and the official announcement came from U.S. Peace Corps headquarters tonight.

Peace Corps Mourns the Loss of Volunteer Thomas Maresco:

Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams is saddened to announce the death of Peace Corps volunteer Thomas “Tom” Maresco in Lesotho. Tom, 24, died as a result of a gunshot wound on Sept. 3 in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. The investigation into this incident is ongoing, but at this time it appears it may have been an attempted robbery.

Lesotho has been one of the Peace Corps' most dangerous locations, and has a long record of violent criminal attacks on volunteers.

Volunteer safety is basically an intractable problem for the Peace Corps, given the nature of volunteer work in very remote and frequently unsettled places.