FBI: Finding Bassem Inconvenient

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee held a subcommittee hearing featuring FBI whistleblower Bassem Youssef, a Supervisory Special Agent and Unit Chief in the FBI Counterterrorism Division, who reported that only 62% of the positions in that division are filled. See this post for more detail.

Yesterday, members of the Senate and House Judiciary committees followed up on Youssef's testimony by sending a letter to the General Accountability Office (GAO) asking for an investigation into the FBI's "unacceptable vacancy rates." The letter was signed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat; Judiciary Committee member Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican; House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat; Judiciary Committee member Rep. Robert C. Scott, Virginia Democrat; and Judiciary Committee member Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican.

That development was reported today by Congressional Quarterly (Lawmakers Seek GAO Probe of FBI Staffing Levels) and the Washington Times (Hill tells FBI to explain staff gap), among other news media, but not the Washington Post.

According to a May 21 post in the Whistleblower Protection Blog about news media coverage of Bassem Youssef's testimony of last week, ABC News, Fox News, Reuters, CNN, Washington Times, LA Times, USA Today, Think Progress, American Library Association, CNN Wire, Salon.com, AFP, and GovExec.com all ran stories about it. But not the Washington Post.

Isn't the WAPO interested in the fact that the FBI has allowed 2 out of 5 positions in its Counterterrorism Division to go vacant? Surely it is. So why the strange reticence to report a story that embarrasses the Bureau? Does J. Edgar Hoover's ghost haunt the WAPO building? The U.S. Congress has finally stopped handling the FBI with kid gloves, so why has the WAPO now started?

Last U.S. Veteran of the Great War

(Frank Buckles at age 16)

I was pleasantly surprised to learn - courtesy of the History News Network - that there is a last surviving American veteran of the First World War. Of the 4.5 million U.S. troops who served in the European Theatre during that war, the last one left 90 years later is Frank W. Buckles, now age 107.

The HNN article notes:

The dwindling ranks of our World War I veterans – literally from millions to one – marks a poignant moment in our nation’s history. When Frank Buckles is gone, our direct and living connection to the Great War will be gone. Only images, artifacts, and words of the period will remain.

When Frank W. Buckles dies, his name will be added to a list of "last veterans" kept by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The most recent update to this list took place in 1992 when Nathan Cook died at the age of 106. He was the last surviving veteran of the Spanish-American War.

As if World War I wasn't enough, Buckles was a civilian working for an American shipping line in the Philippines when World War II began. He was captured by the Japanese and spent most of the war in a prison camp.

(Frank Buckles at age 103. Quite the dapper gentleman!)

Memorial Day

Whistles Were Blown, but the Washington Post Wasn't Listening

The House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, had quite a hearing yesterday on FBI whistleblowers. It featured FBI Supervisory Special Agent Bassem Youssef, the Unit Chief in the FBI Counterterrorism Division's Communications Analysis Unit, who had a striking written statement. Here are the key points he made:

* Currently the ITOS sections are inexcusably understaffed. Critical supervisory personnel within ITOS (which includes the Unit that tracks AI-Qaeda) staffng level is only 62% of its mandated Funded Staffng Level. This has forced the FBI to recruit supervisors into ITOS who lack the background and expertise necessary to direct America's most important law enforcement mission.

* The mismanagement of the FBI's Counterterrorism program has already resulted in the systemic and needless violation of the civil liberties of thousands of Americans, the misidentification of threats against the United States and repeated sloppy mistakes within the counterterrorism program.

* The continuing failure of the FBI to hire or train agents who are fluent in Arabic, knowledgeable about the Middle East and/or experienced in operational counterterrorism is rooted in two factors: First, an ongoing policy which does not reward these skills in the promotional process and Second, deep seated discriminatory practices within the Bureau.

* A full independent review of the counterterrorism program is badly needed. The review must be conducted by persons with unquestionable expertise in Middle Eastern terrorism.

On the one hand, this is shocking stuff. On the other hand, what's new? It sounds like nothing much has changed since 2002, when the FBI's own Inspector General reviewed its counterterrorism program and said much the same.

The hearing was covered in today's Washington Times, which reported FBI Director Miller's verbal tap-dancing in response to Youssef's testimony ("While we appreciate any employee's views on the state and direction of the FBI, those assessments may be very limited in scope") but I saw nothing about it in today's Washington Post. What's up with that? The WAPO is normally all over these whistleblower dramas. Is the FBI still a sacred cow?

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Petroleum

For anyone who would like to track gasoline prices and energy markets in general, I highly recommend subscribing to This Week In Petroleum, a weekly product of the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. You can sign up for e-mail updates and get all the charts and data analysis you could possibly want.

U.S. to Assist Saudi Arabia with Nuclear Energy

I'm surprised that last Friday's announcement of U.S-Saudi nuclear energy assistance [U.S.-Saudi Arabia Memorandum of Understanding on Nuclear Energy Cooperation] hasn't gotten more critical attention.

"The United States will assist the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to develop civilian nuclear energy for use in medicine, industry, and power generation and will help in development of both the human and infrastructure resources in accordance with evolving International Atomic Energy Agency guidance and standards."

The deal coincided with President Bush's recent visit to the magical Kingdom, however, he wasn't the first Western head of state to offer the Saudis nuclear energy assistance. French President Sarkozy did so last January (which is something of a habit for Sarkozy, who has also expressed his willingness to provide civilian nuclear assistance to Egypt and the United Arab Emirates). Apparently the Saudis have been looking for this kind of assistance for some time.

There will be much predictable scoffing about why the Saudis would have any use for nuclear energy in "medicine, industry, and power generation," but it's really not so odd given that Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) has been making a major effort to market itself as an investment destination for petroleum spin-off industries. For example, last year SABIC entered into a joint venture with Dow Chemical to produce plastics and other 'downstream' petroleum products in Saudi Arabia, and also acquired the plastics division of GE. I can easily see why it makes sense to move the plastics industry to Saudi Arabia, since that will put manufacturing facilities next to almost unlimited amounts of the feedstock chemicals and power they need. I suppose the same reasoning could apply to many other industries.

Water desalination is another good reason to produce nuclear energy in the Kingdom. About 70% of Saudi Arabia's drinking water is produced in 30 or so desalination plants and those plants require about 21 percent of all the electricity now generated in the Kingdom, according to articles like this one and this one. The Saudis need to build even more such plants, and that's clearly an attractive scenario for nuclear power.

Could the Saudis also want to acquire nuclear weapons? Maybe; here's a research thesis that suggests why they might. But surely they could do that much more easily by funding under-the-table weapons efforts in Pakistan than by building the weapons themselves. Developing nuclear weapons is not so easy, even for a wealthy nation. The Israelis did it [read The Bomb in the Basement to see how and why] but only after many years of effort during which they first developed a world-class scientific establishment, obtained critical assistance from certain guilt-ridden officials in post-World War II France, and persuaded the United States to look the other way at times. The Saudis just might want to have a few nukes, but I don't think this new agreement will be a route to get them.

Where Are They Now? Cpl. Arnold Bracy 21 Years After Moscow

I got a blast from the past today when I saw a Washington DC local television news report about the troubles of the District of Colombia Protective Services Police, the city agency that provides security for DC government buildings. The Chief of that organization is Arnold Bracy, the same Arnold Bracy who was a Marine Security Guard at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during 1985-87, and who was unfairly caught up in the espionage scandal surrounding Sgt. Lonetree.

Bracy was accused by the Naval Investigative Service of conspiring with Lonetree to let Russians into the embassy's communications center, but charges were never pressed against him, and he was eventually exonerated. I believe he even recovered his security clearance.

In 1988, Bracy landed a job with security contractor Vance International and worked his way up to become their Regional Manager for Washington, DC. In 2001, he was hired by the District of Colombia as Deputy Chief for Security Management, Protective Services Police. In 2003, he was promoted to Assistant Chief, and in 2006 to Chief.

He's in a bit of trouble now, according to this series of reports on the DC Fox News channel: part 1, part 2, and part 3 (the one that features an interview with Bracy).