Back of the Envelope

A number of bloggers have been asserting that the leaks to the press about the NSA program to monitor communications between terrorists outside and inside of the US amounts to treason. It is indeed illegal to leak classified information, but bloggers, such as Dean Esmay and Doc Rampage, are saying that execution is an appropriate punishment.

It is rare that people are executed for spying in the US, even when they are selling classified information to our enemy. See, for example, this list from CNN. A few examples:

• 1984 — Richard William Miller
  
  Miller was a Los Angeles-based FBI agent who was arrested for passing classified documents to two pro-Soviet immigrants, who also were arrested and pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Miller pleaded innocent, saying he was trying to infiltrate the KGB. His first trial ended in a mistrial, but he was found guilty in second trial in 1986. That verdict was overturned in 1989 on a technicality. In a third trial, he was convicted again and sentenced to 20 years in 1991. He was released in 1994 after a federal judge reduced his sentence.



• 1985 — Jonathan Jay Pollard
  
  A civilian employee at the Naval Investigative Service, Pollard was arrested for selling classified information to Israeli intelligence. Convicted of espionage on June 4, 1986, he was sentenced to life in prison in 1987. His wife, Anne Louise Henderson Pollard, was also convicted of espionage and received a five-year prison term. Israel, which granted Pollard citizenship, has lobbied former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to pardon Pollard. Clinton considered doing so in the midst of the Wye River peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in 1998. Clinton pulled back after CIA Director George Tenet threatened to resign if Pollard was pardoned.



• 1985 — Walker family
  
  John A. Walker Jr. was a retired Navy warrant officer charged with selling information to the Soviets for 18 years, including data on U.S. encryption devices that compromised U.S. communications. Once out of the Navy, Walker recruited his son, Michael Walker, a petty officer aboard the USS Nimitz; his brother, ex-Navy Lt. Cmdr. Arthur James Walker; and Jerry Alfred Whitworth, a retired Navy communications specialist, to procure classified documents that the elder Walker paid for and then sold to the Soviets. John Walker's ex-wife tipped the FBI to his activities, and he was arrested in May 1985. The three others were apprehended around the same time.
  
  In late 1985, John Walker Jr. pleaded guilty to espionage charges as part of a plea agreement to testify at Whitworth's trial and provide full details on what he gave to the Soviets in exchange for a lesser sentence for his son. The elder Walker was sentenced to two life terms plus 10 years, and his son, who also pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 25 years. Arthur James Walker was convicted of seven counts of espionage in late 1985 and was sentenced to life in prison. Whitworth was convicted of espionage and tax charges in 1986 and sentenced to 365 years.



• 1994 — Aldrich Ames
  
  Ames was characterized as probably the most damaging turncoat in U.S. history. A career agency official, Ames began selling U.S. secrets to the KGB in 1985, when he was head of the CIA's Soviet counterintelligence unit. Within a decade he had revealed more than 100 covert operations and betrayed at least 30 agents. Ten of the spies revealed by Ames were later executed by the Soviets, including Dmitri Polyakov, the top CIA informer inside Soviet military intelligence. Ames' activities also may have allowed the Soviets to dupe the CIA by sending fake intelligence to the agency through the agents whom Ames compromised.
  
  Along with his co-conspirator and wife, Rosario, Ames was paid more than $2.7 million for the information before he was arrested in 1994. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole, while his wife, under the terms of a plea agreement, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years and three months in prison for conspiring to commit espionage and evading taxes.



• 1997 — Squillacote, Stand and Clark
  
  Theresa Marie Squillacote, husband Kurt Alan Stand and friend James Michael Clark were college buddies who spied on behalf of East Germany. Prosecutors said Stand began his spying activities in 1972 when East Germany recruited him to line up spies in Washington. Stand enlisted Clark in 1976 while the two were members of a radical leftist group at the University of Wisconsin and recruited his wife about the time the couple married in 1980. Stand was a labor union official, while Squillacote was a lawyer who later worked as the senior staff attorney in the office of the deputy undersecretary of defense. Clark was a civilian analyst for the Army.
  
  U.S. authorities learned of the past activities of the spy ring from German files following the collapse of the communist East Berlin government. A U.S. agent contacted Squillacote in 1997 claiming to be a South African official and Communist Party member. She then produced secret Pentagon documents describing arms transactions and assessing U.S. troop strength and one document about U.S. nuclear weapons.
  
  All three were arrested in October 1997. Clark pleaded guilty in June 1998 to conspiracy to commit espionage and received a reduced sentence of 12 years and seven months in prison in exchange for testifying against Squillacote and Stand. The couple were convicted in 1998 of conspiracy and espionage charges, and Squillacote received 21 years in prison and her husband 17 years.

Given these examples, and the seriousness of the crimes committed by these traitors, execution for leaking damaging information to the New York Times is disproportionate. The leakers are undoubtedly guilty of a crime, but I think twenty years to life is a more appropriate sentence.

Every time I hear about the outrageous expansion of surveillance powers under the current administration, I end up thinking the same thing, "Wait a minute! You mean our intelligence services weren't doing that before 9/11? What the heck did we even have them for?" That, ultimately, is why the Democrats won't make any headway in this line of attack. I, and most Americans, grew up on a steady diet of spy thrillers, both in novels and movies. In them, the all-powerful CIA, NSA, or even intelligence organizations whom the government didn't publicly acknowledge the existence of, ran all sorts of crazy operations in order to protect US citizens. In their desperate efforts to counter the terrorists, torture, warrantless searches, and assassinations were the norm. In the context of killing the enemy before he could set off a nuclear device in New York City, all this was considered justified. And if occasional mistakes were made and the wrong person died, or if laws were broken, that was acceptable collateral damage in this shadowy war. True, this attitude towards the intelligence services made us feel a little bit paranoid about big brother, but ultimately we felt better for the knowledge that such powerful organizations were out there, protecting us from the terrorists.

Of course, it turns out that the real organizations aren't anywhwere near as powerful or effective as we had been led to believe. And when we hear this outcry over them listening in on conversations between terrorists outside and inside of America, what bothers us most is not that they were doing it without a warrant after 9/11--we didn't even know that they needed a warrant for that--but that they apparently weren't doing it at all before.

Lileks has an end of the year roundup:

An oppressive colonizer is forced to withdraw from occupied Arab land. This is initially met with dancing in the streets of Cairo, Paris, and Turtle Bay. Then everyone realizes it is Syria pulling out of Lebanon. You must understand that the Cedar Revolution, after years of Syrian domination, has nothing to do with the American presence in Iraq, you jingoist. It's just one of those international coincidences like the moon being where it was when Apollo 11 flew past. A few months later, Israel voluntarily withdraws from Gaza, earning approximately 17 seconds of good will from the international community. Personal best!

Iran announces it will no longer allow inspectors into the Khomeini Memorial Peaceful Nuclear Research Facility for Hastening the Destruction of Israel. European diplomats threaten to take the matter to the U.N. Subcommittee of the Task Force for Occasionally Threatening to Issue a Strongly-Worded Report. But the group's next meeting isn't until 2007, and it must first take up the horror of Israel's security fence. Iran promises to allow inspections in exchange for 500 million Euros, payable in coins of enriched uranium. The E.U. agrees, with the condition that the interest rate on the loan will be adjusted upward if Iran makes nuclear bombs. If they actually detonate a bomb there would be an immediate balloon payment, make no mistake about it.

The bottom line is that stuff happened, and we tended to hype up the unimportant stuff and ignore the important stuff. Read the whole thing.

Most liberals say the slippery slope argument is hogwash, when used by conservatives at least. Take, for example, hate crimes. Conservatives oppose tacking on extra penalties on crimes just because the criminal is motivated by hatred. They figure a crime's a crime, and it doesn't matter whether it was commited because of hatred, greed, or publicity, the criminal should be punished for the crime, not the motivation. The main reason for this is that crime will be defined downward until the hate itself is a crime, which is essentially criminalizing opinion, which our First Amendment absolutely forbids. You think it can't happen? Well, we're getting there, and other "liberal" democracies are leading the way:

So what is a "priority crime"? Well, the other day, the author Lynette Burrows went on a BBC Five Live show to talk about the government's new "civil partnerships" and expressed her opinion - politely, no intemperate words - that the adoption of children by homosexuals was "a risk". The following day, Fulham police contacted her to discuss the "homophobic incident".

A Scotland Yard spokesperson told the Telegraph's Sally Pook that it's "standard policy" for "community safety units" to investigate "homophobic, racist and domestic incidents" because these are all "priority crimes" - even though, in the case of Mrs Burrows, there is (to be boringly legalistic about these things) no crime, as even the zealots of the Yard concede. "It is all about reassuring the community," said the very p.c. Plod to the Telegraph. "All parties have been spoken to by the police. No allegation of crime has been made. A report has been taken but is now closed."

So no crime was committed. Yet Mrs Burrows was "investigated" and a report about the "incident" and her involvement in it is now on a government computer somewhere. Oh, to be sure, the vicious homophobe wasn't dragged off to re-education camp - or more likely, given budgetary constraints, an overcrowded women's prison to be tossed in a cell with a predatory bull-dyke who could teach her the error of her homophobic ways.

But, on balance, that has the merit of at least being more obviously outrageous than the weaselly "community reassurance" approach of the Met. As it is, Lynette Burrows has been investigated by police merely for expressing an opinion. Which is the sort of thing we used to associate with police states. Indeed, it's the defining act of a police state: the arbitrary criminalisation of dissent from state orthodoxy.
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"Freedom from harm" is all very well, "freedom from being offended" is extremely dangerous - a way of extending the already harmful media phenomenon of "libel chill" to every noisy lobby group. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie and co get their way on "religious hatred", every BBC Five Live discussion on Islam will be followed by a call from an aggrieved listener and a visit from the Fulham police. And, for every Lynette Burrows, insisting she'll continue to exercise her right to free speech, there'll be a hundred more who keep their heads down and opt for a quiet life.

I do worry about this. Freedom of speech is precious--I pray we don't lose it.

Trying to raise a little Democrat? Worried that he or she might stray from the true faith if you don't start young? Well, take a look at this children's book, Why Mommy is a Democrat. Mommy Squirrel will explain in detail what she believes. (Apparently the Democrats haven't gotten the memo that squirrels can no longer be considered cute and innocent.) My favorite page is the one that says, "Democrats make sure we are always safe, just like Mommy does," while showing two little squirrels huddling in Mommy's protective embrace while an elephant tromps by. This book fully embraces the theme of the Democrats as the Mommy party and the Republicans as the evil, abusive Daddy party. I honestly have no idea whether to be amused or appalled. It looks like it is aimed for three to five year olds, which I believe is much too young to try to indoctrinate kids in politics. It reduces complex issues to good guys versus bad guys. Kids need to be taught civics, not politics--that the policeman is your friend, that Congress makes the laws, that the President enforces them, but that the Supreme Court is where the real power lies. Okay, maybe that last bit is too advanced for that age. The point, however, is that they should be learning respect and appreciation for government and for both parties, not which side is better. They can reach that conclusion themselves once they learn a little US history and gain some exposure to how government actually works. They'll take some direction from their parents, but this is more a matter of parents communicating their values to their kids than indoctrinating them in party loyalty.

Of course, conservatives aren't innocent in this matter, as you can see in another book, Help! Mom! There are Liberals under my bed! At least it gets points for being funny and aimed at older children, but still!

For today's Christmas in politics story, we'll check on an old Mark Steyn column that's been recently reposted, demonstrating that Mark doesn't think much of the Democrats' attempts to get religion:

And frankly the Democrats never do well when they try to square contemporary liberal pieties with religion. For one thing, they recoil from the very word “religion”. Al Gore prefers to say, “Well, in my faith tradition…” As a general rule, folks with a “faith tradition” tend not to call it such. At Friday prayers in Mecca, the A-list imams don’t say, “Well, in my faith tradition we believe in killing all the infidels.”

Secondly, prominent Democrats seem to have great difficulty getting even the well-known bits right. Christmas, according to Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1999, is when those in that particular faith tradition celebrate “the birth of a homeless child”. Or, as Al Gore put it in 1997, “two thousand years ago a homeless woman gave birth to a homeless child.” For pete’s sake, they weren’t homeless - they couldn’t get a hotel room. They had to sleep in the stable only because Dad had to schlep halfway across the country to pay his taxes in the town of his birth, which sounds like the kind of cockamamie bureaucratic nightmare only a blue state could cook up. Except that in Massachusetts it’s no doubt illegal to rent out your stable without applying for a Livestock Shelter Change Of Use Permit plus a Temporary Maternity Ward For Non-Insured Transients License, so Mary would have been giving birth under a bridge on I-95.

I know, Mark's politicizing Christmas just as much as the Democrats, but they started it. Besides, Mark's funnier.

Jonah Goldberg offers some good advice to liberals:

If liberals really want to emulate conservative successes, I have some advice for them: Get into some big, honking arguments — not with conservatives, but with each other. The history of the conservative movement's successes has been the history of intellectual donnybrooks, between libertarians and traditionalists, hawks and isolationists, so-called neocons and so-called paleocons, less-filling versus tastes great. Liberals would be smart to copy that and stop worrying how to mimic our direct mail strategies.

Liberals have a tendency to mistake political tactics for political principles, and vice versa. Exhibit A is the Left's fascination with "unity." Unity is often useful in politics, but it's often a handicap if you haven't figured out what to be unified about. Just as the Socratic method leads to wisdom, big fights not only illuminate big ideas, but they force people to become invested in them. Unfortunately, liberals define diversity by skin color and sex, not by ideas, which makes it difficult to have really good arguments.

Of course there are arguments on the Left and there are individual liberals with deep-seated convictions and principles. But most of the arguments are about how to "build a movement" or how to win elections, not about what liberalism is. Even the "Get out of Iraq now!" demands from the base of the Democratic party aren't grounded in anything like a coherent foreign policy. Ten years ago liberals championed nation-building. Now they call it imperialism because George W. Bush is doing it.

It's good advice.

About Canadian politics, at least. He has a very interesting article up in the Western Standard:

Back in the Trudeaupian golden age, you may recall, the great man’s barnstorming transformation of Canada was momentarily halted by a storm about barns. It emerged that some overzealous officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had burned down barns belonging to Quebec separatists. The press was briefly exercised over this, but M. Trudeau gave one of his famous shrugs and airily remarked that, if people were so upset by the Mounties burning down barns illegally, perhaps he’d make the burning of barns by the Mounties legal. As the great George Jonas commented:

“It seemed not to occur to him that it isn’t wrong to burn down barns because it’s illegal, but it’s illegal to burn down barns because it’s wrong. Like other statist politicians, Mr. Trudeau seemed to think his ability to set out for his country what is legal and illegal also entitled him to set out for his citizens what is right and wrong. He either didn’t see, or resented, that right and wrong are only reflected by the laws, not determined by them.”

This is a distinction all but lost in the decayed Dominion’s political culture. Mr. Brison’s new guidelines are anxious to promote the idea that Adscam happened because the parties involved were not up to speed on what’s legal and illegal. That’s not the problem. It’s that they no longer know what’s right and wrong. I’d wager very few of the vast numbers of Liberal cronies, bagmen and wardheelers were unaware that what they were doing was against the law. And, if they were happy to break the existing laws, giving them three or four more laws to break and a couple dozen more regulations to ignore and 300 more audits to file in the basement is unlikely to change their basic approach to government. And why should it? In a one-party state, they are the law. They rule their fiefdoms: these are, in Alphonso Gagliano’s casually proprietorial phrase, “my crowns.”

This is why I oppose the one party state, even when my party is in charge. Read the whole thing, even if you don't care about Canadian politics.

I dunno. However, if you look at bin Laden's public statements, you can see what he really wants:

Osama bin Laden wants the United States to convert to Islam, ditch its constitution, abolish banks, jail homosexuals, bar women from appearing in the press and sign the Kyoto climate change treaty.

Professor Bruce Lawrence did us the great favor of translating bin Laden's speeches for us. It's hard to appease someone like this, so I really think we ought to quit trying. (Thanks to Tim Blair for pointing this one out.)