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Loose Lips Sink Ships Barry Farber If Casey Stengel were alive he'd drop dead. Baseball's Stengel was the original manager of the late-coming and even later-blooming New York Mets who wrote a book about that adventure entitled, "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?" Baseball doesn't always teach the essential lessons of national security but, somehow, I believe that if Casey were writing a book about America's intelligence situation today he'd suggest the same title. Those who mutter dark disparagement about "Bush spying on our own people!" are confessing they know a lot more about civil rights than military intelligence, and that's unfortunate but it's expectable and it's far from the big story. That chorus only tuned up after the Dec. 16, 2005, revelation in the New York Times that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping calls between Americans in America and known terrorist connections overseas. The NSA operation was (is) a bright spot in America's intelligence galaxy. Most of the rest is depressing.
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Take, for just one example, the standard TV news channel anchor saying, "We go now to the south lawn of the White House where President Bush is about to board the Marine One helicopter which will take him to Andrews Air Force Base where Air Force One is waiting to take the presidential party to (name it!)" On those occasions I can't help imagining I'm hearing a gutteral "Thank you, CNN." from terrorists with a shoulder-fired missile crouched on the banks of the Potomac River not far behind the White House waiting for a good shot at the helicopter as it gains liftoff. Those live shots of the Presidential helicopter in effect shout forth, "Here I am, world. Here I am!" And did CNN and the other news channels find some Deep Throat inside the White House to reveal the exact time of the president's liftoff? Did the news channels manage to sneak a camera into the area to capture the liftoff live? Of course not. It's not necessary. The White House sends the news media precise information on the president's travel plans and offers facilities for live camera coverage. OK, maybe, before 9/11. Not okay any more; but nonetheless done regularly. True, I served in intelligence during the Korean War but my rank was only private first class. Still, who can argue with me? Are we or are we not at war?
Wouldn't the jihadis want to target President Bush every bit as much as we'd like to target Osama bin Laden? And don't we regularly show live pictures of the president at the most vulnerable instant of flight; helicopter takeoff? Yet it remains business as usual. When the president reaches his secure venue; the Economic Club of Detroit or the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention; then let it be shown. Not, however, when he's within shoulder-missile range behind the White House. World War II effectively taught America how to keep its mouth shut. Don't sneer at those posters of the period that warn "Loose Lips Sink Ships!" As Hollywoody as it may sound, there really were blondes speaking just-right English in port-city bars during that war flirting with sailors and merchant seamen and trying to get the ones chuggalug drinks in a "last night ashore" manner to fork over information as to when their convoy was shipping out the next morning. The German submarine fleets were alerted before the hangovers disappeared. During the Cold War, in the early 1970s, I interviewed E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame after his book about the debacle was published. On one single page of Hunt's book I found five top-secrets revealed, any one of which would have caused international uproar, presidential apologies, intel reshuffling, and jail time if they'd been published in the early 1950s. One of them was Hunt's casual confession he'd been in charge of a CIA operation that used American planes to drop anti-communist leaflets into Communist Albania. You don't see why that's such a big deal? Neither did Hunt's publisher, editors, book reviewers, and readers; most of whom only cared about his Watergate revelations anyhow. I may be the only American whose intestines twisted into slipknots reading everything Hunt was giving away. America today has no notion, awareness, or instinct for national security. We argue blithely and bitterly about troop strength in Iraq; then, now, and projected. We debate the overall troop strength of U.S. forces and whether recruitment and retention goals are being met, unmet, or something in between. A Pentagon study comes out claiming the U. S. Army is "stretched to the breaking point" and the TV news shows fill their schedules with retired brass issuing yeas and nays. Excuse me, folks. Everything that smacks of information about our strength, morale, and military capabilities should be top secret. That's fundamental; like baseball's hitting, throwing, and sliding. Contrast the uninhibited emblazonment of American strengths and weaknesses today with the way it was when plenty Americans knew how to play this game. Among the top secrets of the Cold War was the amount of toilet paper shipped to the American air base in Thule, Greenland. Why? If the Soviets had known the amount and the frequency of shipments they could have deduced the size of our garrison there. Israel gets it. In early June, 1967, Randolph Churchill, Winston's son, was a war correspondent covering the about-to-explode Middle East. Just before Israel's launch of the Six-Day War Randolph went to Israeli general Moshe Dayan and said, cryptically, "Moshe, might this be a good time for me to make a quick visit back to England?" Israeli General Dayan winked and replied, "Sure, Randy. This would be a great weekend." The clear implication was that he wouldn't miss anything. Randy Churchill left. And missed the coordinated Israeli attack on five Arab nations that we remember as the Six-Day War. Randolph Churchill was, of course, furious. Israel was perfectly willing to sacrifice the friendship of Churchill's son in order to have such a high profile person seen inside Ben Gurion Airport leaving Israel two days before the Israeli attack. Arab intelligence, Israel figured, would likely conclude that, with Churchill's connections, he wouldn't be leaving if there would be anything interesting to cover while he was gone! We're a great democracy, and that's OK. Our sense of security, however, has, to quote Hebrew liturgy, "lost its cunning." Too bad. An old Israeli joke exposes current American reality. The American CIA agent goes to the address he's been given in Jerusalem and rings the buzzer for the Israeli agent Rabinowitz. A voice answers on the intercom and our CIA man recites the designated password; "The tide in Jaffa resembles that which Jonah experienced on his journey to Tarshih." The Israeli on the intercom replied, "Oh, this is Rabinowitz the dentist. You want Rabinowitz the spy. He's on the sixth floor!" At least the Israelis are joking. American security is nothing to joke about. Neither is the inside-out attitude that high-tech eavesdropping on key phone calls overseas - with or without warrants - is nothing more than "spying on our fellow Americans." Here I am, America. Spy on me all you like. I'm on our side! History teaches me when the need for spying ends in America, so does the spying. The most pitiful attempt to rob the administration of any and all credit for zero hits on the homeland since 9/11 goes like this: "Al-Qaida attacked the World Trade Center first in 1993 and didn't attack again until 2001. President Bush and his team have nothing to do with it!" Would you credit the wartime Japanese if they concluded the day the A-bomb destroyed Hiroshima, "Let's see now; it's taken the Americans three and a half years of war to drop one of those bombs, so I guess we don't have to worry about another one for a while!" The next one landed on Nagasaki before they'd have finished doing the math. Back to Casey Stengel and the embryo New York Mets. In those early years a young sportscaster went to the Mets training camp and asked, "Mr. Stengel, regarding next season, barring the unforeseen..." Casey abruptly interrupted him by gruffly insisting, "There ain't gonna be no unforeseen!" Go, Casey, go! We don't need any "unforeseen" in our national defense against jihad, either.
Editor's note:
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