The Australian ran a piece yesterday using the Dusty Foggo–Brent Wilkes story as the peg for a look at the broader mess within the U.S. intelligence community:
Revelations via The New York Times and The Washington Post in the past 12 months have included reports that the CIA was operating secret prisons offshore to detain high-level terrorists and that Bush was authorising surveillance through wiretaps on US citizens without a court warrant, as laws demand. Bush has confirmed the existence of both programs.
The disclosures have helped frame the debate in the US on the war on terror this year and promoted an increasing disquiet among Americans about the direction of their country. The intelligence leaks play into the fears of many an American that there’s a sneaky federal Government up to no good behind the scenes and always looking for a way to control their lives, a kind of conspiracy that appears embedded in the cultural DNA of the place.
And it means that rather than a unified front against terrorism, the US has become as polarised as ever about where it’s headed.
It’s a good read, and has an interesting perspective that perhaps comes with being more detached than domestic American media.
