The Nation This Week

by Danny Fisher

The Nation‘s “Spring Books” issue hit newstands this week, and it’s filled with good stuff.

First is Eric Alterman’s three-part eulogy of John Kenneth Galbraith, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, and Rev. William Sloane Coffin–Yale University’s former chaplain.

Also stong is their editorial about President Bush’s recent assignment of Air Force General Michael Hayden to fill the post of CIA Director, which was recently vacated by Porter Goss. The editors articulate three important criticisms of this choice:

  1. While at the NSA, he masterminded Bush’s warrantless wiretap program. A year after the program had begun, Hayden misled Congress by testifying that any domestic surveillance was being carried out under the provisions of FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires probable cause and approval by a special court), even though the Administration had been evading FISA for a year. After this illegal spying was exposed last year, Hayden was one of its most ardent champions, complaining that FISA presented burdensome bureaucratic obstacles. His remarks showed a disregard for due process–after all, after 9/11 Congress did pass a provision that allowed investigators to obtain wiretaps in emergencies as long as they filed the necessary request within seventy-two hours after the tap. That wasn’t good enough for Hayden.

  2. He wears a uniform. For years there has been a fierce battle within the national security establishment, as CIA directors have feuded with defense secretaries–especially Donald Rumsfeld–over control of intelligence resources. This is not just about money. The military has an understandable penchant for the kind of intelligence that’s handy in wartime. Civilian intelligence officials have broader horizons, including analysis of long-term geopolitical and social trends. Placing an active-duty officer–who technically answers to Rumsfeld–in charge of a civilian agency is a lousy idea. Citing Hayden’s military status, Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, protested, “He’s the wrong person, the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

  3. The nation requires a CIA chief who can be an independent force and an honest broker of intelligence–someone (unlike [George] Tenet or Goss) who will signal from the start that he or she will quit if the policy-makers (including the Commander in Chief) abuse or misrepresent information supplied by intelligence professionals. It’s sad but true: With the Bush Administration, the CIA chief has to check the President. There’s no indication that Hayden can, or will, be such a director. And there’s no chance Bush would appoint such a spy chief.
Best of all, though, is Reza Aslan’s review of Iranian judge and Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi’s Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope. In the past couple of years, Ebadi has become one of my revered people, and I think the long-awaited arrival of her book should be cause for considerable celebration. Aslan explains the manuscript’s difficult journey to print:
    Until recently an outmoded and discriminatory Treasury Department regulation, enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), prohibited the translation, editing, promotion or marketing of any work from an embargoed state (e.g., Iran, Cuba, Sudan) unless the work had been previously published in the writer’s home country. Ebadi’s memoir, of course, never would have passed Iran’s unyielding censors and thus had no chance of being published first in her home country. It was precisely for that reason that Ebadi turned to the United States, assuming that a country that has sanctified freedom of speech would provide her the opportunity denied by Iran’s hard-line government to publish the story of her life and work.

    To her astonishment, OFAC banned the publication of her memoir here, in effect censoring a liberal Muslim reformer who has spent her life battling the very Islamic extremists that the United States is so keen to defeat. OFAC eventually suggested that she apply for a license that would allow her to publish her memoir here without facing any penalties. But rather than accept the compromise, Ebadi and her American agent initiated a lawsuit against the Treasury Department in federal court, claiming that the OFAC law was unconstitutional. Embarrassed by the media attention, the department backed down. On December 15, 2004, OFAC revised its laws regulating so-called “embargoed literature,” clearing the way for the publication of Iran Awakening.

I’ve not yet had the opportunity to read the book, but based on the writings of Ebadi that I have read, I feel fine about highly recommending Iran Awakening.