Imperial Hubris
The active U.S. intelligence officer known only
as "Anonymous," who has gained world renown this
month as author of an upcoming book called
"Imperial Hubris," is actually named Michael
Scheuer, according to an article in the Boston
Phoenix today by Jason Vest.
Speculation about his identity has
run rampant since a June 23 article in The New
York Times discussed the book and the background
of the author. The book, "Imperial Hubris: Why
the West is Losing the War on Terror," asserts,
among other things, that Osama bin Laden is not
on the run and that the invasion of Iraq has not
made the United States safer.
In that June 23 piece, the Times
identified Anonymous as a 22-year CIA veteran
who ran the Counterterrorist Center's bin Laden
station from 1996 to 1999, adding that a "senior
intelligence official" held that revealing the
man's full name "could make him a target of Al
Qaeda." Anonymous has appeared in brief
television interviews always in silhouette.
According to Vest,
"Nearly a dozen intelligence-community sources,
however, say Anonymous is Michael Scheuer -- and
that his forced anonymity is both unprecedented
and telling in the context of CIA history and
modern politics."
Vest in his article notes that "at
issue here is not just the book's content, but
why Anonymous is anonymous. After all, as the
Times and others have reported, his situation is
nothing like that of Valerie Plame, a covert
operative whose ability to work active overseas
cases was undermined when someone in the White
House blew her cover to journalist Robert Novak
in an apparent payback for an inconvenient
weapons-of-mass-destruction intelligence report
by her husband, Joseph Wilson. Anonymous, on the
other hand, is, by the CIA's own admission, a
Langley, Va.-bound analyst whose identity has
never required secrecy.
"A Phoenix investigation has
discovered that Anonymous does not, in fact,
want to be anonymous at all -- and that his
anonymity is neither enforced nor voluntarily
assumed out of fear for his safety, but rather
compelled by an arcane set of classified
regulations that are arguably being abused in an
attempt to spare the CIA possible political
inconvenience. In the Phoenix's view, continued
deference by the press to a bogus and unwanted
standard of secrecy essentially amounts to
colluding with the CIA in muzzling a civil
servant -- a standard made more ridiculous by
the ubiquity of Anonymous's name in both
intelligence and journalistic circles."
When asked to confirm
or deny his identity in an interview with the
Phoenix, Anonymous declined to do either,
explaining, "I've given my word I'm not going to
tell anyone who I am, as the organization that
employs me has bound me by my word."
Jonathan Turley, a
national-security-law expert at George
Washington University Law School, told Vest,
"The requirement that someone publish
anonymously is rare, almost unheard-of,
particularly if the person is not in a covert
position. It seems pretty obvious that the
requirement he remain anonymous is motivated
solely by political concerns, and ones that have
more to do with the CIA."
The CIA did not respond to a call
from the Phoenix, and declined to comment on the
book or the author to the Associated Press last
Friday.
Vest says
that the man he identifies as Scheuer told him,
"I suppose there might be a knucklehead out
there somewhere who might take offense and do
something, but anonymity isn't something I asked
for, and not for that reason; it makes me sound
like I'm hiding behind something, and I
personally dislike thinking that anyone thinks
I'm a coward."
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