Situation Report

A weekly digest of national security, defense, and cybersecurity news from Foreign Policy reporters Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer, formerly Security Brief. Delivered Thursday.

The race tightens as Obama, Romney prepare for foreign policy debate tonight

AUSA begins, What Ishmael Jones’ experience tells us about “No Easy Day,” Thanks for the cowbells, and more.

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Not long ago, the third and final debate was seen as an opportunity for Obama, who has enjoyed an advantage on foreign policy, to close the deal. Today, with a new WSJ/NBC poll showing the two men neck-and-neck, (47-47) the candidates stand on a far more level playing field. That, and a looming crisis in Syria and the region that grows worse each day, including the deepening political crisis now in Lebanon - suggests Obama's foreign policy will be tested just as strenuously as Romney's foreign policy idea bank. All of this should give plenty of fodder for moderator Bob Schieffer tonight. Meanwhile, a number of other new polls show contrasts in the way Americans think about some foreign policy issues: Pew shows that 56 percent of Americans want the U.S. to "take a firm stand" against Iran versus 35 percent who want to "avoid military conflict," for example, which might give the nod to Romney, who has made an effort to sound tougher on Iran but provided few details. 

Not long ago, the third and final debate was seen as an opportunity for Obama, who has enjoyed an advantage on foreign policy, to close the deal. Today, with a new WSJ/NBC poll showing the two men neck-and-neck, (47-47) the candidates stand on a far more level playing field. That, and a looming crisis in Syria and the region that grows worse each day, including the deepening political crisis now in Lebanon – suggests Obama’s foreign policy will be tested just as strenuously as Romney’s foreign policy idea bank. All of this should give plenty of fodder for moderator Bob Schieffer tonight. Meanwhile, a number of other new polls show contrasts in the way Americans think about some foreign policy issues: Pew shows that 56 percent of Americans want the U.S. to "take a firm stand" against Iran versus 35 percent who want to "avoid military conflict," for example, which might give the nod to Romney, who has made an effort to sound tougher on Iran but provided few details. 

And, according to the WSJ/NBC poll, 39 percent of Americans believe the U.S. "could have prevented" the attack in Libya, versus 26 percent who believe it could not have, which reinforces conservative criticism of the administration. Pew also showed that 49 percent of respondents believe "getting tougher" with China is more important than "building a stronger relationship" (42 percent), which would appear to give Romney an edge. On the other hand, while 60 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should "remove troops ASAP" from Afghanistan, according to Pew, about 46 percent believe Obama is removing them out at roughly the right rate (as opposed to 28 percent who say not quickly enough).

Poll results on pollingreport.com: http://bit.ly/aFcLIs

E-Ring’s Kevin Baron on Pew numbers: http://bit.ly/QCdBX8

CFR resource page for the debate, including candidate excerpts, topic pages and analysis: http://on.cfr.org/SgmQxY

Welcome to Monday’s edition of Situation Report, in which we congratulate the winner of yesterday’s Army 10-miler, Tesfaye Senedeku-Alemyeho, with a time of 47:48; the top female, Kerri Gallagher, with a time of 56:09; and John Faulkenberry of the Wounded Warriors Division, who finished in 1:03:45. We ran it and finished with a respectable time; however, Foreign Policy maintains a strict policy of not publishing staffer’s run times. But thanks to the Pentagon’s Jenn Elzea for yelling out our name on a quiet part of the course when we needed to hear it. Thanks also to those with all the cowbells throughout the course. Follow me @glubold. Or hit me anytime at gordon.lubold@foreignpolicy.com. And sign up for Situation Report here: http://bit.ly/NCN9uN or just send me an e-mail and I’ll put you on the list.

Overheard on the race course: one runner to another, listening to an iPod: "No audio, that’s the rules, take off your headphones."

Other runner (with earbuds in): "I can’t heeeaar you."

SitRep: Why again does this have to be a rule?

The 10-miler kicks off the annual Association of the U.S. Army convention, which effectively begins today. In addition to three days of speeches, panel discussions, and other events, the Army will be doing some self-reflection. Situation Report reported last week about the key themes Army Chief Staff Gen. Ray Odierno will touch on throughout this week. For example, Odierno will push, not for cyber-weapons for the rank-and-file, but for cyber-expertise among tactical units. Also, Odierno’s new Strategic Landpower initiative, which includes SOCOM and the Marines, will be formally announced. Odierno will also talk about the need for the Army to better adapt to the mission requirements of what amounts to a new era, so that the Army can deploy any size force, depending on the need. And finally, he’ll discuss the effort to consolidate more than 100 programs, from those for PTSD to those for soldier fitness, to help the Army better serve all soldiers.

Situation Report last week: http://bit.ly/PLSg2H

AUSA sked of events: http://bit.ly/T0mKZw

The fact that the Pentagon hasn’t gone after the "No Easy Day" author may mean there’s nothing really there to go after. Weeks have gone by since the hubbub over the book "No Easy Day," the inside story on the bin Laden raid. The Pentagon seemed poised to go after the author, a former Navy SEAL, for disclosing classified information for which he had signed a non-disclosure agreement — even though the Pentagon wouldn’t say what was classified.

But it has not made any moves, publicly anyway, to take legal action against the author, Matt Bissonnette (who wrote under the pen name Mark Owen). Some believe that is because going after Bissonnette, who was on the bin Laden raid, would engender enormous negative publicity and might not accomplish much. Another approach the Pentagon may embrace is to garnish proceeds from his book instead of going after him legally. That is a slightly more palatable approach, but one the Pentagon hasn’t appeared to take, either. Still, the Pentagon will sooner or later confront the problem of having to stand up to former service members who disclose privileged information — or let the issue go and deal with it again and again.

But a former "deep cover officer" for the CIA, who wrote the book "The Human Factor," about dysfunction in the intelligence community, says that the Pentagon may be taking no action because Bissonnette may not really have disclosed anything that classified. "The overriding issue is that we all agree that if you publish secrets, you should be punished," Ishmael Jones (also a pseudonym) told us. "And if they aren’t ready to punish him, it would suggest he didn’t really publish any secrets."

Jones learned the hard way what it was like to go through the CIA’s publication vetting process — an issue that the Pentagon is now confronting. As a former officer, he agreed to submit his manuscript for security review, only to find the CIA "sat on it" for a year. After publishing it, and planning to give proceeds of the book to charity, the government sued him. Although he lost the case, the judge chose not to ask for any of the money. http://bit.ly/PM2yQ9

Speaking of dysfunctional…Rosa Brooks apologizes, sorta. FP’s Rosa Brooks wrote a piece late last week critical of Obama’s foreign policy. She said the administration needed to "get a strategy," "get some decent managers," "get some people who actually know something," and, for a president sometimes seen as distant, "get out of the bubble." Some called Brooks’ analysis "blistering," and perhaps it was.

Now she’s issuing an apology, sorta-kinda. But it’s a Washington apology if ever there was one: Brooks: "I recently wrote a column in which I might have appeared to be highly critical of certain senior White House officials. I might also have implied that the word ‘jerks’ could be applicable. This was a poor choice of words, and I regret it deeply. What I was trying to say is that I admire the National Security Advisor greatly and consider him a fine leader. The same goes for those other jerks, too." On a more serious note, Brooks says there are many "dedicated and talented people" working on Obama’s national security staff… but that she wouldn’t have written the piece if she wasn’t aware that her concerns are "widely shared" by many inside the administration. There will be more on this at FP, including more responses from Rosa, as well as some of her critics, so stay tuned.

Apology, such as it is: http://bit.ly/Vkw4yX

Original article: http://bit.ly/WG1YUF

Forget what you learned by watching "Argo" this weekend. News flash! Hollywood made the true story sexier than it actually was. The true story of the hostage rescue was far less dramatic, according to an insider account, published in 1999, of the rescue. Nate Jones, writing on FP, said the customs official stamping passports at Tehran’s airport "could not have cared less" when he stamped the fake passports — counter to the dramatic scene in the movie. http://bit.ly/R72c5m

Burning

A Plot Foiled

Debate Prep

Alive and Kicking?

 

Gordon Lubold is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. He is also the author of FP's Situation Report, an e-mailed newsletter that is blasted out to more than 70,000 national security and foreign affairs subscribers each morning that includes the top nat-sec news, breaking news, tidbits, nuggets and what he likes to call "candy." Before arriving at FP, he was a senior advisor at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, where he wrote on national security and foreign policy. Prior to his arrival at USIP, he was a defense reporter for Politico, where he launched the popular Morning Defense early morning blog and tip-sheet. Prior to that, he was the Pentagon and national security correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and before that he was the Pentagon correspondent for the Army Times chain of newspapers. He has covered conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries in South Asia, and has reported on military matters in sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Latin America as well as at American military bases across the country. He has spoken frequently on the sometimes-contentious relationship between the military and the media as a guest on numerous panels. He also appears on radio and television, including on CNN, public radio's Diane Rehm and To the Point, and C-SPAN's Washington Journal. He lives in Alexandria with his wife and two children. Twitter: @glubold

Tags: Afghanistan, Economics, National Security Agency

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