If
you think that the President of the United States isn't doing permanent
harm to the U.S., following the drive by Moveon.org, you haven't read this letter
from eight former CIA directors. They are saying in the clearest
possible language that the President is completely destroying our
ability to get information from our own intelligence staff and
certainly from foreign intelligence agencies. Foreign agencies have never trusted us in the first place as you will read below.
"..... this approach will seriously damage the willingness of many other intelligence officers to take risks to protect the country. In our judgment such risk-taking is vital to success in the long and difficult fight against the terrorists who continue to threaten us.
"Success in intelligence often depends on surprise and deception and on creating uncertainty in the mind of an enemy. As president you have the authority to make decisions restricting substantive interrogation or any other intelligence collection method, based on legal analyses and policy recommendations.
"But, the administration must be mindful that public disclosure about past intelligence operations can only help Al Qaeda elude U.S. intelligence and plan future operations. Disclosures about CIA collection operations have and will continue to make it harder for intelligence officers to maintain the momentum of operations that have saved lives and helped protect America from further attacks.
"Finally, another certain result of these reopened investigations is the serious damage done to our intelligence community's ability to obtain the cooperation of foreign intelligence agencies. Foreign services are already greatly concerned about the United States' inability to maintain any secrets. They rightly fear that, through these additional investigations and the court proceedings that could follow, terrorists may learn how other countries came to our assistance in a time of peril.
"The United States promised these foreign countries that their cooperation would never be disclosed. As a result of the zeal on the part of some to uncover every action taken in the post-9/11 period, many countries may decide that they can no longer safely share intelligence or cooperate with us on future counter-terrorist operations. They simply cannot rely on our promises of secrecy."