“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” King Lear memorably observes in Shakespeare’s play named after him. John Bolton’s New York Post column reminds me — I had forgotten when I wrote my own comments on Iran’s latest proxy strike on American forces — that I can top that for ingratitude.
Only last week the Biden administration leaked a story to the Wall Street Journal. The January 26 Journal story is posted online here. The deep thinkers of the Biden administration are proud of it. They want it to be known that they secretly warned Iran of the impending ISIS terrorist attack that killed some 80 Iranians in a pair of coordinated suicide bombings early this month.
Bolton writes with a first-person perspective on the issue:
Anonymous administration sources justified sharing intelligence with a US enemy by citing a “duty to warn” policy applicable to both citizens and noncitizens.
Although the Journal story mentions “exceptions” to this policy, its administration sources were less than candid.
I have experienced duty-to-warn personally.
Starting in 2020, the FBI, pursuant to the policy, has warned me of Iran’s efforts to assassinate me and other current and former American officials.
I’m sure Tehran is pleased to know President Biden nonetheless still has its best interests at heart.
Let us not forget:
The terrorists’ target here was memorial services for Qassem Soleimani, former head of Iran’s Quds Force, sent to his Maker courtesy of the United States in January 2020.
These memorials were Iranian government events, attended by large numbers of government officials, especially from the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guards (of which the force is a component) and others.
ICD 191 [i.e., the “duty to warn” policy] authorizes waiving disclosure where the target is at risk because of its “participation in an insurgency, insurrection or other armed conflict” or where there is reason to believe the target “is a terrorist, a direct supporter of terrorists, an assassin” or commits other criminal activity.
These exemptions define attendees at the Soleimani memorial services to a T.
In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night the clown comments, “I say there is no darkness but ignorance” and adds, alluding to one of the 10 biblical plagues that afflicted Egypt, “in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.” Substitute “stupidity” for “ignorance” and you have the plague of darkness that afflicts the deep thinkers of the Biden administration.
Let’s leave it with Bolton’s entirely reasonable observation: “[T]here are no words to describe adequately the recent White House decision, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, to warn Tehran about a possible terrorist attack.”
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