CIA leak illustrates selective use of intelligence on Iraq:
The grand jury probe into the leak of a covert CIA officer's name has opened a new window into how the Bush administration used intelligence from dubious sources to make a case for a pre-emptive war and discarded information that undercut its rationale for attacking Iraq.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10772.htm
Full Version: CIA and Related Issues - Volume 3
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > Foreign Policy and National Defense > Foreign Policy & National Defense Issues Archive
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...MNG62FDUGL1.DTL
NEWS ANALYSIS
Bush team sought to snuff CIA doubts
Differences over Iraq WMD latest attempt to override agency
Jeff Stein, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Washington -- Whether or not Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald decides to bring indictments in the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative -- and whether or not any crimes were actually committed -- one element of the case is central to an understanding of what happened and why: At the time of the leak, administration supporters of the Iraq war were determined to neutralize the CIA's doubts about the White House case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear weapons.
It is also not the first time -- and it most likely won't be the last -- that conflicts over intelligence have had momentous political consequences.
As far back as the 1950s, when the Air Force claimed there was a missile gap between the United States and Russia, the CIA proved to be a sticking point. Only when the agency sent its new U-2 spy plane soaring over the Soviet Union, taking pictures of air bases and missiles from 80,000 feet, did U.S. arms-control advocates have the ammunition they needed to beat back the furor.
In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.
Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
CIA Director William Colby rejected the Team B idea and was fired. Colby's successor as head of the spy agency, George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, accepted it.
Team B's conclusion that the CIA was indeed soft on the Soviets was leaked to sympathetic journalists and generated public support for a new round of military spending, particularly on missiles. Team B's conclusions turned out, years later, to be false.
"In retrospect, and with the Team B report and records now largely declassified, it is possible to see that virtually all of Team B's criticisms ... proved to be wrong," Raymond Garthoff, a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, wrote in a paper for the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence three years ago. "On several important specific points it wrongly criticized and 'corrected' the official estimates, always in the direction of enlarging the impression of danger and threat."
Another run at controlling the CIA was taken when then-President Ronald Reagan appointed businessman William Casey CIA director with a mandate to ride herd on supposed agency liberals. Casey set up the irregular, covert operation led by Marine Corps Col. Oliver North, which eventually ended in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. Likewise, when Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz wanted to secretly back Saddam Hussein against the Iranians, Schultz bypassed the CIA and sent Rumsfeld, then a businessman, to Baghdad to seal the deal.
The path to Plame's outing also led through Baghdad, this time via Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, who had been abandoned by the CIA in the late 1990s as too troublesome, unreliable and corrupt.
Among Chalabi's key supporters were Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz. When the three came back into power in January 2001, the CIA and State Department still refused to back Chalabi.
Cheney began visiting CIA headquarters to challenge its analysts over their intelligence on Hussein's weapons. To Richard Kerr, the former chief of CIA analysis who later studied the agency's pre-war reporting on Iraq, Cheney displayed no anti-CIA animus at the time.
"My experience was to the contrary," Kerr said by e-mail. "He would not accept all our analysis without skepticism and believed we were better on some subjects than others. But those are the characteristics of a good customer."
Over at the Pentagon, however, Rumsfeld was reprising Team B by creating his own intelligence shop. The Chalabi organization's alarmist reports on Hussein's nuclear weapons, which later proved to be false, bypassed the CIA and went directly to the White House.
"That's why they set up an intelligence unit in [Undersecretary of Defense Douglas] Feith's office," said intelligence historian James Bamford. "The whole purpose was to get that kind of information and send it to Cheney."
In 2002, CIA analysts thought so little of a report that Hussein had obtained uranium yellow cake from Niger to build a bomb that they didn't even include it in the president's daily briefing, Bamford said.
"The Pentagon got it and flagged it to get Cheney's attention," he added, riling the White House further. Then covert CIA officer Plame, a specialist on weapons of mass destruction, helped arrange for her husband, career diplomat Joseph Wilson, to investigate the yellow cake claim in Niger.
As the world now knows, Wilson reported that there was nothing to it. And after President Bush offered the Niger intelligence as fact in his 2003 State of the Union speech, Wilson went public with his findings in an opinion piece in the New York Times later that year.
The fallout may be enough to put someone in jail for a time, and it may shake up the White House in major ways. But as past episodes have shown, even that will probably not disarm the combatants in the long and unending war over who controls intelligence.
Jeff Stein is National Security Editor at Congressional Quarterly where a longer version of this article originally appeared.
Page A - 4
NEWS ANALYSIS
Bush team sought to snuff CIA doubts
Differences over Iraq WMD latest attempt to override agency
Jeff Stein, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Washington -- Whether or not Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald decides to bring indictments in the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative -- and whether or not any crimes were actually committed -- one element of the case is central to an understanding of what happened and why: At the time of the leak, administration supporters of the Iraq war were determined to neutralize the CIA's doubts about the White House case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear weapons.
It is also not the first time -- and it most likely won't be the last -- that conflicts over intelligence have had momentous political consequences.
As far back as the 1950s, when the Air Force claimed there was a missile gap between the United States and Russia, the CIA proved to be a sticking point. Only when the agency sent its new U-2 spy plane soaring over the Soviet Union, taking pictures of air bases and missiles from 80,000 feet, did U.S. arms-control advocates have the ammunition they needed to beat back the furor.
In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.
Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
CIA Director William Colby rejected the Team B idea and was fired. Colby's successor as head of the spy agency, George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, accepted it.
Team B's conclusion that the CIA was indeed soft on the Soviets was leaked to sympathetic journalists and generated public support for a new round of military spending, particularly on missiles. Team B's conclusions turned out, years later, to be false.
"In retrospect, and with the Team B report and records now largely declassified, it is possible to see that virtually all of Team B's criticisms ... proved to be wrong," Raymond Garthoff, a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, wrote in a paper for the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence three years ago. "On several important specific points it wrongly criticized and 'corrected' the official estimates, always in the direction of enlarging the impression of danger and threat."
Another run at controlling the CIA was taken when then-President Ronald Reagan appointed businessman William Casey CIA director with a mandate to ride herd on supposed agency liberals. Casey set up the irregular, covert operation led by Marine Corps Col. Oliver North, which eventually ended in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. Likewise, when Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz wanted to secretly back Saddam Hussein against the Iranians, Schultz bypassed the CIA and sent Rumsfeld, then a businessman, to Baghdad to seal the deal.
The path to Plame's outing also led through Baghdad, this time via Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, who had been abandoned by the CIA in the late 1990s as too troublesome, unreliable and corrupt.
Among Chalabi's key supporters were Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz. When the three came back into power in January 2001, the CIA and State Department still refused to back Chalabi.
Cheney began visiting CIA headquarters to challenge its analysts over their intelligence on Hussein's weapons. To Richard Kerr, the former chief of CIA analysis who later studied the agency's pre-war reporting on Iraq, Cheney displayed no anti-CIA animus at the time.
"My experience was to the contrary," Kerr said by e-mail. "He would not accept all our analysis without skepticism and believed we were better on some subjects than others. But those are the characteristics of a good customer."
Over at the Pentagon, however, Rumsfeld was reprising Team B by creating his own intelligence shop. The Chalabi organization's alarmist reports on Hussein's nuclear weapons, which later proved to be false, bypassed the CIA and went directly to the White House.
"That's why they set up an intelligence unit in [Undersecretary of Defense Douglas] Feith's office," said intelligence historian James Bamford. "The whole purpose was to get that kind of information and send it to Cheney."
In 2002, CIA analysts thought so little of a report that Hussein had obtained uranium yellow cake from Niger to build a bomb that they didn't even include it in the president's daily briefing, Bamford said.
"The Pentagon got it and flagged it to get Cheney's attention," he added, riling the White House further. Then covert CIA officer Plame, a specialist on weapons of mass destruction, helped arrange for her husband, career diplomat Joseph Wilson, to investigate the yellow cake claim in Niger.
As the world now knows, Wilson reported that there was nothing to it. And after President Bush offered the Niger intelligence as fact in his 2003 State of the Union speech, Wilson went public with his findings in an opinion piece in the New York Times later that year.
The fallout may be enough to put someone in jail for a time, and it may shake up the White House in major ways. But as past episodes have shown, even that will probably not disarm the combatants in the long and unending war over who controls intelligence.
Jeff Stein is National Security Editor at Congressional Quarterly where a longer version of this article originally appeared.
Page A - 4
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=7789
October 26, 2005
Yellowcake Dossier Not the Work of the CIA
''Pollari went to the White House to offer his truth on Iraq"
by Carlo Bonnini e Giuseppe D'Avanzo of La Repubblica
[translated at the request of Antiwar.com by Azzurra Crispino]
Anything found in [ ] are translator's notes and not originally in the article.
For Nicolò Pollari, director of SISMI [sic Military Intelligence Agency of Italy] the rules of his job are non-negotiable. He tells La Repubblica: "I am the director of intelligence, and the only person I have spoken to in Washington on an institutional level, post September 11th, has been the director of the CIA, George Tenet. Obviously, I speak only to him." But is it really true that our undercover agents have worked exclusively with the CIA? Or, were they co-opted by the clandestine parallel intelligence efforts headed by Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz over the "White House Iraq Group," the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, the National Security advisor's office, who all were set out to find the necessary proof to bring about 'regime change' in Bagdad?
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Pollari, the director of SISMI meets in Washington with the staff of Condoleeza Rice, then White House National Security Advisor. This is done under the supervision of Gianni Castellaneta, currently the Italian ambassador to the US and then diplomatic advisor for Palazzo Chigi [Silvio Berlusconi's official residence as Prime Minister of Italy]. La Repubblica is able to document the simultaneous travel of the Italian government and intelligence. At least one of the "unofficial" meetings Pollari holds is, as secret agents say, the the creation of a love triangle between policy, intelligence, and information.
A quick summary: the Military Intelligence of Italy under Pollari wants to confirm the Iraqi purchase of unprocessed uranium used to make a nuclear bomb. The game plan is clear. Antonio Nucera, assistant chief of the Center for Military Intelligence in Rome, gives the "authentic papers" regarding an attempted acquisition of uranium in Niger (old Italian "intelligence" from the 80s). These are then bundled with other false papers hatched together from official stationery and seals, recovered during a faked burglary of the Niger embassy. These papers are shown by Pollari's people to CIA agents stationed in Rome. Meanwhile, a "deliveryman" for the Military Intelligence Agency, none other than Rocco Martino, delivers them to MI6 in London, run by Sir Richard Dearlove.
This is what gets the ball rolling. This will all be useful in understanding the second chapter of the great Italian deception -- framing the proof used to justify military intervention in Iraq. Greg Thielmann, former director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research for the State Department, finds "the Italian report on uranium" on his desk. He claims not to recall the exact date, but it is roughly fall of 2001. The exact date may be important. We know three events coincide on the date October 15th, 2001. Nicolò Pollari, nominated on September 27th, becomes the head of SISMI, after having been the number two man at CESIS (the center coordinating intelligence for Palazzo Chigi). Silvio Berlusconi finally meets with George W. Bush at the White House and the first CIA report on the Italian evidence all occur on the same date: October 15th, 2001. One might call this nothing more than coincidence, except that it appears the Italians are desperately trying to get into the action. Berlusconi had difficulty, following an attack of "misunderstanding among civilizations," getting a meeting with a White House far more preoccupied with meeting with moderate Arab regimes. Pollari is anxious to be on board with the Premier and the new direction. Col. Alberto Manenti, Pollari's former boss and the newly appointed head of WMD unit at SISMI, also wants to be in tune with the new director. While Bush is showing Berlusconi the Rose Garden, writes Russ Hoyle, the CIA is taking action on the news Italian intelligence has just handed them on a silver platter: "negotiations between Niamey [the capital of Niger] and Bagdad regarding the acquisition of uranium began in the beginning of 1999. culminating in the authorization of the sale by the Nigerien government in 2000." No additional documentation is cited able to show that the shipment of uranium actually took place. CIA analysts consider this first report "very limited" and "lacking in necessary details." Analysts in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department rate the information "highly suspect."
Pollari's first contact with the American intelligence community is not particularly gratifying, but nevertheless useful. The director of SISMI is not a fool, he is quick to reconstruct where the main players fall in the sordid conflict underway in the Administration between those advocating prudence and a pragmatic outlook (State Department and the CIA) versus those who are merely looking for an opportunity to justify a pre-planned war. Gianni Castellaneta advises Pollari to "look in other directions," while Minister of Defense Antonio Martino invites him to meet "an old friend of Italy."
This old American friend is Michael A. Ledeen, an old fox of US parallel intelligence who was declared "undesirable" by Italy in the 1980s. Ledeen is in Rome on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, created by the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowitz to gather intelligence that supports military intervention in Iraq. A source from Forte Braschi [SISMI's headquarters in Rome] tells La Repubblica: "Jeff Castelli, head of the CIA station in Rome, gives a cold reception to Pollari's uranium story and lets the matter drop. Pollari understands this is merely a prelude to something else and talks to Michael Ledeen...." Some unknown reason moves Michael Ledeen back to Washington, D.C. But, at the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convices Dick Cheney to explore in depth the Italian story on the uranium. The Vice President, states the Senate Selected Committee on Intelligence, asks the CIA one more time to know more about a possible acquisition of uranium from Niger. In that meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly states this shred of intelligence was gathered by "a foreign service."
The Pentagon parallel intelligence then spreads this "new information," according to which "there exists an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the sale of 500 tons of uranium a year." The technical analysts smile at this declaration: 500 tons of uranium is an astronomical quantity, and the news is clearly devoid of any accountability. All independent reports, requested following the "Italian document" warn that the two mines in Niger, Arlit and Akouta, are not capable of extracting more than 300 tons a year. But the climate is what it is. George Tenet, hobbled by the holes in intelligence surrounding 9/11, puts on a good face and turns a deaf ear when the State Department (as told to La Repubblica by Greg Thielmann) states in opposition that "the information gathered in Italy is inconsistent; the Niger-uranium story is fake; and that a bunch of things told to us were lies."
The source in Forte Braschi continues, "Pollari is extremely shrewd. He understands that in order to push the uranium story he cannot rely on the CIA alone. He has to work, as he was advised by Palazzo Chigi and the Defense Department, with the Pentagon and the National Security Advisor, Rice." This claim could be nothing more than a malicious rumor (as is often the case in the world of spies) but confirmation of "alternate channels" Pollari creates with Washington are within grasp in an image and a meeting.
The image: Pollari is in Washington. He meets George Tenet, as often happens, in a reserved room of a hotel near Langley. Someone who assisted with the meeting tells La Repubblica: "Pollari must not trust his English very much, because he utilizes an interpreter when speaking to the director of the CIA. George, to get the ball rolling, reveals some information on Al Qaeda and Italy that the Agency has gathered amongst the Guantanamo prisoners. Tenet expects at least a smile, if not a thank you. Instead, he gets a face of stone. At first, this upsets him, but then he lets it go. But what strikes everyone most about Pollari is the way he keeps his central boss in Washington completely marginalized from everything." This estrangement is interesting. In 2002 the head of the SISMI station in Washington is Admiral Giuseppe Grignolo, who has important experience in the proliferation of WMDs, an excellent relationship with the CIA and is very respected by CIA number two Jim Pravitt. The source from Forte Braschi recalls, "in reality, we wanted to keep the CIA out of our work and Pollari didn't trust Grignolo because he's too closely connected to Langley. So, he keeps all his moves quiet, leading [Grignolo] down the wrong path, like say having him focus unnecessarily on the criminal record of the new hires to the service who have perhaps spent a few years in the States... his more important meetings happen elsewhere. With Condi Rice, through Gianni Castellaneta and for the Office of Special Plans of Wolfowitz and Dough Feith, through Leeden. Castellaneta is the one who schedules the meeting in the office of the National Security Advisor." When? What do they discuss? "What do you think they discussed in the summer of 2002? Weapons of mass destruction." The date of the meeting? "That I'm keeping to myself... besides, all it takes is checking with the CAI [Commitato Aeronautico Italiano, the Italian version of the FAA] logs on planes scheduled to fly Ciampino-Washington." [Ciampino is the Italian military airport.]
Getting the flightplans in Rome is difficult, but there's better luck in Washington. An administration official tells La Repubblica, "I can confirm that on Sept. 9th, 2002, General Nicolò Pollari met with Stephen Hadley, at the time Deputy National Security Advisor under Condoleeza Rice. And just like October 15th 2001, September 9th 2002 is a date of coincidences. The issue of Panorama that will hit the stands with the date September 12/19 is going to press. This seems to be the customary in the "yellowcake affair." Recall that "the deliveryman" for SISMI, Rocco Martino, contacts in October a journalist from the weekly magazine, at the time edited by Carlo Rossella, to sell them the document of this crooked affair. No one seems to remember that, in that September 12/19 2002 issue, coinciding with the secret meeting between Pollari and Hadley, Panorama finds a colossal scoop. The title of the article, "The War? It's Already Begun," tells the story of "a load of half a ton of uranium." Further in the article, "the men of Mukhabarat, the Iraqi Secret Service, acquired it [the uranium] through a Jordan intermediary company in far-off Nigeria, where some merchants were selling it as contraband after having stolen it from a nuclear deposit in one of the republics of the former USSR. Five hundred kilos of uranium landed in Amman [the capital of Jordan]. From there, after seven hours by land, they reached their destination: a plant 20 km north of Bagdad, called Al Radhidiyah, well-known for its production and treatment of fission materials." Later in the article, "... the alert pertains to Germany, where in previous years Iraq has tried to buy technology and industrial components from the "Leycochem" organization... including the coveted aluminum tubes for the gas centrifuges."
It is important to note that all the ingredients for the recipe for war are present in this Panorama article, even if in an inexact context (Nigeria is not Niger, a grave lapse) and in some parts far-out (contraband from the former USSR to Africa in a truck): the five hundred tons of uranium that, from Africa, reach Baghdad; aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. A reasonable observation can be made that the schema at work here in Italy seems to overlap completely with the ones sustained in the US CIA/New York Times scandal. Government asks for something; intelligence gives it; the media circulates it; and government confirms it. It's a disinformation technique as old as the Cold War. Exaggerate the danger from the enemy, thereby terrorizing and convincing public opinion. In our own home, an even worse detail: the Prime Minister owns the magazine spreading this poisonous news. The same PM, who heads intelligence and wants to seem and be George W. Bush's biggest ally, who is in turn anxious to go to war.
The groundwork now laid out, Pollari can now concentrate on a different but essential aspect of his gameplan, the promotion of SISMI and himself. He cashes in on the dividends from the last year's obfuscated work, blinding parliament with news cautiously manipulated; revelations that would finally require a believable and documented reconstruction are instead met with a wall of secrecy from the state (that would be opposed by Gianni Letta on July 16th, 2003).
After his secret meeting with Hadley, Pollari has two audiences with the parliamentary committee overseeing secret services. In the first, the director of SISMI states, "we do not have documented proof, but we do have news that a central-African nation has sold pure uranium to Baghdad." Thirty days later, Pollari states, "we have documented proof of an Iraqi acquisition of pure uranium in a central-African nation. We also know of an Iraqi attempt to purchase centrifuges, to be used to enrich uranium, from companies in Germany and possibly in Italy as well." Leaving Parliament, Pollari still has the problem of how to get the fake document to Washington without his metaphorical finger prints on them. The "deliveryman" for SISMI, Rocco Martino, who has already gone knocking on MI6's door, contacts Panorama's Elisabetta Burba attempting to sell her the dossier. Is it the smokeseller's own idea, was it suggested to him by Antonio Nucera, or from someone else? Burba, justly, goes to double check the information in Niger. There she invents a cover-up of dinosaurs, from the Tyrannosaurus Nigeriensis to the Velociraptor Abakensis.
In the meantime, she also speaks to some credible sources. Elisabette does her duty with tenacity and rigor, and comes to the conclusion that the story just does not jive, and doesn't publish a single line of it. But in reality, everything has already happened, because the director of the weekly, Carlo Rossella, enthusiastic to have perhaps found "the smoking gun" (as he tells his staff), has already sent the documents to the American embassy, "as the best source of verification." Does Pollari then warn the Prime Minister's weekly that in regards to the uranium scoop, the whole thing is a fraud? It would appear not. Thus, Jeff Castelli and the CIA find they once again have to deal with this half-baked story, which they have been trying to avoid for a year. These documents are so obviously fake that they can only be hidden, if they do not want to be mortified when meeting with Dick Cheney. The arrival of the documents in Washington is hushed. On October 16th, 2002, the documents are given out to the various intelligence agencies by members of the State Department during one of their regular meetings, where four CIA members are also present. None of them recall if they have them or ever did. Mysteriously, in Langley the "Italian documents" are "lost" for three months in the counter-proliferation center's vaults. First strike for the Italian documents. The uranium hoax will redouble with the addition of tall-tale of the aluminum tubes. But that's another story.
October 26, 2005
Yellowcake Dossier Not the Work of the CIA
''Pollari went to the White House to offer his truth on Iraq"
by Carlo Bonnini e Giuseppe D'Avanzo of La Repubblica
[translated at the request of Antiwar.com by Azzurra Crispino]
Anything found in [ ] are translator's notes and not originally in the article.
For Nicolò Pollari, director of SISMI [sic Military Intelligence Agency of Italy] the rules of his job are non-negotiable. He tells La Repubblica: "I am the director of intelligence, and the only person I have spoken to in Washington on an institutional level, post September 11th, has been the director of the CIA, George Tenet. Obviously, I speak only to him." But is it really true that our undercover agents have worked exclusively with the CIA? Or, were they co-opted by the clandestine parallel intelligence efforts headed by Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz over the "White House Iraq Group," the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, the National Security advisor's office, who all were set out to find the necessary proof to bring about 'regime change' in Bagdad?
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Pollari, the director of SISMI meets in Washington with the staff of Condoleeza Rice, then White House National Security Advisor. This is done under the supervision of Gianni Castellaneta, currently the Italian ambassador to the US and then diplomatic advisor for Palazzo Chigi [Silvio Berlusconi's official residence as Prime Minister of Italy]. La Repubblica is able to document the simultaneous travel of the Italian government and intelligence. At least one of the "unofficial" meetings Pollari holds is, as secret agents say, the the creation of a love triangle between policy, intelligence, and information.
A quick summary: the Military Intelligence of Italy under Pollari wants to confirm the Iraqi purchase of unprocessed uranium used to make a nuclear bomb. The game plan is clear. Antonio Nucera, assistant chief of the Center for Military Intelligence in Rome, gives the "authentic papers" regarding an attempted acquisition of uranium in Niger (old Italian "intelligence" from the 80s). These are then bundled with other false papers hatched together from official stationery and seals, recovered during a faked burglary of the Niger embassy. These papers are shown by Pollari's people to CIA agents stationed in Rome. Meanwhile, a "deliveryman" for the Military Intelligence Agency, none other than Rocco Martino, delivers them to MI6 in London, run by Sir Richard Dearlove.
This is what gets the ball rolling. This will all be useful in understanding the second chapter of the great Italian deception -- framing the proof used to justify military intervention in Iraq. Greg Thielmann, former director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research for the State Department, finds "the Italian report on uranium" on his desk. He claims not to recall the exact date, but it is roughly fall of 2001. The exact date may be important. We know three events coincide on the date October 15th, 2001. Nicolò Pollari, nominated on September 27th, becomes the head of SISMI, after having been the number two man at CESIS (the center coordinating intelligence for Palazzo Chigi). Silvio Berlusconi finally meets with George W. Bush at the White House and the first CIA report on the Italian evidence all occur on the same date: October 15th, 2001. One might call this nothing more than coincidence, except that it appears the Italians are desperately trying to get into the action. Berlusconi had difficulty, following an attack of "misunderstanding among civilizations," getting a meeting with a White House far more preoccupied with meeting with moderate Arab regimes. Pollari is anxious to be on board with the Premier and the new direction. Col. Alberto Manenti, Pollari's former boss and the newly appointed head of WMD unit at SISMI, also wants to be in tune with the new director. While Bush is showing Berlusconi the Rose Garden, writes Russ Hoyle, the CIA is taking action on the news Italian intelligence has just handed them on a silver platter: "negotiations between Niamey [the capital of Niger] and Bagdad regarding the acquisition of uranium began in the beginning of 1999. culminating in the authorization of the sale by the Nigerien government in 2000." No additional documentation is cited able to show that the shipment of uranium actually took place. CIA analysts consider this first report "very limited" and "lacking in necessary details." Analysts in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department rate the information "highly suspect."
Pollari's first contact with the American intelligence community is not particularly gratifying, but nevertheless useful. The director of SISMI is not a fool, he is quick to reconstruct where the main players fall in the sordid conflict underway in the Administration between those advocating prudence and a pragmatic outlook (State Department and the CIA) versus those who are merely looking for an opportunity to justify a pre-planned war. Gianni Castellaneta advises Pollari to "look in other directions," while Minister of Defense Antonio Martino invites him to meet "an old friend of Italy."
This old American friend is Michael A. Ledeen, an old fox of US parallel intelligence who was declared "undesirable" by Italy in the 1980s. Ledeen is in Rome on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, created by the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowitz to gather intelligence that supports military intervention in Iraq. A source from Forte Braschi [SISMI's headquarters in Rome] tells La Repubblica: "Jeff Castelli, head of the CIA station in Rome, gives a cold reception to Pollari's uranium story and lets the matter drop. Pollari understands this is merely a prelude to something else and talks to Michael Ledeen...." Some unknown reason moves Michael Ledeen back to Washington, D.C. But, at the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convices Dick Cheney to explore in depth the Italian story on the uranium. The Vice President, states the Senate Selected Committee on Intelligence, asks the CIA one more time to know more about a possible acquisition of uranium from Niger. In that meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly states this shred of intelligence was gathered by "a foreign service."
The Pentagon parallel intelligence then spreads this "new information," according to which "there exists an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the sale of 500 tons of uranium a year." The technical analysts smile at this declaration: 500 tons of uranium is an astronomical quantity, and the news is clearly devoid of any accountability. All independent reports, requested following the "Italian document" warn that the two mines in Niger, Arlit and Akouta, are not capable of extracting more than 300 tons a year. But the climate is what it is. George Tenet, hobbled by the holes in intelligence surrounding 9/11, puts on a good face and turns a deaf ear when the State Department (as told to La Repubblica by Greg Thielmann) states in opposition that "the information gathered in Italy is inconsistent; the Niger-uranium story is fake; and that a bunch of things told to us were lies."
The source in Forte Braschi continues, "Pollari is extremely shrewd. He understands that in order to push the uranium story he cannot rely on the CIA alone. He has to work, as he was advised by Palazzo Chigi and the Defense Department, with the Pentagon and the National Security Advisor, Rice." This claim could be nothing more than a malicious rumor (as is often the case in the world of spies) but confirmation of "alternate channels" Pollari creates with Washington are within grasp in an image and a meeting.
The image: Pollari is in Washington. He meets George Tenet, as often happens, in a reserved room of a hotel near Langley. Someone who assisted with the meeting tells La Repubblica: "Pollari must not trust his English very much, because he utilizes an interpreter when speaking to the director of the CIA. George, to get the ball rolling, reveals some information on Al Qaeda and Italy that the Agency has gathered amongst the Guantanamo prisoners. Tenet expects at least a smile, if not a thank you. Instead, he gets a face of stone. At first, this upsets him, but then he lets it go. But what strikes everyone most about Pollari is the way he keeps his central boss in Washington completely marginalized from everything." This estrangement is interesting. In 2002 the head of the SISMI station in Washington is Admiral Giuseppe Grignolo, who has important experience in the proliferation of WMDs, an excellent relationship with the CIA and is very respected by CIA number two Jim Pravitt. The source from Forte Braschi recalls, "in reality, we wanted to keep the CIA out of our work and Pollari didn't trust Grignolo because he's too closely connected to Langley. So, he keeps all his moves quiet, leading [Grignolo] down the wrong path, like say having him focus unnecessarily on the criminal record of the new hires to the service who have perhaps spent a few years in the States... his more important meetings happen elsewhere. With Condi Rice, through Gianni Castellaneta and for the Office of Special Plans of Wolfowitz and Dough Feith, through Leeden. Castellaneta is the one who schedules the meeting in the office of the National Security Advisor." When? What do they discuss? "What do you think they discussed in the summer of 2002? Weapons of mass destruction." The date of the meeting? "That I'm keeping to myself... besides, all it takes is checking with the CAI [Commitato Aeronautico Italiano, the Italian version of the FAA] logs on planes scheduled to fly Ciampino-Washington." [Ciampino is the Italian military airport.]
Getting the flightplans in Rome is difficult, but there's better luck in Washington. An administration official tells La Repubblica, "I can confirm that on Sept. 9th, 2002, General Nicolò Pollari met with Stephen Hadley, at the time Deputy National Security Advisor under Condoleeza Rice. And just like October 15th 2001, September 9th 2002 is a date of coincidences. The issue of Panorama that will hit the stands with the date September 12/19 is going to press. This seems to be the customary in the "yellowcake affair." Recall that "the deliveryman" for SISMI, Rocco Martino, contacts in October a journalist from the weekly magazine, at the time edited by Carlo Rossella, to sell them the document of this crooked affair. No one seems to remember that, in that September 12/19 2002 issue, coinciding with the secret meeting between Pollari and Hadley, Panorama finds a colossal scoop. The title of the article, "The War? It's Already Begun," tells the story of "a load of half a ton of uranium." Further in the article, "the men of Mukhabarat, the Iraqi Secret Service, acquired it [the uranium] through a Jordan intermediary company in far-off Nigeria, where some merchants were selling it as contraband after having stolen it from a nuclear deposit in one of the republics of the former USSR. Five hundred kilos of uranium landed in Amman [the capital of Jordan]. From there, after seven hours by land, they reached their destination: a plant 20 km north of Bagdad, called Al Radhidiyah, well-known for its production and treatment of fission materials." Later in the article, "... the alert pertains to Germany, where in previous years Iraq has tried to buy technology and industrial components from the "Leycochem" organization... including the coveted aluminum tubes for the gas centrifuges."
It is important to note that all the ingredients for the recipe for war are present in this Panorama article, even if in an inexact context (Nigeria is not Niger, a grave lapse) and in some parts far-out (contraband from the former USSR to Africa in a truck): the five hundred tons of uranium that, from Africa, reach Baghdad; aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. A reasonable observation can be made that the schema at work here in Italy seems to overlap completely with the ones sustained in the US CIA/New York Times scandal. Government asks for something; intelligence gives it; the media circulates it; and government confirms it. It's a disinformation technique as old as the Cold War. Exaggerate the danger from the enemy, thereby terrorizing and convincing public opinion. In our own home, an even worse detail: the Prime Minister owns the magazine spreading this poisonous news. The same PM, who heads intelligence and wants to seem and be George W. Bush's biggest ally, who is in turn anxious to go to war.
The groundwork now laid out, Pollari can now concentrate on a different but essential aspect of his gameplan, the promotion of SISMI and himself. He cashes in on the dividends from the last year's obfuscated work, blinding parliament with news cautiously manipulated; revelations that would finally require a believable and documented reconstruction are instead met with a wall of secrecy from the state (that would be opposed by Gianni Letta on July 16th, 2003).
After his secret meeting with Hadley, Pollari has two audiences with the parliamentary committee overseeing secret services. In the first, the director of SISMI states, "we do not have documented proof, but we do have news that a central-African nation has sold pure uranium to Baghdad." Thirty days later, Pollari states, "we have documented proof of an Iraqi acquisition of pure uranium in a central-African nation. We also know of an Iraqi attempt to purchase centrifuges, to be used to enrich uranium, from companies in Germany and possibly in Italy as well." Leaving Parliament, Pollari still has the problem of how to get the fake document to Washington without his metaphorical finger prints on them. The "deliveryman" for SISMI, Rocco Martino, who has already gone knocking on MI6's door, contacts Panorama's Elisabetta Burba attempting to sell her the dossier. Is it the smokeseller's own idea, was it suggested to him by Antonio Nucera, or from someone else? Burba, justly, goes to double check the information in Niger. There she invents a cover-up of dinosaurs, from the Tyrannosaurus Nigeriensis to the Velociraptor Abakensis.
In the meantime, she also speaks to some credible sources. Elisabette does her duty with tenacity and rigor, and comes to the conclusion that the story just does not jive, and doesn't publish a single line of it. But in reality, everything has already happened, because the director of the weekly, Carlo Rossella, enthusiastic to have perhaps found "the smoking gun" (as he tells his staff), has already sent the documents to the American embassy, "as the best source of verification." Does Pollari then warn the Prime Minister's weekly that in regards to the uranium scoop, the whole thing is a fraud? It would appear not. Thus, Jeff Castelli and the CIA find they once again have to deal with this half-baked story, which they have been trying to avoid for a year. These documents are so obviously fake that they can only be hidden, if they do not want to be mortified when meeting with Dick Cheney. The arrival of the documents in Washington is hushed. On October 16th, 2002, the documents are given out to the various intelligence agencies by members of the State Department during one of their regular meetings, where four CIA members are also present. None of them recall if they have them or ever did. Mysteriously, in Langley the "Italian documents" are "lost" for three months in the counter-proliferation center's vaults. First strike for the Italian documents. The uranium hoax will redouble with the addition of tall-tale of the aluminum tubes. But that's another story.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2601934_pf.html
washingtonpost.com
Negroponte Unveils Intelligence Strategy
Director Highlights Fostering Growth of Foreign Democracies as a Top U.S. Goal
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 27, 2005; A09
Bolstering the growth of democracy in other countries has joined countering terrorism and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction as the top strategic missions for the nation's intelligence agencies, according to a document released yesterday by Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.
Titled "The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States," the publication publicly sets out for the first time the strategic missions laid out by the director of national intelligence for the country's 15 agencies.
Negroponte said the strategic mission to "bolster the growth of democracy and sustain peaceful democratic states" is aimed at providing policymakers with information to alert them as to how countries are progressing toward democracy, allowing them to understand the "success or failure to achieve good governance." Although he did not mention Iraq, it would appear that the need to understand that country's progress would fit his description.
Negroponte said mission priorities as described in the document have not changed for the agencies, but two former senior intelligence officials said yesterday one involving democracy appeared new.
During the Cold War, the CIA carried out covert activities in many countries, including some in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, to support democratic leaders and political parties that opposed communist governments.
A senior intelligence official, who appeared with Negroponte at a briefing for reporters but asked not to be identified, said the democracy mission statement does not describe such covert operations but only outlines collection and analysis of so-called soft power intelligence in contrast to the threat-based intelligence that has been emphasized in the past.
The publication also lays out 10 goals, termed "enterprise objectives," that Negroponte hopes to accomplish as a result of the restructuring and transformation of the agencies that has begun since he took over as President Bush's chief intelligence adviser six months ago. These include many steps recommended by the Sept. 11 commission and the president's intelligence commission such as sharing of intelligence between agencies and creation of uniform security practices.
The public release of the intelligence strategy "shows Congress and the public our commitment to building an intelligence community that is more unified, coordinated and effective," Negroponte told reporters at the briefing. He added that the document will help the individual agencies under him align their activities to these missions.
In the past, the mission statement had been contained in a classified document produced by the DNI's predecessor, the director of central intelligence, according to a senior intelligence official.
One "enterprise" objective calls for establishing new and strengthened relationships with foreign intelligence services. That appears to conflict with goals recently set out by CIA Director Porter J. Goss who told his agency he wants to increase unilateral human intelligence collection and reduce reliance on foreign liaison relationships.
The senior intelligence official said that though U.S. human intelligence collection will increase, "we have a lot more to harvest with allies," and that both approaches will be used.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
Negroponte Unveils Intelligence Strategy
Director Highlights Fostering Growth of Foreign Democracies as a Top U.S. Goal
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 27, 2005; A09
Bolstering the growth of democracy in other countries has joined countering terrorism and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction as the top strategic missions for the nation's intelligence agencies, according to a document released yesterday by Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.
Titled "The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States," the publication publicly sets out for the first time the strategic missions laid out by the director of national intelligence for the country's 15 agencies.
Negroponte said the strategic mission to "bolster the growth of democracy and sustain peaceful democratic states" is aimed at providing policymakers with information to alert them as to how countries are progressing toward democracy, allowing them to understand the "success or failure to achieve good governance." Although he did not mention Iraq, it would appear that the need to understand that country's progress would fit his description.
Negroponte said mission priorities as described in the document have not changed for the agencies, but two former senior intelligence officials said yesterday one involving democracy appeared new.
During the Cold War, the CIA carried out covert activities in many countries, including some in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, to support democratic leaders and political parties that opposed communist governments.
A senior intelligence official, who appeared with Negroponte at a briefing for reporters but asked not to be identified, said the democracy mission statement does not describe such covert operations but only outlines collection and analysis of so-called soft power intelligence in contrast to the threat-based intelligence that has been emphasized in the past.
The publication also lays out 10 goals, termed "enterprise objectives," that Negroponte hopes to accomplish as a result of the restructuring and transformation of the agencies that has begun since he took over as President Bush's chief intelligence adviser six months ago. These include many steps recommended by the Sept. 11 commission and the president's intelligence commission such as sharing of intelligence between agencies and creation of uniform security practices.
The public release of the intelligence strategy "shows Congress and the public our commitment to building an intelligence community that is more unified, coordinated and effective," Negroponte told reporters at the briefing. He added that the document will help the individual agencies under him align their activities to these missions.
In the past, the mission statement had been contained in a classified document produced by the DNI's predecessor, the director of central intelligence, according to a senior intelligence official.
One "enterprise" objective calls for establishing new and strengthened relationships with foreign intelligence services. That appears to conflict with goals recently set out by CIA Director Porter J. Goss who told his agency he wants to increase unilateral human intelligence collection and reduce reliance on foreign liaison relationships.
The senior intelligence official said that though U.S. human intelligence collection will increase, "we have a lot more to harvest with allies," and that both approaches will be used.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/politics/27intel.html
Spy Agencies Told to Bolster 'The Growth of Democracy'
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 27, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - A new strategy document issued Wednesday by the Bush administration ranks efforts to "bolster the growth of democracy" among the three top missions for American intelligence agencies.
John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, said the rankings were intended to align the work of intelligence agencies with the administration's broader national security goals. The top two "mission objectives" are efforts to counter terrorism and weapons proliferation.
At a briefing, Mr. Negroponte said he did not believe that the priorities reflected a significant change from those in place before the overhaul of intelligence agencies and the establishment of his post six months ago. But another senior intelligence official, speaking at the same briefing, said the emphasis reflected an acknowledgment that American agencies needed to do "a better job" in understanding the role played by "soft power."
The Bush administration has seized upon the expansion of democracy abroad as a central theme of foreign policy, especially since President Bush devoted much of his second inaugural address to pledging support for democratic movements "in every nation and culture."
Among other things, the strategy says that "collectors, analysts and operators" within the 15 American intelligence agencies should seek to "forge relationships with new and incipient democracies" in order to help "strengthen the rule of law and ward off threats to representative government." The strategy, published on www.dni.gov, is unclassified, and the officials said it was not intended to apply in any way to any covert action that might be undertaken by the United States.
The document provided few specifics, and Mr. Negroponte said it could take as long as two years before its goals were fully reflected in intelligence budgets. But the second intelligence official said it would be prudent to expect to see funds shifted away from classified technical intelligence programs, some of which Mr. Negroponte's office has already selected for cuts, and toward human spying.
"Without prejudging anything, that's where they keep the money," the second official said, referring to the multibillion-dollar budgets controlled by the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which build, launch and operate reconnaissance and eavesdropping satellites.
The second official spoke on condition of anonymity, under ground rules set by Mr. Negroponte's office.
While counterterrorism was listed first among intelligence priorities, the second official suggested that Mr. Negroponte's office was still reviewing how intelligence agencies were organized to wage that effort.
A new National Counterterrorism Center has been designated the "mission manager" by Mr. Negroponte, but the C.I.A. maintains its own such center, and the two sometimes compete for resources.
Spy Agencies Told to Bolster 'The Growth of Democracy'
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 27, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - A new strategy document issued Wednesday by the Bush administration ranks efforts to "bolster the growth of democracy" among the three top missions for American intelligence agencies.
John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, said the rankings were intended to align the work of intelligence agencies with the administration's broader national security goals. The top two "mission objectives" are efforts to counter terrorism and weapons proliferation.
At a briefing, Mr. Negroponte said he did not believe that the priorities reflected a significant change from those in place before the overhaul of intelligence agencies and the establishment of his post six months ago. But another senior intelligence official, speaking at the same briefing, said the emphasis reflected an acknowledgment that American agencies needed to do "a better job" in understanding the role played by "soft power."
The Bush administration has seized upon the expansion of democracy abroad as a central theme of foreign policy, especially since President Bush devoted much of his second inaugural address to pledging support for democratic movements "in every nation and culture."
Among other things, the strategy says that "collectors, analysts and operators" within the 15 American intelligence agencies should seek to "forge relationships with new and incipient democracies" in order to help "strengthen the rule of law and ward off threats to representative government." The strategy, published on www.dni.gov, is unclassified, and the officials said it was not intended to apply in any way to any covert action that might be undertaken by the United States.
The document provided few specifics, and Mr. Negroponte said it could take as long as two years before its goals were fully reflected in intelligence budgets. But the second intelligence official said it would be prudent to expect to see funds shifted away from classified technical intelligence programs, some of which Mr. Negroponte's office has already selected for cuts, and toward human spying.
"Without prejudging anything, that's where they keep the money," the second official said, referring to the multibillion-dollar budgets controlled by the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which build, launch and operate reconnaissance and eavesdropping satellites.
The second official spoke on condition of anonymity, under ground rules set by Mr. Negroponte's office.
While counterterrorism was listed first among intelligence priorities, the second official suggested that Mr. Negroponte's office was still reviewing how intelligence agencies were organized to wage that effort.
A new National Counterterrorism Center has been designated the "mission manager" by Mr. Negroponte, but the C.I.A. maintains its own such center, and the two sometimes compete for resources.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051114/ritter
Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh: Iraq Confidential
EDITOR'S NOTE: Iraq is a nation on fire, a conflagration of America's making that threatens to consume everything the nation stands for. How did we get there? How do we get out? Can we get out?
In this edited transcript of an October 19 public conversation sponsored by The Nation Institute at the New York Ethical Culture Society, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter discuss how the CIA manipulated and sabotaged the work of UN departments to achieve a hidden foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. The conversation was based on revelations in Ritter's new book, Iraq Confidential, published by Nation Books. Hersh's most recent book is Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, published by HarperCollins.
MR. HERSH: What I'm going to do is just ask Scott a series of questions. I've read his book a couple of times, and basically we're going to try to have some fun. Consider Scott and I your little orchestra playing on the deck of the Titanic as it goes down, because we're all in grave trouble here. So, Scott, to begin, before we even talk about how we got to where we are, my own personal view is we have two options in Iraq. Option A, we can get all our troops out by midnight tonight, and option B, we can get them all out by tomorrow night at midnight. And so I wonder where you sit on that, what's your view?
MR. RITTER: Well, I view that Iraq is a nation that's on fire. There's a horrific problem that faces not only the people of Iraq but the United States and the entire world. And the fuel that feeds that fire is the presence of American and British troops. This is widely acknowledged by the very generals that are in charge of the military action in Iraq. So the best way to put out the fire is to separate the fuel from the flame. So I'm a big proponent of bringing the troops home as soon as possible.
Today's the best day we're going to have in Iraq. Tomorrow's going to be worse, and the day after that's going to be even worse. But we also have to recognize that one of the reasons why we didn't move to Baghdad in 1991 to take out Saddam was that there was wide recognition that if you get rid of Saddam and you don't have a good idea of what's going to take his place, that Iraq will devolve into chaos and anarchy. Well, we've done just that. We got rid of Saddam, and we have no clue what was going to take his place. And pulling the troops out is only half of the problem.
We also have to deal with three critical issues that have emerged since we invaded:
--A, the Shia, and I'm not talking about the mainstream Shia of Iraq. I'm talking about this political elite that's pro-Iranian that has conducted a coup d'etat. They're running the government today.
--B, the Sunni. We took a secular bulwark against the expansion of radical anti-American Islamic fundamentalism, and we've radicalized them. And if we just pull out and leave the situation as it is, we've turned the Sunni heartland into a festering cesspool of anti-American sentiment. It's the new Afghanistan, the new breeding ground for Al Qaeda.
--C, the one that nobody talks about in the media is the Kurds. We somehow have given the Kurds this false sense that they're going to have an independent homeland, and yet our NATO ally, Turkey, has said this will never happen. And if we allow the Kurds to move forward towards independence, we're compelling the Turks to radical military intervention at a time when Turkey has just been invited to enter into the fifteen-year negotiation with the European Union about becoming a member of the European community. If the Turks move against the Kurds, that negotiation's over which means that Turkey has been rejected by Europe and will be heading towards the embrace of radical anti-American Islam. So it's not just about getting the troops out. We have to recognize that there are three huge ongoing issues in Iraq that affect the national security of the United States, and we need a policy to address these. But keeping our troops in Iraq is not part of that policy.
MR.HERSH: How do you get them out, how quickly?
MR. RITTER: The quicker the better. I mean, I'd leave it up to military professionals to determine how you reduce perimeters. There are some areas of the country where you can just literally up and run. But we have a significant force in place, we have significant infrastructure in place, and we have an active insurgency that would take advantage of any weaknesses. But I guarantee you this, if we went to the insurgents--and I do believe that we're having some sort of interaction with the insurgents today--and said we're getting out of here, all attacks would stop. They'd do everything they can to make sure that the road out of Iraq was as IED-free as possible.
MR. HERSH: One of the things about your book that's amazing is that it's not only about the Bush Administration, and if there are any villains in this book, they include Sandy Berger, who was Clinton's national security advisor, and Madeleine Albright.
Another thing that's breathtaking about this book is the amount of new stories and new information. Scott describes in detail and with named sources, basically, a two or three-year run of the American government undercutting the inspection process. In your view, during those years, '91 to'98, particularly the last three years, was the United States interested in disarming Iraq?
MR. RITTER: Well, the fact of the matter is the United States was never interested in disarming Iraq. The whole Security Council resolution that created the UN weapons inspections and called upon Iraq to disarm was focused on one thing and one thing only, and that is a vehicle for the maintenance of economic sanctions that were imposed in August 1990 linked to the liberation of Kuwait. We liberated Kuwait, I participated in that conflict. And one would think, therefore, the sanctions should be lifted.
The United States needed to find a vehicle to continue to contain Saddam because the CIA said all we have to do is wait six months and Saddam is going to collapse on his own volition. That vehicle is sanctions. They needed a justification; the justification was disarmament. They drafted a Chapter 7 resolution of the United Nations Security Council calling for the disarmament of Iraq and saying in Paragraph 14 that if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted. Within months of this resolution being passed--and the United States drafted and voted in favor of this resolution--within months, the President, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, are saying publicly, not privately, publicly that even if Iraq complies with its obligation to disarm, economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power.
That is proof positive that disarmament was only useful insofar as it contained through the maintenance of sanctions and facilitated regime change. It was never about disarmament, it was never about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It started with George Herbert Walker Bush, and it was a policy continued through eight years of the Clinton presidency, and then brought us to this current disastrous course of action under the current Bush Administration.
MR. HERSH: One of the things that's overwhelming to me is the notion that everybody believed before March of '03 that Saddam had weapons. This is just urban myth. The fact of the matter is that, in talking to people who worked on the UNSCOM and also in the International Atomic Energy Agency, they were pretty much clear by '97 that there was very little likelihood that Saddam had weapons. And there were many people in our State Department, in the Department of Energy, in the CIA who didn't believe there were weapons. And I think history is going to judge the mass hysteria we had about Saddam and weapons. And one of the questions that keeps on coming up now is why didn't Saddam tell us. Did he tell us?
MR. RITTER: Well, of course he told us. Look, let's be honest, the Iraqis were obligated in 1991 to submit a full declaration listing the totality of their holdings in WMD, and they didn't do this. They lied. They failed to declare a nuclear weapons program, they failed to declare a biological weapons programs, and they under-declared their chemical and ballistic missile capabilities. Saddam Hussein intended to retain a strategic deterrent capability, not only to take care of Iran but also to focus on Israel. What he didn't count on was the tenacity of the inspectors. And very rapidly, by June 1991, we had compelled him into acknowledging that he had a nuclear weapons programs, and we pushed him so hard that by the summer of 1991, in the same way that a drug dealer who has police knocking at his door, flushes drugs down a toilet to get rid of his stash so he could tell the cops, "I don't have any drugs," the Iraqis, not wanting to admit that they lied, flushed their stash down the toilet.
They blew up all their weapons and buried them in the desert, and then tried to maintain the fiction that they had told the truth. And by 1992 they were compelled again, because of the tenacity of the inspectors, to come clean. People ask why didn't Saddam Hussein admit being disarmed? In 1992 they submitted a declaration that said everything's been destroyed, we have nothing left. In 1995 they turned over the totality of their document cache. Again, not willingly, it took years of inspections to pressure them, but the bottom line is by 1995 there were no more weapons in Iraq, there were no more documents in Iraq, there was no more production capability in Iraq because we were monitoring the totality of Iraq's industrial infrastructure with the most technologically advanced, the most intrusive arms control regime in the history of arms control.
And furthermore, the CIA knew this, the British intelligence knew this, Israeli intelligence knew this, German intelligence, the whole world knew this. They weren't going to say that Iraq was disarmed because nobody could say that, but they definitely knew that the Iraqi capability regarding WMD had been reduced to as near to zero as you could bring it, and that Iraq represented a threat to no one when it came to weapons of mass destruction.
MR. HERSH: The other element in all of this, of course, is that, as Scott writes in his book, there were things going on inside his own organization that he didn't know about, operations being run by the CIA. One of the things that was going on is, as we provoked Saddam and demanded to get into the palaces, their concern was, of course, that the real meaning of the effort was to assassinate him, and, lo and behold----
MR. RITTER: Well, that's exactly what happened. I mean, look, the American policy was regime change. At first they wanted to be passive, we're just going to contain Saddam through economic sanctions, and he's going to collapse of his own volition in six months. That failed. We're going to put pressure on the Iraqis, and we're going to get some Sunni general to apply the 75-cent solution--the cost of a 9 mm bullet put in the back of Saddam's head--and the Sunni general will take over. If you want proof positive about the corrupt nature of our regime-change policy, understand this, it wasn't about changing the regime. It wasn't about getting rid of the Baathist party or transforming Iraq into a modern democracy back in the early 1990s. It was about getting rid of one man, Saddam Hussein. And if he was replaced by a Sunni general who governed Iraq in the exact same fashion, that was okay. And that shows the utter hypocrisy of everything we did.
But the CIA was having a difficult time getting near Saddam because he has a very effective security apparatus. By 1995, Saddam's survival becomes a political liability to Bill Clinton, and he was coming up for reelection in '96, and he turned to the CIA and said get rid of Saddam by the summer of 1996: I need that man gone. And the CIA worked with British intelligence, they brought in somebody named Ayad Allawi. It might be a name familiar to people--he was for a period of time the interim Prime Minister of Iraq after the American occupation. Before he was interim Prime Minister, however, he was a paid agent of British intelligence and the CIA, and he worked with them to orchestrate this coup d'état that required them to recruit people on the inside of Iraq to be ready to take out Saddam. But you needed a trigger, and the trigger was a UN weapons inspection that I helped organize.
We thought we were going after the concealment mechanism, but it turned out that the CIA was setting us up so that we would go to facilities that housed Saddam's security. It was anticipated they would block us, and then when we withdrew, there would be a military strike that would decapitate the security of Saddam.
The one place that we wanted to go to, the Third Battalion, we weren't allowed to. The CIA said don't worry about that, we know those guys, they're not bad. And they were supposed to rise up and take Saddam out. Well, the Iraqi intelligence service was very effective at infiltrating this coup, they wrapped it up, and nothing happened in terms of getting rid of Saddam. Except one thing, the Iraqis were fully aware of the role played by the CIA in infiltrating UNSCOM and using UNSCOM for devices. And the ultimate tragedy of this is that from that point on, every time a UN weapons inspector went into Iraq--somebody with a blue hat--they weren't viewed by the Iraqis as somebody who was trying to disarm Iraq, they were viewed by the Iraqis as somebody trying to kill their President, and they were right.
MR. HERSH: When did you learn about this?
MR. RITTER: We always knew about regime change. I mean, when I first came in, we knew about regime change. In terms of the infiltration, you know, some people say it's my fault because I'm the guy who brought in the character I call Modaz and the special activities staff, the covert operators of the CIA. We used them in 1992, we used them in 1993 because it's tough to do inspections in Iraq. You know, they're not necessarily the friendliest people in the world when you're trying to go to a site that they don't want you to get in. And you can't have a bunch of thin-necked, geeky scientists trying to do this job. You need guys with thick necks and thick arms, and the CIA had plenty of these guys who could do logistics, they could do planning, they could do communications in austere environments. So we used these guys, and we used them in June.
The problem came afterwards when we started doing up follow-up inspections. First of all, the Iraqis would come to me, and they would say, "Mr. Ritter, what are you doing? You know, you're supposed to be an inspector, and yet you're doing all this bad stuff. We know about the CIA's coup attempts.... We know what happened in June."
Well, what happened in June? And suddenly we started inspecting cites, and I see documents that start sending off signals in my head about, oh, my gosh, the unit the CIA didn't want us to go to was the unit that was liquidated by Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the failed coup because that was the unit that was trying to take out Saddam. It's silly, the light goes off, and you're sitting there going we've had the wool pulled over our eyes, we've been used. We were used by the United States, though, and they're the most powerful nation on the Security Council that we as inspectors worked for.
So how do you turn to your boss and say, Hey, you've used us? We won't tolerate that. Well, you can't do that. What you have to do is continue to plod forward and just redouble your efforts to maintain the integrity of a process that tragically had been terminally corrupted by that point.
MR. HERSH: The question is, if Clinton wasn't so good, where are we now?
MR. RITTER: Well, I mean, I'll start off, and I want to highlight that point that Clinton wasn't so good. You know, there's a lot of talk today in the Democratically controlled judiciary committee about going after the Bush Administration for crimes, for lying to Congress, and etc. And I'm all in favor of that, bring on the indictments, but don't stop at the Bush Administration. If you want to have a truly bipartisan indictment, you indict Madeleine Albright, you indict Sandy Berger, you indict every person on the Clinton Administration that committed the exact same crime that the Bush Administration has committed today. Lying during the course of your official duty: That's a felony, that's a high crime and misdemeanor. That's language in the Constitution that triggers certain events like impeachment. So let's not just simply turn this into a Bush-bashing event. This is about a failure of not only the Bush Administration but of the United States of America, and we have to look in the mirror and recognize that, well, all the Bush Administration did is take advantage of a systemic failure on the part of the United States as a whole, a failure that not only involves the executive, but it involves the legislative branch, Congress.
Congress has abrogated its responsibilities under the Constitution, and they've abrogated it for years. Then there's the media, and, yes, we can turn this into a media-bashing event. But you know what? The media only feeds the American people the poison they're willing to swallow. And we the people of the United States of America seem to want our news in no more than three-minute chunks with sound bites of thirty seconds or less, and it can't be too complicated. So what we did is allowed ourselves during the decade of the 1990s to be pre-programmed into accepting at face value without question anything that was negative about Saddam Hussein's regime, and this made selling the war on Iraq on the basis of a lie the easiest task ever faced by the Bush Administration.
MR. HERSH: There's always the argument that one virtue of what we did, no matter how bad it is, we've got rid of a very bad dictator. What's your answer to that one?
MR. RITTER: That invokes the notion of the ends justify the means. I mean, that's basically what we're saying here is that who cares about the lie, who cares about the WMD. You know, we got rid of a bad guy. The ends justify the means. And I have to be frank. If there's anybody here who calls themselves a citizen of the United States of America and you endorse the notion of the ends justify the means, submit your passport for destruction and get the hell out of my country. Because this is a country that is founded on the rule of law as set forth by the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution that the men and women who serve us swore an oath of allegiance to, the Constitution that our government, every government official swears an oath of allegiance to, and it's about due process. Democracy is ugly. Sometimes it doesn't work as smoothly as we want it to. But if you're sitting here and saying that when it comes to Saddam, that the ends justify the means, where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line?
And you can't tell me that it's only going to stop here. It's about the rule of law, it's about the Constitution. And if we wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, then we should have had a debate, discussion, and dialogue about the real reasons and not make up some artificial WMD.
MR. HERSH: But let me ask you this, as somebody who knows the military pretty well, what about the failure of the military to speak out?
MR. RITTER: Well, I'm not saying that they shouldn't speak out. I mean, it would be wonderful if soldiers came back from Iraq and said this is a war that's not only unwinnable, but this is a war that's morally unacceptable, and I can no longer participate in this conflict. But it's a very difficult thing to ask a soldier to do what the average American citizen won't.
I mean, why do we put the burden on the soldier to speak out instead of putting the burden on the American public to become more empowered, to become enraged about what's happening? We've got an election coming up in 2006. Rather than waiting for soldiers to resign, why don't we vote out of Congress everybody who voted in favor of this war?
MR. HERSH: Do you have any optimism at this point?
MR. RITTER: No. I wish I did.
I mean, the sad fact is, one of the reasons why I was arguing against this war was not just that it was based on a lie, but it's a reflection of the reality that was recognized in 1991: If you remove Saddam and you don't have a clue what's going to replace Saddam, you're going to get chaos and anarchy. People continue to say they want the elegant solution in Iraq. I mean, that's the problem, everybody's like, well, we can't withdraw because we got to solve all the problems.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's not going to be an elegant solution in Iraq. There's no magic wand that can be waved to solve this problem. If we get out and we have a plan, you know, it's still going to cost 30,000 Iraqi lives. Let's understand that, there's going to be blood shed in Iraq. They're going to kill each other, and we're not going to stop it.
If we continue to stay the course, however, that 30,000 number may become 60,000 or 90,000. At the end of the day, we've created a nightmare scenario in Iraq, and the best we can do is mitigate failure. And that's what I'm talking, and, unfortunately, that's a politically unacceptable answer. People say, no, we have to win, we have to persevere, there has to be victory. There's not going to be victory.
MR. HERSH: What about the chances of expanding the war? What about the chances of expanding the war into Syria or even into Iran?
MR. RITTER: Well, the sad thing right now is that we have a Bush Administration that's populated by people who don't understand war. They've never been in the military, they've never served in combat, and they don't know what it means to have a son die or to have a friend die or have a brother die or have a comrade die.
And so that's why you have a Secretary of State like Condoleezza Rice who has the gall to stand before the American people and say that war is the only guarantor of peace and security. And now she testified before the US Congress today, and she said that not only is Iraq probably going to be another ten-year investment of time, blood, and national treasure for the American public, but that Syria and Iran may very well be the next targets of the Bush Administration. So this Administration has learned nothing, but what's worse is that Congress has learned nothing.
There were no tough questions to Condoleezza Rice. And now we have the American people. What lessons have we learned, what actions are we going to take?
Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh: Iraq Confidential
EDITOR'S NOTE: Iraq is a nation on fire, a conflagration of America's making that threatens to consume everything the nation stands for. How did we get there? How do we get out? Can we get out?
In this edited transcript of an October 19 public conversation sponsored by The Nation Institute at the New York Ethical Culture Society, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter discuss how the CIA manipulated and sabotaged the work of UN departments to achieve a hidden foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. The conversation was based on revelations in Ritter's new book, Iraq Confidential, published by Nation Books. Hersh's most recent book is Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, published by HarperCollins.
MR. HERSH: What I'm going to do is just ask Scott a series of questions. I've read his book a couple of times, and basically we're going to try to have some fun. Consider Scott and I your little orchestra playing on the deck of the Titanic as it goes down, because we're all in grave trouble here. So, Scott, to begin, before we even talk about how we got to where we are, my own personal view is we have two options in Iraq. Option A, we can get all our troops out by midnight tonight, and option B, we can get them all out by tomorrow night at midnight. And so I wonder where you sit on that, what's your view?
MR. RITTER: Well, I view that Iraq is a nation that's on fire. There's a horrific problem that faces not only the people of Iraq but the United States and the entire world. And the fuel that feeds that fire is the presence of American and British troops. This is widely acknowledged by the very generals that are in charge of the military action in Iraq. So the best way to put out the fire is to separate the fuel from the flame. So I'm a big proponent of bringing the troops home as soon as possible.
Today's the best day we're going to have in Iraq. Tomorrow's going to be worse, and the day after that's going to be even worse. But we also have to recognize that one of the reasons why we didn't move to Baghdad in 1991 to take out Saddam was that there was wide recognition that if you get rid of Saddam and you don't have a good idea of what's going to take his place, that Iraq will devolve into chaos and anarchy. Well, we've done just that. We got rid of Saddam, and we have no clue what was going to take his place. And pulling the troops out is only half of the problem.
We also have to deal with three critical issues that have emerged since we invaded:
--A, the Shia, and I'm not talking about the mainstream Shia of Iraq. I'm talking about this political elite that's pro-Iranian that has conducted a coup d'etat. They're running the government today.
--B, the Sunni. We took a secular bulwark against the expansion of radical anti-American Islamic fundamentalism, and we've radicalized them. And if we just pull out and leave the situation as it is, we've turned the Sunni heartland into a festering cesspool of anti-American sentiment. It's the new Afghanistan, the new breeding ground for Al Qaeda.
--C, the one that nobody talks about in the media is the Kurds. We somehow have given the Kurds this false sense that they're going to have an independent homeland, and yet our NATO ally, Turkey, has said this will never happen. And if we allow the Kurds to move forward towards independence, we're compelling the Turks to radical military intervention at a time when Turkey has just been invited to enter into the fifteen-year negotiation with the European Union about becoming a member of the European community. If the Turks move against the Kurds, that negotiation's over which means that Turkey has been rejected by Europe and will be heading towards the embrace of radical anti-American Islam. So it's not just about getting the troops out. We have to recognize that there are three huge ongoing issues in Iraq that affect the national security of the United States, and we need a policy to address these. But keeping our troops in Iraq is not part of that policy.
MR.HERSH: How do you get them out, how quickly?
MR. RITTER: The quicker the better. I mean, I'd leave it up to military professionals to determine how you reduce perimeters. There are some areas of the country where you can just literally up and run. But we have a significant force in place, we have significant infrastructure in place, and we have an active insurgency that would take advantage of any weaknesses. But I guarantee you this, if we went to the insurgents--and I do believe that we're having some sort of interaction with the insurgents today--and said we're getting out of here, all attacks would stop. They'd do everything they can to make sure that the road out of Iraq was as IED-free as possible.
MR. HERSH: One of the things about your book that's amazing is that it's not only about the Bush Administration, and if there are any villains in this book, they include Sandy Berger, who was Clinton's national security advisor, and Madeleine Albright.
Another thing that's breathtaking about this book is the amount of new stories and new information. Scott describes in detail and with named sources, basically, a two or three-year run of the American government undercutting the inspection process. In your view, during those years, '91 to'98, particularly the last three years, was the United States interested in disarming Iraq?
MR. RITTER: Well, the fact of the matter is the United States was never interested in disarming Iraq. The whole Security Council resolution that created the UN weapons inspections and called upon Iraq to disarm was focused on one thing and one thing only, and that is a vehicle for the maintenance of economic sanctions that were imposed in August 1990 linked to the liberation of Kuwait. We liberated Kuwait, I participated in that conflict. And one would think, therefore, the sanctions should be lifted.
The United States needed to find a vehicle to continue to contain Saddam because the CIA said all we have to do is wait six months and Saddam is going to collapse on his own volition. That vehicle is sanctions. They needed a justification; the justification was disarmament. They drafted a Chapter 7 resolution of the United Nations Security Council calling for the disarmament of Iraq and saying in Paragraph 14 that if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted. Within months of this resolution being passed--and the United States drafted and voted in favor of this resolution--within months, the President, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, are saying publicly, not privately, publicly that even if Iraq complies with its obligation to disarm, economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power.
That is proof positive that disarmament was only useful insofar as it contained through the maintenance of sanctions and facilitated regime change. It was never about disarmament, it was never about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It started with George Herbert Walker Bush, and it was a policy continued through eight years of the Clinton presidency, and then brought us to this current disastrous course of action under the current Bush Administration.
MR. HERSH: One of the things that's overwhelming to me is the notion that everybody believed before March of '03 that Saddam had weapons. This is just urban myth. The fact of the matter is that, in talking to people who worked on the UNSCOM and also in the International Atomic Energy Agency, they were pretty much clear by '97 that there was very little likelihood that Saddam had weapons. And there were many people in our State Department, in the Department of Energy, in the CIA who didn't believe there were weapons. And I think history is going to judge the mass hysteria we had about Saddam and weapons. And one of the questions that keeps on coming up now is why didn't Saddam tell us. Did he tell us?
MR. RITTER: Well, of course he told us. Look, let's be honest, the Iraqis were obligated in 1991 to submit a full declaration listing the totality of their holdings in WMD, and they didn't do this. They lied. They failed to declare a nuclear weapons program, they failed to declare a biological weapons programs, and they under-declared their chemical and ballistic missile capabilities. Saddam Hussein intended to retain a strategic deterrent capability, not only to take care of Iran but also to focus on Israel. What he didn't count on was the tenacity of the inspectors. And very rapidly, by June 1991, we had compelled him into acknowledging that he had a nuclear weapons programs, and we pushed him so hard that by the summer of 1991, in the same way that a drug dealer who has police knocking at his door, flushes drugs down a toilet to get rid of his stash so he could tell the cops, "I don't have any drugs," the Iraqis, not wanting to admit that they lied, flushed their stash down the toilet.
They blew up all their weapons and buried them in the desert, and then tried to maintain the fiction that they had told the truth. And by 1992 they were compelled again, because of the tenacity of the inspectors, to come clean. People ask why didn't Saddam Hussein admit being disarmed? In 1992 they submitted a declaration that said everything's been destroyed, we have nothing left. In 1995 they turned over the totality of their document cache. Again, not willingly, it took years of inspections to pressure them, but the bottom line is by 1995 there were no more weapons in Iraq, there were no more documents in Iraq, there was no more production capability in Iraq because we were monitoring the totality of Iraq's industrial infrastructure with the most technologically advanced, the most intrusive arms control regime in the history of arms control.
And furthermore, the CIA knew this, the British intelligence knew this, Israeli intelligence knew this, German intelligence, the whole world knew this. They weren't going to say that Iraq was disarmed because nobody could say that, but they definitely knew that the Iraqi capability regarding WMD had been reduced to as near to zero as you could bring it, and that Iraq represented a threat to no one when it came to weapons of mass destruction.
MR. HERSH: The other element in all of this, of course, is that, as Scott writes in his book, there were things going on inside his own organization that he didn't know about, operations being run by the CIA. One of the things that was going on is, as we provoked Saddam and demanded to get into the palaces, their concern was, of course, that the real meaning of the effort was to assassinate him, and, lo and behold----
MR. RITTER: Well, that's exactly what happened. I mean, look, the American policy was regime change. At first they wanted to be passive, we're just going to contain Saddam through economic sanctions, and he's going to collapse of his own volition in six months. That failed. We're going to put pressure on the Iraqis, and we're going to get some Sunni general to apply the 75-cent solution--the cost of a 9 mm bullet put in the back of Saddam's head--and the Sunni general will take over. If you want proof positive about the corrupt nature of our regime-change policy, understand this, it wasn't about changing the regime. It wasn't about getting rid of the Baathist party or transforming Iraq into a modern democracy back in the early 1990s. It was about getting rid of one man, Saddam Hussein. And if he was replaced by a Sunni general who governed Iraq in the exact same fashion, that was okay. And that shows the utter hypocrisy of everything we did.
But the CIA was having a difficult time getting near Saddam because he has a very effective security apparatus. By 1995, Saddam's survival becomes a political liability to Bill Clinton, and he was coming up for reelection in '96, and he turned to the CIA and said get rid of Saddam by the summer of 1996: I need that man gone. And the CIA worked with British intelligence, they brought in somebody named Ayad Allawi. It might be a name familiar to people--he was for a period of time the interim Prime Minister of Iraq after the American occupation. Before he was interim Prime Minister, however, he was a paid agent of British intelligence and the CIA, and he worked with them to orchestrate this coup d'état that required them to recruit people on the inside of Iraq to be ready to take out Saddam. But you needed a trigger, and the trigger was a UN weapons inspection that I helped organize.
We thought we were going after the concealment mechanism, but it turned out that the CIA was setting us up so that we would go to facilities that housed Saddam's security. It was anticipated they would block us, and then when we withdrew, there would be a military strike that would decapitate the security of Saddam.
The one place that we wanted to go to, the Third Battalion, we weren't allowed to. The CIA said don't worry about that, we know those guys, they're not bad. And they were supposed to rise up and take Saddam out. Well, the Iraqi intelligence service was very effective at infiltrating this coup, they wrapped it up, and nothing happened in terms of getting rid of Saddam. Except one thing, the Iraqis were fully aware of the role played by the CIA in infiltrating UNSCOM and using UNSCOM for devices. And the ultimate tragedy of this is that from that point on, every time a UN weapons inspector went into Iraq--somebody with a blue hat--they weren't viewed by the Iraqis as somebody who was trying to disarm Iraq, they were viewed by the Iraqis as somebody trying to kill their President, and they were right.
MR. HERSH: When did you learn about this?
MR. RITTER: We always knew about regime change. I mean, when I first came in, we knew about regime change. In terms of the infiltration, you know, some people say it's my fault because I'm the guy who brought in the character I call Modaz and the special activities staff, the covert operators of the CIA. We used them in 1992, we used them in 1993 because it's tough to do inspections in Iraq. You know, they're not necessarily the friendliest people in the world when you're trying to go to a site that they don't want you to get in. And you can't have a bunch of thin-necked, geeky scientists trying to do this job. You need guys with thick necks and thick arms, and the CIA had plenty of these guys who could do logistics, they could do planning, they could do communications in austere environments. So we used these guys, and we used them in June.
The problem came afterwards when we started doing up follow-up inspections. First of all, the Iraqis would come to me, and they would say, "Mr. Ritter, what are you doing? You know, you're supposed to be an inspector, and yet you're doing all this bad stuff. We know about the CIA's coup attempts.... We know what happened in June."
Well, what happened in June? And suddenly we started inspecting cites, and I see documents that start sending off signals in my head about, oh, my gosh, the unit the CIA didn't want us to go to was the unit that was liquidated by Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the failed coup because that was the unit that was trying to take out Saddam. It's silly, the light goes off, and you're sitting there going we've had the wool pulled over our eyes, we've been used. We were used by the United States, though, and they're the most powerful nation on the Security Council that we as inspectors worked for.
So how do you turn to your boss and say, Hey, you've used us? We won't tolerate that. Well, you can't do that. What you have to do is continue to plod forward and just redouble your efforts to maintain the integrity of a process that tragically had been terminally corrupted by that point.
MR. HERSH: The question is, if Clinton wasn't so good, where are we now?
MR. RITTER: Well, I mean, I'll start off, and I want to highlight that point that Clinton wasn't so good. You know, there's a lot of talk today in the Democratically controlled judiciary committee about going after the Bush Administration for crimes, for lying to Congress, and etc. And I'm all in favor of that, bring on the indictments, but don't stop at the Bush Administration. If you want to have a truly bipartisan indictment, you indict Madeleine Albright, you indict Sandy Berger, you indict every person on the Clinton Administration that committed the exact same crime that the Bush Administration has committed today. Lying during the course of your official duty: That's a felony, that's a high crime and misdemeanor. That's language in the Constitution that triggers certain events like impeachment. So let's not just simply turn this into a Bush-bashing event. This is about a failure of not only the Bush Administration but of the United States of America, and we have to look in the mirror and recognize that, well, all the Bush Administration did is take advantage of a systemic failure on the part of the United States as a whole, a failure that not only involves the executive, but it involves the legislative branch, Congress.
Congress has abrogated its responsibilities under the Constitution, and they've abrogated it for years. Then there's the media, and, yes, we can turn this into a media-bashing event. But you know what? The media only feeds the American people the poison they're willing to swallow. And we the people of the United States of America seem to want our news in no more than three-minute chunks with sound bites of thirty seconds or less, and it can't be too complicated. So what we did is allowed ourselves during the decade of the 1990s to be pre-programmed into accepting at face value without question anything that was negative about Saddam Hussein's regime, and this made selling the war on Iraq on the basis of a lie the easiest task ever faced by the Bush Administration.
MR. HERSH: There's always the argument that one virtue of what we did, no matter how bad it is, we've got rid of a very bad dictator. What's your answer to that one?
MR. RITTER: That invokes the notion of the ends justify the means. I mean, that's basically what we're saying here is that who cares about the lie, who cares about the WMD. You know, we got rid of a bad guy. The ends justify the means. And I have to be frank. If there's anybody here who calls themselves a citizen of the United States of America and you endorse the notion of the ends justify the means, submit your passport for destruction and get the hell out of my country. Because this is a country that is founded on the rule of law as set forth by the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution that the men and women who serve us swore an oath of allegiance to, the Constitution that our government, every government official swears an oath of allegiance to, and it's about due process. Democracy is ugly. Sometimes it doesn't work as smoothly as we want it to. But if you're sitting here and saying that when it comes to Saddam, that the ends justify the means, where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line?
And you can't tell me that it's only going to stop here. It's about the rule of law, it's about the Constitution. And if we wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, then we should have had a debate, discussion, and dialogue about the real reasons and not make up some artificial WMD.
MR. HERSH: But let me ask you this, as somebody who knows the military pretty well, what about the failure of the military to speak out?
MR. RITTER: Well, I'm not saying that they shouldn't speak out. I mean, it would be wonderful if soldiers came back from Iraq and said this is a war that's not only unwinnable, but this is a war that's morally unacceptable, and I can no longer participate in this conflict. But it's a very difficult thing to ask a soldier to do what the average American citizen won't.
I mean, why do we put the burden on the soldier to speak out instead of putting the burden on the American public to become more empowered, to become enraged about what's happening? We've got an election coming up in 2006. Rather than waiting for soldiers to resign, why don't we vote out of Congress everybody who voted in favor of this war?
MR. HERSH: Do you have any optimism at this point?
MR. RITTER: No. I wish I did.
I mean, the sad fact is, one of the reasons why I was arguing against this war was not just that it was based on a lie, but it's a reflection of the reality that was recognized in 1991: If you remove Saddam and you don't have a clue what's going to replace Saddam, you're going to get chaos and anarchy. People continue to say they want the elegant solution in Iraq. I mean, that's the problem, everybody's like, well, we can't withdraw because we got to solve all the problems.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's not going to be an elegant solution in Iraq. There's no magic wand that can be waved to solve this problem. If we get out and we have a plan, you know, it's still going to cost 30,000 Iraqi lives. Let's understand that, there's going to be blood shed in Iraq. They're going to kill each other, and we're not going to stop it.
If we continue to stay the course, however, that 30,000 number may become 60,000 or 90,000. At the end of the day, we've created a nightmare scenario in Iraq, and the best we can do is mitigate failure. And that's what I'm talking, and, unfortunately, that's a politically unacceptable answer. People say, no, we have to win, we have to persevere, there has to be victory. There's not going to be victory.
MR. HERSH: What about the chances of expanding the war? What about the chances of expanding the war into Syria or even into Iran?
MR. RITTER: Well, the sad thing right now is that we have a Bush Administration that's populated by people who don't understand war. They've never been in the military, they've never served in combat, and they don't know what it means to have a son die or to have a friend die or have a brother die or have a comrade die.
And so that's why you have a Secretary of State like Condoleezza Rice who has the gall to stand before the American people and say that war is the only guarantor of peace and security. And now she testified before the US Congress today, and she said that not only is Iraq probably going to be another ten-year investment of time, blood, and national treasure for the American public, but that Syria and Iran may very well be the next targets of the Bush Administration. So this Administration has learned nothing, but what's worse is that Congress has learned nothing.
There were no tough questions to Condoleezza Rice. And now we have the American people. What lessons have we learned, what actions are we going to take?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9831216/site/newsweek/
Fabricated Links?
A CIA report casts new doubt on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Plus, tensions between FBI Director Bob Mueller and his predecessor, Louis Freeh.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET Oct. 26, 2005
Oct. 26, 2005 - A secret draft CIA report raises new questions about a principal argument used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq: the claim that Saddam Hussein was "harboring" notorious terror leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi prior to the American invasion.
The allegation that Zarqawi had visited Baghdad in May 2002 with Saddam's sanction—purportedly for medical treatment—was once a centerpiece of the administration's arguments about Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Zarqawi's alleged visit in his speech to the United Nations Security Council. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred obliquely to Zarqawi's purported trip as an example of "bulletproof" evidence that the administration had assembled linking Saddam's regime with Al Qaeda.
But like the uranium yellowcake claims—since determined to be fraudulent—that are at the heart of the CIA leak case, the administration's original allegations about Zarqawi's trip also seem to be melting away. An updated CIA re-examination of the issue recently concluded that Saddam's regime may not have given Zarqawi "safe haven" after all.
The CIA declined to comment on the draft report. But officials tell NEWSWEEK that Zarqawi probably did travel to the Iraqi capital in the spring of 2002 for medical treatment. And, of course, there is no question that he is in Iraq now—orchestrating many of the deadly suicide bombings and attacks on American soldiers.
But before the American-led invasion, Saddam's government may never have known he was there. The reason: he used an alias and was there under what one U.S. intelligence official calls a "false cover." No evidence has been found showing senior Iraqi officials were even aware of his presence, according to two counterterrorism analysts familiar with the classified CIA study who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
An intelligence official told NEWSWEEK that the current draft says that "most evidence suggests Saddam Hussein did not provide Zarqawi safe haven before the war. It also recognizes that there are still unanswered questions and gaps in knowledge about the relationship."
The most recent CIA analysis is an update—based on fresh reporting from Iraq and interviews with former Saddam officials—of a classified report that analysts in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence first produced more than a year ago. According to the Knight Ridder newspapers, the agency was originally asked to conduct that review of Saddam's dealings with Zarqawi by Vice President Dick Cheney.
The new report is only the latest chink in the armor of the alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Last year, the September 11 Commission found there was no "collaborative" relationship between the Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden; one high-level Al Qaeda commander—who had been cited by Powell as testifying to talks about chemical- and biological-warfare training—later recanted his claims. But the Pentagon and Cheney's office have been reluctant to abandon the case: in the months after U.S. and allied forces deposed Saddam, NEWSWEEK has learned, Iraqi informants approached U.S. intelligence personnel with what purported to be caches of documents proving that Saddam's dealings with Al Qaeda were extensive. (One cache of documents even claimed that six of 19 of the September 11 hijackers had been trained to fly in Iraq.)
Current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials said that when officials at the Bush White House learned about the existence of documents linking Saddam to Al Qaeda, they became very excited and pressured intelligence agencies to work quickly to validate and decipher them. However, the CIA ultimately established that most key documents about the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection turned over were faked—just like the documents purporting to show Iraqi purchases of uranium.
Tension Between FBI Chiefs
Ex-FBI director Louis Freeh's new book, "My FBI," has kicked up controversy over its stinging attacks on Bill Clinton. But it has also frayed relations with current director Bob Mueller. Freeh takes a little-noticed shot at his successor in the book, describing a testy encounter in the early days of the Bush administration with an "acting deputy attorney general"—a clear reference to Mueller who at the time held that post.
In Freeh's account, the acting deputy A.G. tells him the department now has new top priorities—guns, drugs and juvenile crime. Freeh replies that terrorism and "just about everything else" are more important. "Those are our marching orders," Mueller says, according to Freeh's account. "Those aren't my marching orders," Freeh shoots back. Freeh then writes that "lockstep, blind obedience" by an FBI director to "potentially unlawful or even 'dumb orders'" is a "formula for disaster."
Mueller declined an invitation to attend Freeh's book party last week after telling one bureau official that Freeh was "too controversial," according to a Freeh associate who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. (The event was attended by several top Bush administration officials, including CIA Director Porter Goss and White House homeland-security adviser Fran Townsend.) An FBI spokesman said only that Mueller had strong "terrorism credentials" while he served at Justice overseeing, among other cases, indictments of the Iranian perpetrators of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia—a case that was a top priority for Freeh.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
Fabricated Links?
A CIA report casts new doubt on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Plus, tensions between FBI Director Bob Mueller and his predecessor, Louis Freeh.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET Oct. 26, 2005
Oct. 26, 2005 - A secret draft CIA report raises new questions about a principal argument used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq: the claim that Saddam Hussein was "harboring" notorious terror leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi prior to the American invasion.
The allegation that Zarqawi had visited Baghdad in May 2002 with Saddam's sanction—purportedly for medical treatment—was once a centerpiece of the administration's arguments about Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Zarqawi's alleged visit in his speech to the United Nations Security Council. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred obliquely to Zarqawi's purported trip as an example of "bulletproof" evidence that the administration had assembled linking Saddam's regime with Al Qaeda.
But like the uranium yellowcake claims—since determined to be fraudulent—that are at the heart of the CIA leak case, the administration's original allegations about Zarqawi's trip also seem to be melting away. An updated CIA re-examination of the issue recently concluded that Saddam's regime may not have given Zarqawi "safe haven" after all.
The CIA declined to comment on the draft report. But officials tell NEWSWEEK that Zarqawi probably did travel to the Iraqi capital in the spring of 2002 for medical treatment. And, of course, there is no question that he is in Iraq now—orchestrating many of the deadly suicide bombings and attacks on American soldiers.
But before the American-led invasion, Saddam's government may never have known he was there. The reason: he used an alias and was there under what one U.S. intelligence official calls a "false cover." No evidence has been found showing senior Iraqi officials were even aware of his presence, according to two counterterrorism analysts familiar with the classified CIA study who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
An intelligence official told NEWSWEEK that the current draft says that "most evidence suggests Saddam Hussein did not provide Zarqawi safe haven before the war. It also recognizes that there are still unanswered questions and gaps in knowledge about the relationship."
The most recent CIA analysis is an update—based on fresh reporting from Iraq and interviews with former Saddam officials—of a classified report that analysts in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence first produced more than a year ago. According to the Knight Ridder newspapers, the agency was originally asked to conduct that review of Saddam's dealings with Zarqawi by Vice President Dick Cheney.
The new report is only the latest chink in the armor of the alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Last year, the September 11 Commission found there was no "collaborative" relationship between the Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden; one high-level Al Qaeda commander—who had been cited by Powell as testifying to talks about chemical- and biological-warfare training—later recanted his claims. But the Pentagon and Cheney's office have been reluctant to abandon the case: in the months after U.S. and allied forces deposed Saddam, NEWSWEEK has learned, Iraqi informants approached U.S. intelligence personnel with what purported to be caches of documents proving that Saddam's dealings with Al Qaeda were extensive. (One cache of documents even claimed that six of 19 of the September 11 hijackers had been trained to fly in Iraq.)
Current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials said that when officials at the Bush White House learned about the existence of documents linking Saddam to Al Qaeda, they became very excited and pressured intelligence agencies to work quickly to validate and decipher them. However, the CIA ultimately established that most key documents about the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection turned over were faked—just like the documents purporting to show Iraqi purchases of uranium.
Tension Between FBI Chiefs
Ex-FBI director Louis Freeh's new book, "My FBI," has kicked up controversy over its stinging attacks on Bill Clinton. But it has also frayed relations with current director Bob Mueller. Freeh takes a little-noticed shot at his successor in the book, describing a testy encounter in the early days of the Bush administration with an "acting deputy attorney general"—a clear reference to Mueller who at the time held that post.
In Freeh's account, the acting deputy A.G. tells him the department now has new top priorities—guns, drugs and juvenile crime. Freeh replies that terrorism and "just about everything else" are more important. "Those are our marching orders," Mueller says, according to Freeh's account. "Those aren't my marching orders," Freeh shoots back. Freeh then writes that "lockstep, blind obedience" by an FBI director to "potentially unlawful or even 'dumb orders'" is a "formula for disaster."
Mueller declined an invitation to attend Freeh's book party last week after telling one bureau official that Freeh was "too controversial," according to a Freeh associate who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. (The event was attended by several top Bush administration officials, including CIA Director Porter Goss and White House homeland-security adviser Fran Townsend.) An FBI spokesman said only that Mueller had strong "terrorism credentials" while he served at Justice overseeing, among other cases, indictments of the Iranian perpetrators of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia—a case that was a top priority for Freeh.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
Case not closed on Cheney's role Seattle Times
By Paul Richter. WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney appears as no more than a background character in the indictment of his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Yet even that secondary role raises raises questions about whether Cheney played any part in the alleged effort to discredit an administration critic.
Vice President Dick Cheney appears Friday at an event for former Georgia Congressman Max Burns. Cheney's adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted Friday on five counts.
Indeed, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said emphatically Friday that, "We make no allegation that the vice president committed any criminal act." But as the Libby case moves forward, it is likely to focus more attention on the vice president's position as one of the most-powerful behind-the-scenes figures in government. The five-count federal indictment says Cheney talked to Libby about the fact that Valerie Plame — the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador and administration critic — was a CIA operative. And it suggests that Cheney was close by his chief of staff as Libby took some of the actions that led to the charges of lying and obstruction of justice. If the case goes to trial, testimony could show whether Cheney had any role in inspiring Libby's alleged decision to unmask Plame. Even if Cheney emerges blameless, the indictment deprives him of a capable and like-minded assistant who helped him carry out his foreign-policy agenda, beginning with the Iraq war. Cheney has been "splashed by this, though not soaked," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University. Cheney and Libby have had the closest kind of working relationship, based on a strong mutual admiration. The two share hawkish foreign-policy views, a wry sense of humor, and a hard-charging style. On Friday, Cheney said he accepted the resignation with "deep regret," and called Libby "one of the most capable and talented individuals I have ever known." The indictment says that Cheney was the third person, after an unidentified undersecretary of state and a CIA officer, to discuss with Libby the fact that Plame was a CIA officer. It is not illegal for senior officials with security clearances to talk about classified matters. What was illegal, Friday's indictment charged, was the alleged false statements Libby subsequently made about the Wilson affair in interviews with the FBI and testimony before the grand jury investigating the CIA leak case. Libby's conversation with Cheney took place around June 12, 2003, about the time Libby and unidentified other "officials in the office of the vice president" discussed how to respond to Wilson's allegations that the administration was lying about Iraq's alleged purchase of uranium from Niger, a claim that formed part of President Bush's rationale for invading Iraq. The indictment hints that Cheney and Libby may have discussed how to handle the Wilson problem and the media coverage of Wilson's charges. It says that on or about July 12, on the return leg of a trip to Norfolk, Va., with Cheney, Libby talked over "with other officials aboard the plane" how Libby should respond to media inquiries, including some from Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper. The indictment did not indicate whether Cheney participated in that discussion. Robert Boorstin, a former Clinton administration aide at the Center for American Progress, said that there is little chance these charges will hurt Cheney in his relationship with Bush. Cheney is "still the 800-pound gorilla. ... He's still going to be the last person who whispers into the president's ear." Still, Boorstin said, it will be hard for Cheney to find a replacement as effective as Libby, and his loss will likely be a blow to morale in the office of the vice president. The indictment comes at a time that has been difficult for Cheney, analysts noted. He was one of the earliest and most influential advocates of an Iraq war, which continues to lose public support. He has come under personal criticism recently as opponents of the war have been emboldened. Last week, in an article in The New Yorker magazine, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the national-security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, suggested that Cheney had changed greatly since he oversaw the 1991 Persian Gulf War as secretary of defense. "I don't know him anymore," Scowcroft said. Meanwhile, there are some suggestions that, in his second term, the current president has been more inclined to follow the advice of his secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and to take a less-hawkish line on issues such as the alleged North Korean and Iranian nuclear-weapons programs.
Rove Is Spared -- for Now Los Angeles Times
How one leak spun out of control Telegraph.co.uk
The Statesman - Boston Globe - Washington Post - philly.com - all 4,182 related »
By Paul Richter. WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney appears as no more than a background character in the indictment of his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Yet even that secondary role raises raises questions about whether Cheney played any part in the alleged effort to discredit an administration critic.
Vice President Dick Cheney appears Friday at an event for former Georgia Congressman Max Burns. Cheney's adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted Friday on five counts.
Indeed, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said emphatically Friday that, "We make no allegation that the vice president committed any criminal act." But as the Libby case moves forward, it is likely to focus more attention on the vice president's position as one of the most-powerful behind-the-scenes figures in government. The five-count federal indictment says Cheney talked to Libby about the fact that Valerie Plame — the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador and administration critic — was a CIA operative. And it suggests that Cheney was close by his chief of staff as Libby took some of the actions that led to the charges of lying and obstruction of justice. If the case goes to trial, testimony could show whether Cheney had any role in inspiring Libby's alleged decision to unmask Plame. Even if Cheney emerges blameless, the indictment deprives him of a capable and like-minded assistant who helped him carry out his foreign-policy agenda, beginning with the Iraq war. Cheney has been "splashed by this, though not soaked," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University. Cheney and Libby have had the closest kind of working relationship, based on a strong mutual admiration. The two share hawkish foreign-policy views, a wry sense of humor, and a hard-charging style. On Friday, Cheney said he accepted the resignation with "deep regret," and called Libby "one of the most capable and talented individuals I have ever known." The indictment says that Cheney was the third person, after an unidentified undersecretary of state and a CIA officer, to discuss with Libby the fact that Plame was a CIA officer. It is not illegal for senior officials with security clearances to talk about classified matters. What was illegal, Friday's indictment charged, was the alleged false statements Libby subsequently made about the Wilson affair in interviews with the FBI and testimony before the grand jury investigating the CIA leak case. Libby's conversation with Cheney took place around June 12, 2003, about the time Libby and unidentified other "officials in the office of the vice president" discussed how to respond to Wilson's allegations that the administration was lying about Iraq's alleged purchase of uranium from Niger, a claim that formed part of President Bush's rationale for invading Iraq. The indictment hints that Cheney and Libby may have discussed how to handle the Wilson problem and the media coverage of Wilson's charges. It says that on or about July 12, on the return leg of a trip to Norfolk, Va., with Cheney, Libby talked over "with other officials aboard the plane" how Libby should respond to media inquiries, including some from Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper. The indictment did not indicate whether Cheney participated in that discussion. Robert Boorstin, a former Clinton administration aide at the Center for American Progress, said that there is little chance these charges will hurt Cheney in his relationship with Bush. Cheney is "still the 800-pound gorilla. ... He's still going to be the last person who whispers into the president's ear." Still, Boorstin said, it will be hard for Cheney to find a replacement as effective as Libby, and his loss will likely be a blow to morale in the office of the vice president. The indictment comes at a time that has been difficult for Cheney, analysts noted. He was one of the earliest and most influential advocates of an Iraq war, which continues to lose public support. He has come under personal criticism recently as opponents of the war have been emboldened. Last week, in an article in The New Yorker magazine, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the national-security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, suggested that Cheney had changed greatly since he oversaw the 1991 Persian Gulf War as secretary of defense. "I don't know him anymore," Scowcroft said. Meanwhile, there are some suggestions that, in his second term, the current president has been more inclined to follow the advice of his secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and to take a less-hawkish line on issues such as the alleged North Korean and Iranian nuclear-weapons programs.
Rove Is Spared -- for Now Los Angeles Times
How one leak spun out of control Telegraph.co.uk
The Statesman - Boston Globe - Washington Post - philly.com - all 4,182 related »
Flying Blind - Dark days: Singed by the special prosecutor and rattled by the Harriet Miers mess,Bush team in turmoil Newsweek
The mood in the White House last Friday afternoon was grim, but eerily quiet. Dick Cheney was gone, off in Georgia giving yet another apocalyptic terrorism speech to yet another military crowd. The president, just back from his own rally-the-troops address, was eager to chopper to Camp David for the weekend. But, in the small dining room adjoining the Oval Office, he was doing something uncharacteristic: watching live news on TV.
Rove, Libby and Miers at the White House earlier this year
"I don't read books, I read people," George W. Bush once said, half in jest, and so the figure on the screen spoke volumes to him: the Irish-American altar-boy visage; the off-the-rack attire; the meticulous, yet colloquial speech, a blend of the U.S. Code, Jimmy Stewart and baseball. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Bush said to his aides, "is a very serious guy." And so was the charge he laid out: that I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the vice president's right-hand man, had lied repeatedly under oath about what might well have been a White House effort to vindictively tip reporters about the identity of a CIA agent whose husband was a critic of the Iraq war. Libby has denied wrongdoing, and his lawyer vowed a vigorous defense. But Bush, an aide indicated, was as impressed by Fitzgerald's case as by the man who brought it. "The indictment speaks for itself," said the aide, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the situation. In a capital that fashions its gallows out of court papers, Fitzgerald also made news for what he didn't do—and for whom he didn't propose to try to hang. Importantly, he did not indict Libby for disclosing the identity of the agent, Valerie Plame, to reporters. In a tour-de-force press conference (Bush saw the initial 20 minutes), the prosecutor said that he couldn't conclude whether to take that step in part because Libby had covered his motives in lies. Nor, as of last Friday, had Fitzgerald decided whether to indict Karl Rove, the top presidential aide and close friend, who also talked to journalists about Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. There was relief but no joy inside the White House at these dodged bullets. "This is a White House in turmoil right now," said a senior aide, one of many who declined to speak on the record at a time of peril and paranoia. As for Rove, the aide said, some insiders believed that he had "behaved, if not criminally, then certainly unethically." Like decent dukes in a Shakespeare play, special prosecutors tend to appear in the last act—the second term—of presidencies. But rather than impose peace, federal investigators tend to immobilize, if not destroy, the administrations they pry apart. And this probe, White House insiders know, hits an administration already reeling from a host of problems: criticism of Bush's handling of hurricane disasters; the botched—and, last week, withdrawn—nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court; the rising U.S. death toll in Iraq, which has passed the 2,000 mark; the fracturing of the president's carefully constructed but no longer faithful conservative base, and the lack of a salable, uplifting second-term agenda to leaven the Manichean bleakness of the war on terror. Now Fitzgerald's probe is aimed at the operational inner sanctum of Bush's "war presidency"—and, by extension, at Bush's anchoring view of what his administration has been about since the 9/11 attacks. As he prosecutes "Cheney's Cheney" for perjury, false statements and obstruction, Fitzgerald will inevitably have to shine a light on the machinery that sold the Iraq war and that sought to discredit critics of it, particularly Joseph Wilson. And that, in turn, could lead to Cheney and to the Cheney-run effort to make Iraq the central battleground in the war on terror. As if that weren't dramatic enough, the Libby trial—if there is one—will feature an unprecedented, high-stakes credibility contest between a top government official and the reporters he spoke to: Tim Russert of NBC, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine. Another likely witness: Cheney himself. White House officials were admonished not to have any contact with Libby about the investigation. That presumably includes the vice president. Just as the prosecutor's role has become familiar, so are the epigrams and questions that accompany his arrival on the scene, subpoenas in hand. Once again, it appears that the old cliche applies: it's not the crime but the cover-up. And once again, the hoary "Howard Baker Questions" are being asked: what did he know and when did he know it? This time, however, the target isn't the president, protected for now by his reputation as a rigorous delegator, but Cheney, viewed as the most powerful vice president in modern times. Perhaps it's no surprise, therefore, that at least some administration officials—speaking on background, of course—have begun retroactively to dismiss Cheney's role. Even if they are rewriting history, the revision is politically significant—and an ominous sign for Cheney in a city where power is the appearance of power. As an aide now tells it, Cheney's influence began to wane from the start of the second term and effectively came to an end as the Fitzgerald investigation gained momentum in recent months. "You can say that the influence of the vice president is going to decrease, but it's hard to decrease from zero," said a senior official sympathetic to Cheney's policies. Even on foreign policy, said a senior Bush aide, the veep has been eclipsed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who now has the president's ear and works effectively with her successor as national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley. Bush has grown more confident, aides say, having jettisoned the Cheney training wheels. "The president has formulated a lot of his own views," said an aide, "and has a very firm idea of what he wants to do and accomplish with his foreign policy." For the self-described "war president," that idea is steadfast devotion to confronting the global evil of "Islamist radicalism," and to "completing the mission" in Iraq. But repeating the antiterrorism incantation isn't enough. Last week the president gave perhaps his most eloquent speech on the topic, but it seemed repetitive and out of touch with public opinion and the on-the-ground realities of Iraq. For a political figure who rose to power on the strength of strategic "rollouts," Bush seemed to be oddly lacking a grand plan. There is, as yet, no master plan to breathe life into the second term with dramatic new initiatives. Social Security reform—which was supposed to be the grand, defining initiative—remains as dead as it was the moment Bush introduced it. Instead, he now will talk about immigration reform—no sure winner with the conservative base—and tax reform, which may be. He will push for federal budget cuts, but probably not enough to satisfy the deficit hawks in his own Republican Party. (He may even have to fight a rear-guard action to save the prescription-drug benefit he championed: Sen. John McCain is assembling a coalition to delay its implementation by two years to save $80 billion.) "Now isn't the time for a long ball," said a senior aide. "It's time for simple blocking and tackling. We have to demonstrate that we can make sound, competent decisions." That won't be as easy as it sounds, given the decision Bush was facing: whom to nominate to the high court in place of his White House counsel. Conservatives, emboldened by their successful effort to derail Miers, were ready to pounce on the president if the replacement was anyone less than their Scalia-like ideal. But if Bush tried to satisfy them, the Democrats—whose chief strategy remains the sincere expression of disdain—were ready to decry the choice as a shameless cave-in to the religious right. Ensconced at Camp David in sunny, crisp weather, he sifted his options. Cheney doesn't go up there often. Last weekend was no exception.
NEWSWEEK ON AIR
The CIA Leak
10/30/05: Richard Wolffe, NEWSWEEK Senior White House correspondent and Evan Thomas, NEWSWEEK Assistant Managing editor
• Audio clip | Complete show | Podcast
RELATED STORIES What's this?
• Talk Transcript: Is Karl Rove in Trouble?
• The Oval: What Happened to Fiscal Discipline?
• The Oval: Bush Backers Question His Priorities
• Online Mail Call: July 1
• The Oval: Shake, Rattle and Roll
The mood in the White House last Friday afternoon was grim, but eerily quiet. Dick Cheney was gone, off in Georgia giving yet another apocalyptic terrorism speech to yet another military crowd. The president, just back from his own rally-the-troops address, was eager to chopper to Camp David for the weekend. But, in the small dining room adjoining the Oval Office, he was doing something uncharacteristic: watching live news on TV.
Rove, Libby and Miers at the White House earlier this year
"I don't read books, I read people," George W. Bush once said, half in jest, and so the figure on the screen spoke volumes to him: the Irish-American altar-boy visage; the off-the-rack attire; the meticulous, yet colloquial speech, a blend of the U.S. Code, Jimmy Stewart and baseball. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Bush said to his aides, "is a very serious guy." And so was the charge he laid out: that I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the vice president's right-hand man, had lied repeatedly under oath about what might well have been a White House effort to vindictively tip reporters about the identity of a CIA agent whose husband was a critic of the Iraq war. Libby has denied wrongdoing, and his lawyer vowed a vigorous defense. But Bush, an aide indicated, was as impressed by Fitzgerald's case as by the man who brought it. "The indictment speaks for itself," said the aide, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the situation. In a capital that fashions its gallows out of court papers, Fitzgerald also made news for what he didn't do—and for whom he didn't propose to try to hang. Importantly, he did not indict Libby for disclosing the identity of the agent, Valerie Plame, to reporters. In a tour-de-force press conference (Bush saw the initial 20 minutes), the prosecutor said that he couldn't conclude whether to take that step in part because Libby had covered his motives in lies. Nor, as of last Friday, had Fitzgerald decided whether to indict Karl Rove, the top presidential aide and close friend, who also talked to journalists about Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. There was relief but no joy inside the White House at these dodged bullets. "This is a White House in turmoil right now," said a senior aide, one of many who declined to speak on the record at a time of peril and paranoia. As for Rove, the aide said, some insiders believed that he had "behaved, if not criminally, then certainly unethically." Like decent dukes in a Shakespeare play, special prosecutors tend to appear in the last act—the second term—of presidencies. But rather than impose peace, federal investigators tend to immobilize, if not destroy, the administrations they pry apart. And this probe, White House insiders know, hits an administration already reeling from a host of problems: criticism of Bush's handling of hurricane disasters; the botched—and, last week, withdrawn—nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court; the rising U.S. death toll in Iraq, which has passed the 2,000 mark; the fracturing of the president's carefully constructed but no longer faithful conservative base, and the lack of a salable, uplifting second-term agenda to leaven the Manichean bleakness of the war on terror. Now Fitzgerald's probe is aimed at the operational inner sanctum of Bush's "war presidency"—and, by extension, at Bush's anchoring view of what his administration has been about since the 9/11 attacks. As he prosecutes "Cheney's Cheney" for perjury, false statements and obstruction, Fitzgerald will inevitably have to shine a light on the machinery that sold the Iraq war and that sought to discredit critics of it, particularly Joseph Wilson. And that, in turn, could lead to Cheney and to the Cheney-run effort to make Iraq the central battleground in the war on terror. As if that weren't dramatic enough, the Libby trial—if there is one—will feature an unprecedented, high-stakes credibility contest between a top government official and the reporters he spoke to: Tim Russert of NBC, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine. Another likely witness: Cheney himself. White House officials were admonished not to have any contact with Libby about the investigation. That presumably includes the vice president. Just as the prosecutor's role has become familiar, so are the epigrams and questions that accompany his arrival on the scene, subpoenas in hand. Once again, it appears that the old cliche applies: it's not the crime but the cover-up. And once again, the hoary "Howard Baker Questions" are being asked: what did he know and when did he know it? This time, however, the target isn't the president, protected for now by his reputation as a rigorous delegator, but Cheney, viewed as the most powerful vice president in modern times. Perhaps it's no surprise, therefore, that at least some administration officials—speaking on background, of course—have begun retroactively to dismiss Cheney's role. Even if they are rewriting history, the revision is politically significant—and an ominous sign for Cheney in a city where power is the appearance of power. As an aide now tells it, Cheney's influence began to wane from the start of the second term and effectively came to an end as the Fitzgerald investigation gained momentum in recent months. "You can say that the influence of the vice president is going to decrease, but it's hard to decrease from zero," said a senior official sympathetic to Cheney's policies. Even on foreign policy, said a senior Bush aide, the veep has been eclipsed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who now has the president's ear and works effectively with her successor as national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley. Bush has grown more confident, aides say, having jettisoned the Cheney training wheels. "The president has formulated a lot of his own views," said an aide, "and has a very firm idea of what he wants to do and accomplish with his foreign policy." For the self-described "war president," that idea is steadfast devotion to confronting the global evil of "Islamist radicalism," and to "completing the mission" in Iraq. But repeating the antiterrorism incantation isn't enough. Last week the president gave perhaps his most eloquent speech on the topic, but it seemed repetitive and out of touch with public opinion and the on-the-ground realities of Iraq. For a political figure who rose to power on the strength of strategic "rollouts," Bush seemed to be oddly lacking a grand plan. There is, as yet, no master plan to breathe life into the second term with dramatic new initiatives. Social Security reform—which was supposed to be the grand, defining initiative—remains as dead as it was the moment Bush introduced it. Instead, he now will talk about immigration reform—no sure winner with the conservative base—and tax reform, which may be. He will push for federal budget cuts, but probably not enough to satisfy the deficit hawks in his own Republican Party. (He may even have to fight a rear-guard action to save the prescription-drug benefit he championed: Sen. John McCain is assembling a coalition to delay its implementation by two years to save $80 billion.) "Now isn't the time for a long ball," said a senior aide. "It's time for simple blocking and tackling. We have to demonstrate that we can make sound, competent decisions." That won't be as easy as it sounds, given the decision Bush was facing: whom to nominate to the high court in place of his White House counsel. Conservatives, emboldened by their successful effort to derail Miers, were ready to pounce on the president if the replacement was anyone less than their Scalia-like ideal. But if Bush tried to satisfy them, the Democrats—whose chief strategy remains the sincere expression of disdain—were ready to decry the choice as a shameless cave-in to the religious right. Ensconced at Camp David in sunny, crisp weather, he sifted his options. Cheney doesn't go up there often. Last weekend was no exception.
NEWSWEEK ON AIR
The CIA Leak
10/30/05: Richard Wolffe, NEWSWEEK Senior White House correspondent and Evan Thomas, NEWSWEEK Assistant Managing editor
• Audio clip | Complete show | Podcast
RELATED STORIES What's this?
• Talk Transcript: Is Karl Rove in Trouble?
• The Oval: What Happened to Fiscal Discipline?
• The Oval: Bush Backers Question His Priorities
• Online Mail Call: July 1
• The Oval: Shake, Rattle and Roll
President urged to make an apology Financial Times
By Demetri Sevastopulo and Caroline Daniel in Washington. President George W. Bush on Sunday faced calls for him to apologise to the American people following the indictment of top White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby for lying to the Central Intelligence Agency’s leak investigation. As a poll put Mr Bush’s ratings at a new low of 39 per cent, Harry Reid, the Senate Democrat minority leader, said the president and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, should “come clean” following the indictment of Mr Libby – who resigned as chief of staff to Mr Cheney on Friday – for obstructing the investigation into the unmasking of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative.
“There has not been an apology to the American people for this obvious problem in the White House,”' said Mr Reid. “This has gotten way out of hand, and the American people deserve better than this.” Mr Reid also renewed Democrat calls for the resignation of Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s top political aide. Originally, Mr Bush said he would fire anybody who was involved in the leaking of Ms Plame’s identity, but he later backtracked, saying he would remove only aides convicted of a crime. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor leading the investigation, did not indict Mr Rove, who has appeared before the grand jury four times. But Mr Rove is understood to remain under investigation. Mr Libby, who was indicted on five counts, including obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements, faces a maximum of 30 years in prison if convicted on all of the charges against him. Following the announcement of the indictment on Friday, Mr Bush praised Mr Libby, offering no signs of apologising over the affair. Some commentators contrasted his approach with the apology by former president Ronald Reagan over the Iran-Contra scandal. Mr Reid also called on Mr Bush not to pardon Mr Libby, should he be convicted, in an obvious reference to Gerald Ford’s presidential pardon of his predecessor Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal. Over the weekend, Mr Bush was working to rebuild his presidency, centring on a new nomination to the Supreme Court, following the withdrawal of Harriet Miers, his top White House lawyer, from the process. A new nomination could be announced early this week, and Mr Bush is expected to pick a clearly conservative nominee to reunite his base, a move that could spark a bitter partisan fight in the Senate. The damage to Mr Bush’s standing was evident in a weekend Washington Post/ABC poll that put his ratings at a new low of 39 per cent. Meanwhile, Republican support is ebbing. Only 22 per cent of those polled “strongly approve” of the president, and 46 per cent agreed that ethics and honesty in the federal government had fallen under Mr Bush. That compares with 24 per cent who said the same under Bill Clinton in 1994. Professor Fred Greenstein, a presidential historian at Princeton, warned: “He will possibly be categorised with other presidents who had very strong periods then made moves that incapacitated them, like Lyndon Johnson who drove through domestic legislation before the Vietnam quagmire.”
How Dubya lost his swagger New York Daily News
Bush, Cheney Urged to Apologize for Aides Guardian Unlimited
Christian Science Monitor - New York Times - Melbourne Herald Sun - Washington Post - all 4,946 related »
By Demetri Sevastopulo and Caroline Daniel in Washington. President George W. Bush on Sunday faced calls for him to apologise to the American people following the indictment of top White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby for lying to the Central Intelligence Agency’s leak investigation. As a poll put Mr Bush’s ratings at a new low of 39 per cent, Harry Reid, the Senate Democrat minority leader, said the president and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, should “come clean” following the indictment of Mr Libby – who resigned as chief of staff to Mr Cheney on Friday – for obstructing the investigation into the unmasking of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative.
“There has not been an apology to the American people for this obvious problem in the White House,”' said Mr Reid. “This has gotten way out of hand, and the American people deserve better than this.” Mr Reid also renewed Democrat calls for the resignation of Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s top political aide. Originally, Mr Bush said he would fire anybody who was involved in the leaking of Ms Plame’s identity, but he later backtracked, saying he would remove only aides convicted of a crime. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor leading the investigation, did not indict Mr Rove, who has appeared before the grand jury four times. But Mr Rove is understood to remain under investigation. Mr Libby, who was indicted on five counts, including obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements, faces a maximum of 30 years in prison if convicted on all of the charges against him. Following the announcement of the indictment on Friday, Mr Bush praised Mr Libby, offering no signs of apologising over the affair. Some commentators contrasted his approach with the apology by former president Ronald Reagan over the Iran-Contra scandal. Mr Reid also called on Mr Bush not to pardon Mr Libby, should he be convicted, in an obvious reference to Gerald Ford’s presidential pardon of his predecessor Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal. Over the weekend, Mr Bush was working to rebuild his presidency, centring on a new nomination to the Supreme Court, following the withdrawal of Harriet Miers, his top White House lawyer, from the process. A new nomination could be announced early this week, and Mr Bush is expected to pick a clearly conservative nominee to reunite his base, a move that could spark a bitter partisan fight in the Senate. The damage to Mr Bush’s standing was evident in a weekend Washington Post/ABC poll that put his ratings at a new low of 39 per cent. Meanwhile, Republican support is ebbing. Only 22 per cent of those polled “strongly approve” of the president, and 46 per cent agreed that ethics and honesty in the federal government had fallen under Mr Bush. That compares with 24 per cent who said the same under Bill Clinton in 1994. Professor Fred Greenstein, a presidential historian at Princeton, warned: “He will possibly be categorised with other presidents who had very strong periods then made moves that incapacitated them, like Lyndon Johnson who drove through domestic legislation before the Vietnam quagmire.”
How Dubya lost his swagger New York Daily News
Bush, Cheney Urged to Apologize for Aides Guardian Unlimited
Christian Science Monitor - New York Times - Melbourne Herald Sun - Washington Post - all 4,946 related »
Reid: Rove Should Resign Over CIA Leak San Francisco Chronicle
The Senate Democratic leader said Sunday that presidential adviser Karl Rove should resign because of his role in exposing an undercover CIA officer, and a veteran Republican senator said President Bush needs "new blood" in his White House. Rove has not been charged, but he continues to be investigated in the CIA leaks case that brought the indictment and resignation Friday of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an adviser to Bush and the top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Lawmakers From Both Parties Call for White House Shakeup New York Times
Trying times for White House Christian Science Monitor
Salem Statesman Journal - Melbourne Herald Sun - Voice of America - ABC News - all 5,016 related »
The Senate Democratic leader said Sunday that presidential adviser Karl Rove should resign because of his role in exposing an undercover CIA officer, and a veteran Republican senator said President Bush needs "new blood" in his White House. Rove has not been charged, but he continues to be investigated in the CIA leaks case that brought the indictment and resignation Friday of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an adviser to Bush and the top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Lawmakers From Both Parties Call for White House Shakeup New York Times
Trying times for White House Christian Science Monitor
Salem Statesman Journal - Melbourne Herald Sun - Voice of America - ABC News - all 5,016 related »
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sectio...articleId=10472
The Yes-Man
President Bush sent Porter Goss to the CIA to keep the agency in line. What he’s really doing is wrecking it.
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 11.23.05
Exactly as intended, Porter Goss has hit the Central Intelligence Agency like a wrecking ball.
The former Florida congressman, who had an undistinguished career as a CIA operations officer in the 1960s, came to the agency in September 2004 after serving seven years as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. With his staff in tow -- a collection of Capitol Hill aides nicknamed “the Gosslings” -- Goss bowled into the CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters, scattering senior officials like so many duckpins. In mid-September, Robert Richer, the newly installed deputy director of operations and a former Near East Division chief, quit in disgust. The newspapers duly reported Richer’s departure. But he is only the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg.
Since Goss took over, between 30 and 90 senior CIA officials have made their exit, according to various sources, some fleeing into retirement, others taking refuge as consultants. Others, unable to retire, have stayed, but only to mark time at the agency. Morale, already low after several years during which the CIA was accused of a series of intelligence failures related to September 11 and Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, is now at rock-bottom. The agency’s vaunted Near East Division, in particular, which served as the “pointy end of the spear,” as one CIA veteran put it, in simultaneous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the “global war on terror,” has been decimated.
And the agency has been locked down tight: After a decade during which the CIA prided itself on a new openness, shedding some of its legendary obsession with secrecy, neither Goss nor anyone else in the organization is giving interviews or bothering to explain the CIA’s workings.
Appointed to lead the agency in the midst of a heated presidential campaign, Goss’ primary mission, according to numerous former CIA officials -- including some only recently departed -- was to yank Langley onto President Bush’s political team. His immediate goal in 2004 was to block what had been, until then, a stream of damaging leaks of information about CIA intelligence reports that ran contrary to the White House’s rosy optimism about Iraq and U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. More broadly, the Goss team clamped down on dissenting views and radically politicized the CIA’s leadership. Even worse, say former agency officials, Goss has acquiesced in the dismantling of the CIA itself, which has bowed too easily to the supremacy of the new director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who spent his days in Baghdad contradicting the CIA’s clear-eyed battle reports.
For liberals and leftists accustomed to viewing the CIA as a rogue agency prone to unaccountable covert actions abroad, it is ironic that since 9-11, the CIA has emerged as a bastion of opposition to George W. Bush’s imperial foreign policy. Further, since 9-11, the CIA has established itself as perhaps the primary U.S. system of defense against Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and its offshoots and co-thinkers in the Muslim world. That reality makes Goss’ wrecking-ball approach to the agency both irresponsible and dangerous.
This article, based on more than two-dozen interviews with former intelligence officials from the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department, along with ex–Capitol Hill intelligence staffers who worked with Goss, is the first comprehensive account of the CIA’s transition from George Tenet through John McLaughlin, the agency’s respected acting director in mid-2004, to Goss. It reveals that Goss may have put the final nail in the coffin of an agency whose expertise and analytical skills were cavalierly overridden by a White House obsessed with Saddam Hussein. From 2001 on, its covert operatives and analysts were ignored, pressured, and forced to toe the administration’s line; neoconservative ideologues considered those operatives to be virtually part of the enemy camp. Many of those who remain inside the CIA are distraught, convinced that their work is wasted on an administration that doesn’t want to hear the truth. “How do you think they feel?” asked one recently retired CIA officer with three decades of experience. “They’re watching a "expletive deleted"ing idiotic policy, run by idiots, unfold right before their eyes!”
* * *
From 9-11 through the start of the Iraq War in March 2003, the neoconservative nexus in the administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, leaned heavily on the CIA to come up with intelligence to support the White House’s preordained determination to go to war against Iraq. The pressure directed at Tenet, McLaughlin, and scores of other CIA managers, analysts, and field officers was intense. Subsequent official investigations, by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and by the commission co-chaired by Lawrence Silberman and Charles Robb, blithely passed over the question of whether intelligence analysts were pressured by the administration. Both studies determined that analysts were not pressured, a conclusion that CIA and other U.S. intelligence professionals find laughable -- especially the idea that analysts would answer in the affirmative when asked by commissioners or senators if they had been pressured. “The senior guys got together and said, ‘You guys weren’t pressured, right? Right?’” says W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Middle East section.
In fact, analysts were pressured, and heavily so, according to Richard Kerr. A 32-year CIA veteran, Kerr led an internal investigation of the agency’s failure to correctly analyze Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities, preparing a series of four reports that have not been released publicly. Kerr joined the CIA in 1960, serving in a series of senior analytic posts, including director of East Asian analysis, the unit that prepared the president’s daily intelligence brief, and finally as chief of the Directorate of Intelligence. For several months in 1991, Kerr was the acting CIA director; he retired in 1992. A highly respected analyst, Kerr received four Distinguished Intelligence Medals; in 1992, President George Bush Senior gave him the Citizen’s Medal for his work during Operation Desert Storm.
Two years ago, Kerr was summoned out of retirement to lead a four-member task force to conduct the investigation of the weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco. His team, which included a former Near East Division chief, a former CIA deputy inspector general, and a former CIA chief Soviet analyst, spent months sorting through everything that the CIA produced on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion, as well as interviewing virtually everyone at the agency who had anything to do with producing the faulty intelligence estimates. The Kerr team’s first report was an overview of what the CIA said about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war compared with what Kerr calls the postwar “ground truth.” The second looked specifically at a classified version of the important October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which the administration used to build its case for war. The third looked at the overall intelligence process, and the fourth was a think piece that considered how to reorganize the management of intelligence analysis “if you could start all over again.”
Kerr’s four reports, with a fifth now under way, were viewed as the definitive works of self-criticism inside the agency and were shared with the oversight committees in Congress, outside commissions, and the office of the secretary of defense. Unlike the outside reports that looked at the same issues, however, Kerr’s concluded that CIA analysts felt squeezed -- and hard -- by the administration. “Everybody felt pressure,” Kerr told me. “A lot of analysts believed that they were being pressured to come to certain conclusions … . I talked to a lot of people who said, ‘There was a lot of repetitive questioning. We were being asked to justify what we were saying again and again.’ There were certainly people who felt they were being pushed beyond the evidence they had.”
In particular, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials hammered at the CIA to go back time and time again to look at intelligence that had already been sifted and resifted. “It was a continuing drumbeat: ‘How do you know this? How do you know that? What about this or that report in the newspaper?’” says Kerr. Many of those questions, which began to cascade onto the CIA in 2001, were generated by the Office of Special Plans and by discredited fabricators such as Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and a secret source code-named “Curveball.” As a result, says Kerr, the CIA reached back to old data, relied on several sources of questionable veracity, and made assumptions about current data that were unwarranted. In particular, intelligence on Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons program, much of which was based on data collected in the 1980s, early ’90s, and more spottily until the end of the United Nations inspection regime in 1998, was parsed -- and, some would argue, cherry-picked -- in order to reinforce the administration’s case.
On and off the record, other former CIA officials say that despite the pressure, dissent against the White House was rife within the agency. The strongest opposition centered in the CIA’s Near East Division, few of whose officials supported the idea of war with Iraq. They clashed often with WINPAC, the CIA division focused on weapons proliferation and the part of the agency most responsible for the heavily skewed conclusions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. “The Near East Division people didn’t buy into what the Bush administration wanted to do in regard to Iraq, but much of WINPAC did,” says Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who left the agency in 1989 and then served four years as deputy director of the State Department’s office of counterterrorism. “Bush, and the White House, favored WINPAC over [the Near East Division]. There were people in the agency who tried to speak out or disagree … who got fired, got transferred, got outed, or criticized. Others decided to play ball.”
Michael Scheuer -- who gained fame in 2004 as Anonymous, the author of Imperial Hubris, and who exited the CIA as Goss came in -- headed the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit and saw the confrontation up close. “I know a lot of people in the Iraq shop who were dissenting,” he says. “There were people who were disciplined or taken off accounts.” Opposition flared, particularly when the controversial 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was being cooked. “There was a great deal of dissent about that [estimate],” says Scheuer. “No one thought it was conclusive. One gentleman that I talked to, a senior Iraq analyst, regrets to this day that he did not go public.”
According to another former CIA official, as the war loomed, the CIA’s Iraq task force ballooned in size, from fewer than 10 analysts to 500. But some of the CIA’s best and brightest on Iraq asked to be given other assignments rather than play ball with an administration already set on war. “A lot of people from the Iraq shop asked to be transferred away from Iraq,” the former officer said. “You had all these people being transferred in, and the people who didn’t like the direction it was going transferred out.”
* * *
Despite the vise-like squeeze on the CIA by Cheney and the Defense Department, the agency still got a lot on Iraq right. Not once in the period up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 did the U.S. intelligence community determine that Hussein posed a threat to the United States. The CIA concluded convincingly that there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and that Hussein had no connection to bin Laden’s attacks. “We, at CIA, were convinced within days -- within hours, by midday on September 11 -- that we had evidence that it was al-Qaeda and had no reason to suspect that Iraq was involved,” says a former high-level official. “That was our position, and we held to it firmly.” According to Scheuer, after the CIA received repeated inquiries about Iraq–al-Qaeda links from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s office, the agency reviewed more than 70,000 documents and pieces of data, concluding that there was no tie between Hussein and al-Qaeda.
The CIA also correctly concluded that Iraq was not even close to developing nuclear weapons. And, long before the war, the CIA told the White House that if the United States invaded Iraq and carried out a prolonged occupation, it would spark an insurgency like the one now tearing Iraq apart. “We did predict this in papers that we wrote,” says a former CIA official.
Paul Pillar was one of many inside the CIA who accurately foresaw the insurgency, according to Scheuer. A longtime CIA officer who served in battle-scarred venues such as Sri Lanka, Algeria, and Kashmir until becoming the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, Pillar “knows insurgencies inside out,” says Scheuer admiringly. “It’s no surprise that Pillar would understand that there would be an insurgency in Iraq.”
By 2004, the CIA had issued a steady stream of finished intelligence products that, one after another, undermined the premises of the Bush administration’s basic assertions about the occupation. The team that put these together included McLaughlin, the bloodied Near East Division analysts, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Not only did the CIA’s work shoot holes in White House policy; several of its conclusions were leaked, finding their way on to the front pages of the major newspapers. More than anything else, it was these leaks that enraged Bush and Cheney and caused them to turn to Porter Goss as their enforcer.
The fact that the agency was leaking isn’t denied by some. “Of course they were leaking,” says Pat Lang. “They told me about it at the time. They thought it was funny. They’d say things like, ‘This last thing that came out, surely people will pay attention to that. They won’t re-elect this man.’”
The dissent within the agency, and the anger about being manipulated, were palpable by 2004. Equally palpable were the complaints about the agency emanating from the neoconservatives and other war supporters. In The New York Times, David Brooks was bloodthirsty. “If we lived in a primitive age,” he wrote, “the ground at Langley would be laid waste and salted, and there would be heads on spikes.” And Robert Novak, the principal conduit for the White House leak campaign against Plame and Wilson, concocted an indictment against Pillar for supposedly having leaked a CIA report that contradicted the most cherished assumptions of the administration about Iraq. The incident with Pillar, wrote Novak, “leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other.” It made for a situation that Bush, facing re-election, wanted desperately to change. Brooks was about to get his wish.
* * *
Porter Johnston Goss is a well-bred Connecticut Yankee whose genteel family sent him to The Hotchkiss School and then to Yale University (class of 1960). The CIA that Goss joined in 1962 was still the Old Boys’ club, an insiders’ preserve for Ivy League grads and others of the “best and the brightest.” Goss married Mariel Robinson, daughter of a rich Pittsburgh industrial family -- “she’s an heiress,” says a former CIA colleague -- and amassed even greater wealth. In 1999, Goss listed his net worth as more than $20 million.
Over the years, Goss has refused to say much about his career as a clandestine-services officer in the CIA, but several colleagues say that it was an undistinguished one, mostly in headquarters. “He was a nothing as a [Directorate of Operations] guy,” says one. “He served mostly a few [temporary duty] postings in Europe.” Goss apparently also served for a time in Mexico and the Caribbean, and likes to say things like, “I had some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits.”
In any case, by 1971, stricken with a life-threatening staph infection, Goss quit the agency and moved to sunny Florida. For a time, he co-owned a chintzy newspaper, the Island Reporter, which he later sold for what he called an “obscene” amount. He drifted into local politics, and in 1988 was elected to Congress from Florida’s 14th District. Ensconced in the 14th, the state’s most Republican district, Goss frequently ran unopposed or won re-election by huge margins, with virtually all of his campaign contributions coming from business. Not surprisingly, he adopted the right-wing agenda.
It wasn’t long before Goss was trading on his hush-hush CIA background. His first official brush with intelligence was to serve as a Republican member of the special task force assembled to investigate the 1980 “October Surprise” allegations claiming that Bush Senior and William Casey, the late CIA director, had struck a secret deal with Iran’s ayatollahs in advance of the November 1980 election to prevent the release of U.S. hostages held in Tehran. It was no surprise that Goss, acting to protect then–Vice President Bush, found no truth to the story. In 1994 he served on one of those what’s-wrong-with-intelligence commissions that turn up every few years.
By 1996, Goss, having established an alliance with Newt Gingrich, got himself named to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Gingrich’s support for Goss was critical to the Florida congressman’s success, because Gingrich -- far more than any other speaker of the House in recent times -- maintained an extraordinary interest in intelligence issues and, unusually, served as an ex-officio member of the HPSCI. Goss cemented his tie to Gingrich by chairing the subcommittee tasked with investigating ethics charges against the speaker. Within days of being mostly cleared, Gingrich selected Goss as chairman of the HPSCI, the post he would hold until being nominated to run the CIA in 2004.
Another key bond was formed in this period: Gardiner Peckham, Gingrich’s right-hand man on intelligence issues, would eventually become a close friend of Patrick Murray, who off and on served as an HPSCI staffer under Goss. To many who worked with him on the Hill, Goss was seen as a prisoner of his staff -- above all, of Murray. During one confrontation over a controversial piece of legislation, when other members challenged Goss, he deferred to Murray. “Goss looked sad and apologetic, and he looked at us and said, ‘Pat runs the show,’” according to a source. “We all wondered, ‘What does Pat Murray have on Porter Goss?’”
During his years as HPSCI chairman, Goss established himself as a friend of the CIA, preferring partnership to oversight. When Bush took over in 2001, it was Cheney who persuaded Goss not to retire from Congress, as he had pledged to do, and for a time Goss was viewed as a replacement for Tenet in the Bush administration. However, Tenet obsequiously cultivated the Bush family, going so far as to name the CIA’s Langley headquarters after George Bush Senior, and Tenet was asked to stay on. But Goss retained the support of Cheney. In May 2001, speaking about intelligence, Goss praised Cheney to The New Yorker. “You need to take risks,” he said. “We need leadership. Cheney is certainly the man who can provide it. He understands risk. He understands bold leadership. He understands purpose.”
Meanwhile, Murray, according to former HPSCI staff, stayed even closer to Cheney’s White House office and the network of neoconservatives who’d taken up key posts in the Bush administration. “There was a sense that [Murray], even more than Porter, was close to the folks at the White House,” says a former HPSCI staffer. “And that [Murray] was making everything happen, with lots of meetings at the White House, with Cheney’s office, and House leadership.”
And in 2004, with tempers flaring between the White House and the agency, Goss, despite his longtime advocacy for the CIA, turned on a dime and issued a report that blasted it for having lost its way. Seemingly overnight, Goss decided that the CIA was a “stilted bureaucracy incapable of even the slightest bit of success.” The CIA, said Goss, is mismanaged, has a “political aversion to risk,” and “continues down the road leading over a proverbial cliff.” For many at the agency, it was a sign that Goss was auditioning for the job of intelligence reformer, but his newfound zeal for reform bemused CIA partisans. “He served on the HPSCI for eight years,” says Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. “What the "expletive deleted" was he doing for the last seven years?”
But if Goss lambasted the CIA, he never wavered in his fealty to the Bush-Cheney team. When David Kay, the CIA’s point man on searching for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, said that the weapons weren’t there, Goss told a packed news conference, “Those weapons are there.” He defended Bush-Cheney right down the line on Iraq policy, blocking efforts in the House or at the hpsci to investigate prewar intelligence about the weapons. He blocked an inquiry about Abu Ghraib, too. And when it became apparent that White House officials had leaked Plame’s name, Goss ridiculed the idea of investigating what was, according to nearly all intelligence officials, a significant breach of national security. “Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I’ll have an investigation,” sniffed Goss.
His nomination didn’t exactly win plaudits, and four Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- including the ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller -- voted against it. But in the end, the Democrats rolled over, choosing not to make a fight on the eve of the elections. On September 24, he took over.
* * *
Within weeks of Goss’ arrival, it was clear that the agency had been plunged into turmoil. One after another, top CIA officials bolted: first McLaughlin; then Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick, the top two officials in the Directorate of Operations; Jami Miscik, who headed the Directorate of Intelligence, and her deputy, Scott White; Buzzy Krongard, the CIA’s executive director; Mary Margaret Graham, a senior counterterrorism official; the heads of the European and East Asia divisions; and many more. Pillar, the Middle East national intelligence officer, took retirement. Many others, less prominent, also quit, were fired, or took jobs as consultants. Rockefeller, watching from the sidelines, said Goss “faces rumors of a partisan purge at the CIA.”
Leading the purge were Murray, who followed Goss to Langley, and perhaps half a dozen other HPSCI staffers who joined them, including Merrell Moorhead and Jay Jakub. Nearly all of them had poor reputations at the HPSCI. California Democratic Representative Jane Harman, hardly a critic of the CIA, said Goss has assembled a “highly partisan, inexperienced staff,” noting that “[f]rankly, on both sides of the aisle in the committee, we were happy to see them go.” And the CIA, where they were referred to as the “Hitler youth,” was not exactly happy to see them arrive.
Many of these departures made headlines, none more so than the confrontation between Murray and Mary Margaret Graham, who, according to a former colleague, was serving as the CIA’s chief of station in New York on 9-11. Murray treated Graham, a 27-year CIA veteran, so imperiously that the ensuring fracas led to the resignations of both Kappes and Sulick. According to several former CIA officers who served with Kappes and Sulick, both former Moscow chiefs of station who had only assumed the reins at the Directorate of Operations months earlier, the two men were among the most highly respected agency officers. “The real loss was Steve Kappes,” says Mike Scheuer. “He would have been one of the best [deputy directors of operations].” Says another clandestine-services officer with more than 25 years of experience: “Goss got rid of them like they were nothing. His attitude was, ‘You guys leaked stuff against the president. You’re disloyal, and you need to be punished.’”
The purge was felt down the line, with various chiefs of station, division heads, and other top officials bailing out. No section was harder hit than the already rattled Near East Division. At least two consecutive Baghdad chiefs of station have quit or been fired, and division’s staff at headquarters has been nearly swept clean of its experienced officials. “All over the agency, the talk is about the steady stream of people leaving,” says one veteran CIA officer. “People are disillusioned, and there seems to be no relief from the sense that there is no fixing this.” In the Near East Division, especially in the section that focuses on Iraq, many are gone. “What you’ve got left is a bunch of kids,” this officer said. “You’ve got a bunch of newbies in there -- some very smart, but with no experience.” Another former CIA chief of station said: “There aren’t any Arabists left in the CIA. They’re gone. They weren’t with the program. It’s like Pol Pot, who killed anybody wearing glasses because they might be able to read.”
Most troubling to agency watchers -- including Harman, who says that the CIA’s “free fall” is a “very, very bad omen in the middle of a war” -- is that the people exiting the CIA are those with decades of experience. “The intelligence process is based on experience,” says one grizzled CIA veteran. “It’s the 10,000 at-bat syndrome. It’s more an art than a science, and it is very difficult to teach. We’re talking about an agency that has no bench. When you take out the A-team, there’s no one.”
Another retired chief of station, who maintains close ties inside the CIA, said that scores of top agency officials have scattered. Some have made deals with contractors, returning to the CIA sporting the green badge signifying that they are from the private sector, yet working alongside CIA officers doing the same job for half as much money. Others have taken jobs in the military-industrial complex. And still others are flocking to the new office of the director of national intelligence, led by Negroponte. “What’s left behind are what you’d call the less enlightened people,” he says. “Hot molecules escape; the cold ones are left behind.”
Without a doubt, Goss’ team is the most highly partisan ever to run the CIA. The ex–HPSCI staffers were notorious for taking a Republican Party–oriented stance on many issues, especially Murray, who once tried to get classified information released so it could be used against the Democrats. Under Goss, the CIA public-affairs office has been nearly shut down, under the tight control of Jennifer Millerwise -- not an intelligence person, but a political operative who worked on the Bush-Cheney election campaigns and for Goss at the HPSCI. The partisan, pro-Bush nature of the current regime at the CIA was underlined when Goss issued a widely leaked memorandum telling agency employees to “support the administration and its policies in our work,” adding, “As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies.”
The import of Goss’ memo to staff was not lost on agency veterans. “The meaning was that from now on, there is only one acceptable view, and that’s the neocon view,” said one. For many it was the final straw, convincing them that there was no hope of salvaging independent analysis. “At the [Directorate of Intelligence], they’re wondering, ‘What is our job now, now that our boss doesn’t seem to care about us anyway?’” says Gregory Treverton, who served on the National Intelligence Council under Bill Clinton.
* * *
On the seventh floor at Langley, Goss is reportedly isolated. His staff protects him from agency veterans. It is said that he doesn’t walk the halls or mix readily with the troops, doesn’t eat in the CIA cafeteria, and gets chilly stares from employees. Many of them are angry that Goss has quietly allowed Negroponte to usurp traditional CIA roles, such as briefing the president on daily intelligence. “He’s seen as a weak leader, not as an advocate,” says one recently retired Middle East CIA officer. “So the agency is losing its position of influence.” Having clashed early with the Directorate of Operations, Goss has alienated -- some say irreparably -- the heart of the CIA: its clandestine service. “Without the [Directorate of Operations], the CIA is the Brookings Institution with razor wire,” says one former agent. Another adds: “The [Directorate of Operations] won’t forgive Goss. With the [directorate], you are either an ‘us’ or a ‘them.’ With the start Goss made, he was firmly placed in the ‘them’ category.”
Chas W. Freeman is a former assistant secretary of defense and U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. “What Goss is doing is an effort that originated outside the agency to impose a vision on it that its analysts and operatives reject as simply not based on reality,” he says. “It’s totalitarian. We are going to end up with an agency that is more right-wing, more conformist, and less prone to produce people with original views and dissenters.”
Demoralized, weakened, and politicized, the CIA may yet recover. The agency, particularly the Directorate of Operations, has weathered storms before and knows how to hunker down. Goss will probably not remain at the helm for long. And despite him, the agency continues to produce reports on the U.S. predicament in Iraq that reflect a measure of reality-based pessimism. But there is anger, bitterness, and an unhealthy caution that ill serves America’s need for an agency that, as one former CIA officer says, “speaks truth to power.” Enormous damage has been done, and the rebuilding of the CIA will take many years after Goss departs.
Robert Dreyfuss is a Prospect senior correspondent. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The Nation and Mother Jones. His book, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, was published this fall by Henry Holt/Metropolitan.
Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Robert Dreyfuss, "The Yes-Man", The American Prospect Online, Oct 23, 2005. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.
The Yes-Man
President Bush sent Porter Goss to the CIA to keep the agency in line. What he’s really doing is wrecking it.
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 11.23.05
Exactly as intended, Porter Goss has hit the Central Intelligence Agency like a wrecking ball.
The former Florida congressman, who had an undistinguished career as a CIA operations officer in the 1960s, came to the agency in September 2004 after serving seven years as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. With his staff in tow -- a collection of Capitol Hill aides nicknamed “the Gosslings” -- Goss bowled into the CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters, scattering senior officials like so many duckpins. In mid-September, Robert Richer, the newly installed deputy director of operations and a former Near East Division chief, quit in disgust. The newspapers duly reported Richer’s departure. But he is only the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg.
Since Goss took over, between 30 and 90 senior CIA officials have made their exit, according to various sources, some fleeing into retirement, others taking refuge as consultants. Others, unable to retire, have stayed, but only to mark time at the agency. Morale, already low after several years during which the CIA was accused of a series of intelligence failures related to September 11 and Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, is now at rock-bottom. The agency’s vaunted Near East Division, in particular, which served as the “pointy end of the spear,” as one CIA veteran put it, in simultaneous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the “global war on terror,” has been decimated.
And the agency has been locked down tight: After a decade during which the CIA prided itself on a new openness, shedding some of its legendary obsession with secrecy, neither Goss nor anyone else in the organization is giving interviews or bothering to explain the CIA’s workings.
Appointed to lead the agency in the midst of a heated presidential campaign, Goss’ primary mission, according to numerous former CIA officials -- including some only recently departed -- was to yank Langley onto President Bush’s political team. His immediate goal in 2004 was to block what had been, until then, a stream of damaging leaks of information about CIA intelligence reports that ran contrary to the White House’s rosy optimism about Iraq and U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. More broadly, the Goss team clamped down on dissenting views and radically politicized the CIA’s leadership. Even worse, say former agency officials, Goss has acquiesced in the dismantling of the CIA itself, which has bowed too easily to the supremacy of the new director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who spent his days in Baghdad contradicting the CIA’s clear-eyed battle reports.
For liberals and leftists accustomed to viewing the CIA as a rogue agency prone to unaccountable covert actions abroad, it is ironic that since 9-11, the CIA has emerged as a bastion of opposition to George W. Bush’s imperial foreign policy. Further, since 9-11, the CIA has established itself as perhaps the primary U.S. system of defense against Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and its offshoots and co-thinkers in the Muslim world. That reality makes Goss’ wrecking-ball approach to the agency both irresponsible and dangerous.
This article, based on more than two-dozen interviews with former intelligence officials from the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department, along with ex–Capitol Hill intelligence staffers who worked with Goss, is the first comprehensive account of the CIA’s transition from George Tenet through John McLaughlin, the agency’s respected acting director in mid-2004, to Goss. It reveals that Goss may have put the final nail in the coffin of an agency whose expertise and analytical skills were cavalierly overridden by a White House obsessed with Saddam Hussein. From 2001 on, its covert operatives and analysts were ignored, pressured, and forced to toe the administration’s line; neoconservative ideologues considered those operatives to be virtually part of the enemy camp. Many of those who remain inside the CIA are distraught, convinced that their work is wasted on an administration that doesn’t want to hear the truth. “How do you think they feel?” asked one recently retired CIA officer with three decades of experience. “They’re watching a "expletive deleted"ing idiotic policy, run by idiots, unfold right before their eyes!”
* * *
From 9-11 through the start of the Iraq War in March 2003, the neoconservative nexus in the administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, leaned heavily on the CIA to come up with intelligence to support the White House’s preordained determination to go to war against Iraq. The pressure directed at Tenet, McLaughlin, and scores of other CIA managers, analysts, and field officers was intense. Subsequent official investigations, by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and by the commission co-chaired by Lawrence Silberman and Charles Robb, blithely passed over the question of whether intelligence analysts were pressured by the administration. Both studies determined that analysts were not pressured, a conclusion that CIA and other U.S. intelligence professionals find laughable -- especially the idea that analysts would answer in the affirmative when asked by commissioners or senators if they had been pressured. “The senior guys got together and said, ‘You guys weren’t pressured, right? Right?’” says W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Middle East section.
In fact, analysts were pressured, and heavily so, according to Richard Kerr. A 32-year CIA veteran, Kerr led an internal investigation of the agency’s failure to correctly analyze Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities, preparing a series of four reports that have not been released publicly. Kerr joined the CIA in 1960, serving in a series of senior analytic posts, including director of East Asian analysis, the unit that prepared the president’s daily intelligence brief, and finally as chief of the Directorate of Intelligence. For several months in 1991, Kerr was the acting CIA director; he retired in 1992. A highly respected analyst, Kerr received four Distinguished Intelligence Medals; in 1992, President George Bush Senior gave him the Citizen’s Medal for his work during Operation Desert Storm.
Two years ago, Kerr was summoned out of retirement to lead a four-member task force to conduct the investigation of the weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco. His team, which included a former Near East Division chief, a former CIA deputy inspector general, and a former CIA chief Soviet analyst, spent months sorting through everything that the CIA produced on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion, as well as interviewing virtually everyone at the agency who had anything to do with producing the faulty intelligence estimates. The Kerr team’s first report was an overview of what the CIA said about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war compared with what Kerr calls the postwar “ground truth.” The second looked specifically at a classified version of the important October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which the administration used to build its case for war. The third looked at the overall intelligence process, and the fourth was a think piece that considered how to reorganize the management of intelligence analysis “if you could start all over again.”
Kerr’s four reports, with a fifth now under way, were viewed as the definitive works of self-criticism inside the agency and were shared with the oversight committees in Congress, outside commissions, and the office of the secretary of defense. Unlike the outside reports that looked at the same issues, however, Kerr’s concluded that CIA analysts felt squeezed -- and hard -- by the administration. “Everybody felt pressure,” Kerr told me. “A lot of analysts believed that they were being pressured to come to certain conclusions … . I talked to a lot of people who said, ‘There was a lot of repetitive questioning. We were being asked to justify what we were saying again and again.’ There were certainly people who felt they were being pushed beyond the evidence they had.”
In particular, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials hammered at the CIA to go back time and time again to look at intelligence that had already been sifted and resifted. “It was a continuing drumbeat: ‘How do you know this? How do you know that? What about this or that report in the newspaper?’” says Kerr. Many of those questions, which began to cascade onto the CIA in 2001, were generated by the Office of Special Plans and by discredited fabricators such as Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and a secret source code-named “Curveball.” As a result, says Kerr, the CIA reached back to old data, relied on several sources of questionable veracity, and made assumptions about current data that were unwarranted. In particular, intelligence on Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons program, much of which was based on data collected in the 1980s, early ’90s, and more spottily until the end of the United Nations inspection regime in 1998, was parsed -- and, some would argue, cherry-picked -- in order to reinforce the administration’s case.
On and off the record, other former CIA officials say that despite the pressure, dissent against the White House was rife within the agency. The strongest opposition centered in the CIA’s Near East Division, few of whose officials supported the idea of war with Iraq. They clashed often with WINPAC, the CIA division focused on weapons proliferation and the part of the agency most responsible for the heavily skewed conclusions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. “The Near East Division people didn’t buy into what the Bush administration wanted to do in regard to Iraq, but much of WINPAC did,” says Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who left the agency in 1989 and then served four years as deputy director of the State Department’s office of counterterrorism. “Bush, and the White House, favored WINPAC over [the Near East Division]. There were people in the agency who tried to speak out or disagree … who got fired, got transferred, got outed, or criticized. Others decided to play ball.”
Michael Scheuer -- who gained fame in 2004 as Anonymous, the author of Imperial Hubris, and who exited the CIA as Goss came in -- headed the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit and saw the confrontation up close. “I know a lot of people in the Iraq shop who were dissenting,” he says. “There were people who were disciplined or taken off accounts.” Opposition flared, particularly when the controversial 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was being cooked. “There was a great deal of dissent about that [estimate],” says Scheuer. “No one thought it was conclusive. One gentleman that I talked to, a senior Iraq analyst, regrets to this day that he did not go public.”
According to another former CIA official, as the war loomed, the CIA’s Iraq task force ballooned in size, from fewer than 10 analysts to 500. But some of the CIA’s best and brightest on Iraq asked to be given other assignments rather than play ball with an administration already set on war. “A lot of people from the Iraq shop asked to be transferred away from Iraq,” the former officer said. “You had all these people being transferred in, and the people who didn’t like the direction it was going transferred out.”
* * *
Despite the vise-like squeeze on the CIA by Cheney and the Defense Department, the agency still got a lot on Iraq right. Not once in the period up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 did the U.S. intelligence community determine that Hussein posed a threat to the United States. The CIA concluded convincingly that there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and that Hussein had no connection to bin Laden’s attacks. “We, at CIA, were convinced within days -- within hours, by midday on September 11 -- that we had evidence that it was al-Qaeda and had no reason to suspect that Iraq was involved,” says a former high-level official. “That was our position, and we held to it firmly.” According to Scheuer, after the CIA received repeated inquiries about Iraq–al-Qaeda links from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s office, the agency reviewed more than 70,000 documents and pieces of data, concluding that there was no tie between Hussein and al-Qaeda.
The CIA also correctly concluded that Iraq was not even close to developing nuclear weapons. And, long before the war, the CIA told the White House that if the United States invaded Iraq and carried out a prolonged occupation, it would spark an insurgency like the one now tearing Iraq apart. “We did predict this in papers that we wrote,” says a former CIA official.
Paul Pillar was one of many inside the CIA who accurately foresaw the insurgency, according to Scheuer. A longtime CIA officer who served in battle-scarred venues such as Sri Lanka, Algeria, and Kashmir until becoming the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, Pillar “knows insurgencies inside out,” says Scheuer admiringly. “It’s no surprise that Pillar would understand that there would be an insurgency in Iraq.”
By 2004, the CIA had issued a steady stream of finished intelligence products that, one after another, undermined the premises of the Bush administration’s basic assertions about the occupation. The team that put these together included McLaughlin, the bloodied Near East Division analysts, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Not only did the CIA’s work shoot holes in White House policy; several of its conclusions were leaked, finding their way on to the front pages of the major newspapers. More than anything else, it was these leaks that enraged Bush and Cheney and caused them to turn to Porter Goss as their enforcer.
The fact that the agency was leaking isn’t denied by some. “Of course they were leaking,” says Pat Lang. “They told me about it at the time. They thought it was funny. They’d say things like, ‘This last thing that came out, surely people will pay attention to that. They won’t re-elect this man.’”
The dissent within the agency, and the anger about being manipulated, were palpable by 2004. Equally palpable were the complaints about the agency emanating from the neoconservatives and other war supporters. In The New York Times, David Brooks was bloodthirsty. “If we lived in a primitive age,” he wrote, “the ground at Langley would be laid waste and salted, and there would be heads on spikes.” And Robert Novak, the principal conduit for the White House leak campaign against Plame and Wilson, concocted an indictment against Pillar for supposedly having leaked a CIA report that contradicted the most cherished assumptions of the administration about Iraq. The incident with Pillar, wrote Novak, “leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other.” It made for a situation that Bush, facing re-election, wanted desperately to change. Brooks was about to get his wish.
* * *
Porter Johnston Goss is a well-bred Connecticut Yankee whose genteel family sent him to The Hotchkiss School and then to Yale University (class of 1960). The CIA that Goss joined in 1962 was still the Old Boys’ club, an insiders’ preserve for Ivy League grads and others of the “best and the brightest.” Goss married Mariel Robinson, daughter of a rich Pittsburgh industrial family -- “she’s an heiress,” says a former CIA colleague -- and amassed even greater wealth. In 1999, Goss listed his net worth as more than $20 million.
Over the years, Goss has refused to say much about his career as a clandestine-services officer in the CIA, but several colleagues say that it was an undistinguished one, mostly in headquarters. “He was a nothing as a [Directorate of Operations] guy,” says one. “He served mostly a few [temporary duty] postings in Europe.” Goss apparently also served for a time in Mexico and the Caribbean, and likes to say things like, “I had some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits.”
In any case, by 1971, stricken with a life-threatening staph infection, Goss quit the agency and moved to sunny Florida. For a time, he co-owned a chintzy newspaper, the Island Reporter, which he later sold for what he called an “obscene” amount. He drifted into local politics, and in 1988 was elected to Congress from Florida’s 14th District. Ensconced in the 14th, the state’s most Republican district, Goss frequently ran unopposed or won re-election by huge margins, with virtually all of his campaign contributions coming from business. Not surprisingly, he adopted the right-wing agenda.
It wasn’t long before Goss was trading on his hush-hush CIA background. His first official brush with intelligence was to serve as a Republican member of the special task force assembled to investigate the 1980 “October Surprise” allegations claiming that Bush Senior and William Casey, the late CIA director, had struck a secret deal with Iran’s ayatollahs in advance of the November 1980 election to prevent the release of U.S. hostages held in Tehran. It was no surprise that Goss, acting to protect then–Vice President Bush, found no truth to the story. In 1994 he served on one of those what’s-wrong-with-intelligence commissions that turn up every few years.
By 1996, Goss, having established an alliance with Newt Gingrich, got himself named to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Gingrich’s support for Goss was critical to the Florida congressman’s success, because Gingrich -- far more than any other speaker of the House in recent times -- maintained an extraordinary interest in intelligence issues and, unusually, served as an ex-officio member of the HPSCI. Goss cemented his tie to Gingrich by chairing the subcommittee tasked with investigating ethics charges against the speaker. Within days of being mostly cleared, Gingrich selected Goss as chairman of the HPSCI, the post he would hold until being nominated to run the CIA in 2004.
Another key bond was formed in this period: Gardiner Peckham, Gingrich’s right-hand man on intelligence issues, would eventually become a close friend of Patrick Murray, who off and on served as an HPSCI staffer under Goss. To many who worked with him on the Hill, Goss was seen as a prisoner of his staff -- above all, of Murray. During one confrontation over a controversial piece of legislation, when other members challenged Goss, he deferred to Murray. “Goss looked sad and apologetic, and he looked at us and said, ‘Pat runs the show,’” according to a source. “We all wondered, ‘What does Pat Murray have on Porter Goss?’”
During his years as HPSCI chairman, Goss established himself as a friend of the CIA, preferring partnership to oversight. When Bush took over in 2001, it was Cheney who persuaded Goss not to retire from Congress, as he had pledged to do, and for a time Goss was viewed as a replacement for Tenet in the Bush administration. However, Tenet obsequiously cultivated the Bush family, going so far as to name the CIA’s Langley headquarters after George Bush Senior, and Tenet was asked to stay on. But Goss retained the support of Cheney. In May 2001, speaking about intelligence, Goss praised Cheney to The New Yorker. “You need to take risks,” he said. “We need leadership. Cheney is certainly the man who can provide it. He understands risk. He understands bold leadership. He understands purpose.”
Meanwhile, Murray, according to former HPSCI staff, stayed even closer to Cheney’s White House office and the network of neoconservatives who’d taken up key posts in the Bush administration. “There was a sense that [Murray], even more than Porter, was close to the folks at the White House,” says a former HPSCI staffer. “And that [Murray] was making everything happen, with lots of meetings at the White House, with Cheney’s office, and House leadership.”
And in 2004, with tempers flaring between the White House and the agency, Goss, despite his longtime advocacy for the CIA, turned on a dime and issued a report that blasted it for having lost its way. Seemingly overnight, Goss decided that the CIA was a “stilted bureaucracy incapable of even the slightest bit of success.” The CIA, said Goss, is mismanaged, has a “political aversion to risk,” and “continues down the road leading over a proverbial cliff.” For many at the agency, it was a sign that Goss was auditioning for the job of intelligence reformer, but his newfound zeal for reform bemused CIA partisans. “He served on the HPSCI for eight years,” says Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. “What the "expletive deleted" was he doing for the last seven years?”
But if Goss lambasted the CIA, he never wavered in his fealty to the Bush-Cheney team. When David Kay, the CIA’s point man on searching for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, said that the weapons weren’t there, Goss told a packed news conference, “Those weapons are there.” He defended Bush-Cheney right down the line on Iraq policy, blocking efforts in the House or at the hpsci to investigate prewar intelligence about the weapons. He blocked an inquiry about Abu Ghraib, too. And when it became apparent that White House officials had leaked Plame’s name, Goss ridiculed the idea of investigating what was, according to nearly all intelligence officials, a significant breach of national security. “Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I’ll have an investigation,” sniffed Goss.
His nomination didn’t exactly win plaudits, and four Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- including the ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller -- voted against it. But in the end, the Democrats rolled over, choosing not to make a fight on the eve of the elections. On September 24, he took over.
* * *
Within weeks of Goss’ arrival, it was clear that the agency had been plunged into turmoil. One after another, top CIA officials bolted: first McLaughlin; then Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick, the top two officials in the Directorate of Operations; Jami Miscik, who headed the Directorate of Intelligence, and her deputy, Scott White; Buzzy Krongard, the CIA’s executive director; Mary Margaret Graham, a senior counterterrorism official; the heads of the European and East Asia divisions; and many more. Pillar, the Middle East national intelligence officer, took retirement. Many others, less prominent, also quit, were fired, or took jobs as consultants. Rockefeller, watching from the sidelines, said Goss “faces rumors of a partisan purge at the CIA.”
Leading the purge were Murray, who followed Goss to Langley, and perhaps half a dozen other HPSCI staffers who joined them, including Merrell Moorhead and Jay Jakub. Nearly all of them had poor reputations at the HPSCI. California Democratic Representative Jane Harman, hardly a critic of the CIA, said Goss has assembled a “highly partisan, inexperienced staff,” noting that “[f]rankly, on both sides of the aisle in the committee, we were happy to see them go.” And the CIA, where they were referred to as the “Hitler youth,” was not exactly happy to see them arrive.
Many of these departures made headlines, none more so than the confrontation between Murray and Mary Margaret Graham, who, according to a former colleague, was serving as the CIA’s chief of station in New York on 9-11. Murray treated Graham, a 27-year CIA veteran, so imperiously that the ensuring fracas led to the resignations of both Kappes and Sulick. According to several former CIA officers who served with Kappes and Sulick, both former Moscow chiefs of station who had only assumed the reins at the Directorate of Operations months earlier, the two men were among the most highly respected agency officers. “The real loss was Steve Kappes,” says Mike Scheuer. “He would have been one of the best [deputy directors of operations].” Says another clandestine-services officer with more than 25 years of experience: “Goss got rid of them like they were nothing. His attitude was, ‘You guys leaked stuff against the president. You’re disloyal, and you need to be punished.’”
The purge was felt down the line, with various chiefs of station, division heads, and other top officials bailing out. No section was harder hit than the already rattled Near East Division. At least two consecutive Baghdad chiefs of station have quit or been fired, and division’s staff at headquarters has been nearly swept clean of its experienced officials. “All over the agency, the talk is about the steady stream of people leaving,” says one veteran CIA officer. “People are disillusioned, and there seems to be no relief from the sense that there is no fixing this.” In the Near East Division, especially in the section that focuses on Iraq, many are gone. “What you’ve got left is a bunch of kids,” this officer said. “You’ve got a bunch of newbies in there -- some very smart, but with no experience.” Another former CIA chief of station said: “There aren’t any Arabists left in the CIA. They’re gone. They weren’t with the program. It’s like Pol Pot, who killed anybody wearing glasses because they might be able to read.”
Most troubling to agency watchers -- including Harman, who says that the CIA’s “free fall” is a “very, very bad omen in the middle of a war” -- is that the people exiting the CIA are those with decades of experience. “The intelligence process is based on experience,” says one grizzled CIA veteran. “It’s the 10,000 at-bat syndrome. It’s more an art than a science, and it is very difficult to teach. We’re talking about an agency that has no bench. When you take out the A-team, there’s no one.”
Another retired chief of station, who maintains close ties inside the CIA, said that scores of top agency officials have scattered. Some have made deals with contractors, returning to the CIA sporting the green badge signifying that they are from the private sector, yet working alongside CIA officers doing the same job for half as much money. Others have taken jobs in the military-industrial complex. And still others are flocking to the new office of the director of national intelligence, led by Negroponte. “What’s left behind are what you’d call the less enlightened people,” he says. “Hot molecules escape; the cold ones are left behind.”
Without a doubt, Goss’ team is the most highly partisan ever to run the CIA. The ex–HPSCI staffers were notorious for taking a Republican Party–oriented stance on many issues, especially Murray, who once tried to get classified information released so it could be used against the Democrats. Under Goss, the CIA public-affairs office has been nearly shut down, under the tight control of Jennifer Millerwise -- not an intelligence person, but a political operative who worked on the Bush-Cheney election campaigns and for Goss at the HPSCI. The partisan, pro-Bush nature of the current regime at the CIA was underlined when Goss issued a widely leaked memorandum telling agency employees to “support the administration and its policies in our work,” adding, “As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies.”
The import of Goss’ memo to staff was not lost on agency veterans. “The meaning was that from now on, there is only one acceptable view, and that’s the neocon view,” said one. For many it was the final straw, convincing them that there was no hope of salvaging independent analysis. “At the [Directorate of Intelligence], they’re wondering, ‘What is our job now, now that our boss doesn’t seem to care about us anyway?’” says Gregory Treverton, who served on the National Intelligence Council under Bill Clinton.
* * *
On the seventh floor at Langley, Goss is reportedly isolated. His staff protects him from agency veterans. It is said that he doesn’t walk the halls or mix readily with the troops, doesn’t eat in the CIA cafeteria, and gets chilly stares from employees. Many of them are angry that Goss has quietly allowed Negroponte to usurp traditional CIA roles, such as briefing the president on daily intelligence. “He’s seen as a weak leader, not as an advocate,” says one recently retired Middle East CIA officer. “So the agency is losing its position of influence.” Having clashed early with the Directorate of Operations, Goss has alienated -- some say irreparably -- the heart of the CIA: its clandestine service. “Without the [Directorate of Operations], the CIA is the Brookings Institution with razor wire,” says one former agent. Another adds: “The [Directorate of Operations] won’t forgive Goss. With the [directorate], you are either an ‘us’ or a ‘them.’ With the start Goss made, he was firmly placed in the ‘them’ category.”
Chas W. Freeman is a former assistant secretary of defense and U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. “What Goss is doing is an effort that originated outside the agency to impose a vision on it that its analysts and operatives reject as simply not based on reality,” he says. “It’s totalitarian. We are going to end up with an agency that is more right-wing, more conformist, and less prone to produce people with original views and dissenters.”
Demoralized, weakened, and politicized, the CIA may yet recover. The agency, particularly the Directorate of Operations, has weathered storms before and knows how to hunker down. Goss will probably not remain at the helm for long. And despite him, the agency continues to produce reports on the U.S. predicament in Iraq that reflect a measure of reality-based pessimism. But there is anger, bitterness, and an unhealthy caution that ill serves America’s need for an agency that, as one former CIA officer says, “speaks truth to power.” Enormous damage has been done, and the rebuilding of the CIA will take many years after Goss departs.
Robert Dreyfuss is a Prospect senior correspondent. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The Nation and Mother Jones. His book, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, was published this fall by Henry Holt/Metropolitan.
Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Robert Dreyfuss, "The Yes-Man", The American Prospect Online, Oct 23, 2005. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.
Did Cheney Know Plame Was Undercover? The Nation.
The Scooter Libby indictment is rather straightforward. He first told FBI agents and later the grand jury that he had no independent information regarding Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie (and her employment at the CIA). He said that he only had picked up rumors about Wilson's wife from reporters and that this was the information he passed to other reporters. He said he wasn't even certain the scuttlebutt he had shared with the journalists was correct. Yet special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald uncovered evidence, which seems rather strong, that Libby actively gathered information on the Wilsons from the CIA and the State Department before talking to reporters about Valerie Wilson. And the most intriguing piece of evidence Fitzgerald mentioned in the indictment (with, alas, no elaboration) was that on June 12, 2003--nearly a month before Joseph Wilson published his now-infamous op-ed piece on his trip to Niger but several weeks after he had shared information about this trip with the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as an anonymous source--Vice President Dick Cheney told Libby, in the words of the indictment, that "Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division." By sharing this information with Libby, Cheney was telling his chief of staff that Wilson's wife was employed by the Operations Directorate of the CIA--the clandestine service of the intelligence agency where undercover officers work. The Counterproliferation Division is part of the DO--as it been called within the CIA--and anyone familiar with the CIA, especially a senior administration official obsessed with weapons of mass destruction ought to know that. This short sentence suggests that Libby had reason to assume that (or wonder if) Valerie Wilson was working undercover at the CIA. As Barton Gellman noted in an important front-pager in Sunday's Washington Post, this statement from Cheney was ...an unambiguous declaration that [Valerie Wilson's] position was among the case officers of the operations directorate... It's possible that Libby didn't catch the significance of Cheney's assertion. Or that he figured--wrongly--for some reason that Valerie Wilson worked in the Operations Directorate but was not operating under cover. But if the indictment is accurate--and Cheney's office has not challenged it--Libby at the very least was profoundly careless in discussing Valerie Wilson with two reporters (Judith Miller of fhe New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time) without first checking on her position at the CIA. After all, it was the Vice President who had told him that she worked in the clandestine portion of the CIA. Let's sum up: Libby disclosed identifying information about a covert official of the US intelligence service after being told she was employed by a division of the Operations Directorate. This scenario comes close to being a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and it does appear that Fitzgerald, even recently, had contemplated seeking an indictment of Libby or someone else under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Just last week, FBI agents working with Fitzgerald were investigating issues that would be relevant to such a prosecution. But perhaps Fitzgerald realized it would difficult to pursue this sort of case because Libby (or anyone else) could mount a defense by claiming he had not checked to see if Valerie Wilson specifically was under cover and, thus, did not really, really know her status. Conservative and Republican critics of the leak investigation have long argued that since there was no way Fitzgerald could indict anyone under the narrowly drafted (and poorly written) Intelligence Identities Protection Act, his whole inquiry was pointless. But this one sentence is a hint that Fitzgerald came close. And his investigation, Fitzgerald says, is not over yet. This sentence suggests Libby was either damn close to breaking that law or recklessly negligent by not determining Valerie Wilson's CIA position before discussing her with reporters. Moreover, it prompts serious questions about Cheney. How did he find out about Valerie Wilson? The indictment notes that "Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA." But from whom at the CIA? The indictment does not say. Shouldn't Cheney have realized that a person working at the DO's Counterproliferation Division was probably--or possibly--an undercover official? Given Cheney's long years of government service--when he was in the House of Representatives he sat on the intelligence committee--it's not a stretch to expect that Cheney would understand a DO officer might be undercover and that one should handle information about such a public servant with much care. (As the indictment notes, Libby was "obligated by applicable laws and regulations...not to disclose classified information to persons not authorized to receive such information, and otherwise to exercise proper care to safeguard classified information." Valerie Wilson's employment status at the CIA, the indictment says, was "classified.") Yet Cheney's chief of staff leaked information on Valerie Wilson to reporters. As the Post piece notes, on July 12, 2003--six days after Wilson published his op-ed--Libby apparently discussed with Cheney what he should say to reporters, particularly Matt Cooper, about the Wilson imbroglio. The indictment does not disclose what Cheney said to Libby at this point. But the next day, Libby confirmed for Cooper that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Would Libby have done so had Cheney told him to be careful not to identify a DO officer when discussing the Wilson affair with reporters? Perhaps so. But it's not unreasonable to wonder if Libby was--inadvertently or knowingly--spreading classified information about an undercover officer with the tacit or explicit consent of his boss. The indictment does not resolve this issue, and Fitzgerald is not likely to offer any other evidence about Cheney's conversations with Libby unless he produces additional indictments. At his press conference, Fitzgerald yielded no hints as to whether other indictments would come. The consensus of reporters there--which I shared--is that he acted like a fellow who was close to done with this endeavor; other close-watchers of the scandal that I have spoken with since have offered various analyses that lead to the--wishful?--conclusion that more indictments are on their way. But the questions generated by this one line in the Libby indictment could be resolved if Cheney would speak candidly about his role in the leak affair. What exactly did he tell Libby about Valerie Wilson? What did the two discuss during that July 12, 2003, conversation regarding what Libby should say to reporters? And what was Cheney doing seeking out information on Joseph and Valerie Wilson on his own? Why did he not rely on Libby or other staffers? Why was this macher down in the weeds? When he learned that Valerie Wilson worked at the DO's Counterproliferation Division, what was he told about her job there? Now that it is clear--according to the statements of Cooper and Miller--that Libby did reveal the identity of a DO officer to reporters, why hasn't Cheney expressed any regrets, apologized, or acknowledged his role in the affair? And when the White House and Bush declared in the fall of 2003 that Karl Rove and Libby were not "involved in the leak," why did Cheney not speak up and note that he, for one, had sought out information on Valerie Wilson and shared this sensitive material with Libby? If Fitzgerald has answers to these questions but cannot make them public because he is bound by law not to reveal grand jury evidence that does not appear in an indictment, there is no reason why Cheney and the White House cannot address such matters and tell the public what transpired. Bush did say in 2003 that he wanted the truth to come out. And recently his press secretary, Scott McClellan, said that FItzgerald should "determine the facts and then outline those facts for the American people." Cheney and the White House can say that Fitzgerald has asked people involved in his investigation not to talk publicly about the matter--a request, not an order--but perhaps Cheney can agree to tell all at a no-holds-barred press conference once Fitzgerald signals his probe is completed. Cheney champions and Bush backers have claimed that the narrow indictment Fitzgerald issued shows that the leak was not a criminal act. But it was an act of wrongdoing an it was a violation of government rules that prohibit officials from divulging classified information. According to the Libby indictment, Cheney--wittingly or not--helped Scooter Libby break the rules (governing the handling of classified information) if not the law. The White House has said the American public deserves to know what happened. That one sentence--and other issues raised by the Libby indictment--warrant much explanation from Cheney and the Bush White House.
GADFLY: Fitz's Knuckle Ball Memphis Flyer
Leak led to threats against CIA agent, husband reveals Independent
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The Scooter Libby indictment is rather straightforward. He first told FBI agents and later the grand jury that he had no independent information regarding Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie (and her employment at the CIA). He said that he only had picked up rumors about Wilson's wife from reporters and that this was the information he passed to other reporters. He said he wasn't even certain the scuttlebutt he had shared with the journalists was correct. Yet special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald uncovered evidence, which seems rather strong, that Libby actively gathered information on the Wilsons from the CIA and the State Department before talking to reporters about Valerie Wilson. And the most intriguing piece of evidence Fitzgerald mentioned in the indictment (with, alas, no elaboration) was that on June 12, 2003--nearly a month before Joseph Wilson published his now-infamous op-ed piece on his trip to Niger but several weeks after he had shared information about this trip with the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as an anonymous source--Vice President Dick Cheney told Libby, in the words of the indictment, that "Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division." By sharing this information with Libby, Cheney was telling his chief of staff that Wilson's wife was employed by the Operations Directorate of the CIA--the clandestine service of the intelligence agency where undercover officers work. The Counterproliferation Division is part of the DO--as it been called within the CIA--and anyone familiar with the CIA, especially a senior administration official obsessed with weapons of mass destruction ought to know that. This short sentence suggests that Libby had reason to assume that (or wonder if) Valerie Wilson was working undercover at the CIA. As Barton Gellman noted in an important front-pager in Sunday's Washington Post, this statement from Cheney was ...an unambiguous declaration that [Valerie Wilson's] position was among the case officers of the operations directorate... It's possible that Libby didn't catch the significance of Cheney's assertion. Or that he figured--wrongly--for some reason that Valerie Wilson worked in the Operations Directorate but was not operating under cover. But if the indictment is accurate--and Cheney's office has not challenged it--Libby at the very least was profoundly careless in discussing Valerie Wilson with two reporters (Judith Miller of fhe New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time) without first checking on her position at the CIA. After all, it was the Vice President who had told him that she worked in the clandestine portion of the CIA. Let's sum up: Libby disclosed identifying information about a covert official of the US intelligence service after being told she was employed by a division of the Operations Directorate. This scenario comes close to being a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and it does appear that Fitzgerald, even recently, had contemplated seeking an indictment of Libby or someone else under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Just last week, FBI agents working with Fitzgerald were investigating issues that would be relevant to such a prosecution. But perhaps Fitzgerald realized it would difficult to pursue this sort of case because Libby (or anyone else) could mount a defense by claiming he had not checked to see if Valerie Wilson specifically was under cover and, thus, did not really, really know her status. Conservative and Republican critics of the leak investigation have long argued that since there was no way Fitzgerald could indict anyone under the narrowly drafted (and poorly written) Intelligence Identities Protection Act, his whole inquiry was pointless. But this one sentence is a hint that Fitzgerald came close. And his investigation, Fitzgerald says, is not over yet. This sentence suggests Libby was either damn close to breaking that law or recklessly negligent by not determining Valerie Wilson's CIA position before discussing her with reporters. Moreover, it prompts serious questions about Cheney. How did he find out about Valerie Wilson? The indictment notes that "Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA." But from whom at the CIA? The indictment does not say. Shouldn't Cheney have realized that a person working at the DO's Counterproliferation Division was probably--or possibly--an undercover official? Given Cheney's long years of government service--when he was in the House of Representatives he sat on the intelligence committee--it's not a stretch to expect that Cheney would understand a DO officer might be undercover and that one should handle information about such a public servant with much care. (As the indictment notes, Libby was "obligated by applicable laws and regulations...not to disclose classified information to persons not authorized to receive such information, and otherwise to exercise proper care to safeguard classified information." Valerie Wilson's employment status at the CIA, the indictment says, was "classified.") Yet Cheney's chief of staff leaked information on Valerie Wilson to reporters. As the Post piece notes, on July 12, 2003--six days after Wilson published his op-ed--Libby apparently discussed with Cheney what he should say to reporters, particularly Matt Cooper, about the Wilson imbroglio. The indictment does not disclose what Cheney said to Libby at this point. But the next day, Libby confirmed for Cooper that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Would Libby have done so had Cheney told him to be careful not to identify a DO officer when discussing the Wilson affair with reporters? Perhaps so. But it's not unreasonable to wonder if Libby was--inadvertently or knowingly--spreading classified information about an undercover officer with the tacit or explicit consent of his boss. The indictment does not resolve this issue, and Fitzgerald is not likely to offer any other evidence about Cheney's conversations with Libby unless he produces additional indictments. At his press conference, Fitzgerald yielded no hints as to whether other indictments would come. The consensus of reporters there--which I shared--is that he acted like a fellow who was close to done with this endeavor; other close-watchers of the scandal that I have spoken with since have offered various analyses that lead to the--wishful?--conclusion that more indictments are on their way. But the questions generated by this one line in the Libby indictment could be resolved if Cheney would speak candidly about his role in the leak affair. What exactly did he tell Libby about Valerie Wilson? What did the two discuss during that July 12, 2003, conversation regarding what Libby should say to reporters? And what was Cheney doing seeking out information on Joseph and Valerie Wilson on his own? Why did he not rely on Libby or other staffers? Why was this macher down in the weeds? When he learned that Valerie Wilson worked at the DO's Counterproliferation Division, what was he told about her job there? Now that it is clear--according to the statements of Cooper and Miller--that Libby did reveal the identity of a DO officer to reporters, why hasn't Cheney expressed any regrets, apologized, or acknowledged his role in the affair? And when the White House and Bush declared in the fall of 2003 that Karl Rove and Libby were not "involved in the leak," why did Cheney not speak up and note that he, for one, had sought out information on Valerie Wilson and shared this sensitive material with Libby? If Fitzgerald has answers to these questions but cannot make them public because he is bound by law not to reveal grand jury evidence that does not appear in an indictment, there is no reason why Cheney and the White House cannot address such matters and tell the public what transpired. Bush did say in 2003 that he wanted the truth to come out. And recently his press secretary, Scott McClellan, said that FItzgerald should "determine the facts and then outline those facts for the American people." Cheney and the White House can say that Fitzgerald has asked people involved in his investigation not to talk publicly about the matter--a request, not an order--but perhaps Cheney can agree to tell all at a no-holds-barred press conference once Fitzgerald signals his probe is completed. Cheney champions and Bush backers have claimed that the narrow indictment Fitzgerald issued shows that the leak was not a criminal act. But it was an act of wrongdoing an it was a violation of government rules that prohibit officials from divulging classified information. According to the Libby indictment, Cheney--wittingly or not--helped Scooter Libby break the rules (governing the handling of classified information) if not the law. The White House has said the American public deserves to know what happened. That one sentence--and other issues raised by the Libby indictment--warrant much explanation from Cheney and the Bush White House.
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Leak led to threats against CIA agent, husband reveals Independent
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http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Oct/20051031News013.asp
Reactions to leak vary among ex-CIA insiders
San Francisco Chronicle
Published Monday, October 31, 2005
When Larry Johnson heard from a friend that Valerie Plame, an old classmate from his CIA training class, had been identified in a newspaper column as a CIA operative, his first reaction was shock.
"I was furious," said Johnson, who left the CIA in 1989 for the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Counterterrorism and now runs a business consulting firm. His growing sense that Plame was outed for the political benefit of the White House has only heightened his sense of outrage. "People ought to be fired, lose their jobs and face prosecution," he said.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former case officer in the CIA’s clandestine service who is now a resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, had a different reaction. "I don’t think the relay of just that name, given the circumstances, is such a serious thing," he said. "That kind of thing has happened innumerable times with journalists. This has really been blown egregiously out of proportion."
Those extremes define the range of reaction to the Plame revelation within the shadow world of CIA spooks, as described by those who have left that realm for a life in which people can talk about such things.
Reactions largely hinged on how seriously the former operatives took Plame’s position within the clandestine community when Robert Novak identified her.
The CIA had sent Plame’s husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from the West African nation. Wilson later publicly criticized the White House’s use of those claims, since discredited, in the months leading to the war in Iraq. Shortly thereafter, Novak identified Plame as Wilson’s wife, leading to a two-year investigation into whether a top White House aide leaked the agent’s identity to the journalist and whether doing so was a crime.
As special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald pursues his investigation into those questions, the same debate echoes through the intelligence community.
For some, the question boils down to whether a law had been broken specifically, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which bars those with access to classified information from knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent.
"If" the leaker "knew for a fact that this person was undercover and was operating undercover, he should have his legs broken," said Andre LeGallo, a former senior intelligence officer with the CIA directorate of operations and president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
"If he said it like, ‘I think’ " Wilson’s " ‘wife works in the agency,’ without knowing if she’s in science or technology or a logistics expert, that’s a pretty tough call," LeGallo said.
For other former operatives, the idea that the law was open to question was an indication of a bigger problem. "If they’re going to say this law is not sufficient in such a blatant example of exposing somebody’s cover, then the law needs to be rewritten," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, who wrote about her experience as a clandestine CIA operative in her memoir, "Denial and Deception."
Reactions to leak vary among ex-CIA insiders
San Francisco Chronicle
Published Monday, October 31, 2005
When Larry Johnson heard from a friend that Valerie Plame, an old classmate from his CIA training class, had been identified in a newspaper column as a CIA operative, his first reaction was shock.
"I was furious," said Johnson, who left the CIA in 1989 for the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Counterterrorism and now runs a business consulting firm. His growing sense that Plame was outed for the political benefit of the White House has only heightened his sense of outrage. "People ought to be fired, lose their jobs and face prosecution," he said.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former case officer in the CIA’s clandestine service who is now a resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, had a different reaction. "I don’t think the relay of just that name, given the circumstances, is such a serious thing," he said. "That kind of thing has happened innumerable times with journalists. This has really been blown egregiously out of proportion."
Those extremes define the range of reaction to the Plame revelation within the shadow world of CIA spooks, as described by those who have left that realm for a life in which people can talk about such things.
Reactions largely hinged on how seriously the former operatives took Plame’s position within the clandestine community when Robert Novak identified her.
The CIA had sent Plame’s husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from the West African nation. Wilson later publicly criticized the White House’s use of those claims, since discredited, in the months leading to the war in Iraq. Shortly thereafter, Novak identified Plame as Wilson’s wife, leading to a two-year investigation into whether a top White House aide leaked the agent’s identity to the journalist and whether doing so was a crime.
As special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald pursues his investigation into those questions, the same debate echoes through the intelligence community.
For some, the question boils down to whether a law had been broken specifically, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which bars those with access to classified information from knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent.
"If" the leaker "knew for a fact that this person was undercover and was operating undercover, he should have his legs broken," said Andre LeGallo, a former senior intelligence officer with the CIA directorate of operations and president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
"If he said it like, ‘I think’ " Wilson’s " ‘wife works in the agency,’ without knowing if she’s in science or technology or a logistics expert, that’s a pretty tough call," LeGallo said.
For other former operatives, the idea that the law was open to question was an indication of a bigger problem. "If they’re going to say this law is not sufficient in such a blatant example of exposing somebody’s cover, then the law needs to be rewritten," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, who wrote about her experience as a clandestine CIA operative in her memoir, "Denial and Deception."
CIA Running Secret Prisons Overseas, Declines Comment Muslim American Society
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declined to comment on a newspaper report saying the agency has been hiding and interrogating alleged al-Qaeda captives at secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
The CIA declined to comment on a report saying it was detaining alleged al-Qaeda members at secret prisons in Eastern Europe and other locations overseas.
The prisons, known as "black sites," are, or have been, located in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and "several democracies in eastern Europe," the daily said, quoting U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the system, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Asked about the report published Wednesday, a CIA spokeswoman replied: "We decline to comment." White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "I'm not going to get into specific intelligence activities. I will say that the president's most important responsibility is to protect the American people." The secret detention centers were set up after the September 11 attacks and are known only to a handful of officials, The Washington Post reported. The names of the eastern European countries were withheld by the Post "at the request of senior U.S. officials," who argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere. Russia and Bulgaria immediately denied any facility was there. Thailand also denied it was host to such a facility, reports Reuters. The Central Intelligence Agency has sent more than 100 suspects to the hidden global internment network, said the daily, indicating that the number was a rough estimate and did not include prisoners picked up from Iraq. About 30 of the detainees, considered major terrorism suspects, have been held at black sites financed and managed by the CIA in Eastern Europe and elsewhere - two locations in Thailand and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were closed in 2003 and 2004, the daily said. They are isolated from the outside world, have no recognized legal rights and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or see them, the sources told the newspaper. More than 70 other less important detainees - with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value, some of whom were originally interned at black sites, have been delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, under a process known as "rendition," the daily added. The State Department has issued human rights reports accusing Egypt, Jordan and Morocco of abusing prisoners. The Post, citing several former and current intelligence and other U.S. government officials, said the CIA used such detention centers abroad because in the United States it is illegal to hold prisoners in such isolation, reports Reuters. The CIA and the White House have dissuaded the U.S. Congress from asking questions in open testimony about the facilities or their conditions, the daily said. "Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long," the Post said. The covert prison system is "known only to a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country," said the newspaper, which pieced together the "contours" of the CIA detention program over the past two years. The Bush administration's policy toward prisoners taken in Afghanistan and Iraq has come under heavy criticism at home and abroad. Inmate abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was strongly condemned in the Muslim world and among U.S. allies while many have called for more openness about those being held at a U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, reports Reuters. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spurned a request by U.N. human rights investigators and denied them the opportunity to meet with detainees at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects, the news agency reports. But the administration also faced problems at home. In an October 5 bipartisan vote, the Senate approved 90-9 an amendment to regulate the Pentagon's handling of military detainees by establishing rules for their interrogation and treatment despite strong White House opposition.
CIA's secret terror war Melbourne Herald Sun
CIA runs secret terrorism prisons abroad - Wpost Malaysia Star
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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declined to comment on a newspaper report saying the agency has been hiding and interrogating alleged al-Qaeda captives at secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
The CIA declined to comment on a report saying it was detaining alleged al-Qaeda members at secret prisons in Eastern Europe and other locations overseas.
The prisons, known as "black sites," are, or have been, located in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and "several democracies in eastern Europe," the daily said, quoting U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the system, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Asked about the report published Wednesday, a CIA spokeswoman replied: "We decline to comment." White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "I'm not going to get into specific intelligence activities. I will say that the president's most important responsibility is to protect the American people." The secret detention centers were set up after the September 11 attacks and are known only to a handful of officials, The Washington Post reported. The names of the eastern European countries were withheld by the Post "at the request of senior U.S. officials," who argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere. Russia and Bulgaria immediately denied any facility was there. Thailand also denied it was host to such a facility, reports Reuters. The Central Intelligence Agency has sent more than 100 suspects to the hidden global internment network, said the daily, indicating that the number was a rough estimate and did not include prisoners picked up from Iraq. About 30 of the detainees, considered major terrorism suspects, have been held at black sites financed and managed by the CIA in Eastern Europe and elsewhere - two locations in Thailand and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were closed in 2003 and 2004, the daily said. They are isolated from the outside world, have no recognized legal rights and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or see them, the sources told the newspaper. More than 70 other less important detainees - with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value, some of whom were originally interned at black sites, have been delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, under a process known as "rendition," the daily added. The State Department has issued human rights reports accusing Egypt, Jordan and Morocco of abusing prisoners. The Post, citing several former and current intelligence and other U.S. government officials, said the CIA used such detention centers abroad because in the United States it is illegal to hold prisoners in such isolation, reports Reuters. The CIA and the White House have dissuaded the U.S. Congress from asking questions in open testimony about the facilities or their conditions, the daily said. "Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long," the Post said. The covert prison system is "known only to a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country," said the newspaper, which pieced together the "contours" of the CIA detention program over the past two years. The Bush administration's policy toward prisoners taken in Afghanistan and Iraq has come under heavy criticism at home and abroad. Inmate abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was strongly condemned in the Muslim world and among U.S. allies while many have called for more openness about those being held at a U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, reports Reuters. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spurned a request by U.N. human rights investigators and denied them the opportunity to meet with detainees at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects, the news agency reports. But the administration also faced problems at home. In an October 5 bipartisan vote, the Senate approved 90-9 an amendment to regulate the Pentagon's handling of military detainees by establishing rules for their interrogation and treatment despite strong White House opposition.
CIA's secret terror war Melbourne Herald Sun
CIA runs secret terrorism prisons abroad - Wpost Malaysia Star
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CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
By Dana Priest
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.
While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.
Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.
The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.
Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.
"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. "Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?' "
It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.
The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency's prisons.
More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.
The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.
About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.
Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.
The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.
Most of the facilities were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees' chairmen and vice chairmen on the program's generalities.
The Eastern European countries that the CIA has persuaded to hide al Qaeda captives are democracies that have embraced the rule of law and individual rights after decades of Soviet domination. Each has been trying to cleanse its intelligence services of operatives who have worked on behalf of others -- mainly Russia and organized crime.
The idea of holding terrorists outside the U.S. legal system was not under consideration before Sept. 11, 2001, not even for Osama bin Laden, according to former government officials. The plan was to bring bin Laden and his top associates into the U.S. justice system for trial or to send them to foreign countries where they would be tried.
"The issue of detaining and interrogating people was never, ever discussed," said a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, during that period. "It was against the culture and they believed information was best gleaned by other means."
On the day of the attacks, the CIA already had a list of what it called High-Value Targets from the al Qaeda structure, and as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack plots were unraveled, more names were added to the list. The question of what to do with these people surfaced quickly.
The CTC's chief of operations argued for creating hit teams of case officers and CIA paramilitaries that would covertly infiltrate countries in the Middle East, Africa and even Europe to assassinate people on the list, one by one.
But many CIA officers believed that the al Qaeda leaders would be worth keeping alive to interrogate about their network and other plots. Some officers worried that the CIA would not be very adept at assassination.
"We'd probably shoot ourselves," another former senior CIA official said.
The agency set up prisons under its covert action authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a covert action, by signing a document called a presidential finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal advisers.
Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world.
It could not be determined whether Bush approved a separate finding for the black-sites program, but the consensus among current and former intelligence and other government officials interviewed for this article is that he did not have to.
Rather, they believe that the CIA general counsel's office acted within the parameters of the Sept. 17 finding. The black-site program was approved by a small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials, according to several former and current U.S. government and intelligence officials.
Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for security and logistics reasons.
CIA officers also searched for a setting like Alcatraz Island. They considered the virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia, which were edged with craggy cliffs and covered in woods. But poor sanitary conditions could easily lead to fatal diseases, they decided, and besides, they wondered, could the Zambians be trusted with such a secret?
Still without a long-term solution, the CIA began sending suspects it captured in the first month or so after Sept. 11 to its longtime partners, the intelligence services of Egypt and Jordan.
A month later, the CIA found itself with hundreds of prisoners who were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan. A short-term solution was improvised. The agency shoved its highest-value prisoners into metal shipping containers set up on a corner of the Bagram Air Base, which was surrounded with a triple perimeter of concertina-wire fencing. Most prisoners were left in the hands of the Northern Alliance, U.S.-supported opposition forces who were fighting the Taliban.
"I remember asking: What are we going to do with these people?" said a senior CIA officer. "I kept saying, where's the help? We've got to bring in some help. We can't be jailers -- our job is to find Osama."
Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would be used for CIA prisoners.
The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras and tough Afghan guards, but the road leading to it was not safe to travel and the jail was eventually moved inside Bagram Air Base. It has since been relocated off the base.
By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black-site deals with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern European nation, current and former officials said. An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.
Then the CIA captured its first big detainee, in March 28, 2002. Pakistani forces took Abu Zubaida, al Qaeda's operations chief, into custody and the CIA whisked him to the new black site in Thailand, which included underground interrogation cells, said several former and current intelligence officials. Six months later, Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh was also captured in Pakistan and flown to Thailand.
But after published reports revealed the existence of the site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it down, and the two terrorists were moved elsewhere, according to former government officials involved in the matter. Work between the two countries on counterterrorism has been lukewarm ever since.
In late 2002 or early 2003, the CIA brokered deals with other countries to establish black-site prisons. One of these sites -- which sources said they believed to be the CIA's biggest facility now -- became particularly important when the agency realized it would have a growing number of prisoners and a shrinking number of prisons.
Thailand was closed, and sometime in 2004 the CIA decided it had to give up its small site at Guantanamo Bay. The CIA had planned to convert that into a state-of-the-art facility, operated independently of the military. The CIA pulled out when U.S. courts began to exercise greater control over the military detainees, and agency officials feared judges would soon extend the same type of supervision over their detainees.
In hindsight, say some former and current intelligence officials, the CIA's problems were exacerbated by another decision made within the Counterterrorist Center at Langley.
The CIA program's original scope was to hide and interrogate the two dozen or so al Qaeda leaders believed to be directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, or who posed an imminent threat, or had knowledge of the larger al Qaeda network. But as the volume of leads pouring into the CTC from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and former officials.
The original standard for consigning suspects to the invisible universe was lowered or ignored, they said. "They've got many, many more who don't reach any threshold," one intelligence official said.
Several former and current intelligence officials, as well as several other U.S. government officials with knowledge of the program, express frustration that the White House and the leaders of the intelligence community have not made it a priority to decide whether the secret internment program should continue in its current form, or be replaced by some other approach.
Meanwhile, the debate over the wisdom of the program continues among CIA officers, some of whom also argue that the secrecy surrounding the program is not sustainable.
"It's just a horrible burden," said the intelligence official.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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By Dana Priest
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.
While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.
Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.
The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.
Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.
"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. "Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?' "
It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.
The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency's prisons.
More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.
The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.
About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.
Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.
The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.
Most of the facilities were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees' chairmen and vice chairmen on the program's generalities.
The Eastern European countries that the CIA has persuaded to hide al Qaeda captives are democracies that have embraced the rule of law and individual rights after decades of Soviet domination. Each has been trying to cleanse its intelligence services of operatives who have worked on behalf of others -- mainly Russia and organized crime.
The idea of holding terrorists outside the U.S. legal system was not under consideration before Sept. 11, 2001, not even for Osama bin Laden, according to former government officials. The plan was to bring bin Laden and his top associates into the U.S. justice system for trial or to send them to foreign countries where they would be tried.
"The issue of detaining and interrogating people was never, ever discussed," said a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, during that period. "It was against the culture and they believed information was best gleaned by other means."
On the day of the attacks, the CIA already had a list of what it called High-Value Targets from the al Qaeda structure, and as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack plots were unraveled, more names were added to the list. The question of what to do with these people surfaced quickly.
The CTC's chief of operations argued for creating hit teams of case officers and CIA paramilitaries that would covertly infiltrate countries in the Middle East, Africa and even Europe to assassinate people on the list, one by one.
But many CIA officers believed that the al Qaeda leaders would be worth keeping alive to interrogate about their network and other plots. Some officers worried that the CIA would not be very adept at assassination.
"We'd probably shoot ourselves," another former senior CIA official said.
The agency set up prisons under its covert action authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a covert action, by signing a document called a presidential finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal advisers.
Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world.
It could not be determined whether Bush approved a separate finding for the black-sites program, but the consensus among current and former intelligence and other government officials interviewed for this article is that he did not have to.
Rather, they believe that the CIA general counsel's office acted within the parameters of the Sept. 17 finding. The black-site program was approved by a small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials, according to several former and current U.S. government and intelligence officials.
Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for security and logistics reasons.
CIA officers also searched for a setting like Alcatraz Island. They considered the virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia, which were edged with craggy cliffs and covered in woods. But poor sanitary conditions could easily lead to fatal diseases, they decided, and besides, they wondered, could the Zambians be trusted with such a secret?
Still without a long-term solution, the CIA began sending suspects it captured in the first month or so after Sept. 11 to its longtime partners, the intelligence services of Egypt and Jordan.
A month later, the CIA found itself with hundreds of prisoners who were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan. A short-term solution was improvised. The agency shoved its highest-value prisoners into metal shipping containers set up on a corner of the Bagram Air Base, which was surrounded with a triple perimeter of concertina-wire fencing. Most prisoners were left in the hands of the Northern Alliance, U.S.-supported opposition forces who were fighting the Taliban.
"I remember asking: What are we going to do with these people?" said a senior CIA officer. "I kept saying, where's the help? We've got to bring in some help. We can't be jailers -- our job is to find Osama."
Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would be used for CIA prisoners.
The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras and tough Afghan guards, but the road leading to it was not safe to travel and the jail was eventually moved inside Bagram Air Base. It has since been relocated off the base.
By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black-site deals with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern European nation, current and former officials said. An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.
Then the CIA captured its first big detainee, in March 28, 2002. Pakistani forces took Abu Zubaida, al Qaeda's operations chief, into custody and the CIA whisked him to the new black site in Thailand, which included underground interrogation cells, said several former and current intelligence officials. Six months later, Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh was also captured in Pakistan and flown to Thailand.
But after published reports revealed the existence of the site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it down, and the two terrorists were moved elsewhere, according to former government officials involved in the matter. Work between the two countries on counterterrorism has been lukewarm ever since.
In late 2002 or early 2003, the CIA brokered deals with other countries to establish black-site prisons. One of these sites -- which sources said they believed to be the CIA's biggest facility now -- became particularly important when the agency realized it would have a growing number of prisoners and a shrinking number of prisons.
Thailand was closed, and sometime in 2004 the CIA decided it had to give up its small site at Guantanamo Bay. The CIA had planned to convert that into a state-of-the-art facility, operated independently of the military. The CIA pulled out when U.S. courts began to exercise greater control over the military detainees, and agency officials feared judges would soon extend the same type of supervision over their detainees.
In hindsight, say some former and current intelligence officials, the CIA's problems were exacerbated by another decision made within the Counterterrorist Center at Langley.
The CIA program's original scope was to hide and interrogate the two dozen or so al Qaeda leaders believed to be directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, or who posed an imminent threat, or had knowledge of the larger al Qaeda network. But as the volume of leads pouring into the CTC from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and former officials.
The original standard for consigning suspects to the invisible universe was lowered or ignored, they said. "They've got many, many more who don't reach any threshold," one intelligence official said.
Several former and current intelligence officials, as well as several other U.S. government officials with knowledge of the program, express frustration that the White House and the leaders of the intelligence community have not made it a priority to decide whether the secret internment program should continue in its current form, or be replaced by some other approach.
Meanwhile, the debate over the wisdom of the program continues among CIA officers, some of whom also argue that the secrecy surrounding the program is not sustainable.
"It's just a horrible burden," said the intelligence official.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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Goss Plan to Strengthen CIA Is Ready
By Walter Pincus
CIA Director Porter J. Goss plans to deliver to President Bush today his plans for increasing by 50 percent the number of clandestine operations officers and analysts to expand U.S. intelligence on terrorist networks and to counter the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, according to senior intelligence officials.
Goss will stress, as he did last year, that he wants to get more people overseas, "in the field," including not just clandestine officers but also knowledgeable analysts, one senior administration official said yesterday. His plan will focus on recruiting more officers and analysts who "look, sound and talk like" the groups being spied on, so that they "can have close access and learn plans and intentions," the official added.
Last fall, Bush ordered that a 50 percent increase in personnel take place "as soon as feasible," but current and former clandestine operatives say it will take many years before large numbers of newly trained case officers can be sent out to recruit foreign agents with access to terrorists or who know about chemical, biological or nuclear weapons efforts.
"It is easy to say you are going to vastly increase the case officer output . . . but much harder to do in reality," said a senior official with long experience in clandestine service.
Goss is expected to be questioned on his plans when he appears today with the heads of other intelligence agencies before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its annual hearing on worldwide threats. The group appeared yesterday in closed session before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, but neither Goss nor several members of the panel would discuss it.
Bush ordered the increase in intelligence officers and analysts after the Sept. 11 commission report detailed broad shortcomings in U.S. intelligence and called on the CIA to hire more and better-qualified people.
Although the number is classified, there are roughly 5,000 case officers in service, with one-third to one-half of them overseas.
Efforts to rebuild the CIA's human intelligence capability began in 1998. At that time, when then-CIA Director George J. Tenet put together his first strategic plan to revitalize the clandestine service, only a handful of new recruits were being trained at Camp Peary in Virginia, known as "The Farm."
The physical facilities there had become run down, and faculty positions had come to be regarded as jobs for people either on their way out or those with no future at the CIA. "People at the Farm were not the best in the late 1990s," a senior intelligence official said yesterday, "and it was changed so it was not a career-ending move to go out there and train new recruits."
Steady funding for the agency has also been a problem because funds often came in one-time supplemental bills, which helped fix problems but prevented sound planning. Early last year, Bush added a significant amount of funds to the CIA's permanent budget to continue over the next five years. Said by one senior official to amount to "over a billion" dollars, it allows long-term planning without fear the money would dry up.
Even with the changes and new money, "there are an awful number of obstacles people don't think about" in recruiting, training and deploying officers, said Frank Anderson, a former senior CIA clandestine officer who once ran training programs. Training to be a clandestine officer can take a year, and for those who do not know Arabic or other needed languages, it could require two additional years.
Once officers are sent abroad, usually after a year at headquarters, new problems emerge.
If an officer is going to serve undercover as a businessperson, instead of working from an embassy job, for example, "you have to train for whatever business you are supposed to be in," Anderson said. If you are running around a country as a U.S. official, that country's counterintelligence service watches you, he said. "But if you are sent in as a businessman, then the local tax people pay attention, and they are more intrusive."
Either way, Anderson said, "all at once the amount of available operational time -- when you can meet locals and try to recruit promising agents -- is reduced. Someone in an embassy job does an embassy job; the businessperson has to do business, and if not, people notice."
Another former operations officer said the agency had already begun to "change their whole way of doing things." An officer used to be able to use an embassy job as a cover for recruiting agents -- local people who could approach Russians or Chinese, he said. But people at embassy cocktail parties are not today's targets in the fight against terrorists. "You have to get out of the embassies and recruit 'dirtballs,' or . . . people who can get to those people," he said.
Despite the buildup, the CIA will still rely heavily on "liaison" help from local police and security services, current and former officers said. "Every liaison service can get hundreds or thousands of people on the streets doing things that we could never do between our officers, whether undercover or inside embassies," one former case officer said.
In most Middle Eastern countries, he said, "it is almost inconceivable that we would have 20 people we could call out in a crisis."
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By Walter Pincus
CIA Director Porter J. Goss plans to deliver to President Bush today his plans for increasing by 50 percent the number of clandestine operations officers and analysts to expand U.S. intelligence on terrorist networks and to counter the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, according to senior intelligence officials.
Goss will stress, as he did last year, that he wants to get more people overseas, "in the field," including not just clandestine officers but also knowledgeable analysts, one senior administration official said yesterday. His plan will focus on recruiting more officers and analysts who "look, sound and talk like" the groups being spied on, so that they "can have close access and learn plans and intentions," the official added.
Last fall, Bush ordered that a 50 percent increase in personnel take place "as soon as feasible," but current and former clandestine operatives say it will take many years before large numbers of newly trained case officers can be sent out to recruit foreign agents with access to terrorists or who know about chemical, biological or nuclear weapons efforts.
"It is easy to say you are going to vastly increase the case officer output . . . but much harder to do in reality," said a senior official with long experience in clandestine service.
Goss is expected to be questioned on his plans when he appears today with the heads of other intelligence agencies before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its annual hearing on worldwide threats. The group appeared yesterday in closed session before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, but neither Goss nor several members of the panel would discuss it.
Bush ordered the increase in intelligence officers and analysts after the Sept. 11 commission report detailed broad shortcomings in U.S. intelligence and called on the CIA to hire more and better-qualified people.
Although the number is classified, there are roughly 5,000 case officers in service, with one-third to one-half of them overseas.
Efforts to rebuild the CIA's human intelligence capability began in 1998. At that time, when then-CIA Director George J. Tenet put together his first strategic plan to revitalize the clandestine service, only a handful of new recruits were being trained at Camp Peary in Virginia, known as "The Farm."
The physical facilities there had become run down, and faculty positions had come to be regarded as jobs for people either on their way out or those with no future at the CIA. "People at the Farm were not the best in the late 1990s," a senior intelligence official said yesterday, "and it was changed so it was not a career-ending move to go out there and train new recruits."
Steady funding for the agency has also been a problem because funds often came in one-time supplemental bills, which helped fix problems but prevented sound planning. Early last year, Bush added a significant amount of funds to the CIA's permanent budget to continue over the next five years. Said by one senior official to amount to "over a billion" dollars, it allows long-term planning without fear the money would dry up.
Even with the changes and new money, "there are an awful number of obstacles people don't think about" in recruiting, training and deploying officers, said Frank Anderson, a former senior CIA clandestine officer who once ran training programs. Training to be a clandestine officer can take a year, and for those who do not know Arabic or other needed languages, it could require two additional years.
Once officers are sent abroad, usually after a year at headquarters, new problems emerge.
If an officer is going to serve undercover as a businessperson, instead of working from an embassy job, for example, "you have to train for whatever business you are supposed to be in," Anderson said. If you are running around a country as a U.S. official, that country's counterintelligence service watches you, he said. "But if you are sent in as a businessman, then the local tax people pay attention, and they are more intrusive."
Either way, Anderson said, "all at once the amount of available operational time -- when you can meet locals and try to recruit promising agents -- is reduced. Someone in an embassy job does an embassy job; the businessperson has to do business, and if not, people notice."
Another former operations officer said the agency had already begun to "change their whole way of doing things." An officer used to be able to use an embassy job as a cover for recruiting agents -- local people who could approach Russians or Chinese, he said. But people at embassy cocktail parties are not today's targets in the fight against terrorists. "You have to get out of the embassies and recruit 'dirtballs,' or . . . people who can get to those people," he said.
Despite the buildup, the CIA will still rely heavily on "liaison" help from local police and security services, current and former officers said. "Every liaison service can get hundreds or thousands of people on the streets doing things that we could never do between our officers, whether undercover or inside embassies," one former case officer said.
In most Middle Eastern countries, he said, "it is almost inconceivable that we would have 20 people we could call out in a crisis."
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Cheney vs. The CIA
by Mel Goodman
DICK CHENEY vs. THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Dick Cheney’s principal aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, has been indicted and forced to resign, but the vice president hasn’t said anything. Then again, he rarely does. For the past thirty years, Cheney has been wreaking havoc on America’s national security policy and working to politicize the intelligence assessments of the CIA, but his work has been conducted from the shadows. During this period, Cheney has surrounded himself with hard-liners who share his view of national security policy and his hostility toward the Central Intelligence Agency.
Thirty years ago, Cheney became President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, and his close colleague, Donald Rumsfeld, became the secretary of defense. The two men had a clear security agenda to reverse the moderate policies of President Richard Nixon. This required weakening the negotiating powers of Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, ending arms control and disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union, slowing the pace of détente with the Kremlin, and ending the dialogue with China. Cheney and Rumsfeld also targeted the CIA, believing that the agency was not being responsive to their foreign policy concerns and that the CIA’s intelligence assessments on the Soviet Union were far too moderate. They were successful in implementing their agenda.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were instrumental in imposing a team of right-wing ideologues onto the CIA in an effort to push the agency’s analysis on Soviet military developments far to the right, charging that the agency “significantly understated the threat of the Soviet military buildup.” The exercise, which began in 1976, was known as the Team A/Team B Exercise. Team A consisted of the analytical cadre at the CIA who worked on Soviet strategic assessments. Team B included such ideologues as Harvard Professor Richard Pipes, William Van Cleve, Paul Wolfowitz, and retired general Daniel Graham. CIA director William Colby refused to accept Team B because of its ideological makeup; his successor, George H.W. Bush, however, was willing to allow the exercise to take place.
Near the end of President George H.W. Bush’s first term, Secretary of Defense Cheney and his two top aides, Wolfowitz and Libby, prepared a draft of the “Defense Planning Guidance,” which emphasized unilateralism and preemptive attack. Written after the Gulf War of 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the document defended the preemptive use of force against states suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction and downplayed the role of arms control. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Libby were administration critics of the decision to stop the Gulf War before an invasion of Iraq, which was supported by President Bush, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell.
Rumsfeld and Libby were also involved in the preparation of a report that overstated the ballistic missile threat in 1998. It was used by the Bush administration in 2002 to justify the construction of a flawed national missile defense and the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Rumsfeld and Libby also persuaded the CIA to prepare a national intelligence estimate that matched the worst-case assumptions of the Rumsfeld Commission. Just as Team B was largely successful in pushing CIA’s analysis on the Soviet strategic threat to the right, Rumsfeld and Libby did the same with CIA’s work on the challenge of ballistic missiles. On both occasions, CIA senior analysts were intimidated by the influence of right-wing ideologues, with CIA directors Bush and George Tenet permitting the politicization of intelligence to take place.
The next major move against the CIA took place before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when a group of Cheney’s former aides established a special unit in the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans (OSP). This office prepared intelligence assessments that the CIA would not endorse, charging the Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons capabilities and had developed strong ties with al Qaeda. These specious assessments allowed President Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice to warn that the “smoking gun must not be a nuclear cloud.” The OSP and the White House Iraq Group also used forged intelligence to make this assertion, despite CIA’s efforts to get the phony claim out of the president’s speech in Ohio in October 2002 (successfully) and the State of the Union speech in January 2003 (unsuccessfully). The OSP “cooked the books” on intelligence for the Iraq War, reminiscent of the role of the National Security Council and the CIA during the Iran-contra crisis in the Reagan administration.
In the wake of the indictments against Libby, Cheney continues to surround himself with protégés who believe that the CIA has tried to undermine the national security policy of the vice president, particularly his case for war against Iraq. Libby’s portfolios have been given to David Addington and John Hannah who have worked with Cheney for the past fifteen years and share his worldview. Both men were questioned for the Libby indictment and presumably would have to testify in any Libby trial. Thus we may eventually learn more about the role of Cheney and his minions in taking the country to war against Iraq and whether a forged intelligence document was at the center of the campaign.
The charges of perjury and obstruction against Libby are serious and substantial, but barely touch on the bad blood that exists between the Bush administration and the CIA. Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald made no attempt, morever, to examine the role of forged intelligence in the case for war, and the CIA has never conducted a counter-intelligence investigation of the damage done by the phony document alleging that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from Niger. Similarly, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Pat Roberts (R-KS) has blocked the committee from examining the White House’s use of CIA intelligence to make the case for going to war. If the executive and legislative branches cannot conduct a genuine inquiry into the misuse of intelligence, then it will be necessary to use public tribunals to review the way the United States went to war.
We need such a study because of the danger of going to war under false pretenses. We need a counter-intelligence investigation in the United States to reveal how a forged document was used to make the case for war, who produced this document, how did it move through the intelligence community to reach the president of the United States, when did the community and the executive branch become aware that the document was a fabrication, and did the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the national security adviser wittingly use a forgery to make a case for war and gain a congressional resolution that would permit the use of force against Iraq.
Fitzgerald has given us an excellent chronology on the maneuverings of Scooter Libby against former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. Now we need a similar chronology on the tortuous path of tailored intelligence. We waited 40 years to learn that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was based on politicized intelligence that took us into a tragic war against Vietnam. We don’t want to wait 40 years to learn how a forged document took us into an equally tragic war against Iraq.
Melvin A. Goodman, a former senior analyst at the CIA, is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of the forthcoming “The Decline and Fall of the CIA.”
Cheney vs. The CIA
by Mel Goodman
DICK CHENEY vs. THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Dick Cheney’s principal aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, has been indicted and forced to resign, but the vice president hasn’t said anything. Then again, he rarely does. For the past thirty years, Cheney has been wreaking havoc on America’s national security policy and working to politicize the intelligence assessments of the CIA, but his work has been conducted from the shadows. During this period, Cheney has surrounded himself with hard-liners who share his view of national security policy and his hostility toward the Central Intelligence Agency.
Thirty years ago, Cheney became President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, and his close colleague, Donald Rumsfeld, became the secretary of defense. The two men had a clear security agenda to reverse the moderate policies of President Richard Nixon. This required weakening the negotiating powers of Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, ending arms control and disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union, slowing the pace of détente with the Kremlin, and ending the dialogue with China. Cheney and Rumsfeld also targeted the CIA, believing that the agency was not being responsive to their foreign policy concerns and that the CIA’s intelligence assessments on the Soviet Union were far too moderate. They were successful in implementing their agenda.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were instrumental in imposing a team of right-wing ideologues onto the CIA in an effort to push the agency’s analysis on Soviet military developments far to the right, charging that the agency “significantly understated the threat of the Soviet military buildup.” The exercise, which began in 1976, was known as the Team A/Team B Exercise. Team A consisted of the analytical cadre at the CIA who worked on Soviet strategic assessments. Team B included such ideologues as Harvard Professor Richard Pipes, William Van Cleve, Paul Wolfowitz, and retired general Daniel Graham. CIA director William Colby refused to accept Team B because of its ideological makeup; his successor, George H.W. Bush, however, was willing to allow the exercise to take place.
Near the end of President George H.W. Bush’s first term, Secretary of Defense Cheney and his two top aides, Wolfowitz and Libby, prepared a draft of the “Defense Planning Guidance,” which emphasized unilateralism and preemptive attack. Written after the Gulf War of 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the document defended the preemptive use of force against states suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction and downplayed the role of arms control. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Libby were administration critics of the decision to stop the Gulf War before an invasion of Iraq, which was supported by President Bush, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell.
Rumsfeld and Libby were also involved in the preparation of a report that overstated the ballistic missile threat in 1998. It was used by the Bush administration in 2002 to justify the construction of a flawed national missile defense and the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Rumsfeld and Libby also persuaded the CIA to prepare a national intelligence estimate that matched the worst-case assumptions of the Rumsfeld Commission. Just as Team B was largely successful in pushing CIA’s analysis on the Soviet strategic threat to the right, Rumsfeld and Libby did the same with CIA’s work on the challenge of ballistic missiles. On both occasions, CIA senior analysts were intimidated by the influence of right-wing ideologues, with CIA directors Bush and George Tenet permitting the politicization of intelligence to take place.
The next major move against the CIA took place before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when a group of Cheney’s former aides established a special unit in the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans (OSP). This office prepared intelligence assessments that the CIA would not endorse, charging the Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons capabilities and had developed strong ties with al Qaeda. These specious assessments allowed President Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice to warn that the “smoking gun must not be a nuclear cloud.” The OSP and the White House Iraq Group also used forged intelligence to make this assertion, despite CIA’s efforts to get the phony claim out of the president’s speech in Ohio in October 2002 (successfully) and the State of the Union speech in January 2003 (unsuccessfully). The OSP “cooked the books” on intelligence for the Iraq War, reminiscent of the role of the National Security Council and the CIA during the Iran-contra crisis in the Reagan administration.
In the wake of the indictments against Libby, Cheney continues to surround himself with protégés who believe that the CIA has tried to undermine the national security policy of the vice president, particularly his case for war against Iraq. Libby’s portfolios have been given to David Addington and John Hannah who have worked with Cheney for the past fifteen years and share his worldview. Both men were questioned for the Libby indictment and presumably would have to testify in any Libby trial. Thus we may eventually learn more about the role of Cheney and his minions in taking the country to war against Iraq and whether a forged intelligence document was at the center of the campaign.
The charges of perjury and obstruction against Libby are serious and substantial, but barely touch on the bad blood that exists between the Bush administration and the CIA. Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald made no attempt, morever, to examine the role of forged intelligence in the case for war, and the CIA has never conducted a counter-intelligence investigation of the damage done by the phony document alleging that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from Niger. Similarly, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Pat Roberts (R-KS) has blocked the committee from examining the White House’s use of CIA intelligence to make the case for going to war. If the executive and legislative branches cannot conduct a genuine inquiry into the misuse of intelligence, then it will be necessary to use public tribunals to review the way the United States went to war.
We need such a study because of the danger of going to war under false pretenses. We need a counter-intelligence investigation in the United States to reveal how a forged document was used to make the case for war, who produced this document, how did it move through the intelligence community to reach the president of the United States, when did the community and the executive branch become aware that the document was a fabrication, and did the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the national security adviser wittingly use a forgery to make a case for war and gain a congressional resolution that would permit the use of force against Iraq.
Fitzgerald has given us an excellent chronology on the maneuverings of Scooter Libby against former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. Now we need a similar chronology on the tortuous path of tailored intelligence. We waited 40 years to learn that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was based on politicized intelligence that took us into a tragic war against Vietnam. We don’t want to wait 40 years to learn how a forged document took us into an equally tragic war against Iraq.
Melvin A. Goodman, a former senior analyst at the CIA, is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of the forthcoming “The Decline and Fall of the CIA.”
Rove's Future Role Is Debated Washington Post
Top White House aides are privately discussing the future of Karl Rove, with some expressing doubt that President Bush can move beyond the damaging CIA leak case as long as his closest political strategist remains in the administration. If Rove stays, which colleagues say remains his intention, he may at a minimum have to issue a formal apology for misleading colleagues and the public about his role in conversations that led to the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to senior Republican sources familiar with White House deliberations.
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald continues to investigate the CIA leak. (Charles Dharapak - AP)
While Rove faces doubts about his White House status, there are new indications that he remains in legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's criminal investigation of the Plame leak. The prosecutor spoke this week with an attorney for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about his client's conversations with Rove before and after Plame's identity became publicly known because of anonymous disclosures by White House officials, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. Fitzgerald is considering charging Rove with making false statements in the course of the 22-month probe, and sources close to Rove -- who holds the titles of senior adviser and White House deputy chief of staff -- said they expect to know within weeks whether the most powerful aide in the White House will be accused of a crime. But some top Republicans said yesterday that Rove's problems may not end there. Bush's top advisers are considering whether it is tenable for Rove to remain on the staff, given that Fitzgerald has already documented something that Rove and White House official spokesmen once emphatically denied -- that he played a central role in discussions with journalists about Plame's role at the CIA and her marriage to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war. "Karl does not have any real enemies in the White House, but there are a lot of people in the White House wondering how they can put this behind them if the cloud remains over Karl," said a GOP strategist who has discussed the issue with top White House officials. "You can not have that [fresh] start as long as Karl is there." A swift resolution is needed in part to ease staff tension, a number of people inside and out of the White House said. Many mid-level staffers inside have expressed frustration that press secretary Scott McClellan's credibility was undermined by Rove, who told the spokesman that he was not involved in the leak, according to people familiar with the case. Some aides said Rove told Bush the same thing, though little is known about the precise nature of the president's conversations with his closest political adviser. McClellan relayed Rove's denial to reporters from the White House lectern in 2003, and he has not yet offered a public explanation for his inaccurate statements. "That is affecting everybody," said a Republican who has discussed the issue with the White House. "Scott personally is really beaten down by this. Everybody I talked to talks about this." I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff, will be arraigned today on five counts, involving three felony charges, in the leak probe. Libby also told McClellan two years ago he was not involved, a denial that was also relayed to the public. White House communications director Nicolle Wallace said that there have not been any White House meetings to discuss Rove's fate, and that the senior adviser is actively engaged and "doing an outstanding job." She said "there is no debate" over Rove's future. Rove has long been regarded as the most influential and feared Bush aide and has enjoyed the fervent backing of the president and influential conservatives. Republicans with firsthand knowledge of the private talks about Rove's political problems said there have been informal discussions involving people inside and outside the White House, and that they reflected the views of a large number of administration officials who are concerned about Bush's efforts to start anew in 2006 with as little interference from the scandal as possible. In U.S. District Court today, Libby is expected to plead not guilty to the five-count indictment that charges him with obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements. Anticipating intense media interest, court officials arranged for the arraignment to be held in the oversized Ceremonial Courtroom, which can seat hundreds and is the largest courtroom in the federal courthouse here. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, randomly selected among the trial judges, will preside over Libby's case. The judge has recently overseen the civil lawsuit of former bioweapons scientist Stephen J. Hatfill against the Justice Department for linking him to the 2001 anthrax attacks. Libby, whose friends have begun raising money for his legal defense fund, is expected to be represented in court by Joseph A. Tate, a partner in his former law firm. But intermediaries for Libby have in recent days contacted several law firms with extensive white-collar criminal defense experience about possibly representing Libby in the near future, according to legal sources.
Rove remains in legal limbo.
Fitzgerald made it clear to Rove's attorney in private conversations last week that his client remains under investigation. And he signaled the same in his indictment of Libby on Friday, in which he identified a senior White House official who had conversations related to the Plame leak as "Official A." White House colleagues say Rove is clearly "Official A," based on the detailed description. That kind of pseudonym is often used by prosecutors to refer to an unindicted co-conspirator, or someone who faces the prospect of being charged. No other administration official is identified in this way in Fitzgerald's indictment. Rove was interviewed by FBI agents in the fall of 2003. He subsequently testified four times before the grand jury, which legal experts say is an unusually large number of appearances given that he was told he was a subject of the investigation and his actions were being scrutinized as possible criminal violations. Sources close to Rove say one pressing problem for him is that he initially did not tell investigators he had a conversation with Cooper, then he produced an e-mail to a colleague in which he reported he had spoken to Cooper. He told the grand jury he could recollect very little of the conversation other than a discussion of welfare, sources said. According to sources who were made aware of the conservation, Fitzgerald has been speaking with Cooper's attorney, Richard Sauber, by telephone in the past three days. He is said to have posed several questions to clarify whether Cooper had other conversations with Rove before and after the crucial July 12, 2003, discussion during which Cooper said Rove told him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. The aim was apparently to discern how common conversations were between Rove and the reporter, then a newcomer to the White House beat. Sauber, reached at his office late yesterday, declined to comment on any conversations he had with the prosecutor's team. Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment. Sources close to Rove said they do not believe the strategist is in the clear, but are confident the prosecutor will determine Rove did nothing illegal. White House critics said Rove's continued presence would expose Bush as a hypocrite. They cite his campaign promise in 2000 to run an ethical government that asks "not only what is legal but what is right" and his 2004 pledge, later softened, to fire anyone involved in the CIA leak. Political pressure is rising from the outside. A few conservatives have suggested it is time for Rove to go. William A. Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute, told Reuters on Tuesday that Bush has to "sacrifice" some top aides starting with Rove, who he said has given good campaign advice but poor guidance on getting legislation passed. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said on MSNBC's "Hardball" the same day, "The question is, should he be the deputy chief of staff for policy under the current circumstances?" Democrats have been more blunt. "It is totally unacceptable that anyone involved in the unauthorized disclosure of the identity of a CIA officer, including your Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, should remain employed at the White House with a security clearance," Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) wrote Bush yesterday.
Behind Libby's indictment Indianapolis Star
Indicted Former Cheney Aide to Make Court Appearance Voice of America
BBC News - Reuters - New Zealand Herald - New York Times - all 627 related »
Top White House aides are privately discussing the future of Karl Rove, with some expressing doubt that President Bush can move beyond the damaging CIA leak case as long as his closest political strategist remains in the administration. If Rove stays, which colleagues say remains his intention, he may at a minimum have to issue a formal apology for misleading colleagues and the public about his role in conversations that led to the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to senior Republican sources familiar with White House deliberations.
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald continues to investigate the CIA leak. (Charles Dharapak - AP)
While Rove faces doubts about his White House status, there are new indications that he remains in legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's criminal investigation of the Plame leak. The prosecutor spoke this week with an attorney for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about his client's conversations with Rove before and after Plame's identity became publicly known because of anonymous disclosures by White House officials, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. Fitzgerald is considering charging Rove with making false statements in the course of the 22-month probe, and sources close to Rove -- who holds the titles of senior adviser and White House deputy chief of staff -- said they expect to know within weeks whether the most powerful aide in the White House will be accused of a crime. But some top Republicans said yesterday that Rove's problems may not end there. Bush's top advisers are considering whether it is tenable for Rove to remain on the staff, given that Fitzgerald has already documented something that Rove and White House official spokesmen once emphatically denied -- that he played a central role in discussions with journalists about Plame's role at the CIA and her marriage to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war. "Karl does not have any real enemies in the White House, but there are a lot of people in the White House wondering how they can put this behind them if the cloud remains over Karl," said a GOP strategist who has discussed the issue with top White House officials. "You can not have that [fresh] start as long as Karl is there." A swift resolution is needed in part to ease staff tension, a number of people inside and out of the White House said. Many mid-level staffers inside have expressed frustration that press secretary Scott McClellan's credibility was undermined by Rove, who told the spokesman that he was not involved in the leak, according to people familiar with the case. Some aides said Rove told Bush the same thing, though little is known about the precise nature of the president's conversations with his closest political adviser. McClellan relayed Rove's denial to reporters from the White House lectern in 2003, and he has not yet offered a public explanation for his inaccurate statements. "That is affecting everybody," said a Republican who has discussed the issue with the White House. "Scott personally is really beaten down by this. Everybody I talked to talks about this." I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff, will be arraigned today on five counts, involving three felony charges, in the leak probe. Libby also told McClellan two years ago he was not involved, a denial that was also relayed to the public. White House communications director Nicolle Wallace said that there have not been any White House meetings to discuss Rove's fate, and that the senior adviser is actively engaged and "doing an outstanding job." She said "there is no debate" over Rove's future. Rove has long been regarded as the most influential and feared Bush aide and has enjoyed the fervent backing of the president and influential conservatives. Republicans with firsthand knowledge of the private talks about Rove's political problems said there have been informal discussions involving people inside and outside the White House, and that they reflected the views of a large number of administration officials who are concerned about Bush's efforts to start anew in 2006 with as little interference from the scandal as possible. In U.S. District Court today, Libby is expected to plead not guilty to the five-count indictment that charges him with obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements. Anticipating intense media interest, court officials arranged for the arraignment to be held in the oversized Ceremonial Courtroom, which can seat hundreds and is the largest courtroom in the federal courthouse here. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, randomly selected among the trial judges, will preside over Libby's case. The judge has recently overseen the civil lawsuit of former bioweapons scientist Stephen J. Hatfill against the Justice Department for linking him to the 2001 anthrax attacks. Libby, whose friends have begun raising money for his legal defense fund, is expected to be represented in court by Joseph A. Tate, a partner in his former law firm. But intermediaries for Libby have in recent days contacted several law firms with extensive white-collar criminal defense experience about possibly representing Libby in the near future, according to legal sources.
Rove remains in legal limbo.
Fitzgerald made it clear to Rove's attorney in private conversations last week that his client remains under investigation. And he signaled the same in his indictment of Libby on Friday, in which he identified a senior White House official who had conversations related to the Plame leak as "Official A." White House colleagues say Rove is clearly "Official A," based on the detailed description. That kind of pseudonym is often used by prosecutors to refer to an unindicted co-conspirator, or someone who faces the prospect of being charged. No other administration official is identified in this way in Fitzgerald's indictment. Rove was interviewed by FBI agents in the fall of 2003. He subsequently testified four times before the grand jury, which legal experts say is an unusually large number of appearances given that he was told he was a subject of the investigation and his actions were being scrutinized as possible criminal violations. Sources close to Rove say one pressing problem for him is that he initially did not tell investigators he had a conversation with Cooper, then he produced an e-mail to a colleague in which he reported he had spoken to Cooper. He told the grand jury he could recollect very little of the conversation other than a discussion of welfare, sources said. According to sources who were made aware of the conservation, Fitzgerald has been speaking with Cooper's attorney, Richard Sauber, by telephone in the past three days. He is said to have posed several questions to clarify whether Cooper had other conversations with Rove before and after the crucial July 12, 2003, discussion during which Cooper said Rove told him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. The aim was apparently to discern how common conversations were between Rove and the reporter, then a newcomer to the White House beat. Sauber, reached at his office late yesterday, declined to comment on any conversations he had with the prosecutor's team. Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment. Sources close to Rove said they do not believe the strategist is in the clear, but are confident the prosecutor will determine Rove did nothing illegal. White House critics said Rove's continued presence would expose Bush as a hypocrite. They cite his campaign promise in 2000 to run an ethical government that asks "not only what is legal but what is right" and his 2004 pledge, later softened, to fire anyone involved in the CIA leak. Political pressure is rising from the outside. A few conservatives have suggested it is time for Rove to go. William A. Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute, told Reuters on Tuesday that Bush has to "sacrifice" some top aides starting with Rove, who he said has given good campaign advice but poor guidance on getting legislation passed. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said on MSNBC's "Hardball" the same day, "The question is, should he be the deputy chief of staff for policy under the current circumstances?" Democrats have been more blunt. "It is totally unacceptable that anyone involved in the unauthorized disclosure of the identity of a CIA officer, including your Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, should remain employed at the White House with a security clearance," Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) wrote Bush yesterday.
Behind Libby's indictment Indianapolis Star
Indicted Former Cheney Aide to Make Court Appearance Voice of America
BBC News - Reuters - New Zealand Herald - New York Times - all 627 related »
EU to Investigate Allegations of CIA Jails
Updated 4:34 PM ET November 3, 2005
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...8dl850o2&src=ap
By CONSTANT BRAND
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union and the continent's top human rights group said Thursday they will investigate allegations the CIA set up secret jails in eastern Europe and elsewhere to interrogate terror suspects, and the Red Cross demanded access to any prisoners.
Human Rights Watch said it has evidence, based on flight logs, that indicate the CIA transported suspects captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. But the two countries _ and others in the former Soviet bloc _ denied the allegations. U.S. officials have refused to confirm or deny the claims.
Such prisons, European officials say, would violate the continent's human rights principles. At work may be a complex web of global politics, in which eastern European countries face choices between the views of the European Union and their interest in close ties with the United States.
The International Committee of the Red Cross expressed strong interest in the claims, first reported Wednesday in the Washington Post, that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at Soviet-era compounds.
Red Cross chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari said the agency asked Washington about the allegations and requested access to the prisons if they exist. The Red Cross, which has exclusive rights to visit terror suspects detained at a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, long has been concerned about reports U.S. officials were hiding detainees from ICRC delegates.
Europe's top human rights organization, the Council of Europe, said it, too, would investigate.
Notari said the Red Cross, which also monitors conditions at U.S. detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been unable to find some people who reportedly were detained. She said the Red Cross was "concerned about the fate of an unknown number of persons detained as part of what is called the 'global war on terror' and held in undisclosed places of detention."
In implicating Poland and Romania, Human Rights Watch examined flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004, said Mark Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the New York-based organization. He said the group matched the flight patterns with testimony from some of the hundreds of detainees in the war on terrorism who have been released by the United States.
"The indications are that prisoners in Afghanistan are being (taken) to facilities in Europe and other countries in the world," Garlasco, a former civilian intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Associated Press.
He would not say how the organization obtained the flight logs, but said two destinations of the flights stood out as likely sites of any secret CIA detention centers: Szymany Airport in Poland, which is near the headquarters of Poland's intelligence service; and Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania.
Human Rights Watch also obtained the tail numbers of dozens of CIA aircraft to match them with the flight logs, Garlasco said.
He said that in September 2003, a Boeing 737 flew from Washington to Kabul, Afghanistan, making stops along the way in the Czech Republic and Uzbekistan. On Sept. 22, the plane flew on to Szymany Airport, then to Mihail Kogalniceanu, proceeded to Sale, Morocco, and finally landed at Guantanamo, Garlasco said.
As far as he knew, Human Rights Watch has not found and interviewed detainees who were held in any alleged facilities in Poland and Romania.
Washington had an agreement with Romania to use its air space during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the U.S. military has used Kogalniceanu air base. But the Romanian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying it was "not aware that such a detention center ... existed at the Mihail Kogalniceanu base," and invited journalists to come see for themselves.
"I repeat: We do not have CIA bases in Romania," said Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu.
In Poland, an aide to President Aleksander Kwasniewski said authorities there had "no information" of such facilities.
Other European countries also issued denials.
Boglar Laszlo, a spokesman for Hungary's prime minister, told the AP that an official report would be drawn up following consultations with air transportation officials and others "so we can bring this matter to a close."
Baltic countries Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia also denied the allegations, as did former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Armenia.
In London, the office of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has close ties with the Bush administration, declined to comment.
EU spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing told reporters that the European Commission, the EU's executive office, would launch an informal probe, requesting answers from all 25 member governments and EU candidates Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Turkey.
At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States has not received any request from the EU for cooperation with an investigation into the reported secret prisons.
"If we do receive a request, we will take a look at it," McCormack said.
Such an investigation could create tensions between Washington and EU governments, many of which have been outspoken critics of how the United States has been handling terrorist suspects at Guantanamo. EU heavyweights France and Germany led international opposition to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq.
According to the Post's report, the CIA set up a covert prison system nearly four years ago which at various times included sites in eight countries, including Afghanistan and several eastern Europe nations. It quoted current and former intelligence officials and diplomats as sources for its story.
Roscam Abbing said such prisons could violate EU human rights laws and other European human rights conventions.
Matjaz Gruden, a spokesman for the Council of Europe, said the human rights watchdog would also be following the issue "very closely."
___
Associated Press writer Andrew Selsky contributed to this report from New York.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
Updated 4:34 PM ET November 3, 2005
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...8dl850o2&src=ap
By CONSTANT BRAND
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union and the continent's top human rights group said Thursday they will investigate allegations the CIA set up secret jails in eastern Europe and elsewhere to interrogate terror suspects, and the Red Cross demanded access to any prisoners.
Human Rights Watch said it has evidence, based on flight logs, that indicate the CIA transported suspects captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. But the two countries _ and others in the former Soviet bloc _ denied the allegations. U.S. officials have refused to confirm or deny the claims.
Such prisons, European officials say, would violate the continent's human rights principles. At work may be a complex web of global politics, in which eastern European countries face choices between the views of the European Union and their interest in close ties with the United States.
The International Committee of the Red Cross expressed strong interest in the claims, first reported Wednesday in the Washington Post, that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at Soviet-era compounds.
Red Cross chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari said the agency asked Washington about the allegations and requested access to the prisons if they exist. The Red Cross, which has exclusive rights to visit terror suspects detained at a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, long has been concerned about reports U.S. officials were hiding detainees from ICRC delegates.
Europe's top human rights organization, the Council of Europe, said it, too, would investigate.
Notari said the Red Cross, which also monitors conditions at U.S. detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been unable to find some people who reportedly were detained. She said the Red Cross was "concerned about the fate of an unknown number of persons detained as part of what is called the 'global war on terror' and held in undisclosed places of detention."
In implicating Poland and Romania, Human Rights Watch examined flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004, said Mark Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the New York-based organization. He said the group matched the flight patterns with testimony from some of the hundreds of detainees in the war on terrorism who have been released by the United States.
"The indications are that prisoners in Afghanistan are being (taken) to facilities in Europe and other countries in the world," Garlasco, a former civilian intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Associated Press.
He would not say how the organization obtained the flight logs, but said two destinations of the flights stood out as likely sites of any secret CIA detention centers: Szymany Airport in Poland, which is near the headquarters of Poland's intelligence service; and Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania.
Human Rights Watch also obtained the tail numbers of dozens of CIA aircraft to match them with the flight logs, Garlasco said.
He said that in September 2003, a Boeing 737 flew from Washington to Kabul, Afghanistan, making stops along the way in the Czech Republic and Uzbekistan. On Sept. 22, the plane flew on to Szymany Airport, then to Mihail Kogalniceanu, proceeded to Sale, Morocco, and finally landed at Guantanamo, Garlasco said.
As far as he knew, Human Rights Watch has not found and interviewed detainees who were held in any alleged facilities in Poland and Romania.
Washington had an agreement with Romania to use its air space during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the U.S. military has used Kogalniceanu air base. But the Romanian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying it was "not aware that such a detention center ... existed at the Mihail Kogalniceanu base," and invited journalists to come see for themselves.
"I repeat: We do not have CIA bases in Romania," said Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu.
In Poland, an aide to President Aleksander Kwasniewski said authorities there had "no information" of such facilities.
Other European countries also issued denials.
Boglar Laszlo, a spokesman for Hungary's prime minister, told the AP that an official report would be drawn up following consultations with air transportation officials and others "so we can bring this matter to a close."
Baltic countries Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia also denied the allegations, as did former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Armenia.
In London, the office of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has close ties with the Bush administration, declined to comment.
EU spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing told reporters that the European Commission, the EU's executive office, would launch an informal probe, requesting answers from all 25 member governments and EU candidates Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Turkey.
At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States has not received any request from the EU for cooperation with an investigation into the reported secret prisons.
"If we do receive a request, we will take a look at it," McCormack said.
Such an investigation could create tensions between Washington and EU governments, many of which have been outspoken critics of how the United States has been handling terrorist suspects at Guantanamo. EU heavyweights France and Germany led international opposition to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq.
According to the Post's report, the CIA set up a covert prison system nearly four years ago which at various times included sites in eight countries, including Afghanistan and several eastern Europe nations. It quoted current and former intelligence officials and diplomats as sources for its story.
Roscam Abbing said such prisons could violate EU human rights laws and other European human rights conventions.
Matjaz Gruden, a spokesman for the Council of Europe, said the human rights watchdog would also be following the issue "very closely."
___
Associated Press writer Andrew Selsky contributed to this report from New York.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
EU Encourages Response to Allegations ABC News
European Commission Encourages European Governments to Respon to Allegations About CIA Prison. The European Commission said Friday it would encourage governments in Eastern Europe to publicly comment on allegations that the CIA set up secret prisons in the region to interrogate al-Qaida suspects. The allegations have already triggered a flurry of denials from governments in the former Soviet bloc and prompted European Union officials, the continent's top human rights organization and the international Red Cross to say they would look into the issue. Such prisons, European officials say, would violate the continent's human rights principles.
The runway and control tower of the airport in Szymany, in northeastern Poland, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005, where allegedly a Boeing 737 plane used by the CIA landed in 2003 with prisoners from Afghanistan, suspected of terrorism. Human Rights Watch group alleged the CIA used Poland for transferring prisoners and also that it has secret CIA prisons for Al Qaida prisoners. The European Commission said Thursday that it will investigate reports that the CIA set up secret jails in eastern Europe to interrogate al-Qaida captives. (AP Photo)
Friso Roscam Abbing, an EU spokesman, said the European Commission the EU's executive office would seek statements from governments that have not yet denied the existence of secret prisons on their territories to comment on the issue "if only to get as much clarity and transparency as possible." According to a report Wednesday in the Washington Post, the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at Soviet-era compounds in eastern Europe. Human Rights Watch said it has evidence, based on flight logs, that indicates the CIA transported suspects captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. The two countries were among those that denied the allegations. U.S. officials have refused to confirm or deny the claims. According to the Post's report, the CIA set up a covert prison system nearly four years ago which at various times included sites in eight countries, including Afghanistan and several eastern Europe nations. It quoted current and former intelligence officials and diplomats as sources for its story.
Nations Urged to Answer Prison Allegations Guardian Unlimited
EU to investigate allegations of CIA jails Sify
Xinhua - New York Times - Globe and Mail - Japan Today - all 578 related »
European Commission Encourages European Governments to Respon to Allegations About CIA Prison. The European Commission said Friday it would encourage governments in Eastern Europe to publicly comment on allegations that the CIA set up secret prisons in the region to interrogate al-Qaida suspects. The allegations have already triggered a flurry of denials from governments in the former Soviet bloc and prompted European Union officials, the continent's top human rights organization and the international Red Cross to say they would look into the issue. Such prisons, European officials say, would violate the continent's human rights principles.
The runway and control tower of the airport in Szymany, in northeastern Poland, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005, where allegedly a Boeing 737 plane used by the CIA landed in 2003 with prisoners from Afghanistan, suspected of terrorism. Human Rights Watch group alleged the CIA used Poland for transferring prisoners and also that it has secret CIA prisons for Al Qaida prisoners. The European Commission said Thursday that it will investigate reports that the CIA set up secret jails in eastern Europe to interrogate al-Qaida captives. (AP Photo)
Friso Roscam Abbing, an EU spokesman, said the European Commission the EU's executive office would seek statements from governments that have not yet denied the existence of secret prisons on their territories to comment on the issue "if only to get as much clarity and transparency as possible." According to a report Wednesday in the Washington Post, the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at Soviet-era compounds in eastern Europe. Human Rights Watch said it has evidence, based on flight logs, that indicates the CIA transported suspects captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. The two countries were among those that denied the allegations. U.S. officials have refused to confirm or deny the claims. According to the Post's report, the CIA set up a covert prison system nearly four years ago which at various times included sites in eight countries, including Afghanistan and several eastern Europe nations. It quoted current and former intelligence officials and diplomats as sources for its story.
Nations Urged to Answer Prison Allegations Guardian Unlimited
EU to investigate allegations of CIA jails Sify
Xinhua - New York Times - Globe and Mail - Japan Today - all 578 related »
http://www.counterpunch.org/beres11042005.html
November 4, 2005
American Greeks Set to Honor the Blood-spattered Functionary
Laurels for Negroponte?
By GEORGE BERES
As one of them, I know Greek-Americans share inordinate pride in democracy having begun in the land of their roots, ancient Greece. So it's appalling to find one of us who has sought to destroy the principles of that heritage will be honored by the United Hellenic American Congress in Chicago, Nov. 12. A letter from UHAC informed me:
"At the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago, UHAC will honor yet another outstanding Hellene whose distinguished career in foreign service has brought him national and international recognition: Ambassador John Dimitri Negroponte." It went on to paint a fictional portrait of Negroponte as "representing his country with valor, pride and commitment to democratic principles. You have no doubt heard about his outstanding efforts and recent accomplishments."
Yes, I have heard this willing functionary of the Bush Administration has bounced around to three high profile government positions in recent years: ambassador to the United Nations, then ambassador to the nation we have devastated, Iraq, and now in the brand new post of National Intelligence czar.
What I also know is something more important, ignored by those who wear ethnic blinders: Negroponte-- supposedly committed to democratic principles-- first surfaced as Ronald Reagan's instrument for trashing democracy in Central America. As ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, he was a chief facilitator for Reagan's arms-for-hostages scandal, Iran-Contra.
Another item from his political vita one won't hear from UHAC is hard evidence of how he circumvented Congress and the Constitution when he made possible torture and death squads from Honduras to advance Reagan's illegal and covert policies.
When I moved from Chicago to Oregon, Negroponte's criminal actions took on a local face: that of the young Oregon social worker he victimized. Ben Linder of Portland was murdered by Contras as he helped build hydroelectric power for peasants in Nicaragua. An auditorium in the University of Oregon student union is named in his memory.
My fellow ethnics and I have been burned before. Spiro Agnew gave our egos a boost when he became Richard Nixon's vice-president, only to leave office when impeached. In more recent times, George Tenet became head of the CIA, only to be discredited for giving Bush the lies he sought to justify war with Iraq. Even Greek-Americans wearing blinders winced when Bush rewarded Tenet for his fabrications, giving him the U.S. Medal of Freedom.
Greeks can be forgiven for their Agnew-Tenet excitement, as it was only later we learned of their malfeasance. No such excuse is there for Negroponte, whose illegal actions have been known for a quarter century.
Socrates: where are you when we need you?
George Beres, retired in Eugene, Ore., once was executive director of the Hellenic Foundation in Chicago in the mid-1970s. He can be reached at: gberes@uoregon.edu
November 4, 2005
American Greeks Set to Honor the Blood-spattered Functionary
Laurels for Negroponte?
By GEORGE BERES
As one of them, I know Greek-Americans share inordinate pride in democracy having begun in the land of their roots, ancient Greece. So it's appalling to find one of us who has sought to destroy the principles of that heritage will be honored by the United Hellenic American Congress in Chicago, Nov. 12. A letter from UHAC informed me:
"At the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago, UHAC will honor yet another outstanding Hellene whose distinguished career in foreign service has brought him national and international recognition: Ambassador John Dimitri Negroponte." It went on to paint a fictional portrait of Negroponte as "representing his country with valor, pride and commitment to democratic principles. You have no doubt heard about his outstanding efforts and recent accomplishments."
Yes, I have heard this willing functionary of the Bush Administration has bounced around to three high profile government positions in recent years: ambassador to the United Nations, then ambassador to the nation we have devastated, Iraq, and now in the brand new post of National Intelligence czar.
What I also know is something more important, ignored by those who wear ethnic blinders: Negroponte-- supposedly committed to democratic principles-- first surfaced as Ronald Reagan's instrument for trashing democracy in Central America. As ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, he was a chief facilitator for Reagan's arms-for-hostages scandal, Iran-Contra.
Another item from his political vita one won't hear from UHAC is hard evidence of how he circumvented Congress and the Constitution when he made possible torture and death squads from Honduras to advance Reagan's illegal and covert policies.
When I moved from Chicago to Oregon, Negroponte's criminal actions took on a local face: that of the young Oregon social worker he victimized. Ben Linder of Portland was murdered by Contras as he helped build hydroelectric power for peasants in Nicaragua. An auditorium in the University of Oregon student union is named in his memory.
My fellow ethnics and I have been burned before. Spiro Agnew gave our egos a boost when he became Richard Nixon's vice-president, only to leave office when impeached. In more recent times, George Tenet became head of the CIA, only to be discredited for giving Bush the lies he sought to justify war with Iraq. Even Greek-Americans wearing blinders winced when Bush rewarded Tenet for his fabrications, giving him the U.S. Medal of Freedom.
Greeks can be forgiven for their Agnew-Tenet excitement, as it was only later we learned of their malfeasance. No such excuse is there for Negroponte, whose illegal actions have been known for a quarter century.
Socrates: where are you when we need you?
George Beres, retired in Eugene, Ore., once was executive director of the Hellenic Foundation in Chicago in the mid-1970s. He can be reached at: gberes@uoregon.edu
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051104/ap_on_...heney_torture_2
Cheney Pushes Senate for CIA Exemption By DAVID ESPO and LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writers
Fri Nov 4, 6:31 PM ET
Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to allow CIA exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody, according to participants in a closed-door session.
Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, these participants added, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment in case the president decided one was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.
The vice president made his comments at a regular weekly private meeting of Senate Republican senators, according to several lawmakers who attended. Cheney often attends the meetings, a chance for the rank-and-file to discuss legislative strategy, but he rarely speaks.
In this case, the room was cleared of aides before the vice president began his remarks, said by one senator to include a reference to classified material. The officials who disclosed the events spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the discussion.
"The vice president's office doesn't have any comment on a private meeting with members of the Senate," Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Cheney, said on Friday.
The vice president drew support from at least one lawmaker, Sen. Jeff Sessions (news, bio, voting record) of Alabama, while Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) dissented, officials said.
McCain, who was tortured while held as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, is the chief Senate sponsor of an anti-torture provision that has twice cleared the Senate and triggered veto threats from the White House.
Cheney's decision to speak at the meeting underscored both his role as White House point man on the contentious issue and the importance the administration attaches to it.
The vice president made his appeal at a time Congress is struggling with the torture issue in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The United States houses about 500 detainees at the naval base there, many of them captured in Afghanistan.
Additionally, human rights organizations contend the United States turns detainees over to other countries that it knows will use torture to try and extract intelligence information.
The Senate recently approved a provision banning the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The vote was 90-9, and an identical provision was added to a second measure on a voice vote on Friday.
Comparable House legislation does not include a similar provision, and it is not clear whether anti-torture language will be included in either of two large defense measures Congress hopes to send to Bush's desk later this year.
The White House initially tried to kill the anti-torture provision while it was pending in the Senate, then switched course to lobby for an exemption in cases of "clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States." The president would have to approve the exemption, and Defense Department personnel could not be involved. In addition, any activity would have to be consistent with the Constitution, federal law and U.S. treaty obligations, according to draft changes in the exemption the White House is seeking.
Cheney also has met several times with McCain, including one session that CIA Director Porter Goss attended in a secure room in the Capitol.
Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Cheney Pushes Senate for CIA Exemption By DAVID ESPO and LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writers
Fri Nov 4, 6:31 PM ET
Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to allow CIA exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody, according to participants in a closed-door session.
Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, these participants added, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment in case the president decided one was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.
The vice president made his comments at a regular weekly private meeting of Senate Republican senators, according to several lawmakers who attended. Cheney often attends the meetings, a chance for the rank-and-file to discuss legislative strategy, but he rarely speaks.
In this case, the room was cleared of aides before the vice president began his remarks, said by one senator to include a reference to classified material. The officials who disclosed the events spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the discussion.
"The vice president's office doesn't have any comment on a private meeting with members of the Senate," Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Cheney, said on Friday.
The vice president drew support from at least one lawmaker, Sen. Jeff Sessions (news, bio, voting record) of Alabama, while Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) dissented, officials said.
McCain, who was tortured while held as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, is the chief Senate sponsor of an anti-torture provision that has twice cleared the Senate and triggered veto threats from the White House.
Cheney's decision to speak at the meeting underscored both his role as White House point man on the contentious issue and the importance the administration attaches to it.
The vice president made his appeal at a time Congress is struggling with the torture issue in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The United States houses about 500 detainees at the naval base there, many of them captured in Afghanistan.
Additionally, human rights organizations contend the United States turns detainees over to other countries that it knows will use torture to try and extract intelligence information.
The Senate recently approved a provision banning the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The vote was 90-9, and an identical provision was added to a second measure on a voice vote on Friday.
Comparable House legislation does not include a similar provision, and it is not clear whether anti-torture language will be included in either of two large defense measures Congress hopes to send to Bush's desk later this year.
The White House initially tried to kill the anti-torture provision while it was pending in the Senate, then switched course to lobby for an exemption in cases of "clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States." The president would have to approve the exemption, and Defense Department personnel could not be involved. In addition, any activity would have to be consistent with the Constitution, federal law and U.S. treaty obligations, according to draft changes in the exemption the White House is seeking.
Cheney also has met several times with McCain, including one session that CIA Director Porter Goss attended in a secure room in the Capitol.
Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
Privacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy - Ad Feedback
Complete 911 Timeline: Able Danger program
Project: Complete 911 Timeline
Open-Content project managed by Paul Thompson
Mid-1999-November 1999: LIWA Data Mining Study Causes Controversy After Connecting Prominent US Figures to Weapons Purchases for Chinese Military
A report commissioned in mid-1999 by Rep. Curt Weldon ® looks into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military. Dr. Eileen Preisser and Michael Maloof are commissioned to make the report. Dr. Preisser, who runs the Information Dominance Center at the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and will later become closely tied to Able Danger, uses LIWA's data mining capabilities to search unclassified information. According to Maloof, their results show Chinese front companies in the US posing as US corporations that acquire technology from US defense contractors. When the study is completed in November 1999, the General Counsel's office in the Office of the Defense Secretary orders the study destroyed. Weldon complains about this to Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, and apparently delays the destruction of the report. Weldon also writes a letter to FBI Director Louis Freeh requesting an espionage investigation into these Chinese links, but Freeh never responds to this. [Washington Times, 10/9/05] As part of this report, LIWA analysts had produced a chart of Chinese strategic and business connections in the US. But this data mining effort runs into controversy when the chart apparently shows connections between future National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent US figures, and business deals benefiting the Chinese military. [New York Post, 8/27/05; Washington Times, 9/22/05] The China chart was put together by private contractor James D. Smith, who will come forward in August 2005 to corroborate revelations about the Able Danger unit and its findings (see August 22-September 1, 2005). The New York Post later says there is “no suggestion that Rice or any of the others had done anything wrong.” [New York Post, 8/27/05] However, articles first appear one month later and through 2001 in the conservative publications WorldNetDaily and NewsMax, which connect Perry and Rice to Hua Di, a Chinese missile scientist and possible spy, and question the nature of their relationship with him. [WorldNetDaily, 12/21/99; WorldNetDaily, 4/5/00; NewsMax, 1/24/01] Di defected to the US in 1989 and worked most of the 1990s at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, which was co-directed by Perry. Di later returned to China and is subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for writing influential articles said to reveal vital Chinese state secrets. [Stanford Report, 2/7/01] However, other accounts claim that he was in fact passing on disinformation through these articles, successfully misleading the US military for a couple of years about the abilities of certain Chinese missile programs. [WorldNetDaily, 12/21/99] Additionally, Hua Di teamed in 1994 with Stanford professor Dr. John Lewis and William Perry to buy an advanced AT&T fiber-optic communications system for “civilian” use inside China that instead is used by the Chinese army. The General Accounting Office later criticized the sale. In 1997, Stanford University investigated Dr. Lewis for his role in it, but Condoleezza Rice, serving as a Stanford provost at the time, apparently stopped the investigation. [WorldNetDaily, 4/5/00; NewsMax, 1/24/01] Able Danger and LIWA's data mining efforts will be severely proscribed in April 2000 as part of the fallout from this China controversy (see April 2000), and the destruction of their collected data will follow shortly thereafter (see May-June 2000).
People and organizations involved: China, Eric Shinseki, James D. Smith, Land Information Warfare Activity, Louis J. Freeh, Condoleezza Rice, Hua Di, William Perry, F. Michael Maloof, Eileen Preisser, Curt Weldon
Fall 1999: Army Intelligence Program Is Set Up to Gather Information on Al-Qaeda
On the orders of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the head of the military's Special Operations Command (SOCOM), sets up an intelligence program called Able Danger, to assemble information about al-Qaeda networks around the world. SOCOM, based in Tampa, Florida, is responsible for America's secret commando units. [Government Security News, 9/05] At least some of the data is collected on behalf of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Lambert, the J3 at US Special Operations Command. [Curt Weldon Statement, 9/21/05] Mark Zaid, a lawyer for several Able Danger whistleblowers in 2005, will give this description of Able Danger: “In the most understandable and simplistic terms, Able Danger involved the searching out and compiling of open source or other publicly available information regarding specific targets or tasks that were connected through associational links. No classified information was used. No government database systems were used. In addition to examining al-Qaeda links, Able Danger also handled tasks relating to Bosnia and China. The search and compilation efforts were primarily handled by defense contractors, who did not necessarily know they were working for Able Danger, and that information was then to be utilized by the military members of Able Danger for whatever appropriate purposes.” [Mark Zaid Testimony, 9/21/05] Eleven intelligence employees are directly involved in Able Danger's work. Six are with SOCOM's Able Danger unit. Four more, including Dr. Eileen Preisser and Maj. Eric Kleinsmith, are with the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA), which joins the effort in December 1999. LIWA had been conducing data mining already on a wide variety of topics, including international drug cartels, corruption in Russia and Serbia, terrorist linkages in the Far East, and the proliferation of sensitive military technology to China (see April 2000). Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer running a unit called Stratus Ivy in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) will also take part in the effort. [Norristown Times Herald, 6/19/05; Government Security News, 8/05; New York Times, 8/9/05; St Petersburg Times, 8/10/05; Bergen Record, 8/14/05; Government Security News, 9/05; Erik Kleinsmith Statement, 9/21/05; Curt Weldon Statement, 9/21/05] Using computers, the unit collects huge amounts of data in a technique called “data mining.” They get information from such sources as al-Qaeda Internet chat rooms, news accounts, web sites, and financial records. Using sophisticated software, they compare this with government records such as visa applications by foreign tourists, to find any correlations and depict these visually. [Bergen Record, 8/14/05; Government Security News, 9/05] The program lasts for 18 months, and is shut down early in 2001 (see Early 2001).
People and organizations involved: Special Operations Command, Mark Zaid, Hugh Shelton, China, Bosnia, Russia, Curt Weldon, al-Qaeda, Peter J. Schoomaker, Able Danger, Geoffrey Lambert, Eileen Preisser, Eric Kleinsmith, Anthony Shaffer
October 1999: CIA Does Not Share Information with Able Danger Program
Capt. Scott Phillpott, head of the Able Danger program, asks Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer to talk to a representative of CIA Director George Tenet and attempt to convince him that the new Able Danger program is not competing with the CIA. Shaffer later recalls the CIA representative replying, “I clearly understand the difference. I clearly understand. We're going after the leadership. You guys are going after the body. But, it doesn't matter. The bottom line is, CIA will never give you the best information from ‘Alex Base’ [the CIA's covert action element targeting bin Laden] or anywhere else. CIA will never provide that to you because if you were successful in your effort to target al-Qaeda, you will steal our thunder. Therefore, we will not support this.” Shaffer claims that for the duration of Able Danger's existence, “To my knowledge, and my other colleagues' knowledge, there was no information ever released to us because CIA chose not to participate in Able Danger.” [Government Security News, 9/05]
People and organizations involved: George Tenet, Able Danger, Anthony Shaffer, Central Intelligence Agency, Scott Phillpott
January-February 2000: Secret Military Unit Identifies al-Qaeda ‘Brooklyn’ Cell; Mohamed Atta is a Member
A blurry photograph of a 2005 reconstruction of the pre-9/11 Able Danger chart showing Mohamed Atta and others.
A US Army intelligence program called Able Danger identifies five al-Qaeda terrorist cells; one of them has connections to Brooklyn, New York and will become informally known as the “Brooklyn” cell by the Able Danger team. This cell includes 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, and three other 9/11 hijackers: Marwan Alshehhi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Nawaf Alhazmi. According to a former intelligence officer who claims he worked closely with Able Danger, the link to Brooklyn is not based upon any firm evidence, but computer analysis that established patterns in links between the four men. “[T]he software put them all together in Brooklyn.” [New York Times, 8/9/05; Washington Times, 8/22/05; Fox News, 8/23/05; Government Security News, 9/05] However, that does not necessarily imply them being physically present in Brooklyn. A lawyer later representing members of Able Danger states, “At no time did Able Danger identify Mohamed Atta as being physically present in the United States.” Furthermore, “No information obtained at the time would have led anyone to believe criminal activity had taken place or that any specific terrorist activities were being planned.” [CNN, 9/21/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05] James D. Smith, a contractor working with the unit, discovers Mohamed Atta's link to al-Qaeda. [WTOP News, 9/1/05] Smith has been using advanced computer software and analysing individuals who are going between mosques. He has made a link between Mohamed Atta and Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, ringleader of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. [Fox News, 8/28/05; Government Security News, 9/05] Atta is said to have some unspecified connection to the El Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, a hotbed of anti-American sentiment once frequented by Abdul-Rahman. [Norristown Times-Herald, 9/20/05] Smith obtained Atta's name and photograph through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East. [New York Times, 8/22/05] Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer claims the photo is not the well-known menacing Florida driver's license photo of Atta. “This is an older, more grainy photo we had of him. It was not the best picture in the world.” It is said to contain several names or aliases for Atta underneath it. [Chicago Tribune, 9/28/05; Jerry Doyle Show, 9/20/05] LIWA analysts supporting Able Danger make a chart, which Shaffer describes in a radio interview as, “A chart probably about a 2x3 which had essentially five clusters around the center point which was bin Laden and his leadership.” [Savage Nation, 9/16/05] The 9/11 Commission later claims that Atta only enters the United States for the first time several months later, in June 2000 (see June 3, 2000). [9/11 Commission Final Report, 7/24/04, p. 224] However, investigations in the months after 9/11 find that Mohamed Atta and another of the hijackers rented rooms in Brooklyn around this time (see Spring 2000). Other newspaper accounts have the CIA monitoring Atta starting in January 2000, while he is living in Germany (see January-May 2000).
People and organizations involved: Marwan Alshehhi, Able Danger, Mohamed Atta, Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, al-Qaeda, Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, El Farouq
Mid-1999-November 1999: LIWA Data Mining Study Causes Controversy After Connecting Prominent US Figures to Weapons Purchases for Chinese Military
A report commissioned in mid-1999 by Rep. Curt Weldon ® looks into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military. Dr. Eileen Preisser and Michael Maloof are commissioned to make the report. Dr. Preisser, who runs the Information Dominance Center at the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and will later become closely tied to Able Danger, uses LIWA's data mining capabilities to search unclassified information. According to Maloof, their results show Chinese front companies in the US posing as US corporations that acquire technology from US defense contractors. When the study is completed in November 1999, the General Counsel's office in the Office of the Defense Secretary orders the study destroyed. Weldon complains about this to Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, and apparently delays the destruction of the report. Weldon also writes a letter to FBI Director Louis Freeh requesting an espionage investigation into these Chinese links, but Freeh never responds to this. [Washington Times, 10/9/05] As part of this report, LIWA analysts had produced a chart of Chinese strategic and business connections in the US. But this data mining effort runs into controversy when the chart apparently shows connections between future National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent US figures, and business deals benefiting the Chinese military. [New York Post, 8/27/05; Washington Times, 9/22/05] The China chart was put together by private contractor James D. Smith, who will come forward in August 2005 to corroborate revelations about the Able Danger unit and its findings (see August 22-September 1, 2005). The New York Post later says there is “no suggestion that Rice or any of the others had done anything wrong.” [New York Post, 8/27/05] However, articles first appear one month later and through 2001 in the conservative publications WorldNetDaily and NewsMax, which connect Perry and Rice to Hua Di, a Chinese missile scientist and possible spy, and question the nature of their relationship with him. [WorldNetDaily, 12/21/99; WorldNetDaily, 4/5/00; NewsMax, 1/24/01] Di defected to the US in 1989 and worked most of the 1990s at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, which was co-directed by Perry. Di later returned to China and is subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for writing influential articles said to reveal vital Chinese state secrets. [Stanford Report, 2/7/01] However, other accounts claim that he was in fact passing on disinformation through these articles, successfully misleading the US military for a couple of years about the abilities of certain Chinese missile programs. [WorldNetDaily, 12/21/99] Additionally, Hua Di teamed in 1994 with Stanford professor Dr. John Lewis and William Perry to buy an advanced AT&T fiber-optic communications system for “civilian” use inside China that instead is used by the Chinese army. The General Accounting Office later criticized the sale. In 1997, Stanford University investigated Dr. Lewis for his role in it, but Condoleezza Rice, serving as a Stanford provost at the time, apparently stopped the investigation. [WorldNetDaily, 4/5/00; NewsMax, 1/24/01] Able Danger and LIWA's data mining efforts will be severely proscribed in April 2000 as part of the fallout from this China controversy (see April 2000), and the destruction of their collected data will follow shortly thereafter (see May-June 2000).
People and organizations involved: China, Eric Shinseki, James D. Smith, Land Information Warfare Activity, Louis J. Freeh, Condoleezza Rice, Hua Di, William Perry, F. Michael Maloof, Eileen Preisser, Curt Weldon
January-May 2000: CIA Has Atta Under Surveillance
Hijacker Mohamed Atta is put under surveillance by the CIA while living in Germany. [Agence France-Presse, 9/22/01; Focus, 9/24/01; Berliner Zeitung, 9/24/01] He is “reportedly observed buying large quantities of chemicals in Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives [and/or] for biological warfare.” “The US agents reported to have trailed Atta are said to have failed to inform the German authorities about their investigation,” even as the Germans are investigating many of his associates. “The disclosure that Atta was being trailed by police long before 11 September raises the question why the attacks could not have been prevented with the man's arrest.” [Observer, 9/30/01] A German newspaper adds that Atta is able to get a visa into the US on May 18. According to some reports, the surveillance stops when he leaves for the US at the start of June. However, “experts believe that the suspect [remains] under surveillance in the United States.” [Berliner Zeitung, 9/24/01] A German intelligence official also states, “We can no longer exclude the possibility that the Americans wanted to keep an eye on Atta after his entry in the US” [Focus, 9/24/01] This correlates with a Newsweek claim that US officials knew Atta was a “known [associate] of Islamic terrorists well before [9/11].” [Newsweek, 9/20/01] However, a congressional inquiry later reports that the US “intelligence community possessed no intelligence or law enforcement information linking 16 of the 19 hijackers [including Atta] to terrorism or terrorist groups.” [9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 9/20/02] In 2005, after accounts of the Able Danger program learning Atta's name become news, newspaper account will neglect to mention this prior report about Atta being known by US intelligence. For instance, the New York Times will report, “The account [about Able Danger] is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks”(see August 9, 2005) . [New York Times, 8/9/05]
People and organizations involved: Mohamed Atta, Central Intelligence Agency
Spring 2000: Atta and Alshehhi Rent Rooms in Brooklyn and the Bronx
Mohamed Atta and another of the 9/11 hijackers (presumably Marwan Alshehhi) rent rooms in New York City, according to a federal investigator. These rooms are in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Following 9/11, Atta is traced back to Brooklyn by a parking ticket issued to a rental car he was driving. However, immigration records have Mohamed Atta entering the US for the first time on June 3, 2000 (see June 3, 2000). The Associated Press article on this subject does not specify if Atta first stayed in New York before or after that date. [Associated Press, 12/8/01] According to a brief mention in the 9/11 Commission's final report, in the month of June, “As [Atta and Marwan Alshehhi] looked at flight schools on the East Coast, [they] stayed in a series of short-term rentals in New York City.” [9/11 Commission Final Report, 7/24/04, p. 224; Washington Post, 8/13/05] Earlier in 2000, a US Army intelligence program called Able Danger identified an al-Qaeda terrorist cell based in Brooklyn, of which Atta is a member (see January-February 2000). Also, a number of eyewitnesses later report seeing Atta in Maine and Florida before this official arrival date (see April 2000; Late April-Mid-May 2000).
People and organizations involved: Able Danger, Marwan Alshehhi, Mohamed Atta, al-Qaeda
April 2000: LIWA Support For Able Danger Program Ends; It Later Restarts
Four analysts from the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) unit are forced to stop their work supporting the Able Danger program. At the same time, private contractors working for Able Danger are fired. This occurs around the time that it becomes known by some inside the military that LIWA had identified future National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent Americans as potential security risks (see April 2000). It was apparently these LIWA analysts (such as Dr. Eileen Preisser) and contractors (such as James D. Smith) who conducted most of the data mining and analysis of al-Qaeda in the preceding months. One of the four LIWA analysts, Maj. Erik Kleinsmith, will later be ordered to destroy all the data collected (see May-June 2000). LIWA's support for Able Danger will resume a few months later (see Late September 2000). [Erik Kleinsmith Statement, 9/21/05; Washington Times, 9/22/05; New York Post, 8/27/05]
People and organizations involved: William Perry, Able Danger, James D. Smith, Eileen Preisser, Condoleezza Rice, Land Information Warfare Activity
April 2000: LIWA and Able Danger Face Trouble After LIWA Connects Prominent US Figures to Chinese Military
A 1999 study by the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) to look into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military created controversy and was ordered destroyed in November 1999 (see Mid-1999-November 1999). However, apparently Rep. Curt Weldon ® protests, and the issue finally comes to a head during this month. One result of this controversy will be what Maj. Erik Kleinsmith will later call “severely restricted” support for Able Danger, including a temporary end to LIWA support (see April 2000) In an April 14, 2000 memorandum from the legal counsel in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Capt. Michael Lohr writes that the concern over the LIWA data mining study raises privacy concerns: “Preliminary review of subject methodology raised the possibility that LIWA ‘data mining’ would potentially access both foreign intelligence (FI) information and domestic information relating to US citizens (i.e. law enforcement, tax, customs, immigration, etc... ... I recognize that an argument can be made that LIWA is not ‘collecting’ in the strict sense (i.e. they are accessing public areas of the Internet and non-FI federal government databases of already lawfully collected information). This effort would, however, have the potential to pull together into a single database a wealth of privacy-protected US citizen information in a more sweeping and exhaustive manner than was previously contemplated.” Additionally, the content of the study is another reason why it caused what Weldon calls a “wave of controversy.” The study had connected future National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent US citizens to business transactions with Chinese military officials.(see Mid-1999-November 1999). [New York Post, 8/27/05; Washington Times, 9/22/05; Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05; Washington Times, 10/9/05; Erik Kleinsmith Statement, 9/21/05] One article on the subject will comment, “Sources familiar with Able Danger say the project was shut down because it could have led to the exposure of a separate secret data mining project focusing on US citizens allegedly transferring super-sensitive US technology illegally to the Chinese government.” [WTOP, 9/1/05] A massive destruction of data from Able Danger and LIWA's data mining efforts will follow, one month later (see May-June 2000).
People and organizations involved: Land Information Warfare Activity, Able Danger, Michael Lohr, Curt Weldon, Condoleezza Rice, William Perry
May-June 2000: Army Officer Told to Destroy Able Danger Documents
Maj. Eric Kleinsmith, chief of intelligence for the Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) unit, is ordered to destroy data and documents related to a military intelligence program set up to gather information about al-Qaeda. The program, called Able Danger, has identified Mohamed Atta and three other future hijackers as potential threats (see January-February 2000). According to Kleinsmith, by April 2000 it has collected “an immense amount of data for analysis that allowed us to map al-Qaeda as a worldwide threat with a surprisingly significant presence within the United States.”(see January-February 2000) [Fox News, 9/21/05; New York Times, 9/22/05] The data is being collected on behalf of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Lambert, the J3 at US Special Operations Command, who is said to be extremely upset when he learns that the data had been destroyed without his knowledge or consent. [Curt Weldon Statement, 9/21/05] Around this time, a separate LIWA effort showing links between prominent US citizens and the Chinese military has been causing controversy, and apparently this data faces destruction as well (see April 2000). The data and documents have to be destroyed in accordance with Army regulations prohibiting the retention of data about US persons for longer than 90 days, unless it falls under one of several restrictive categories. However, during a Senate Judiciary Committee public hearing in September 2005, a Defense Department representative admits that Mohamed Atta was not considered a US person. The representative also acknowledges that regulations would have probably allowed the Able Danger information to be shared with law enforcement agencies before its destruction. Asked why this was not done, he responds, “I can't tell you.” [CNET News, 9/21/05] The order to destroy the data and documents is given to Kleinsmith by Army Intelligence and Security Command General Counsel Tony Gentry, who jokingly tells him, “Remember to delete the data—or you'll go to jail.” [Government Executive, 9/21/05] The quantity of information destroyed is later described as “2.5 terabytes,” about as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress. [Associated Press, 9/16/05] Other records associated with the unit are allegedly destroyed in March 2001 and spring 2004 (see Spring 2004). [Associated Press, 9/21/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05; Fox News, 9/24/05]
People and organizations involved: Mohamed Atta, al-Qaeda, Tony Gentry, Eric Kleinsmith, Land Information Warfare Activity, Able Danger, Geoffrey Lambert
May 2000-Late September 2000: Defense Agency Analyst Assembles Unheeded Attack Warning; Able Danger Information May Be One Source
Kie Fallis, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) terrorism intelligence analyst, has been gathering evidence of an upcoming al-Qaeda attack or attacks. In 2002, he will describe to the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry a research process similar to what Able Danger is using at the same time: “I began to notice there was a voluminous amount of information, as others have testified, regarding al-Qaeda. Most of it appeared to be unrelated to other pieces of information. It appeared to be almost chat. By using a piece of [commercial software called ‘Analyst's Notebook’] I was able to put these small snippets of information into, and graphically represent them as well, I was able to, over a course of many months, to determine certain linkages between these items—linkages that would never be apparent without the use of this tool. It would be lost in the weeds. And there were a lot of weeds to look through.” [Washington Times, 8/26/02; 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 10/8/02] In his research, he claims to find links between al-Qaeda and Iranian intelligence. By May 2000, he writes a classified report on his conclusion that “terrorists were planning two or three major attacks against the United States. The only gaps were where and when.” Apparently, he envisions at least one of these attacks will use a small boat to blow up a US warship. However, the DIA has already issued a report concluding that such a method of attack would be impossible to carry out successfully, and the agency sticks by this assessment. A video message put out by bin Laden in mid-September convinces Fallis that an al-Qaeda attack will happen in the next month or two.(see Mid-September 2000). Shortly after learning about this message, Fallis reaches “the ‘eureka point’ ... in determining an impending terrorist attack.” This comes “from a still-classified intelligence report in September 2000, which he will not discuss.” [Washington Times, 8/26/02] This may be a reference to a lead by the Able Danger team on increased al-Qaeda activity in Yemen at this time (see Late September 2000), and/or it may refer to other intelligence leads. Fallis goes to his supervisor and asks that at least a general warning of an attack in the Middle East be issued. He hopes such a warning will at least put US military forces in the region on a higher alert. His superior turns him down, and other superiors fail to even learn of his suggested warning. The USS Cole will be successfully attacked in the port of Aden, Yemen, by a small boat of terrorists on October 12, 2000 (see October 12, 2000) . [Washington Times, 8/26/02] One day after the Cole attack, Fallis will resign in protest. According to Sen. John Warner ®,“What [Fallis] felt is that his assessment was not given that proper level of consideration by his superiors and, as such, was not incorporated in the final intelligence reports provided to military commanders in the [Middle East region].” [CNN, 10/25/00]
People and organizations involved: Kie Fallis, al-Qaeda, Iran, John W. Warner, Osama bin Laden, Able Danger
Mid-September 2000: Bin Laden Message Gives Hint of Upcoming USS Cole Attack
A videotape message featuring bin Laden calling for more attacks on the US is aired on al-Jazeera. The video ends with al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri saying, “Enough of words, it is time to take action against this iniquitous and faithless force [the United States], which has spread troops through Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.” DIA analyst Kie Fallis later recalls, “Every time he put out one of these videotapes, it was a signal that action was coming.” He claims that after hearing of the video, he “knew then it would be within a month or two.” But nonetheless, his suggestion to put out a general attack warning will go unheeded (see May 2000-Late September 2000). An al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole follows less than a month later (see October 12, 2000). [Washington Times, 8/26/02]
People and organizations involved: United States, Kie Fallis, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri
(Before September 2000-12 Months Later): Mohamed Atta Has Long Term Stay in Wayne, New Jersey; Other Hijackers Seen There
In 2003, New Jersey state police officials say Mohamed Atta lived in the Wayne Inn, in Wayne, New Jersey, for an unspecified 12-month period prior to 9/11. He lives with one other hijacker who is presumably his usual partner Marwan Alshehhi (Alshehhi is seen eating in nearby restaurants with Atta). [Bergen Record, 6/20/03] In 2004, an unnamed whistleblower involved in the Able Danger program will claim that prior to 9/11, Able Danger discovered that Atta and Alshehhi were renting a room at the Wayne Inn, and occasionally meeting with Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar at the inn or near it (see (Before September 2000)). From March 2001 onwards, other hijackers, including Alhazmi and Almihdhar, live in Paterson, New Jersey, only one mile away from Wayne (see March 2001-September 1, 2001). Nawaf Alhazmi and Salem Alhazmi rent mailboxes in Wayne at some unknown point before 9/11. Nawaf Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour rent cars from a Wayne car dealership between June and August 2001. There is also evidence Nawaf Alhazmi and Marwan Alshehhi shop in Wayne. [CNN, 9/27/01] The 9/11 Commission does not mention any hijacker connection to Wayne. This long-term stay in Wayne is surprising because Atta and Alshehhi have generally been placed in Florida most of the time from July 2000 until shortly before 9/11. However, this discrepancy may be explained by one account which states Atta had “two places he lived and 10 safe houses” in the US (see Mid-September 2001).
People and organizations involved: Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi
(Before September 2000): Army Intelligence Unit Said to Discover Hijackers Renting Rooms at New Jersey Motels
According to an anonymous Able Danger official speaking to the Bergen Record, a US Army intelligence unit tasked with assembling information about al-Qaeda networks worldwide discovers that several of the 9/11 hijackers are taking rooms at motels in New Jersey and meeting together there. The intelligence unit, called Able Danger, which uses high-speed computers to analyze vast amounts of data, notices that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi take a room at the Wayne Inn (see (Before September 2000-12 Months Later)). After the existence of the Able Danger unit comes to light in 2005, Bergen Record columnist and reporter Mike Kelly says, “The connect-the-dots tracking by the team was so good that it even knew Atta conducted meetings with the three future hijackers. One of those meetings took place at the Wayne Inn. That's how close all this was—to us and to being solved, if only the information had been passed up the line to FBI agents or even to local cops. This new piece of 9/11 history, revealed only last week by a Pennsylvania congressman and confirmed by two former members of the intelligence team, could turn out to be one of the most explosive revelations since the publication last summer of the 9/11 commission report.” [Bergen Record, 8/14/05] The other two hijackers said to be present at the meetings, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, periodically live in the town of Paterson, only one mile away from Wayne (see March 2001-September 1, 2001). However, contradicting this account, a lawyer representing members of Able Danger later testifies, “At no time did Able Danger identify Mohamed Atta as being physically present in the United States.” [CNN, 9/21/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05] Some media accounts have stated that the Able Danger program determined Atta was in the US before 9/11. For instance, Fox News reported in August 2005, “[Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer] is standing by his claim that he told them that the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks had been identified in the summer of 2000 as an al-Qaeda operative living in the United States.” [Fox News, 8/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Able Danger, Khalid Almihdhar, Anthony Shaffer, Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, Nawaf Alhazmi, al-Qaeda
September 2000: Chart With Mohamed Atta's Photo Presented by Able Danger at SOCOM Headquarters; Meetings With FBI Cancelled
Members of a US Army intelligence unit tasked with assembling information about al-Qaeda have prepared a chart that includes the names and photographs of four future hijackers, who they have identified as members of an al-Qaeda cell based in Brooklyn, New York. The four hijackers in the cell are Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Nawaf Alhazmi. The members of the intelligence unit, called Able Danger, present their chart at the headquarters of the US military's Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa, Florida, with the recommendation that the FBI should be called in to take out the al-Qaeda cell. Lawyers working for SOCOM argue that anyone with a green card has to be granted the same legal protections as any US citizen, so the information about the al-Qaeda cell cannot be shared with the FBI. The legal team directs them to put yellow stickers over the photographs of Mohamed Atta and the other cell members, to symbolize that they are off limits. [Norristown Times Herald, 6/19/05; Government Security News, 8/05; New York Times, 8/9/05; St Petersburg Times, 8/10/05; New York Times, 8/17/05; Government Security News, 9/05] Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer later says that an unnamed two-star general above him is “very adamant” about not looking further at Atta. “I was directed several times [to ignore Atta], to the point where he had to remind me he was a general and I was not ... [and] I would essentially be fired.” [Fox News, 8/19/05] Military leaders at the meeting take the side of the lawyers and prohibit any sharing of information about the al-Qaeda cell. Shaffer believes that the decision to side with the lawyers is made by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Lambert (who had previously expressed distress when Able Danger data was destroyed without his prior notification (see May-June 2000)). He also believes that Gen. Peter Schoomaker, head of SOCOM, is not aware of the decision. [Government Security News, 9/05]
People and organizations involved: Peter J. Schoomaker, Able Danger, Special Operations Command, Anthony Shaffer, Geoffrey Lambert, Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, Mohamed Atta, al-Qaeda
September 2000: Military Lawyers Prevent Able Danger From Sharing Information about Atta and Others with FBI
On three occasions, military lawyers force members of Able Danger to cancel scheduled meetings with the FBI at the last minute. Able Danger officials want to share information about the Brooklyn al-Qaeda cell they believe they've discovered which includes Mohamed Atta and other hijackers (see January-February 2000). The exact timing of these meetings remains unclear, but they appear to happen around the time military lawyers tell Able Danger they are not allowed to pursue Mohamed Atta and other figures (see September 2000) . [Government Security News, 9/05] In 2005, it will be reported that Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer contacted FBI agent Xanthig Magnum in attempts to set up these meetings. Magnum is willing to testify about her communications with Shaffer, but apparently she has not yet been able to do so. [Fox News, 8/28/05] Rep. Curt Weldon ®, who in 2005 helps bring to light the existence of the program, says, “Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred and, certainly, taking out those three principal players in that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the operation that killed 3,000 people in America.” [Government Security News, 8/05]
People and organizations involved: Able Danger, Special Operations Command, Anthony Shaffer, Xanthig Magnum, Mohamed Atta, Curt Weldon, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer will later claim that Capt. Scott Phillpott, leader of the Able Danger program, briefs Gen. Peter Schoomaker, head of Special Operations Command (SOCOM), that Able Danger has uncovered information of increased al-Qaeda “activity” in Aden harbor, Yemen. Shaffer, plus two other officials familiar with Able Danger later tell the New York Post that this warning was gleaned through a search of bin Laden's business ties. Shaffer later recalls, “Yemen was elevated by Able Danger to be one of the top three hot spots for al-Qaeda in the entire world.” This warning, plus another possibly connected warning from Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst Kie Fallis (see May 2000-Late September 2000), go unheeded and no official warning is issued. The USS Cole is attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists in Aden harbor in October 2000 (see October 12, 2000). Shaffer later claims that Phillpott tells the 9/11 Commission about this warning in 2004 to show that Able Danger could have had a significant impact, but the Commission's findings fail to mention the warning, or in fact anything else about Able Danger (see July 12, 2004). [New York Post, 9/17/05; Jerry Doyle Show, 9/20/05 Sources: Anthony Shaffer] Rep. Curt Weldon ® will similarly tell Fox News,“[T]wo weeks before the attack on the Cole, in fact, two days before the attack on the Cole, [Able Danger] saw an increase of activity that led them to say to the senior leadership in the Pentagon at that time, in the Clinton administration, there's something going to happen in Yemen and we better be on high alert, but it was discounted. That story has yet to be told to the American people.” [Fox News, 10/8/05]
People and organizations involved: Scott Phillpott, Peter J. Schoomaker, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Able Danger, Curt Weldon, Clinton administration
Late September 2000: LIWA Support for Able Danger Is Renewed
The US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) unit had been providing important support for Able Danger until about April 2000 (see April 2000). Near the end of September 2000, that support is renewed. In the wake of the loss of LIWA's help, Able Danger utilizes additional private contractors. This new composition of Able Danger in late 2000 is called Able Danger II by some. The first version of Able Danger utilized only unclassified information; this second version uses a significant amount of classified information as well. [Erik Kleinsmith Statement, 9/21/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05]
People and organizations involved: Land Information Warfare Activity, Able Danger
December 30, 2000: Evidence Almihdhar in New Jersey Area Despite Immigration Records
According to US immigration records, the FBI, and the 9/11 Commission, hijacker Khalid Almihdhar left the US in June 2000 (see June 10, 2000) and didn't return until July 2001 (see July 4, 2001). However, USAID, a Florida ID firm, confirms in 2005 that Almihdhar was issued a card in New York or New Jersey on this date. Time magazine calls this, “another possible gap in the 9/11 report.” [Time, 8/21/05]
People and organizations involved: Khalid Almihdhar
January-March 2001: Intelligence Unit Tracking Al-Qaeda is Closed Down; Change in Leadership Factors in Closure
A secret military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which is tasked with assembling information about al-Qaeda networks around the world, is shut down. Some accounts say the program is shut down in January, some say February, and some say March. [Norristown Times Herald, 6/19/05; Norristown Times Herald, 9/12/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05] The unit has identified Mohamed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as members of an al-Qaeda cell operating in the United States. According to James D. Smith, a Pentagon contractor involved with the unit, the inspector general shuts down the operation “because of a claim that we were collecting information on US citizens,” and it is illegal for the military to do this. [WTOP News, 9/1/05 (
] Others familiar with the unit later say it is closed down because it might have led to the exposure of another data mining project that was investigating US citizens allegedly illegally transferring sensitive US technology to the Chinese government. [WTOP News, 9/1/05 ©] Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer also blames the change in leadership brought by the new Bush administration. “Once the four star [General Schoomaker] went away, it was pretty much like the world closing around us [Schoomaker retired in November 2000, but returned as Army Chief of Staff in 2003]. There was no political will to continue this at that point in time. Plus, my direct leadership: Colonel [Jerry] York and General [Bob] Harding had moved on as well. Therefore, I had a new chain of command above me. They were very risk adverse. This [Able Danger] operation, as with other operations which were very high risk / high gain, some of which are still ongoing—seemed to not be appreciated by the incoming leadership.” [Government Security News, 9/05; American Forces Press Service, 6/17/03]
People and organizations involved: James D. Smith, al-Qaeda, Able Danger
Early 2001: Top Military Leaders Attend Briefings on Able Danger
In January, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Henry Shelton is given a three hour briefing on Able Danger. Shelton supported the formation of Able Danger back in 1999 (see Fall 1999). The content of the briefing has never been reported. Then in March, during a briefing on another classified program called Door Hop Galley, Able Danger is again brought up. This briefing, given by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, is attended by Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; Richard Schiefren, an attorney at DOD; and Stephen Cambone, Special Assistant to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense. [Government Security News, 9/05; Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05 Sources: Curt Weldon] In mid-September 2005, Weldon will say, “I knew that the Clinton administration clearly knew about this. Now I know of at least two briefings in the Bush administration.” He calls these two briefings “very troubling.” He wants to know what became of the information presented in these briefings, suggesting it shouldn't have been destroyed as part of the other Able Danger data purges. [Delaware County Daily Times, 9/16/05; Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Richard Schiefren, Able Danger, Anthony Shaffer, Thomas Wilson, Stephen A. Cambone, Henry H. Shelton, Clinton administration, Bush administration
February 2001-March 2001: Withdrawal of DIA Support Contributes to End of Able Danger Program
Maj. Gen. Rod Isler.
The new Director of Operations for the DIA, General Ron Isler, has Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer brief him on a series of operations. According to Shaffer, Isler strongly objects to Shaffer assisting Able Danger. “I said, ‘Well, sir, with all due respect, this is an important operation focused on the global al-Qaeda target,’ and he said, ‘You're not hearing me, Tony. This is not your job.’” After further disagreement, Shaffer recalls the argument ending, “‘Tony, I'm the two star here. I'm the two star. I'm telling you I don't want you doing anything with Able Danger.’ ‘Sir, if not us then who?’ ‘I don't know, but it's not your job.’ And that effectively ended my direct support and my unit's [Stratus Ivy] support to Able Danger.” Recalling how this helped end Able Danger, Shaffer says, “I remember the last conversation I had with Captain Scott Phillpott on this was a desperate call from him asking me to try to help use one of my operational facilities to at least try to exploit the information [Able Danger had collected] before it got lost.” However, Isler says he cannot recall any discussion with Shaffer about Able Danger. [Government Security News, 9/05]
People and organizations involved: Anthony Shaffer, Ron Isler, Scott Phillpott, Able Danger
March 2001-September 1, 2001: Hani Hanjour and Other Hijackers Live in Paterson, New Jersey
The apartment building in Paterson, New Jersey, where some of the hijackers lived.
Hani Hanjour and Salem Alhazmi rent a one-room apartment in Paterson, New Jersey. Hanjour signs the lease. Nawaf Alhazmi, Saeed Alghamdi, and Mohamed Atta are also seen coming and going by neighbors. One unnamed hijacker has to be told by a neighbor how to screw in a light bulb. [Associated Press, 10/7/01 (; Washington Post, 9/30/01] The 9/11 Commission's account of this differs from previous press accounts, and has Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi (instead of his brother Salem) first moving to Paterson in mid-May. Salem Alhazmi, Majed Moqed, Abdulaziz Alomari, Khalid Almihdhar, and probably Ahmed Alghamdi are all seen living there as well during the summer. [9/11 Commission Final Report, 7/24/04, p. 230] Other reports have Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi living periodically in Falls Church, Virginia, over nearly the exact same time period, from March through August 2001 (see March 2001). During this time, Mohamed Atta and other hijackers live in Wayne, New Jersey, a town only one mile from Paterson (see (Before September 2000-12 Months Later)).
People and organizations involved: Salem Alhazmi, William Safire, Saeed Alghamdi, Nawaf Alhazmi, Mohamed Atta, Ahmed Alghamdi, Majed Moqed, Abdulaziz Alomari, Khalid Almihdhar
September 25, 2001: Rep. Curt Weldon Gives Able Danger Chart to Deputy National Security Advisor, Mention of Atta on Chart Is Uncertain
Rep. Curt Weldon ® later claims that about two weeks after 9/11, he is given a chart by friends of his from the Army's Information Dominance Center, in cooperation with special ops. The chart indicates various al-Qaeda cells that were identified by a military intelligence unit called Able Danger. Early in 2000, this unit identified, amongst others, an al-Qaeda cell based in Brooklyn, New York, which included Mohamed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers (see January-February 2000). Atta's name is said to be on the chart given to Weldon. Shortly after being given the chart, Weldon meets with Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and shows the chart to him. Weldon claims, “Hadley looked at the chart and said, Congressman, where did you get that chart from? I said, I got it from the military. ... Steve Hadley said, Congressman, I am going to take this chart, and I am going to show it to the man. The man that he meant ... was the President of the United States. I said, Mr. Hadley, you mean you have not seen something like this before from the CIA, this chart of al-Qaeda worldwide and in the US? And he said, No, Congressman. So I gave him the chart. ” [Congressional Record, 6/27/05; Delaware County Daily Times, 8/12/05; Fox News, 8/22/05] However, a spokesman for Hadley later disputes this account, and says, “Mr. Hadley does not recall any chart bearing the name or photo of Mohamed Atta. [National Security Council] staff reviewed the files of Mr. Hadley as well as of all [National Security Council] personnel... That search has turned up no chart.” [Washington Post, 9/24/05] Rep. Dan Burton ® later recalls attending the meeting and remembers the chart, but can't recall if Atta was on it or not. [New York Times, 10/1/05] Curt Weldon also later claims that the copy of the chart he gives to Hadley is his only one. [Time, 8/14/05] However, apparently contradicting this, Weldon will give a speech in 2002 showing the chart.
People and organizations involved: Able Danger, Mohamed Atta, al-Qaeda, Dan Burton, Stephen Hadley, Central Intelligence Agency, Special Operations Command, Curt Weldon, Information Dominance Center
October 11, 2001: Early Account of Able Danger Remains Classified
Dr. Eileen Preisser testifies before a congressional briefing. Dr. Preisser was one of four analysts in the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) supporting Able Danger in late 1999 and 2000 (see Fall 1999). While her testimony remains classified, the next day, Representative Christopher Shays ® gives a brief summary: “In a briefing we had yesterday, we had Eileen [Preisser], who argues that we don't have the data we need because we don't take all the public data that is available and mix it with the security data. And just taking public data, using, you know, computer systems that are high-speed and able to digest, you know, literally floors' worth of material, she can take relationships that are seven times removed, seven units removed, and when she does that, she ends up with relationships to the bin Laden group where she sees the purchase of chemicals, the sending of students to universities. You wouldn't see it if you isolated it there, but if that unit is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, you then see the relationship. So we don't know ultimately the authenticity of how she does it, but when she does it, she comes up with the kind of answer that you have just asked, which is a little unsettling.” [House of Representatives Hearings, 10/12/01 Sources: Christopher Shays] Note that according to some media accounts, the CIA monitored Mohamed Atta purchasing large quantities of chemicals in Germany in the spring of 2000 (see January-May 2000). Atta also sends a series of e-mails to the US in the spring of 2000, inquiring about flight school opportunities for himself and a “small group” of his associates (see January-March 2000). Dr. Preisser is apparently willing to testify about her role in how Able Danger uncovered Atta's name, but in September 2005 she is prohibited from publicly testifying before Congress (see September 21, 2005).
People and organizations involved: Eileen Preisser, al-Qaeda
May 23, 2002: Rep. Curt Weldon Said to Show Able Danger Chart in Public Speech
A blurry image of the chart Rep. Curt Weldon presented to the Heritage Foundation in 2002.
During a speech before the Heritage Foundation, Rep. Curt Weldon ® unfurls a chart, which, his comments suggest, was produced by Able Danger. He says it is “the unclassified chart that was done by the Special Forces Command briefing center one year before 9/11. It is the complete architecture of al-Qaeda and pan-Islamic extremism. It gives all the linkages.” However, he does not mention Mohamed Atta or any other 9/11 hijackers during the speech. Video footage of the speech shows the chart, but picture quality is too poor to determine whether Atta is on it. [NewsMax, 8/29/05] Weldon later claims to have given up his only copy of the chart showing Atta's face in late 2001. [Time, 8/14/05] In September 2005, Weldon will refer to the chart shown in this 2002 speech and suggest it may not have been the same chart that contained Atta's face. He also says he can't find the chart used in the speech anymore. [Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Curt Weldon, Heritage Foundation, Able Danger, al-Qaeda, Special Operations Command
October 21, 2003: 9/11 Commission Staff Meet Member of Able Danger Unit
Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, along with two members of the commission's staff, meets at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with three individuals doing intelligence work for the US Defense Department. [CNN, 8/17/05] Among these is Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army intelligence officer who worked closely with a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which between fall 1999 and spring 2001 was tasked with assembling information about al-Qaeda networks around the world (see Fall 1999; Early 2001) . According to Shaffer's own later account, he gives the commission staff a detailed account of what Able Danger was, and tells them, “We found two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, to include [Mohamed] Atta.” At the end of the meeting, Philip Zelikow approaches him and says, “This is important. We need to continue this dialogue when we get back to the states. ” [Government Security News, 9/05] Following the meeting, Zelikow calls back to the 9/11 Commission's headquarters in Washington to request that staff draft a document request, seeking information on Able Danger from the Department of Defense. [Kean-Hamilton statement, 8/12/05] According to Anthony Shaffer, “My understanding from talking to another member of the press is that [Zelikow's] call came into America at four o clock in the morning. He got people out of bed over this.” [Government Security News, 9/05] Shaffer subsequently tries contacting Philip Zelikow in January 2004 (see Early January 2004). Spokesmen for the commission members contradict Shaffer's account, claiming that, while they are told of the existence of Able Danger at this briefing, they aren't informed that it had identified Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers as threats. [New York Times, 8/10/05] An official statement says that a memorandum prepared by the commission staff after the meeting “does not record any mention of Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers, or any suggestion that their identities were known to anyone at DOD before 9/11. Nor do any of the three Commission staffers who participated in the interview, or the executive branch lawyer, recall hearing any such allegation.” [Kean-Hamilton statement, 8/12/05]
People and organizations involved: US Department of Defense, Anthony Shaffer, Able Danger, Mohamed Atta, 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow
Early 2004: Weldon Fails to Convince 9/11 Commission to Look into Data Mining Programs
Rep. Curt Weldon ® is not yet familiar with Able Danger, though he will help bring information about the program to light in 2005. However, he is familiar with the closely related Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) program, having had dealings with it before 9/11. He says he is frustrated at the apparent lack of understanding about programs like LIWA based on the lines of questioning at public 9/11 Commission hearings in early 2004, so, “On at least four occasions, I personally tried to brief the 9/11 Commissioners on: NOAH [Weldon's pre-9/11 suggestion to have a National Operations and Analysis Hub]; integrative data collaboration capabilities; my frustration with intelligence stovepipes; and al-Qaeda analysis. However, I was never able to achieve more than a five-minute telephone conversation with Commissioner Thomas Kean. On March 24, 2004, I also had my Chief of Staff personally hand deliver a document about LIWA, along [with] questions for George Tenet to the Commission, but neither was ever used.” [Curt Weldon Statement, 9/21/05] He says, “The next week, they sent a staffer over to pick up some additional materials about the NIWA, about the concept, and about information I had briefed them on. They never followed up and invited me to come in and meet with them. So they can't say that I didn't try.” [Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Land Information Warfare Activity, 9/11 Commission, Curt Weldon, George Tenet, Thomas Kean
Early January 2004: Able Danger Intelligence Officer Tries Contacting 9/11 Commission
Following an October 2003 meeting with three members of the 9/11 Commission's staff (see October 21, 2003), Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer tries contacting Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, as requested by Zelikow himself. Shaffer is an Army intelligence officer who worked closely with a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which identified Mohamed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers in early 2000 (see January-February 2000). He phones Zelikow's number the first week of January 2004. The person who replies tells him, “I will talk to Dr. Zelikow and find out when he wants you to come in.” However, Shaffer receives no call back, so a week later he phones again. This time, the person who answers him says, “Dr. Zelikow tells me that he does not see the need for you to come in. We have all the information on Able Danger.” [Government Security News, 9/05] Yet the commission doesn't even receive the Able Danger documentation they had previously requested from the Defense Department until the following month (see February 2004). [Kean-Hamilton statement, 8/12/05]
People and organizations involved: Anthony Shaffer, Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Commission, Able Danger, Philip Zelikow
February 2004: 9/11 Commission Receives Documentation Relating to Able Danger Program
The 9/11 Commission receives documents that it had requested from the Department of Defense, relating to a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which had allegedly identified Mohamed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the attacks. [New York Times, 8/9/05; Norristown Times Herald, 8/13/05] The commission requested the documents in November 2003, after a meeting in Afghanistan with Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army intelligence officer who had worked closely with the unit (see October 21, 2003). Some documents are given directly to the commission, others are available for review in a Department of Defense reading room, where commission staff make notes summarizing them. Some of the documents include diagrams of Islamic militant networks. However, an official statement later claims, “None of the documents turned over to the Commission mention Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers. Nor do any of the staff notes on documents reviewed in the DOD reading room indicate that Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers were mentioned in any of those documents. ” [Kean-Hamilton statement, 8/12/05; Washington Post, 8/13/05] Shaffer responds, “I'm told confidently by the person who moved the material over, that the Sept. 11 commission received two briefcase-sized containers of documents. I can tell you for a fact that would not be one-twentieth of the information that Able Danger consisted of during the time we spent.” [Fox News, 8/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Anthony Shaffer, Able Danger, 9/11 Commission, US Department of Defense
This page shows all events that either reference, or are referenced by, the event 'March 2004'.
March 2004: Able Danger Intelligence Officer Has Security Clearance Suspended Complete 911 Timeline
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army intelligence officer who worked closely with a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, has his security clearance suspended for what his lawyer later describes as “petty and frivolous” reasons, including a dispute over mileage reimbursement and charges for personal calls on a work cell phone. [Fox News, 8/19/05] According to Shaffer, allegations are made against him over $67 in phone charges, which he accumulated over 18 months. He says, “Even though when they told me about this issue, I offered to pay it back, they chose instead to spend in our estimation $400,000 to investigate all these issues simply to drum up this information.” No formal action is ever taken against Shaffer, and later in the year the Army promotes him to lieutenant colonel. [Fox News, 8/17/05; Government Security News, 9/05] A few months previous, Shaffer had met with staff from the 9/11 Commission, and allegedly informed them that Able Danger had, more than a year before the attacks, identified two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, including Mohamed Atta (see October 21, 2003). According to Shaffer's lawyer, it is because of him having his security clearance suspended that he does not later have any documentation relating to Able Danger. [Fox News, 8/19/05] Rep. Curt Weldon ® will later comment, “In January of 2004 when [Shaffer] was twice rebuffed by the 9/11 Commission for a personal follow-up meeting, he was assigned back to Afghanistan to lead a special classified program. When he returned in March, he was called in and verbally his security clearance was temporarily lifted. By lifting his security clearance, he could not go back into DIA quarters where all the materials he had about Able Danger were, in fact, stored. He could not get access to memos that, in fact, he will tell you discussed the briefings he provided both to the previous administration and this administration.” [Fox News, 8/19/05] These documents Shaffer are trying to reach are destroyed by the DIA roughly around this time (see Spring 2004). In September 2005, Shaffer has his security clearance revoked, just two days before he is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Able Danger's activities (see September 19, 2005).
People and organizations involved: Curt Weldon, Anthony Shaffer, Able Danger
Spring 2004: DIA Destroys Copies of Able Danger Documents
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, DC apparently destroys duplicate copies of documentation relating to a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, for unknown reasons. The documents had been maintained by one of the DIA's employees, intelligence officer Anthony Shaffer. [Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05] The Able Danger unit was established in fall 1999, to assemble information about al-Qaeda networks worldwide (see Fall 1999). Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer had served as a liaison officer between the unit and the DIA. [New York Times, 8/17/05; Guardian, 8/18/05] Able Danger allegedly identified Mohamed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers more than a year before th
Project: Complete 911 Timeline
Open-Content project managed by Paul Thompson
Mid-1999-November 1999: LIWA Data Mining Study Causes Controversy After Connecting Prominent US Figures to Weapons Purchases for Chinese Military
A report commissioned in mid-1999 by Rep. Curt Weldon ® looks into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military. Dr. Eileen Preisser and Michael Maloof are commissioned to make the report. Dr. Preisser, who runs the Information Dominance Center at the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and will later become closely tied to Able Danger, uses LIWA's data mining capabilities to search unclassified information. According to Maloof, their results show Chinese front companies in the US posing as US corporations that acquire technology from US defense contractors. When the study is completed in November 1999, the General Counsel's office in the Office of the Defense Secretary orders the study destroyed. Weldon complains about this to Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, and apparently delays the destruction of the report. Weldon also writes a letter to FBI Director Louis Freeh requesting an espionage investigation into these Chinese links, but Freeh never responds to this. [Washington Times, 10/9/05] As part of this report, LIWA analysts had produced a chart of Chinese strategic and business connections in the US. But this data mining effort runs into controversy when the chart apparently shows connections between future National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent US figures, and business deals benefiting the Chinese military. [New York Post, 8/27/05; Washington Times, 9/22/05] The China chart was put together by private contractor James D. Smith, who will come forward in August 2005 to corroborate revelations about the Able Danger unit and its findings (see August 22-September 1, 2005). The New York Post later says there is “no suggestion that Rice or any of the others had done anything wrong.” [New York Post, 8/27/05] However, articles first appear one month later and through 2001 in the conservative publications WorldNetDaily and NewsMax, which connect Perry and Rice to Hua Di, a Chinese missile scientist and possible spy, and question the nature of their relationship with him. [WorldNetDaily, 12/21/99; WorldNetDaily, 4/5/00; NewsMax, 1/24/01] Di defected to the US in 1989 and worked most of the 1990s at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, which was co-directed by Perry. Di later returned to China and is subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for writing influential articles said to reveal vital Chinese state secrets. [Stanford Report, 2/7/01] However, other accounts claim that he was in fact passing on disinformation through these articles, successfully misleading the US military for a couple of years about the abilities of certain Chinese missile programs. [WorldNetDaily, 12/21/99] Additionally, Hua Di teamed in 1994 with Stanford professor Dr. John Lewis and William Perry to buy an advanced AT&T fiber-optic communications system for “civilian” use inside China that instead is used by the Chinese army. The General Accounting Office later criticized the sale. In 1997, Stanford University investigated Dr. Lewis for his role in it, but Condoleezza Rice, serving as a Stanford provost at the time, apparently stopped the investigation. [WorldNetDaily, 4/5/00; NewsMax, 1/24/01] Able Danger and LIWA's data mining efforts will be severely proscribed in April 2000 as part of the fallout from this China controversy (see April 2000), and the destruction of their collected data will follow shortly thereafter (see May-June 2000).
People and organizations involved: China, Eric Shinseki, James D. Smith, Land Information Warfare Activity, Louis J. Freeh, Condoleezza Rice, Hua Di, William Perry, F. Michael Maloof, Eileen Preisser, Curt Weldon
Fall 1999: Army Intelligence Program Is Set Up to Gather Information on Al-Qaeda
On the orders of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the head of the military's Special Operations Command (SOCOM), sets up an intelligence program called Able Danger, to assemble information about al-Qaeda networks around the world. SOCOM, based in Tampa, Florida, is responsible for America's secret commando units. [Government Security News, 9/05] At least some of the data is collected on behalf of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Lambert, the J3 at US Special Operations Command. [Curt Weldon Statement, 9/21/05] Mark Zaid, a lawyer for several Able Danger whistleblowers in 2005, will give this description of Able Danger: “In the most understandable and simplistic terms, Able Danger involved the searching out and compiling of open source or other publicly available information regarding specific targets or tasks that were connected through associational links. No classified information was used. No government database systems were used. In addition to examining al-Qaeda links, Able Danger also handled tasks relating to Bosnia and China. The search and compilation efforts were primarily handled by defense contractors, who did not necessarily know they were working for Able Danger, and that information was then to be utilized by the military members of Able Danger for whatever appropriate purposes.” [Mark Zaid Testimony, 9/21/05] Eleven intelligence employees are directly involved in Able Danger's work. Six are with SOCOM's Able Danger unit. Four more, including Dr. Eileen Preisser and Maj. Eric Kleinsmith, are with the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA), which joins the effort in December 1999. LIWA had been conducing data mining already on a wide variety of topics, including international drug cartels, corruption in Russia and Serbia, terrorist linkages in the Far East, and the proliferation of sensitive military technology to China (see April 2000). Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer running a unit called Stratus Ivy in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) will also take part in the effort. [Norristown Times Herald, 6/19/05; Government Security News, 8/05; New York Times, 8/9/05; St Petersburg Times, 8/10/05; Bergen Record, 8/14/05; Government Security News, 9/05; Erik Kleinsmith Statement, 9/21/05; Curt Weldon Statement, 9/21/05] Using computers, the unit collects huge amounts of data in a technique called “data mining.” They get information from such sources as al-Qaeda Internet chat rooms, news accounts, web sites, and financial records. Using sophisticated software, they compare this with government records such as visa applications by foreign tourists, to find any correlations and depict these visually. [Bergen Record, 8/14/05; Government Security News, 9/05] The program lasts for 18 months, and is shut down early in 2001 (see Early 2001).
People and organizations involved: Special Operations Command, Mark Zaid, Hugh Shelton, China, Bosnia, Russia, Curt Weldon, al-Qaeda, Peter J. Schoomaker, Able Danger, Geoffrey Lambert, Eileen Preisser, Eric Kleinsmith, Anthony Shaffer
October 1999: CIA Does Not Share Information with Able Danger Program
Capt. Scott Phillpott, head of the Able Danger program, asks Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer to talk to a representative of CIA Director George Tenet and attempt to convince him that the new Able Danger program is not competing with the CIA. Shaffer later recalls the CIA representative replying, “I clearly understand the difference. I clearly understand. We're going after the leadership. You guys are going after the body. But, it doesn't matter. The bottom line is, CIA will never give you the best information from ‘Alex Base’ [the CIA's covert action element targeting bin Laden] or anywhere else. CIA will never provide that to you because if you were successful in your effort to target al-Qaeda, you will steal our thunder. Therefore, we will not support this.” Shaffer claims that for the duration of Able Danger's existence, “To my knowledge, and my other colleagues' knowledge, there was no information ever released to us because CIA chose not to participate in Able Danger.” [Government Security News, 9/05]
People and organizations involved: George Tenet, Able Danger, Anthony Shaffer, Central Intelligence Agency, Scott Phillpott
January-February 2000: Secret Military Unit Identifies al-Qaeda ‘Brooklyn’ Cell; Mohamed Atta is a Member
A blurry photograph of a 2005 reconstruction of the pre-9/11 Able Danger chart showing Mohamed Atta and others.
A US Army intelligence program called Able Danger identifies five al-Qaeda terrorist cells; one of them has connections to Brooklyn, New York and will become informally known as the “Brooklyn” cell by the Able Danger team. This cell includes 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, and three other 9/11 hijackers: Marwan Alshehhi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Nawaf Alhazmi. According to a former intelligence officer who claims he worked closely with Able Danger, the link to Brooklyn is not based upon any firm evidence, but computer analysis that established patterns in links between the four men. “[T]he software put them all together in Brooklyn.” [New York Times, 8/9/05; Washington Times, 8/22/05; Fox News, 8/23/05; Government Security News, 9/05] However, that does not necessarily imply them being physically present in Brooklyn. A lawyer later representing members of Able Danger states, “At no time did Able Danger identify Mohamed Atta as being physically present in the United States.” Furthermore, “No information obtained at the time would have led anyone to believe criminal activity had taken place or that any specific terrorist activities were being planned.” [CNN, 9/21/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05] James D. Smith, a contractor working with the unit, discovers Mohamed Atta's link to al-Qaeda. [WTOP News, 9/1/05] Smith has been using advanced computer software and analysing individuals who are going between mosques. He has made a link between Mohamed Atta and Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, ringleader of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. [Fox News, 8/28/05; Government Security News, 9/05] Atta is said to have some unspecified connection to the El Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, a hotbed of anti-American sentiment once frequented by Abdul-Rahman. [Norristown Times-Herald, 9/20/05] Smith obtained Atta's name and photograph through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East. [New York Times, 8/22/05] Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer claims the photo is not the well-known menacing Florida driver's license photo of Atta. “This is an older, more grainy photo we had of him. It was not the best picture in the world.” It is said to contain several names or aliases for Atta underneath it. [Chicago Tribune, 9/28/05; Jerry Doyle Show, 9/20/05] LIWA analysts supporting Able Danger make a chart, which Shaffer describes in a radio interview as, “A chart probably about a 2x3 which had essentially five clusters around the center point which was bin Laden and his leadership.” [Savage Nation, 9/16/05] The 9/11 Commission later claims that Atta only enters the United States for the first time several months later, in June 2000 (see June 3, 2000). [9/11 Commission Final Report, 7/24/04, p. 224] However, investigations in the months after 9/11 find that Mohamed Atta and another of the hijackers rented rooms in Brooklyn around this time (see Spring 2000). Other newspaper accounts have the CIA monitoring Atta starting in January 2000, while he is living in Germany (see January-May 2000).
People and organizations involved: Marwan Alshehhi, Able Danger, Mohamed Atta, Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, al-Qaeda, Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, El Farouq
Mid-1999-November 1999: LIWA Data Mining Study Causes Controversy After Connecting Prominent US Figures to Weapons Purchases for Chinese Military
A report commissioned in mid-1999 by Rep. Curt Weldon ® looks into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military. Dr. Eileen Preisser and Michael Maloof are commissioned to make the report. Dr. Preisser, who runs the Information Dominance Center at the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and will later become closely tied to Able Danger, uses LIWA's data mining capabilities to search unclassified information. According to Maloof, their results show Chinese front companies in the US posing as US corporations that acquire technology from US defense contractors. When the study is completed in November 1999, the General Counsel's office in the Office of the Defense Secretary orders the study destroyed. Weldon complains about this to Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, and apparently delays the destruction of the report. Weldon also writes a letter to FBI Director Louis Freeh requesting an espionage investigation into these Chinese links, but Freeh never responds to this. [Washington Times, 10/9/05] As part of this report, LIWA analysts had produced a chart of Chinese strategic and business connections in the US. But this data mining effort runs into controversy when the chart apparently shows connections between future National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent US figures, and business deals benefiting the Chinese military. [New York Post, 8/27/05; Washington Times, 9/22/05] The China chart was put together by private contractor James D. Smith, who will come forward in August 2005 to corroborate revelations about the Able Danger unit and its findings (see August 22-September 1, 2005). The New York Post later says there is “no suggestion that Rice or any of the others had done anything wrong.” [New York Post, 8/27/05] However, articles first appear one month later and through 2001 in the conservative publications WorldNetDaily and NewsMax, which connect Perry and Rice to Hua Di, a Chinese missile scientist and possible spy, and question the nature of their relationship with him. [WorldNetDaily, 12/21/99; WorldNetDaily, 4/5/00; NewsMax, 1/24/01] Di defected to the US in 1989 and worked most of the 1990s at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, which was co-directed by Perry. Di later returned to China and is subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for writing influential articles said to reveal vital Chinese state secrets. [Stanford Report, 2/7/01] However, other accounts claim that he was in fact passing on disinformation through these articles, successfully misleading the US military for a couple of years about the abilities of certain Chinese missile programs. [WorldNetDaily, 12/21/99] Additionally, Hua Di teamed in 1994 with Stanford professor Dr. John Lewis and William Perry to buy an advanced AT&T fiber-optic communications system for “civilian” use inside China that instead is used by the Chinese army. The General Accounting Office later criticized the sale. In 1997, Stanford University investigated Dr. Lewis for his role in it, but Condoleezza Rice, serving as a Stanford provost at the time, apparently stopped the investigation. [WorldNetDaily, 4/5/00; NewsMax, 1/24/01] Able Danger and LIWA's data mining efforts will be severely proscribed in April 2000 as part of the fallout from this China controversy (see April 2000), and the destruction of their collected data will follow shortly thereafter (see May-June 2000).
People and organizations involved: China, Eric Shinseki, James D. Smith, Land Information Warfare Activity, Louis J. Freeh, Condoleezza Rice, Hua Di, William Perry, F. Michael Maloof, Eileen Preisser, Curt Weldon
January-May 2000: CIA Has Atta Under Surveillance
Hijacker Mohamed Atta is put under surveillance by the CIA while living in Germany. [Agence France-Presse, 9/22/01; Focus, 9/24/01; Berliner Zeitung, 9/24/01] He is “reportedly observed buying large quantities of chemicals in Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives [and/or] for biological warfare.” “The US agents reported to have trailed Atta are said to have failed to inform the German authorities about their investigation,” even as the Germans are investigating many of his associates. “The disclosure that Atta was being trailed by police long before 11 September raises the question why the attacks could not have been prevented with the man's arrest.” [Observer, 9/30/01] A German newspaper adds that Atta is able to get a visa into the US on May 18. According to some reports, the surveillance stops when he leaves for the US at the start of June. However, “experts believe that the suspect [remains] under surveillance in the United States.” [Berliner Zeitung, 9/24/01] A German intelligence official also states, “We can no longer exclude the possibility that the Americans wanted to keep an eye on Atta after his entry in the US” [Focus, 9/24/01] This correlates with a Newsweek claim that US officials knew Atta was a “known [associate] of Islamic terrorists well before [9/11].” [Newsweek, 9/20/01] However, a congressional inquiry later reports that the US “intelligence community possessed no intelligence or law enforcement information linking 16 of the 19 hijackers [including Atta] to terrorism or terrorist groups.” [9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 9/20/02] In 2005, after accounts of the Able Danger program learning Atta's name become news, newspaper account will neglect to mention this prior report about Atta being known by US intelligence. For instance, the New York Times will report, “The account [about Able Danger] is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks”(see August 9, 2005) . [New York Times, 8/9/05]
People and organizations involved: Mohamed Atta, Central Intelligence Agency
Spring 2000: Atta and Alshehhi Rent Rooms in Brooklyn and the Bronx
Mohamed Atta and another of the 9/11 hijackers (presumably Marwan Alshehhi) rent rooms in New York City, according to a federal investigator. These rooms are in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Following 9/11, Atta is traced back to Brooklyn by a parking ticket issued to a rental car he was driving. However, immigration records have Mohamed Atta entering the US for the first time on June 3, 2000 (see June 3, 2000). The Associated Press article on this subject does not specify if Atta first stayed in New York before or after that date. [Associated Press, 12/8/01] According to a brief mention in the 9/11 Commission's final report, in the month of June, “As [Atta and Marwan Alshehhi] looked at flight schools on the East Coast, [they] stayed in a series of short-term rentals in New York City.” [9/11 Commission Final Report, 7/24/04, p. 224; Washington Post, 8/13/05] Earlier in 2000, a US Army intelligence program called Able Danger identified an al-Qaeda terrorist cell based in Brooklyn, of which Atta is a member (see January-February 2000). Also, a number of eyewitnesses later report seeing Atta in Maine and Florida before this official arrival date (see April 2000; Late April-Mid-May 2000).
People and organizations involved: Able Danger, Marwan Alshehhi, Mohamed Atta, al-Qaeda
April 2000: LIWA Support For Able Danger Program Ends; It Later Restarts
Four analysts from the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) unit are forced to stop their work supporting the Able Danger program. At the same time, private contractors working for Able Danger are fired. This occurs around the time that it becomes known by some inside the military that LIWA had identified future National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent Americans as potential security risks (see April 2000). It was apparently these LIWA analysts (such as Dr. Eileen Preisser) and contractors (such as James D. Smith) who conducted most of the data mining and analysis of al-Qaeda in the preceding months. One of the four LIWA analysts, Maj. Erik Kleinsmith, will later be ordered to destroy all the data collected (see May-June 2000). LIWA's support for Able Danger will resume a few months later (see Late September 2000). [Erik Kleinsmith Statement, 9/21/05; Washington Times, 9/22/05; New York Post, 8/27/05]
People and organizations involved: William Perry, Able Danger, James D. Smith, Eileen Preisser, Condoleezza Rice, Land Information Warfare Activity
April 2000: LIWA and Able Danger Face Trouble After LIWA Connects Prominent US Figures to Chinese Military
A 1999 study by the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) to look into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military created controversy and was ordered destroyed in November 1999 (see Mid-1999-November 1999). However, apparently Rep. Curt Weldon ® protests, and the issue finally comes to a head during this month. One result of this controversy will be what Maj. Erik Kleinsmith will later call “severely restricted” support for Able Danger, including a temporary end to LIWA support (see April 2000) In an April 14, 2000 memorandum from the legal counsel in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Capt. Michael Lohr writes that the concern over the LIWA data mining study raises privacy concerns: “Preliminary review of subject methodology raised the possibility that LIWA ‘data mining’ would potentially access both foreign intelligence (FI) information and domestic information relating to US citizens (i.e. law enforcement, tax, customs, immigration, etc... ... I recognize that an argument can be made that LIWA is not ‘collecting’ in the strict sense (i.e. they are accessing public areas of the Internet and non-FI federal government databases of already lawfully collected information). This effort would, however, have the potential to pull together into a single database a wealth of privacy-protected US citizen information in a more sweeping and exhaustive manner than was previously contemplated.” Additionally, the content of the study is another reason why it caused what Weldon calls a “wave of controversy.” The study had connected future National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent US citizens to business transactions with Chinese military officials.(see Mid-1999-November 1999). [New York Post, 8/27/05; Washington Times, 9/22/05; Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05; Washington Times, 10/9/05; Erik Kleinsmith Statement, 9/21/05] One article on the subject will comment, “Sources familiar with Able Danger say the project was shut down because it could have led to the exposure of a separate secret data mining project focusing on US citizens allegedly transferring super-sensitive US technology illegally to the Chinese government.” [WTOP, 9/1/05] A massive destruction of data from Able Danger and LIWA's data mining efforts will follow, one month later (see May-June 2000).
People and organizations involved: Land Information Warfare Activity, Able Danger, Michael Lohr, Curt Weldon, Condoleezza Rice, William Perry
May-June 2000: Army Officer Told to Destroy Able Danger Documents
Maj. Eric Kleinsmith, chief of intelligence for the Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) unit, is ordered to destroy data and documents related to a military intelligence program set up to gather information about al-Qaeda. The program, called Able Danger, has identified Mohamed Atta and three other future hijackers as potential threats (see January-February 2000). According to Kleinsmith, by April 2000 it has collected “an immense amount of data for analysis that allowed us to map al-Qaeda as a worldwide threat with a surprisingly significant presence within the United States.”(see January-February 2000) [Fox News, 9/21/05; New York Times, 9/22/05] The data is being collected on behalf of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Lambert, the J3 at US Special Operations Command, who is said to be extremely upset when he learns that the data had been destroyed without his knowledge or consent. [Curt Weldon Statement, 9/21/05] Around this time, a separate LIWA effort showing links between prominent US citizens and the Chinese military has been causing controversy, and apparently this data faces destruction as well (see April 2000). The data and documents have to be destroyed in accordance with Army regulations prohibiting the retention of data about US persons for longer than 90 days, unless it falls under one of several restrictive categories. However, during a Senate Judiciary Committee public hearing in September 2005, a Defense Department representative admits that Mohamed Atta was not considered a US person. The representative also acknowledges that regulations would have probably allowed the Able Danger information to be shared with law enforcement agencies before its destruction. Asked why this was not done, he responds, “I can't tell you.” [CNET News, 9/21/05] The order to destroy the data and documents is given to Kleinsmith by Army Intelligence and Security Command General Counsel Tony Gentry, who jokingly tells him, “Remember to delete the data—or you'll go to jail.” [Government Executive, 9/21/05] The quantity of information destroyed is later described as “2.5 terabytes,” about as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress. [Associated Press, 9/16/05] Other records associated with the unit are allegedly destroyed in March 2001 and spring 2004 (see Spring 2004). [Associated Press, 9/21/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05; Fox News, 9/24/05]
People and organizations involved: Mohamed Atta, al-Qaeda, Tony Gentry, Eric Kleinsmith, Land Information Warfare Activity, Able Danger, Geoffrey Lambert
May 2000-Late September 2000: Defense Agency Analyst Assembles Unheeded Attack Warning; Able Danger Information May Be One Source
Kie Fallis, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) terrorism intelligence analyst, has been gathering evidence of an upcoming al-Qaeda attack or attacks. In 2002, he will describe to the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry a research process similar to what Able Danger is using at the same time: “I began to notice there was a voluminous amount of information, as others have testified, regarding al-Qaeda. Most of it appeared to be unrelated to other pieces of information. It appeared to be almost chat. By using a piece of [commercial software called ‘Analyst's Notebook’] I was able to put these small snippets of information into, and graphically represent them as well, I was able to, over a course of many months, to determine certain linkages between these items—linkages that would never be apparent without the use of this tool. It would be lost in the weeds. And there were a lot of weeds to look through.” [Washington Times, 8/26/02; 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 10/8/02] In his research, he claims to find links between al-Qaeda and Iranian intelligence. By May 2000, he writes a classified report on his conclusion that “terrorists were planning two or three major attacks against the United States. The only gaps were where and when.” Apparently, he envisions at least one of these attacks will use a small boat to blow up a US warship. However, the DIA has already issued a report concluding that such a method of attack would be impossible to carry out successfully, and the agency sticks by this assessment. A video message put out by bin Laden in mid-September convinces Fallis that an al-Qaeda attack will happen in the next month or two.(see Mid-September 2000). Shortly after learning about this message, Fallis reaches “the ‘eureka point’ ... in determining an impending terrorist attack.” This comes “from a still-classified intelligence report in September 2000, which he will not discuss.” [Washington Times, 8/26/02] This may be a reference to a lead by the Able Danger team on increased al-Qaeda activity in Yemen at this time (see Late September 2000), and/or it may refer to other intelligence leads. Fallis goes to his supervisor and asks that at least a general warning of an attack in the Middle East be issued. He hopes such a warning will at least put US military forces in the region on a higher alert. His superior turns him down, and other superiors fail to even learn of his suggested warning. The USS Cole will be successfully attacked in the port of Aden, Yemen, by a small boat of terrorists on October 12, 2000 (see October 12, 2000) . [Washington Times, 8/26/02] One day after the Cole attack, Fallis will resign in protest. According to Sen. John Warner ®,“What [Fallis] felt is that his assessment was not given that proper level of consideration by his superiors and, as such, was not incorporated in the final intelligence reports provided to military commanders in the [Middle East region].” [CNN, 10/25/00]
People and organizations involved: Kie Fallis, al-Qaeda, Iran, John W. Warner, Osama bin Laden, Able Danger
Mid-September 2000: Bin Laden Message Gives Hint of Upcoming USS Cole Attack
A videotape message featuring bin Laden calling for more attacks on the US is aired on al-Jazeera. The video ends with al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri saying, “Enough of words, it is time to take action against this iniquitous and faithless force [the United States], which has spread troops through Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.” DIA analyst Kie Fallis later recalls, “Every time he put out one of these videotapes, it was a signal that action was coming.” He claims that after hearing of the video, he “knew then it would be within a month or two.” But nonetheless, his suggestion to put out a general attack warning will go unheeded (see May 2000-Late September 2000). An al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole follows less than a month later (see October 12, 2000). [Washington Times, 8/26/02]
People and organizations involved: United States, Kie Fallis, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri
(Before September 2000-12 Months Later): Mohamed Atta Has Long Term Stay in Wayne, New Jersey; Other Hijackers Seen There
In 2003, New Jersey state police officials say Mohamed Atta lived in the Wayne Inn, in Wayne, New Jersey, for an unspecified 12-month period prior to 9/11. He lives with one other hijacker who is presumably his usual partner Marwan Alshehhi (Alshehhi is seen eating in nearby restaurants with Atta). [Bergen Record, 6/20/03] In 2004, an unnamed whistleblower involved in the Able Danger program will claim that prior to 9/11, Able Danger discovered that Atta and Alshehhi were renting a room at the Wayne Inn, and occasionally meeting with Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar at the inn or near it (see (Before September 2000)). From March 2001 onwards, other hijackers, including Alhazmi and Almihdhar, live in Paterson, New Jersey, only one mile away from Wayne (see March 2001-September 1, 2001). Nawaf Alhazmi and Salem Alhazmi rent mailboxes in Wayne at some unknown point before 9/11. Nawaf Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour rent cars from a Wayne car dealership between June and August 2001. There is also evidence Nawaf Alhazmi and Marwan Alshehhi shop in Wayne. [CNN, 9/27/01] The 9/11 Commission does not mention any hijacker connection to Wayne. This long-term stay in Wayne is surprising because Atta and Alshehhi have generally been placed in Florida most of the time from July 2000 until shortly before 9/11. However, this discrepancy may be explained by one account which states Atta had “two places he lived and 10 safe houses” in the US (see Mid-September 2001).
People and organizations involved: Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi
(Before September 2000): Army Intelligence Unit Said to Discover Hijackers Renting Rooms at New Jersey Motels
According to an anonymous Able Danger official speaking to the Bergen Record, a US Army intelligence unit tasked with assembling information about al-Qaeda networks worldwide discovers that several of the 9/11 hijackers are taking rooms at motels in New Jersey and meeting together there. The intelligence unit, called Able Danger, which uses high-speed computers to analyze vast amounts of data, notices that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi take a room at the Wayne Inn (see (Before September 2000-12 Months Later)). After the existence of the Able Danger unit comes to light in 2005, Bergen Record columnist and reporter Mike Kelly says, “The connect-the-dots tracking by the team was so good that it even knew Atta conducted meetings with the three future hijackers. One of those meetings took place at the Wayne Inn. That's how close all this was—to us and to being solved, if only the information had been passed up the line to FBI agents or even to local cops. This new piece of 9/11 history, revealed only last week by a Pennsylvania congressman and confirmed by two former members of the intelligence team, could turn out to be one of the most explosive revelations since the publication last summer of the 9/11 commission report.” [Bergen Record, 8/14/05] The other two hijackers said to be present at the meetings, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, periodically live in the town of Paterson, only one mile away from Wayne (see March 2001-September 1, 2001). However, contradicting this account, a lawyer representing members of Able Danger later testifies, “At no time did Able Danger identify Mohamed Atta as being physically present in the United States.” [CNN, 9/21/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05] Some media accounts have stated that the Able Danger program determined Atta was in the US before 9/11. For instance, Fox News reported in August 2005, “[Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer] is standing by his claim that he told them that the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks had been identified in the summer of 2000 as an al-Qaeda operative living in the United States.” [Fox News, 8/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Able Danger, Khalid Almihdhar, Anthony Shaffer, Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, Nawaf Alhazmi, al-Qaeda
September 2000: Chart With Mohamed Atta's Photo Presented by Able Danger at SOCOM Headquarters; Meetings With FBI Cancelled
Members of a US Army intelligence unit tasked with assembling information about al-Qaeda have prepared a chart that includes the names and photographs of four future hijackers, who they have identified as members of an al-Qaeda cell based in Brooklyn, New York. The four hijackers in the cell are Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Nawaf Alhazmi. The members of the intelligence unit, called Able Danger, present their chart at the headquarters of the US military's Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa, Florida, with the recommendation that the FBI should be called in to take out the al-Qaeda cell. Lawyers working for SOCOM argue that anyone with a green card has to be granted the same legal protections as any US citizen, so the information about the al-Qaeda cell cannot be shared with the FBI. The legal team directs them to put yellow stickers over the photographs of Mohamed Atta and the other cell members, to symbolize that they are off limits. [Norristown Times Herald, 6/19/05; Government Security News, 8/05; New York Times, 8/9/05; St Petersburg Times, 8/10/05; New York Times, 8/17/05; Government Security News, 9/05] Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer later says that an unnamed two-star general above him is “very adamant” about not looking further at Atta. “I was directed several times [to ignore Atta], to the point where he had to remind me he was a general and I was not ... [and] I would essentially be fired.” [Fox News, 8/19/05] Military leaders at the meeting take the side of the lawyers and prohibit any sharing of information about the al-Qaeda cell. Shaffer believes that the decision to side with the lawyers is made by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Lambert (who had previously expressed distress when Able Danger data was destroyed without his prior notification (see May-June 2000)). He also believes that Gen. Peter Schoomaker, head of SOCOM, is not aware of the decision. [Government Security News, 9/05]
People and organizations involved: Peter J. Schoomaker, Able Danger, Special Operations Command, Anthony Shaffer, Geoffrey Lambert, Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, Mohamed Atta, al-Qaeda
September 2000: Military Lawyers Prevent Able Danger From Sharing Information about Atta and Others with FBI
On three occasions, military lawyers force members of Able Danger to cancel scheduled meetings with the FBI at the last minute. Able Danger officials want to share information about the Brooklyn al-Qaeda cell they believe they've discovered which includes Mohamed Atta and other hijackers (see January-February 2000). The exact timing of these meetings remains unclear, but they appear to happen around the time military lawyers tell Able Danger they are not allowed to pursue Mohamed Atta and other figures (see September 2000) . [Government Security News, 9/05] In 2005, it will be reported that Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer contacted FBI agent Xanthig Magnum in attempts to set up these meetings. Magnum is willing to testify about her communications with Shaffer, but apparently she has not yet been able to do so. [Fox News, 8/28/05] Rep. Curt Weldon ®, who in 2005 helps bring to light the existence of the program, says, “Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred and, certainly, taking out those three principal players in that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the operation that killed 3,000 people in America.” [Government Security News, 8/05]
People and organizations involved: Able Danger, Special Operations Command, Anthony Shaffer, Xanthig Magnum, Mohamed Atta, Curt Weldon, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer will later claim that Capt. Scott Phillpott, leader of the Able Danger program, briefs Gen. Peter Schoomaker, head of Special Operations Command (SOCOM), that Able Danger has uncovered information of increased al-Qaeda “activity” in Aden harbor, Yemen. Shaffer, plus two other officials familiar with Able Danger later tell the New York Post that this warning was gleaned through a search of bin Laden's business ties. Shaffer later recalls, “Yemen was elevated by Able Danger to be one of the top three hot spots for al-Qaeda in the entire world.” This warning, plus another possibly connected warning from Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst Kie Fallis (see May 2000-Late September 2000), go unheeded and no official warning is issued. The USS Cole is attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists in Aden harbor in October 2000 (see October 12, 2000). Shaffer later claims that Phillpott tells the 9/11 Commission about this warning in 2004 to show that Able Danger could have had a significant impact, but the Commission's findings fail to mention the warning, or in fact anything else about Able Danger (see July 12, 2004). [New York Post, 9/17/05; Jerry Doyle Show, 9/20/05 Sources: Anthony Shaffer] Rep. Curt Weldon ® will similarly tell Fox News,“[T]wo weeks before the attack on the Cole, in fact, two days before the attack on the Cole, [Able Danger] saw an increase of activity that led them to say to the senior leadership in the Pentagon at that time, in the Clinton administration, there's something going to happen in Yemen and we better be on high alert, but it was discounted. That story has yet to be told to the American people.” [Fox News, 10/8/05]
People and organizations involved: Scott Phillpott, Peter J. Schoomaker, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Able Danger, Curt Weldon, Clinton administration
Late September 2000: LIWA Support for Able Danger Is Renewed
The US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) unit had been providing important support for Able Danger until about April 2000 (see April 2000). Near the end of September 2000, that support is renewed. In the wake of the loss of LIWA's help, Able Danger utilizes additional private contractors. This new composition of Able Danger in late 2000 is called Able Danger II by some. The first version of Able Danger utilized only unclassified information; this second version uses a significant amount of classified information as well. [Erik Kleinsmith Statement, 9/21/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05]
People and organizations involved: Land Information Warfare Activity, Able Danger
December 30, 2000: Evidence Almihdhar in New Jersey Area Despite Immigration Records
According to US immigration records, the FBI, and the 9/11 Commission, hijacker Khalid Almihdhar left the US in June 2000 (see June 10, 2000) and didn't return until July 2001 (see July 4, 2001). However, USAID, a Florida ID firm, confirms in 2005 that Almihdhar was issued a card in New York or New Jersey on this date. Time magazine calls this, “another possible gap in the 9/11 report.” [Time, 8/21/05]
People and organizations involved: Khalid Almihdhar
January-March 2001: Intelligence Unit Tracking Al-Qaeda is Closed Down; Change in Leadership Factors in Closure
A secret military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which is tasked with assembling information about al-Qaeda networks around the world, is shut down. Some accounts say the program is shut down in January, some say February, and some say March. [Norristown Times Herald, 6/19/05; Norristown Times Herald, 9/12/05; Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05] The unit has identified Mohamed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as members of an al-Qaeda cell operating in the United States. According to James D. Smith, a Pentagon contractor involved with the unit, the inspector general shuts down the operation “because of a claim that we were collecting information on US citizens,” and it is illegal for the military to do this. [WTOP News, 9/1/05 (
] Others familiar with the unit later say it is closed down because it might have led to the exposure of another data mining project that was investigating US citizens allegedly illegally transferring sensitive US technology to the Chinese government. [WTOP News, 9/1/05 ©] Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer also blames the change in leadership brought by the new Bush administration. “Once the four star [General Schoomaker] went away, it was pretty much like the world closing around us [Schoomaker retired in November 2000, but returned as Army Chief of Staff in 2003]. There was no political will to continue this at that point in time. Plus, my direct leadership: Colonel [Jerry] York and General [Bob] Harding had moved on as well. Therefore, I had a new chain of command above me. They were very risk adverse. This [Able Danger] operation, as with other operations which were very high risk / high gain, some of which are still ongoing—seemed to not be appreciated by the incoming leadership.” [Government Security News, 9/05; American Forces Press Service, 6/17/03] People and organizations involved: James D. Smith, al-Qaeda, Able Danger
Early 2001: Top Military Leaders Attend Briefings on Able Danger
In January, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Henry Shelton is given a three hour briefing on Able Danger. Shelton supported the formation of Able Danger back in 1999 (see Fall 1999). The content of the briefing has never been reported. Then in March, during a briefing on another classified program called Door Hop Galley, Able Danger is again brought up. This briefing, given by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, is attended by Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; Richard Schiefren, an attorney at DOD; and Stephen Cambone, Special Assistant to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense. [Government Security News, 9/05; Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05 Sources: Curt Weldon] In mid-September 2005, Weldon will say, “I knew that the Clinton administration clearly knew about this. Now I know of at least two briefings in the Bush administration.” He calls these two briefings “very troubling.” He wants to know what became of the information presented in these briefings, suggesting it shouldn't have been destroyed as part of the other Able Danger data purges. [Delaware County Daily Times, 9/16/05; Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Richard Schiefren, Able Danger, Anthony Shaffer, Thomas Wilson, Stephen A. Cambone, Henry H. Shelton, Clinton administration, Bush administration
February 2001-March 2001: Withdrawal of DIA Support Contributes to End of Able Danger Program
Maj. Gen. Rod Isler.
The new Director of Operations for the DIA, General Ron Isler, has Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer brief him on a series of operations. According to Shaffer, Isler strongly objects to Shaffer assisting Able Danger. “I said, ‘Well, sir, with all due respect, this is an important operation focused on the global al-Qaeda target,’ and he said, ‘You're not hearing me, Tony. This is not your job.’” After further disagreement, Shaffer recalls the argument ending, “‘Tony, I'm the two star here. I'm the two star. I'm telling you I don't want you doing anything with Able Danger.’ ‘Sir, if not us then who?’ ‘I don't know, but it's not your job.’ And that effectively ended my direct support and my unit's [Stratus Ivy] support to Able Danger.” Recalling how this helped end Able Danger, Shaffer says, “I remember the last conversation I had with Captain Scott Phillpott on this was a desperate call from him asking me to try to help use one of my operational facilities to at least try to exploit the information [Able Danger had collected] before it got lost.” However, Isler says he cannot recall any discussion with Shaffer about Able Danger. [Government Security News, 9/05]
People and organizations involved: Anthony Shaffer, Ron Isler, Scott Phillpott, Able Danger
March 2001-September 1, 2001: Hani Hanjour and Other Hijackers Live in Paterson, New Jersey
The apartment building in Paterson, New Jersey, where some of the hijackers lived.
Hani Hanjour and Salem Alhazmi rent a one-room apartment in Paterson, New Jersey. Hanjour signs the lease. Nawaf Alhazmi, Saeed Alghamdi, and Mohamed Atta are also seen coming and going by neighbors. One unnamed hijacker has to be told by a neighbor how to screw in a light bulb. [Associated Press, 10/7/01 (
; Washington Post, 9/30/01] The 9/11 Commission's account of this differs from previous press accounts, and has Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi (instead of his brother Salem) first moving to Paterson in mid-May. Salem Alhazmi, Majed Moqed, Abdulaziz Alomari, Khalid Almihdhar, and probably Ahmed Alghamdi are all seen living there as well during the summer. [9/11 Commission Final Report, 7/24/04, p. 230] Other reports have Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi living periodically in Falls Church, Virginia, over nearly the exact same time period, from March through August 2001 (see March 2001). During this time, Mohamed Atta and other hijackers live in Wayne, New Jersey, a town only one mile from Paterson (see (Before September 2000-12 Months Later)). People and organizations involved: Salem Alhazmi, William Safire, Saeed Alghamdi, Nawaf Alhazmi, Mohamed Atta, Ahmed Alghamdi, Majed Moqed, Abdulaziz Alomari, Khalid Almihdhar
September 25, 2001: Rep. Curt Weldon Gives Able Danger Chart to Deputy National Security Advisor, Mention of Atta on Chart Is Uncertain
Rep. Curt Weldon ® later claims that about two weeks after 9/11, he is given a chart by friends of his from the Army's Information Dominance Center, in cooperation with special ops. The chart indicates various al-Qaeda cells that were identified by a military intelligence unit called Able Danger. Early in 2000, this unit identified, amongst others, an al-Qaeda cell based in Brooklyn, New York, which included Mohamed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers (see January-February 2000). Atta's name is said to be on the chart given to Weldon. Shortly after being given the chart, Weldon meets with Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and shows the chart to him. Weldon claims, “Hadley looked at the chart and said, Congressman, where did you get that chart from? I said, I got it from the military. ... Steve Hadley said, Congressman, I am going to take this chart, and I am going to show it to the man. The man that he meant ... was the President of the United States. I said, Mr. Hadley, you mean you have not seen something like this before from the CIA, this chart of al-Qaeda worldwide and in the US? And he said, No, Congressman. So I gave him the chart. ” [Congressional Record, 6/27/05; Delaware County Daily Times, 8/12/05; Fox News, 8/22/05] However, a spokesman for Hadley later disputes this account, and says, “Mr. Hadley does not recall any chart bearing the name or photo of Mohamed Atta. [National Security Council] staff reviewed the files of Mr. Hadley as well as of all [National Security Council] personnel... That search has turned up no chart.” [Washington Post, 9/24/05] Rep. Dan Burton ® later recalls attending the meeting and remembers the chart, but can't recall if Atta was on it or not. [New York Times, 10/1/05] Curt Weldon also later claims that the copy of the chart he gives to Hadley is his only one. [Time, 8/14/05] However, apparently contradicting this, Weldon will give a speech in 2002 showing the chart.
People and organizations involved: Able Danger, Mohamed Atta, al-Qaeda, Dan Burton, Stephen Hadley, Central Intelligence Agency, Special Operations Command, Curt Weldon, Information Dominance Center
October 11, 2001: Early Account of Able Danger Remains Classified
Dr. Eileen Preisser testifies before a congressional briefing. Dr. Preisser was one of four analysts in the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) supporting Able Danger in late 1999 and 2000 (see Fall 1999). While her testimony remains classified, the next day, Representative Christopher Shays ® gives a brief summary: “In a briefing we had yesterday, we had Eileen [Preisser], who argues that we don't have the data we need because we don't take all the public data that is available and mix it with the security data. And just taking public data, using, you know, computer systems that are high-speed and able to digest, you know, literally floors' worth of material, she can take relationships that are seven times removed, seven units removed, and when she does that, she ends up with relationships to the bin Laden group where she sees the purchase of chemicals, the sending of students to universities. You wouldn't see it if you isolated it there, but if that unit is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, you then see the relationship. So we don't know ultimately the authenticity of how she does it, but when she does it, she comes up with the kind of answer that you have just asked, which is a little unsettling.” [House of Representatives Hearings, 10/12/01 Sources: Christopher Shays] Note that according to some media accounts, the CIA monitored Mohamed Atta purchasing large quantities of chemicals in Germany in the spring of 2000 (see January-May 2000). Atta also sends a series of e-mails to the US in the spring of 2000, inquiring about flight school opportunities for himself and a “small group” of his associates (see January-March 2000). Dr. Preisser is apparently willing to testify about her role in how Able Danger uncovered Atta's name, but in September 2005 she is prohibited from publicly testifying before Congress (see September 21, 2005).
People and organizations involved: Eileen Preisser, al-Qaeda
May 23, 2002: Rep. Curt Weldon Said to Show Able Danger Chart in Public Speech
A blurry image of the chart Rep. Curt Weldon presented to the Heritage Foundation in 2002.
During a speech before the Heritage Foundation, Rep. Curt Weldon ® unfurls a chart, which, his comments suggest, was produced by Able Danger. He says it is “the unclassified chart that was done by the Special Forces Command briefing center one year before 9/11. It is the complete architecture of al-Qaeda and pan-Islamic extremism. It gives all the linkages.” However, he does not mention Mohamed Atta or any other 9/11 hijackers during the speech. Video footage of the speech shows the chart, but picture quality is too poor to determine whether Atta is on it. [NewsMax, 8/29/05] Weldon later claims to have given up his only copy of the chart showing Atta's face in late 2001. [Time, 8/14/05] In September 2005, Weldon will refer to the chart shown in this 2002 speech and suggest it may not have been the same chart that contained Atta's face. He also says he can't find the chart used in the speech anymore. [Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Curt Weldon, Heritage Foundation, Able Danger, al-Qaeda, Special Operations Command
October 21, 2003: 9/11 Commission Staff Meet Member of Able Danger Unit
Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, along with two members of the commission's staff, meets at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with three individuals doing intelligence work for the US Defense Department. [CNN, 8/17/05] Among these is Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army intelligence officer who worked closely with a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which between fall 1999 and spring 2001 was tasked with assembling information about al-Qaeda networks around the world (see Fall 1999; Early 2001) . According to Shaffer's own later account, he gives the commission staff a detailed account of what Able Danger was, and tells them, “We found two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, to include [Mohamed] Atta.” At the end of the meeting, Philip Zelikow approaches him and says, “This is important. We need to continue this dialogue when we get back to the states. ” [Government Security News, 9/05] Following the meeting, Zelikow calls back to the 9/11 Commission's headquarters in Washington to request that staff draft a document request, seeking information on Able Danger from the Department of Defense. [Kean-Hamilton statement, 8/12/05] According to Anthony Shaffer, “My understanding from talking to another member of the press is that [Zelikow's] call came into America at four o clock in the morning. He got people out of bed over this.” [Government Security News, 9/05] Shaffer subsequently tries contacting Philip Zelikow in January 2004 (see Early January 2004). Spokesmen for the commission members contradict Shaffer's account, claiming that, while they are told of the existence of Able Danger at this briefing, they aren't informed that it had identified Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers as threats. [New York Times, 8/10/05] An official statement says that a memorandum prepared by the commission staff after the meeting “does not record any mention of Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers, or any suggestion that their identities were known to anyone at DOD before 9/11. Nor do any of the three Commission staffers who participated in the interview, or the executive branch lawyer, recall hearing any such allegation.” [Kean-Hamilton statement, 8/12/05]
People and organizations involved: US Department of Defense, Anthony Shaffer, Able Danger, Mohamed Atta, 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow
Early 2004: Weldon Fails to Convince 9/11 Commission to Look into Data Mining Programs
Rep. Curt Weldon ® is not yet familiar with Able Danger, though he will help bring information about the program to light in 2005. However, he is familiar with the closely related Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) program, having had dealings with it before 9/11. He says he is frustrated at the apparent lack of understanding about programs like LIWA based on the lines of questioning at public 9/11 Commission hearings in early 2004, so, “On at least four occasions, I personally tried to brief the 9/11 Commissioners on: NOAH [Weldon's pre-9/11 suggestion to have a National Operations and Analysis Hub]; integrative data collaboration capabilities; my frustration with intelligence stovepipes; and al-Qaeda analysis. However, I was never able to achieve more than a five-minute telephone conversation with Commissioner Thomas Kean. On March 24, 2004, I also had my Chief of Staff personally hand deliver a document about LIWA, along [with] questions for George Tenet to the Commission, but neither was ever used.” [Curt Weldon Statement, 9/21/05] He says, “The next week, they sent a staffer over to pick up some additional materials about the NIWA, about the concept, and about information I had briefed them on. They never followed up and invited me to come in and meet with them. So they can't say that I didn't try.” [Curt Weldon Press Conference, 9/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Land Information Warfare Activity, 9/11 Commission, Curt Weldon, George Tenet, Thomas Kean
Early January 2004: Able Danger Intelligence Officer Tries Contacting 9/11 Commission
Following an October 2003 meeting with three members of the 9/11 Commission's staff (see October 21, 2003), Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer tries contacting Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, as requested by Zelikow himself. Shaffer is an Army intelligence officer who worked closely with a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which identified Mohamed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers in early 2000 (see January-February 2000). He phones Zelikow's number the first week of January 2004. The person who replies tells him, “I will talk to Dr. Zelikow and find out when he wants you to come in.” However, Shaffer receives no call back, so a week later he phones again. This time, the person who answers him says, “Dr. Zelikow tells me that he does not see the need for you to come in. We have all the information on Able Danger.” [Government Security News, 9/05] Yet the commission doesn't even receive the Able Danger documentation they had previously requested from the Defense Department until the following month (see February 2004). [Kean-Hamilton statement, 8/12/05]
People and organizations involved: Anthony Shaffer, Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Commission, Able Danger, Philip Zelikow
February 2004: 9/11 Commission Receives Documentation Relating to Able Danger Program
The 9/11 Commission receives documents that it had requested from the Department of Defense, relating to a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which had allegedly identified Mohamed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the attacks. [New York Times, 8/9/05; Norristown Times Herald, 8/13/05] The commission requested the documents in November 2003, after a meeting in Afghanistan with Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army intelligence officer who had worked closely with the unit (see October 21, 2003). Some documents are given directly to the commission, others are available for review in a Department of Defense reading room, where commission staff make notes summarizing them. Some of the documents include diagrams of Islamic militant networks. However, an official statement later claims, “None of the documents turned over to the Commission mention Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers. Nor do any of the staff notes on documents reviewed in the DOD reading room indicate that Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers were mentioned in any of those documents. ” [Kean-Hamilton statement, 8/12/05; Washington Post, 8/13/05] Shaffer responds, “I'm told confidently by the person who moved the material over, that the Sept. 11 commission received two briefcase-sized containers of documents. I can tell you for a fact that would not be one-twentieth of the information that Able Danger consisted of during the time we spent.” [Fox News, 8/17/05]
People and organizations involved: Anthony Shaffer, Able Danger, 9/11 Commission, US Department of Defense
This page shows all events that either reference, or are referenced by, the event 'March 2004'.
March 2004: Able Danger Intelligence Officer Has Security Clearance Suspended Complete 911 Timeline
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army intelligence officer who worked closely with a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, has his security clearance suspended for what his lawyer later describes as “petty and frivolous” reasons, including a dispute over mileage reimbursement and charges for personal calls on a work cell phone. [Fox News, 8/19/05] According to Shaffer, allegations are made against him over $67 in phone charges, which he accumulated over 18 months. He says, “Even though when they told me about this issue, I offered to pay it back, they chose instead to spend in our estimation $400,000 to investigate all these issues simply to drum up this information.” No formal action is ever taken against Shaffer, and later in the year the Army promotes him to lieutenant colonel. [Fox News, 8/17/05; Government Security News, 9/05] A few months previous, Shaffer had met with staff from the 9/11 Commission, and allegedly informed them that Able Danger had, more than a year before the attacks, identified two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, including Mohamed Atta (see October 21, 2003). According to Shaffer's lawyer, it is because of him having his security clearance suspended that he does not later have any documentation relating to Able Danger. [Fox News, 8/19/05] Rep. Curt Weldon ® will later comment, “In January of 2004 when [Shaffer] was twice rebuffed by the 9/11 Commission for a personal follow-up meeting, he was assigned back to Afghanistan to lead a special classified program. When he returned in March, he was called in and verbally his security clearance was temporarily lifted. By lifting his security clearance, he could not go back into DIA quarters where all the materials he had about Able Danger were, in fact, stored. He could not get access to memos that, in fact, he will tell you discussed the briefings he provided both to the previous administration and this administration.” [Fox News, 8/19/05] These documents Shaffer are trying to reach are destroyed by the DIA roughly around this time (see Spring 2004). In September 2005, Shaffer has his security clearance revoked, just two days before he is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Able Danger's activities (see September 19, 2005).
People and organizations involved: Curt Weldon, Anthony Shaffer, Able Danger
Spring 2004: DIA Destroys Copies of Able Danger Documents
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, DC apparently destroys duplicate copies of documentation relating to a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, for unknown reasons. The documents had been maintained by one of the DIA's employees, intelligence officer Anthony Shaffer. [Mark Zaid Statement, 9/21/05] The Able Danger unit was established in fall 1999, to assemble information about al-Qaeda networks worldwide (see Fall 1999). Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer had served as a liaison officer between the unit and the DIA. [New York Times, 8/17/05; Guardian, 8/18/05] Able Danger allegedly identified Mohamed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers more than a year before th
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New York Times
November 6, 2005
Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al 8Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.’’
The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi’s statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration’s misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence.
An administration official declined to comment on the D.I.A. report on Mr. Libi. But Senate Republicans, put on the defensive when Democrats forced a closed session of the Senate this week to discuss the issue, have been arguing that Republicans were not alone in making prewar assertions about Iraq, illicit weapons and terrorism that have since been discredited.
Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan at the end of 2001, recanted his claims in January 2004. That prompted the C.I.A., a month later, to recall all intelligence reports based on his statements, a fact recorded in a footnote to the report issued by the Sept. 11 commission.
Mr. Libi was not alone among intelligence sources later determined to have been fabricating accounts. Among others, an Iraqi exile whose code name was Curveball was the primary source for what proved to be false information about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs. And American military officials cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group, who has been accused of feeding the Pentagon misleading information in urging war.
The report issued by the Senate intelligence committee in July 2004 questioned whether some versions of intelligence report prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libi’s claims.
But neither that report nor another issued by the Sept. 11 commission made any reference to the existence of the earlier and more skeptical 2002 report by the D.I.A., which supplies intelligence to military commanders and national security policy makers. As an official intelligence report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, the document would have circulated widely within the government, and it would have been available to the C.I.A., the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies. It remains unclear whether the D.I.A. document was provided to the Senate panel.
In outlining reasons for its skepticism, the D.I.A. report noted that Mr. Libi’s claims lacked specific details about the Iraqis involved, the illicit weapons used and the location where the training was to have taken place.
“It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers,’’ the February 2002 report said. “Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.’’
Mr. Powell relied heavily on accounts provided by Mr. Libi for his speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing “the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda.’’
At the time of Mr. Powell’s speech, an unclassified statement by the C.I.A. described the reporting, now known to have been from Mr. Libi, as “credible.’’ But Mr. Levin said he had learned that a classified C.I.A. assessment at the time stated “the source was not in a position to know if any training had taken place.’’
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Levin also called attention to a portion of the D.I.A. report that expressed skepticism about the idea of close collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, an idea that was never substantiated by American intelligence but was a pillar of the administration’s prewar claims.
“Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements,’’ the D.I.A. report said in one of two declassified paragraphs. “Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.’’
The request to declassify the two paragraphs was made on Oct. 18 by Mr. Levin and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee. In an Oct. 26 response, Kathleen P. Turner, chief of the D.I.A.’s office for Congressional affairs, said the agency “can find no reason for it to remain classified.’’
At the time of his capture, Mr. Libi was the most senior Qaeda official in American custody. The D.I.A. document gave no indication of where he was being held, or what interrogation methods were used on him.
Mr. Libi remains in custody, apparently at Guantбnamo Bay, Cuba, where he was sent in 2003, according to government officials.
The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to meet beginning next week to review draft reports prepared as part of a long-postponed “Phase II’’ of the panel’s review of prewar intelligence on Iraq. At separate briefings for reporters on Friday, Republicans staff members said the writing had long been under way, while Senate Democrats on the committee claimed credit for reinvigorating the process, by forcing the closed session. They said that already nearly complete is a look at whether prewar intelligence accurately predicted the potential for an anti-American insurgency.
Other areas of focus include the role played by the Iraqi National Congress, that of the Pentagon in shaping intelligence assessments, and an examination of whether public statements about Iraq by members of the Bush and Clinton administrations, as well as members of Congress, were substantiated by intelligence available at the time.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
New York Times
November 6, 2005
Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al 8Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.’’
The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi’s statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration’s misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence.
An administration official declined to comment on the D.I.A. report on Mr. Libi. But Senate Republicans, put on the defensive when Democrats forced a closed session of the Senate this week to discuss the issue, have been arguing that Republicans were not alone in making prewar assertions about Iraq, illicit weapons and terrorism that have since been discredited.
Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan at the end of 2001, recanted his claims in January 2004. That prompted the C.I.A., a month later, to recall all intelligence reports based on his statements, a fact recorded in a footnote to the report issued by the Sept. 11 commission.
Mr. Libi was not alone among intelligence sources later determined to have been fabricating accounts. Among others, an Iraqi exile whose code name was Curveball was the primary source for what proved to be false information about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs. And American military officials cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group, who has been accused of feeding the Pentagon misleading information in urging war.
The report issued by the Senate intelligence committee in July 2004 questioned whether some versions of intelligence report prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libi’s claims.
But neither that report nor another issued by the Sept. 11 commission made any reference to the existence of the earlier and more skeptical 2002 report by the D.I.A., which supplies intelligence to military commanders and national security policy makers. As an official intelligence report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, the document would have circulated widely within the government, and it would have been available to the C.I.A., the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies. It remains unclear whether the D.I.A. document was provided to the Senate panel.
In outlining reasons for its skepticism, the D.I.A. report noted that Mr. Libi’s claims lacked specific details about the Iraqis involved, the illicit weapons used and the location where the training was to have taken place.
“It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers,’’ the February 2002 report said. “Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.’’
Mr. Powell relied heavily on accounts provided by Mr. Libi for his speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing “the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda.’’
At the time of Mr. Powell’s speech, an unclassified statement by the C.I.A. described the reporting, now known to have been from Mr. Libi, as “credible.’’ But Mr. Levin said he had learned that a classified C.I.A. assessment at the time stated “the source was not in a position to know if any training had taken place.’’
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Levin also called attention to a portion of the D.I.A. report that expressed skepticism about the idea of close collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, an idea that was never substantiated by American intelligence but was a pillar of the administration’s prewar claims.
“Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements,’’ the D.I.A. report said in one of two declassified paragraphs. “Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.’’
The request to declassify the two paragraphs was made on Oct. 18 by Mr. Levin and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee. In an Oct. 26 response, Kathleen P. Turner, chief of the D.I.A.’s office for Congressional affairs, said the agency “can find no reason for it to remain classified.’’
At the time of his capture, Mr. Libi was the most senior Qaeda official in American custody. The D.I.A. document gave no indication of where he was being held, or what interrogation methods were used on him.
Mr. Libi remains in custody, apparently at Guantбnamo Bay, Cuba, where he was sent in 2003, according to government officials.
The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to meet beginning next week to review draft reports prepared as part of a long-postponed “Phase II’’ of the panel’s review of prewar intelligence on Iraq. At separate briefings for reporters on Friday, Republicans staff members said the writing had long been under way, while Senate Democrats on the committee claimed credit for reinvigorating the process, by forcing the closed session. They said that already nearly complete is a look at whether prewar intelligence accurately predicted the potential for an anti-American insurgency.
Other areas of focus include the role played by the Iraqi National Congress, that of the Pentagon in shaping intelligence assessments, and an examination of whether public statements about Iraq by members of the Bush and Clinton administrations, as well as members of Congress, were substantiated by intelligence available at the time.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1859288,00.html
The Sunday Times November 06, 2005
‘Gulag’ leak from CIA men
Tony Allen-Mills
EASTERN European countries were yesterday scrambling to distance themselves from the CIA as officials in Washington searched for the source of an embarrassing leak that exposed a programme of secret jails for terrorist detainees.
Claims that the CIA has been hiding prominent Al-Qaeda members at a so-called “black site” facility in eastern Europe have prompted angry denials from Romania, Poland and Albania.
As details emerged yesterday of CIA flights to remote military airfields in northeast Poland and southeast Romania, George W Bush’s administration ordered an internal inquiry into how classified data was leaked to The Washington Post and Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group.
Senior intelligence sources blamed the leak on CIA officers unhappy at having to maintain what one former counter-terrorism official described as “secret gulags”.
The prisons are believed to hold at least 30 Al-Qaeda leaders labelled “ghost detainees” by Human Rights Watch. Many no longer have any intelligence value, but the CIA has been ordered to shield them from international scrutiny or legal proceedings.
The publication of flight logs detailing CIA movements has focused attention on a former military base at Szczytno-Szymany in Poland.
Polish officials acknowledged that a Boeing 737 carrying seven Americans landed at the base in September 2003 and took five others on board. The plane continued to the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in Romania, then to the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Poland and Romania said the plane’s stops had nothing to do with prisoner transfers. Other sources said Albania or Macedonia might have co-operated with the CIA.
The Sunday Times November 06, 2005
‘Gulag’ leak from CIA men
Tony Allen-Mills
EASTERN European countries were yesterday scrambling to distance themselves from the CIA as officials in Washington searched for the source of an embarrassing leak that exposed a programme of secret jails for terrorist detainees.
Claims that the CIA has been hiding prominent Al-Qaeda members at a so-called “black site” facility in eastern Europe have prompted angry denials from Romania, Poland and Albania.
As details emerged yesterday of CIA flights to remote military airfields in northeast Poland and southeast Romania, George W Bush’s administration ordered an internal inquiry into how classified data was leaked to The Washington Post and Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group.
Senior intelligence sources blamed the leak on CIA officers unhappy at having to maintain what one former counter-terrorism official described as “secret gulags”.
The prisons are believed to hold at least 30 Al-Qaeda leaders labelled “ghost detainees” by Human Rights Watch. Many no longer have any intelligence value, but the CIA has been ordered to shield them from international scrutiny or legal proceedings.
The publication of flight logs detailing CIA movements has focused attention on a former military base at Szczytno-Szymany in Poland.
Polish officials acknowledged that a Boeing 737 carrying seven Americans landed at the base in September 2003 and took five others on board. The plane continued to the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in Romania, then to the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Poland and Romania said the plane’s stops had nothing to do with prisoner transfers. Other sources said Albania or Macedonia might have co-operated with the CIA.
Newly Released Data Undercut Prewar Claims
By Walter Pincus
In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned the reliability of a captured top al Qaeda operative whose allegations became the basis of Bush administration claims that terrorists had been trained in the use of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, according to declassified material released by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).
Referring to the first interrogation report on al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the DIA took note that the Libyan terrorist could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training occurred. As a result, "it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," a DIA report concluded.
In fact, in January 2004 al-Libi recanted his claims, and in February 2004 the CIA withdrew all intelligence reports based on his information. By then, the United States and its coalition partners had invaded Iraq.
Levin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he arranged for the material to be declassified by the DIA last month. At the same time that the administration was linking Baghdad to al Qaeda, he said, the DIA and other intelligence agencies were privately raising questions about the sources underlying the claims.
Since then, Levin said in an interview Friday, almost all government intelligence on whether Iraq pursued or possessed weapons of mass destruction has proved faulty. In addition to the allegation of training terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden, there were government claims that then-Iraq President Saddam Hussein had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, that he had reconstituted his nuclear weapons programs, and that unmanned airborne vehicles posed a threat, Levin said.
He said that he could not be certain that White House officials read the DIA report, but his "presumption" was that someone at the National Security Council saw it because it was sent there.
Administration officials declined to comment for this article.
Levin noted in a prepared statement that, beginning in September 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell used the alleged chemical and biological training by Baghdad as valid intelligence in speeches and public appearances to gather support for the Iraq war.
In none of the speeches or appearances was reference made to the DIA questioning the reliability of the source of the claims, Levin said. The doubts about al-Libi were contained in the DIA's February 2002 "Defense Intelligence Terrorist Summary,"which was sent to the White House and the National Security Council and circulated among U.S. intelligence agencies.
"The newly declassified information provides additional dramatic evidence that the administration's prewar statements regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda represents an incredible deception," Levin said.
Levin pointed specifically to an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in which the president outlined what he said was the "grave threat" from Iraq days before the House and Senate voted on a resolution giving him the authority to go to war.
"We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," Bush said, an assertion that was based, according to Levin, primarily on al-Libi's material. Other less important intelligence on the training of al Qaeda members, carried in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, also came from questionable sources, Levin said.
Bush also said in his October 2002 speech: "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade." Levin said the DIA's declassified February 2002 report points out that "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."
"Just imagine," Levin said, "the public impact of that DIA conclusion if it had been disclosed at the time. It surely could have made a difference in the congressional vote authorizing the war."
Levin also pointed out that before the war, the CIA had its own reservations about al-Libi, although the agency did not note them in its publicly distributed unclassified statements. In those, Levin said, it described the source -- without naming al-Libi -- as "credible." In the classified version, however, the CIA added that the source "was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."
Levin said: "Imagine if the president or the others had added that the source of the information might have been making it up for his questioners or wasn't in a position to know. . . . Would he have delivered that in his speech?"
Levin said he first obtained the DIA document as part of his continuing investigation as an Armed Services panel member into intelligence activities that took place within the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Feith's Office of Special Plans undertook a review and analyses of prewar al Qaeda intelligence.
Levin said Friday that he was not aware whether the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he also serves, has the document. That panel did not have the DIA document in July 2004 when it completed its Phase 1 report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
The committee is now conducting its second-phase investigation of the use of Iraq intelligence, one part of which is to compare prewar public statements by officials and members of Congress with the information known at the time.
Levin took part in a news conference Friday with two other intelligence committee Democrats in which they raised questions about whether the panel had received all the classified material on Iraq, including the February 2002 DIA publication, that Bush administration officials had when they made their public statements.
At that news conference, Levin urged that the process be slowed down to make sure the committee had gathered all the intelligence material.
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By Walter Pincus
In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned the reliability of a captured top al Qaeda operative whose allegations became the basis of Bush administration claims that terrorists had been trained in the use of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, according to declassified material released by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).
Referring to the first interrogation report on al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the DIA took note that the Libyan terrorist could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training occurred. As a result, "it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," a DIA report concluded.
In fact, in January 2004 al-Libi recanted his claims, and in February 2004 the CIA withdrew all intelligence reports based on his information. By then, the United States and its coalition partners had invaded Iraq.
Levin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he arranged for the material to be declassified by the DIA last month. At the same time that the administration was linking Baghdad to al Qaeda, he said, the DIA and other intelligence agencies were privately raising questions about the sources underlying the claims.
Since then, Levin said in an interview Friday, almost all government intelligence on whether Iraq pursued or possessed weapons of mass destruction has proved faulty. In addition to the allegation of training terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden, there were government claims that then-Iraq President Saddam Hussein had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, that he had reconstituted his nuclear weapons programs, and that unmanned airborne vehicles posed a threat, Levin said.
He said that he could not be certain that White House officials read the DIA report, but his "presumption" was that someone at the National Security Council saw it because it was sent there.
Administration officials declined to comment for this article.
Levin noted in a prepared statement that, beginning in September 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell used the alleged chemical and biological training by Baghdad as valid intelligence in speeches and public appearances to gather support for the Iraq war.
In none of the speeches or appearances was reference made to the DIA questioning the reliability of the source of the claims, Levin said. The doubts about al-Libi were contained in the DIA's February 2002 "Defense Intelligence Terrorist Summary,"which was sent to the White House and the National Security Council and circulated among U.S. intelligence agencies.
"The newly declassified information provides additional dramatic evidence that the administration's prewar statements regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda represents an incredible deception," Levin said.
Levin pointed specifically to an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in which the president outlined what he said was the "grave threat" from Iraq days before the House and Senate voted on a resolution giving him the authority to go to war.
"We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," Bush said, an assertion that was based, according to Levin, primarily on al-Libi's material. Other less important intelligence on the training of al Qaeda members, carried in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, also came from questionable sources, Levin said.
Bush also said in his October 2002 speech: "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade." Levin said the DIA's declassified February 2002 report points out that "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."
"Just imagine," Levin said, "the public impact of that DIA conclusion if it had been disclosed at the time. It surely could have made a difference in the congressional vote authorizing the war."
Levin also pointed out that before the war, the CIA had its own reservations about al-Libi, although the agency did not note them in its publicly distributed unclassified statements. In those, Levin said, it described the source -- without naming al-Libi -- as "credible." In the classified version, however, the CIA added that the source "was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."
Levin said: "Imagine if the president or the others had added that the source of the information might have been making it up for his questioners or wasn't in a position to know. . . . Would he have delivered that in his speech?"
Levin said he first obtained the DIA document as part of his continuing investigation as an Armed Services panel member into intelligence activities that took place within the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Feith's Office of Special Plans undertook a review and analyses of prewar al Qaeda intelligence.
Levin said Friday that he was not aware whether the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he also serves, has the document. That panel did not have the DIA document in July 2004 when it completed its Phase 1 report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
The committee is now conducting its second-phase investigation of the use of Iraq intelligence, one part of which is to compare prewar public statements by officials and members of Congress with the information known at the time.
Levin took part in a news conference Friday with two other intelligence committee Democrats in which they raised questions about whether the panel had received all the classified material on Iraq, including the February 2002 DIA publication, that Bush administration officials had when they made their public statements.
At that news conference, Levin urged that the process be slowed down to make sure the committee had gathered all the intelligence material.
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Torture ban applies to all prisoners, Bush aide says
Officials: Covert prisons hold al-Qaida suspects
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.
While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military — which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress — have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.
Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.
The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.
Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.
"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. "Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?'"
It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.
The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency's prisons.
More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.
The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.
About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category — in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay — were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
A second tier — which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees — is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.
Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.
The top 30 al-Qaida prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.
Most of the facilities were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the chairman and vice chairman of the House and Senate intelligence committees on the program's generalities.
The Eastern European countries that the CIA has persuaded to hide al-Qaida captives are democracies that have embraced the rule of law and individual rights after decades of Soviet domination. Each has been trying to cleanse its intelligence services of operatives who have worked on behalf of others — mainly Russia and organized crime.
Origins of the Black Sites
The idea of holding terrorists outside the U.S. legal system was not under consideration before Sept. 11, 2001, not even for Osama bin Laden, according to former government officials. The plan was to bring bin Laden and his top associates into the U.S. justice system for trial or to send them to foreign countries where they would be tried.
"The issue of detaining and interrogating people was never, ever discussed," said a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, during that period. "It was against the culture and they believed information was best gleaned by other means."
On the day of the attacks, the CIA already had a list of what it called High-Value Targets from the al-Qaida structure, and as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack plots were unraveled, more names were added to the list. The question of what to do with these people surfaced quickly.
The CTC's chief of operations argued for creating hit teams of case officers and CIA paramilitaries that would covertly infiltrate countries in the Middle East, Africa and even Europe to assassinate people on the list, one by one.
But many CIA officers believed that the al-Qaida leadership would be worth keeping alive to interrogate about their network and other plots. Some officers worried that the CIA would not be very adept at assassination.
"We'd probably shoot ourselves," another former senior CIA official said.
The agency set up prisons under its covert action authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a covert action, by signing a document called a presidential finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal advisers.
Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al-Qaida anywhere in the world.
It could not be determined whether Bush approved a separate finding for the black-sites program, but the consensus among current and former intelligence and other government officials interviewed for this article is that he did not have to.
Rather, they believe that the CIA general counsel's office acted within the parameters of the Sept. 17 finding. The black site program was approved by a small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials, according to several former and current U.S. government and intelligence officials.
Deals With 2 Countries
Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for security and logistics reasons.
CIA officers also searched for a setting like Alcatraz Island. They considered the virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia, which were edged with craggy cliffs and covered in woods. But poor sanitary conditions could easily lead to fatal diseases, they decided, and besides, they wondered, could the Zambians be trusted with such a secret?
Still without a long-term solution, the CIA began sending suspects it captured in the first month or so after Sept. 11 to its longtime partners, the intelligence services of Egypt and Jordan.
A month later, the CIA found itself with hundreds of prisoners who were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan. A short-term solution was improvised. The agency shoved its highest-value prisoners into metal shipping containers set up on a corner of the Bagram Air Base, which was surrounded with a triple perimeter of concertina-wire fencing. Most prisoners were left in the hands of the Northern Alliance, U.S.-supported opposition forces who were fighting the Taliban.
"I remember asking: What are we going to do with these people?" said a senior CIA officer. "I kept saying, where's the help? We've got to bring in some help. We can't be jailers — our job is to find Osama."
Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would be used for CIA prisoners.
The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras and tough Afghan guards, but the road leading to it was not safe to travel and the jail was eventually moved inside Bagram Air Base. It has since been relocated off the base.
By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black site deals with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern European nation, current and former officials said. An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.
Then the CIA captured its first big detainee, in March 28, 2002. Pakistani forces took Abu Zubaida, al-Qaida's operations chief, into custody and the CIA whisked him to the new black site in Thailand, which included underground interrogation cells, said several former and current intelligence officials. Six months later, Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh was also captured in Pakistan and flown to Thailand.
But after published reports revealed the existence of the site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it down, and the two terrorists were moved elsewhere, according to former government officials involved in the matter. Work between the two countries on counterterrorism has been lukewarm ever since.
In late 2002 or early 2003, the CIA brokered deals with other countries to establish black-site prisons. One of these sites — which sources said they believed to be the CIA's biggest facility now — became particularly important when the agency realized it would have a growing number of prisoners and a shrinking number of prisons.
Thailand was closed, and sometime in 2004 the CIA decided it had to give up its small site at Guantanamo Bay. The CIA had planned to convert that into a state-of-the-art facility, operated independently of the military. The CIA pulled out when U.S. courts began to exercise greater control over the military detainees, and agency officials feared judges would soon extend the same type of supervision over their detainees.
In hindsight, say some former and current intelligence officials, the CIA's problems were exacerbated by another decision made within the Counterterrorist Center at Langley, Va.
The CIA program's original scope was to hide and interrogate the two dozen or so al-Qaida leaders believed to be directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, or who posed an imminent threat, or had knowledge of the larger al-Qaida network. But as the volume of leads pouring into the CTC from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and former officials.
The original standard for consigning suspects to the invisible universe was lowered or ignored, they said. "They've got many, many more who don't reach any threshold," one intelligence official said.
Several former and current intelligence officials, as well as several other U.S. government officials with knowledge of the program, express frustration that the White House and the leaders of the intelligence community have not made it a priority to decide whether the secret internment program should continue in its current form, or be replaced by some other approach.
Meanwhile, the debate over the wisdom of the program continues among CIA officers, some of whom also argue that the secrecy surrounding the program is not sustainable.
"It's just a horrible burden," said the intelligence official.
Torture ban applies to all prisoners, Bush aide says
Officials: Covert prisons hold al-Qaida suspects
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.
While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military — which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress — have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.
Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.
The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.
Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.
"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. "Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?'"
It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.
The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency's prisons.
More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.
The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.
About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category — in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay — were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
A second tier — which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees — is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.
Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.
The top 30 al-Qaida prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.
Most of the facilities were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the chairman and vice chairman of the House and Senate intelligence committees on the program's generalities.
The Eastern European countries that the CIA has persuaded to hide al-Qaida captives are democracies that have embraced the rule of law and individual rights after decades of Soviet domination. Each has been trying to cleanse its intelligence services of operatives who have worked on behalf of others — mainly Russia and organized crime.
Origins of the Black Sites
The idea of holding terrorists outside the U.S. legal system was not under consideration before Sept. 11, 2001, not even for Osama bin Laden, according to former government officials. The plan was to bring bin Laden and his top associates into the U.S. justice system for trial or to send them to foreign countries where they would be tried.
"The issue of detaining and interrogating people was never, ever discussed," said a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, during that period. "It was against the culture and they believed information was best gleaned by other means."
On the day of the attacks, the CIA already had a list of what it called High-Value Targets from the al-Qaida structure, and as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack plots were unraveled, more names were added to the list. The question of what to do with these people surfaced quickly.
The CTC's chief of operations argued for creating hit teams of case officers and CIA paramilitaries that would covertly infiltrate countries in the Middle East, Africa and even Europe to assassinate people on the list, one by one.
But many CIA officers believed that the al-Qaida leadership would be worth keeping alive to interrogate about their network and other plots. Some officers worried that the CIA would not be very adept at assassination.
"We'd probably shoot ourselves," another former senior CIA official said.
The agency set up prisons under its covert action authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a covert action, by signing a document called a presidential finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal advisers.
Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al-Qaida anywhere in the world.
It could not be determined whether Bush approved a separate finding for the black-sites program, but the consensus among current and former intelligence and other government officials interviewed for this article is that he did not have to.
Rather, they believe that the CIA general counsel's office acted within the parameters of the Sept. 17 finding. The black site program was approved by a small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials, according to several former and current U.S. government and intelligence officials.
Deals With 2 Countries
Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for security and logistics reasons.
CIA officers also searched for a setting like Alcatraz Island. They considered the virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia, which were edged with craggy cliffs and covered in woods. But poor sanitary conditions could easily lead to fatal diseases, they decided, and besides, they wondered, could the Zambians be trusted with such a secret?
Still without a long-term solution, the CIA began sending suspects it captured in the first month or so after Sept. 11 to its longtime partners, the intelligence services of Egypt and Jordan.
A month later, the CIA found itself with hundreds of prisoners who were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan. A short-term solution was improvised. The agency shoved its highest-value prisoners into metal shipping containers set up on a corner of the Bagram Air Base, which was surrounded with a triple perimeter of concertina-wire fencing. Most prisoners were left in the hands of the Northern Alliance, U.S.-supported opposition forces who were fighting the Taliban.
"I remember asking: What are we going to do with these people?" said a senior CIA officer. "I kept saying, where's the help? We've got to bring in some help. We can't be jailers — our job is to find Osama."
Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would be used for CIA prisoners.
The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras and tough Afghan guards, but the road leading to it was not safe to travel and the jail was eventually moved inside Bagram Air Base. It has since been relocated off the base.
By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black site deals with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern European nation, current and former officials said. An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.
Then the CIA captured its first big detainee, in March 28, 2002. Pakistani forces took Abu Zubaida, al-Qaida's operations chief, into custody and the CIA whisked him to the new black site in Thailand, which included underground interrogation cells, said several former and current intelligence officials. Six months later, Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh was also captured in Pakistan and flown to Thailand.
But after published reports revealed the existence of the site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it down, and the two terrorists were moved elsewhere, according to former government officials involved in the matter. Work between the two countries on counterterrorism has been lukewarm ever since.
In late 2002 or early 2003, the CIA brokered deals with other countries to establish black-site prisons. One of these sites — which sources said they believed to be the CIA's biggest facility now — became particularly important when the agency realized it would have a growing number of prisoners and a shrinking number of prisons.
Thailand was closed, and sometime in 2004 the CIA decided it had to give up its small site at Guantanamo Bay. The CIA had planned to convert that into a state-of-the-art facility, operated independently of the military. The CIA pulled out when U.S. courts began to exercise greater control over the military detainees, and agency officials feared judges would soon extend the same type of supervision over their detainees.
In hindsight, say some former and current intelligence officials, the CIA's problems were exacerbated by another decision made within the Counterterrorist Center at Langley, Va.
The CIA program's original scope was to hide and interrogate the two dozen or so al-Qaida leaders believed to be directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, or who posed an imminent threat, or had knowledge of the larger al-Qaida network. But as the volume of leads pouring into the CTC from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and former officials.
The original standard for consigning suspects to the invisible universe was lowered or ignored, they said. "They've got many, many more who don't reach any threshold," one intelligence official said.
Several former and current intelligence officials, as well as several other U.S. government officials with knowledge of the program, express frustration that the White House and the leaders of the intelligence community have not made it a priority to decide whether the secret internment program should continue in its current form, or be replaced by some other approach.
Meanwhile, the debate over the wisdom of the program continues among CIA officers, some of whom also argue that the secrecy surrounding the program is not sustainable.
"It's just a horrible burden," said the intelligence official.
LEVIN: NEW INFO SHOWS WHITE HOUSE MISSTATED IRAQ INTEL
Even as the Bush Administration was claiming that Iraq aided
al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons efforts, the source
for those claims was deemed unreliable by U.S. intelligence,
according to a release from Senator Carl Levin.
"Newly declassified information from the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) from February 2002 shows that, at the same time the
Administration was making its case for attacking Iraq, the DIA did
not trust or believe the source of the Administration's repeated
assertions that Iraq had provided al-Qaeda with chemical and
biological weapons training," the November 6 news release said.
"Additional newly declassified information from the DIA also
undermines the Administration's broader claim that there were
strong links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda."
A copy of Senator Levin's release and the supporting documents,
which were reported in the New York Times and the Washington Post
on November 6, may be found here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/11/levin110605.html
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita, quoted on CNN, said that the
DIA report Levin cited was taken "out of context, without the
analysis or any other indication as to how it may have factored
in."
Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee outlined
their expectations for the conduct of an investigation into the
Administration's handling of pre-war intelligence at a November 4
press briefing. See this release:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/11/rock110405.html
LATEST ISSUES OF WORLD LAW BULLETIN
The three most recent issues of World Law Bulletin, produced by the
Law Library of Congress but not publicly disseminated, have been
obtained by Secrecy News.
Topics addressed include "Israel's Construction of a Barrier in the
West Bank and the Impact of the International Court of Justice
Advisory Opinion" (October 2005), "Women's Rights Under Shari'ah
(Islamic Law)" (August 2005), "Recent Developments in the European
Union," and much more. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/wlb/index.html
INADVERTENT DISCLOSURES OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS INFO
Between May and August 2005, Department of Energy reviewers
examined approximately 2.9 million pages that had been
declassified and made publicly available at the National Archives,
and they found 140 pages containing classified nuclear weapons
information that should not have been disclosed.
DOE described its findings in general terms in an August 2005
report to Congress that has just been released in declassified
form. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/inadvertent18.pdf
DOE expects to complete its review of publicly released records at
the National Archives next year, officials told historians at a
meeting in College Park last week.
LEAK OF THE WEEK
Speaking at a conference in San Antonio, Deputy Director of
National Intelligence Mary Margaret Graham said that the total
U.S. intelligence budget is now $44 billion, U.S. News and World
Report wrote in its November 14 Washington Whispers column.
See "This Time We Know Who the Leaker Is" (the third item):
http://tinyurl.com/b92e5
According to the CIA, disclosure of such aggregate budget
information causes serious damage to U.S. national security and
compromises intelligence sources and methods.
But it hard to find anyone who seriously believes that. The
bipartisan 9/11 Commission recommended that the aggregate and
individual agency intelligence budgets be routinely disclosed
each year.
MILITARY MEDICINE
A selection of military manuals on emergency medicine and related
topics, from war psychiatry to emergency childbirth, can now be
found on the FAS web site.
Most of this material replicates standard first aid literature, but
it has also has some features that are unique to the military or
otherwise distinctive.
"Army Field Manual 8-50 ('Bandaging and Splinting') is almost 50
years old, but it is the most comprehensive reference on applying
bandages and splints that I know of," said Paul Schumacher, who
shared his copy of the document.
"Only a 4000 year old Egyptian mummy maker could have written a
better manual on this subject," he said.
See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/milmed/index.html
Even as the Bush Administration was claiming that Iraq aided
al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons efforts, the source
for those claims was deemed unreliable by U.S. intelligence,
according to a release from Senator Carl Levin.
"Newly declassified information from the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) from February 2002 shows that, at the same time the
Administration was making its case for attacking Iraq, the DIA did
not trust or believe the source of the Administration's repeated
assertions that Iraq had provided al-Qaeda with chemical and
biological weapons training," the November 6 news release said.
"Additional newly declassified information from the DIA also
undermines the Administration's broader claim that there were
strong links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda."
A copy of Senator Levin's release and the supporting documents,
which were reported in the New York Times and the Washington Post
on November 6, may be found here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/11/levin110605.html
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita, quoted on CNN, said that the
DIA report Levin cited was taken "out of context, without the
analysis or any other indication as to how it may have factored
in."
Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee outlined
their expectations for the conduct of an investigation into the
Administration's handling of pre-war intelligence at a November 4
press briefing. See this release:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/11/rock110405.html
LATEST ISSUES OF WORLD LAW BULLETIN
The three most recent issues of World Law Bulletin, produced by the
Law Library of Congress but not publicly disseminated, have been
obtained by Secrecy News.
Topics addressed include "Israel's Construction of a Barrier in the
West Bank and the Impact of the International Court of Justice
Advisory Opinion" (October 2005), "Women's Rights Under Shari'ah
(Islamic Law)" (August 2005), "Recent Developments in the European
Union," and much more. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/wlb/index.html
INADVERTENT DISCLOSURES OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS INFO
Between May and August 2005, Department of Energy reviewers
examined approximately 2.9 million pages that had been
declassified and made publicly available at the National Archives,
and they found 140 pages containing classified nuclear weapons
information that should not have been disclosed.
DOE described its findings in general terms in an August 2005
report to Congress that has just been released in declassified
form. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/inadvertent18.pdf
DOE expects to complete its review of publicly released records at
the National Archives next year, officials told historians at a
meeting in College Park last week.
LEAK OF THE WEEK
Speaking at a conference in San Antonio, Deputy Director of
National Intelligence Mary Margaret Graham said that the total
U.S. intelligence budget is now $44 billion, U.S. News and World
Report wrote in its November 14 Washington Whispers column.
See "This Time We Know Who the Leaker Is" (the third item):
http://tinyurl.com/b92e5
According to the CIA, disclosure of such aggregate budget
information causes serious damage to U.S. national security and
compromises intelligence sources and methods.
But it hard to find anyone who seriously believes that. The
bipartisan 9/11 Commission recommended that the aggregate and
individual agency intelligence budgets be routinely disclosed
each year.
MILITARY MEDICINE
A selection of military manuals on emergency medicine and related
topics, from war psychiatry to emergency childbirth, can now be
found on the FAS web site.
Most of this material replicates standard first aid literature, but
it has also has some features that are unique to the military or
otherwise distinctive.
"Army Field Manual 8-50 ('Bandaging and Splinting') is almost 50
years old, but it is the most comprehensive reference on applying
bandages and splints that I know of," said Paul Schumacher, who
shared his copy of the document.
"Only a 4000 year old Egyptian mummy maker could have written a
better manual on this subject," he said.
See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/milmed/index.html
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news5/nyt31.htm
November 9, 2005
C.I.A. Asks Criminal Inquiry Over Secret-Prison Article
By DAVID JOHNSTON and CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - The Central Intelligence Agency has asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, government officials said on Tuesday.
The C.I.A.'s request, known as a crimes report or criminal referral, means that the Justice Department will undertake a preliminary review to determine if circumstances justify a criminal inquiry into whether any government official unlawfully provided information to the newspaper. The possibility of this new investigation follows by less than two weeks the perjury and obstruction indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, in a leak case involving other news reporting about a national security issue.
Republican leaders in Congress also jumped into the matter over The Post's article, asking the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate on Tuesday to investigate whether classified material had been disclosed. At the same time, the Senate rejected a Democratic call for an independent commission that would conduct an investigation into claims of abuses of detainees in American custody.
Eric C. Grant, a spokesman for the newspaper, said it would have no comment on the new developments concerning its article. A spokesman for the C.I.A. said a crimes report had indeed been sent to the Justice Department but would not otherwise comment.
The front-page article, published last Wednesday, said the agency had set up secret detention centers in as many as eight countries in the last four years.
The existence of secret detention centers, and the identity of a few of the countries in which they were located, like Thailand and Afghanistan, had been previously disclosed. But the article, describing the prison system as a "hidden global internment network," told of previously undisclosed detention facilities at highly classified "black sites" in "several democracies in Eastern Europe."
The Post, citing a "request of senior U.S. officials," did not identify the Eastern European countries. But the mention of Eastern Europe stirred anxiety at the intelligence agency, particularly after Human Rights Watch, a group that has opposed American detention policies, issued a statement on Monday saying its research had tracked C.I.A. aircraft in 2003 and 2004 making flights from Afghanistan to remote airfields in Poland and Romania. The group said aircraft used in the flights had been previously flown by the C.I.A. for prisoner transport.
More broadly, former intelligence officials said the Post article had prompted concerns at the C.I.A. over threats to the agency's ability to maintain secret relationships with other intelligence services on detainee matters.
In the wake of the disclosure, the top Republican Congressional leaders - Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist - sent the chairmen of the Intelligence Committees a request Tuesday for a joint investigation into the origin of the article.
"If accurate," the letter said, "such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks."
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he was willing to undertake the inquiry but acknowledged that leak investigations were notoriously difficult.
Another Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, indicated skepticism at such an inquiry. Mr. Lott noted that accounts of a private discussion on detainee policy between Mr. Cheney and Senate Republicans last week had also leaked to the press.
"When you get into investigations around here, where does it end?" he said. "Who is going to investigate who?"
Democrats, meanwhile, said that if Republicans wanted to pursue an inquiry, it should go beyond any leak related to secret detention facilities and cover a range of other issues that Democrats say are ripe for investigation.
"That includes the possible manipulation of prewar intelligence on Iraq, and the disclosure for political purposes of classified information involving the identity of the C.I.A. officer," said the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California.
But the Senate voted, 55 to 43, to reject an outside commission to examine detainee abuse. The measure, introduced by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan as an amendment to a broader military policy bill, was opposed by 54 Republicans and 1 Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
In debate on the amendment Monday, Mr. Levin said 12 military investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba had failed to address several important matters, including the role of contractors and Special Operations forces in interrogations.
"The investigations so far have swept critical issues under the rug," Mr. Levin said.
Republicans said that any problems had been exhaustively examined and that the armed forces had already changed many of their detention and interrogation procedures.
"In my judgment, the further investigation is simply unnecessary," said Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.
November 9, 2005
C.I.A. Asks Criminal Inquiry Over Secret-Prison Article
By DAVID JOHNSTON and CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - The Central Intelligence Agency has asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, government officials said on Tuesday.
The C.I.A.'s request, known as a crimes report or criminal referral, means that the Justice Department will undertake a preliminary review to determine if circumstances justify a criminal inquiry into whether any government official unlawfully provided information to the newspaper. The possibility of this new investigation follows by less than two weeks the perjury and obstruction indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, in a leak case involving other news reporting about a national security issue.
Republican leaders in Congress also jumped into the matter over The Post's article, asking the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate on Tuesday to investigate whether classified material had been disclosed. At the same time, the Senate rejected a Democratic call for an independent commission that would conduct an investigation into claims of abuses of detainees in American custody.
Eric C. Grant, a spokesman for the newspaper, said it would have no comment on the new developments concerning its article. A spokesman for the C.I.A. said a crimes report had indeed been sent to the Justice Department but would not otherwise comment.
The front-page article, published last Wednesday, said the agency had set up secret detention centers in as many as eight countries in the last four years.
The existence of secret detention centers, and the identity of a few of the countries in which they were located, like Thailand and Afghanistan, had been previously disclosed. But the article, describing the prison system as a "hidden global internment network," told of previously undisclosed detention facilities at highly classified "black sites" in "several democracies in Eastern Europe."
The Post, citing a "request of senior U.S. officials," did not identify the Eastern European countries. But the mention of Eastern Europe stirred anxiety at the intelligence agency, particularly after Human Rights Watch, a group that has opposed American detention policies, issued a statement on Monday saying its research had tracked C.I.A. aircraft in 2003 and 2004 making flights from Afghanistan to remote airfields in Poland and Romania. The group said aircraft used in the flights had been previously flown by the C.I.A. for prisoner transport.
More broadly, former intelligence officials said the Post article had prompted concerns at the C.I.A. over threats to the agency's ability to maintain secret relationships with other intelligence services on detainee matters.
In the wake of the disclosure, the top Republican Congressional leaders - Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist - sent the chairmen of the Intelligence Committees a request Tuesday for a joint investigation into the origin of the article.
"If accurate," the letter said, "such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks."
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he was willing to undertake the inquiry but acknowledged that leak investigations were notoriously difficult.
Another Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, indicated skepticism at such an inquiry. Mr. Lott noted that accounts of a private discussion on detainee policy between Mr. Cheney and Senate Republicans last week had also leaked to the press.
"When you get into investigations around here, where does it end?" he said. "Who is going to investigate who?"
Democrats, meanwhile, said that if Republicans wanted to pursue an inquiry, it should go beyond any leak related to secret detention facilities and cover a range of other issues that Democrats say are ripe for investigation.
"That includes the possible manipulation of prewar intelligence on Iraq, and the disclosure for political purposes of classified information involving the identity of the C.I.A. officer," said the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California.
But the Senate voted, 55 to 43, to reject an outside commission to examine detainee abuse. The measure, introduced by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan as an amendment to a broader military policy bill, was opposed by 54 Republicans and 1 Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
In debate on the amendment Monday, Mr. Levin said 12 military investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba had failed to address several important matters, including the role of contractors and Special Operations forces in interrogations.
"The investigations so far have swept critical issues under the rug," Mr. Levin said.
Republicans said that any problems had been exhaustively examined and that the armed forces had already changed many of their detention and interrogation procedures.
"In my judgment, the further investigation is simply unnecessary," said Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news5/nyt31.htm
November 9, 2005
C.I.A. Asks Criminal Inquiry Over Secret-Prison Article
By DAVID JOHNSTON and CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - The Central Intelligence Agency has asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, government officials said on Tuesday.
The C.I.A.'s request, known as a crimes report or criminal referral, means that the Justice Department will undertake a preliminary review to determine if circumstances justify a criminal inquiry into whether any government official unlawfully provided information to the newspaper. The possibility of this new investigation follows by less than two weeks the perjury and obstruction indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, in a leak case involving other news reporting about a national security issue.
Republican leaders in Congress also jumped into the matter over The Post's article, asking the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate on Tuesday to investigate whether classified material had been disclosed. At the same time, the Senate rejected a Democratic call for an independent commission that would conduct an investigation into claims of abuses of detainees in American custody.
Eric C. Grant, a spokesman for the newspaper, said it would have no comment on the new developments concerning its article. A spokesman for the C.I.A. said a crimes report had indeed been sent to the Justice Department but would not otherwise comment.
The front-page article, published last Wednesday, said the agency had set up secret detention centers in as many as eight countries in the last four years.
The existence of secret detention centers, and the identity of a few of the countries in which they were located, like Thailand and Afghanistan, had been previously disclosed. But the article, describing the prison system as a "hidden global internment network," told of previously undisclosed detention facilities at highly classified "black sites" in "several democracies in Eastern Europe."
The Post, citing a "request of senior U.S. officials," did not identify the Eastern European countries. But the mention of Eastern Europe stirred anxiety at the intelligence agency, particularly after Human Rights Watch, a group that has opposed American detention policies, issued a statement on Monday saying its research had tracked C.I.A. aircraft in 2003 and 2004 making flights from Afghanistan to remote airfields in Poland and Romania. The group said aircraft used in the flights had been previously flown by the C.I.A. for prisoner transport.
More broadly, former intelligence officials said the Post article had prompted concerns at the C.I.A. over threats to the agency's ability to maintain secret relationships with other intelligence services on detainee matters.
In the wake of the disclosure, the top Republican Congressional leaders - Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist - sent the chairmen of the Intelligence Committees a request Tuesday for a joint investigation into the origin of the article.
"If accurate," the letter said, "such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks."
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he was willing to undertake the inquiry but acknowledged that leak investigations were notoriously difficult.
Another Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, indicated skepticism at such an inquiry. Mr. Lott noted that accounts of a private discussion on detainee policy between Mr. Cheney and Senate Republicans last week had also leaked to the press.
"When you get into investigations around here, where does it end?" he said. "Who is going to investigate who?"
Democrats, meanwhile, said that if Republicans wanted to pursue an inquiry, it should go beyond any leak related to secret detention facilities and cover a range of other issues that Democrats say are ripe for investigation.
"That includes the possible manipulation of prewar intelligence on Iraq, and the disclosure for political purposes of classified information involving the identity of the C.I.A. officer," said the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California.
But the Senate voted, 55 to 43, to reject an outside commission to examine detainee abuse. The measure, introduced by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan as an amendment to a broader military policy bill, was opposed by 54 Republicans and 1 Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
In debate on the amendment Monday, Mr. Levin said 12 military investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba had failed to address several important matters, including the role of contractors and Special Operations forces in interrogations.
"The investigations so far have swept critical issues under the rug," Mr. Levin said.
Republicans said that any problems had been exhaustively examined and that the armed forces had already changed many of their detention and interrogation procedures.
"In my judgment, the further investigation is simply unnecessary," said Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.
November 9, 2005
C.I.A. Asks Criminal Inquiry Over Secret-Prison Article
By DAVID JOHNSTON and CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - The Central Intelligence Agency has asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, government officials said on Tuesday.
The C.I.A.'s request, known as a crimes report or criminal referral, means that the Justice Department will undertake a preliminary review to determine if circumstances justify a criminal inquiry into whether any government official unlawfully provided information to the newspaper. The possibility of this new investigation follows by less than two weeks the perjury and obstruction indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, in a leak case involving other news reporting about a national security issue.
Republican leaders in Congress also jumped into the matter over The Post's article, asking the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate on Tuesday to investigate whether classified material had been disclosed. At the same time, the Senate rejected a Democratic call for an independent commission that would conduct an investigation into claims of abuses of detainees in American custody.
Eric C. Grant, a spokesman for the newspaper, said it would have no comment on the new developments concerning its article. A spokesman for the C.I.A. said a crimes report had indeed been sent to the Justice Department but would not otherwise comment.
The front-page article, published last Wednesday, said the agency had set up secret detention centers in as many as eight countries in the last four years.
The existence of secret detention centers, and the identity of a few of the countries in which they were located, like Thailand and Afghanistan, had been previously disclosed. But the article, describing the prison system as a "hidden global internment network," told of previously undisclosed detention facilities at highly classified "black sites" in "several democracies in Eastern Europe."
The Post, citing a "request of senior U.S. officials," did not identify the Eastern European countries. But the mention of Eastern Europe stirred anxiety at the intelligence agency, particularly after Human Rights Watch, a group that has opposed American detention policies, issued a statement on Monday saying its research had tracked C.I.A. aircraft in 2003 and 2004 making flights from Afghanistan to remote airfields in Poland and Romania. The group said aircraft used in the flights had been previously flown by the C.I.A. for prisoner transport.
More broadly, former intelligence officials said the Post article had prompted concerns at the C.I.A. over threats to the agency's ability to maintain secret relationships with other intelligence services on detainee matters.
In the wake of the disclosure, the top Republican Congressional leaders - Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist - sent the chairmen of the Intelligence Committees a request Tuesday for a joint investigation into the origin of the article.
"If accurate," the letter said, "such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks."
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he was willing to undertake the inquiry but acknowledged that leak investigations were notoriously difficult.
Another Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, indicated skepticism at such an inquiry. Mr. Lott noted that accounts of a private discussion on detainee policy between Mr. Cheney and Senate Republicans last week had also leaked to the press.
"When you get into investigations around here, where does it end?" he said. "Who is going to investigate who?"
Democrats, meanwhile, said that if Republicans wanted to pursue an inquiry, it should go beyond any leak related to secret detention facilities and cover a range of other issues that Democrats say are ripe for investigation.
"That includes the possible manipulation of prewar intelligence on Iraq, and the disclosure for political purposes of classified information involving the identity of the C.I.A. officer," said the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California.
But the Senate voted, 55 to 43, to reject an outside commission to examine detainee abuse. The measure, introduced by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan as an amendment to a broader military policy bill, was opposed by 54 Republicans and 1 Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
In debate on the amendment Monday, Mr. Levin said 12 military investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba had failed to address several important matters, including the role of contractors and Special Operations forces in interrogations.
"The investigations so far have swept critical issues under the rug," Mr. Levin said.
Republicans said that any problems had been exhaustively examined and that the armed forces had already changed many of their detention and interrogation procedures.
"In my judgment, the further investigation is simply unnecessary," said Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news5/nyt30.htm
November 9, 2005
Report Warned on C.I.A.'s Tactics in Interrogation
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - A classified report issued last year by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials say.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, which was completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the C.I.A. about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terror suspects included one known as waterboarding, and went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, which was drafted by the United Nations, bans torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering, and prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.'s inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under American law, the officials said. But Mr. Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The agency said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." It reaffirmed that statement on Tuesday, but would not comment on any classified report issued by Mr. Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading, and which are not explicitly prohibited in American law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the C.I.A. against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the C.I.A. since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to C.I.A. interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Mr. Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in specific detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the agency's handling of terror suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but did not describe them. The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress, but whose reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the agency's general counsel. To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against only one C.I.A. employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against C.I.A. officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Mr. Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
"The ambiguity in the law must cause nightmares for intelligence officers who are engaged in aggressive interrogations of Al Qaeda suspects and other terrorism suspects," said John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the agency who left in 2004. Mr. Radsan, now an associate professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, would not comment on Mr. Helgerson's report.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the C.I.A. should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow. In opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Mr. Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the C.I.A. should be granted an exemption allowing it extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The issue of the agency's treatment of detainees arose shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, after C.I.A. officers became involved in interrogating prisoners caught in Afghanistan, and the agency sought legal guidance on how far its employees and contractors could go in interrogating terror suspects, current and former intelligence officials said.
The list of 10 techniques, including feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior C.I.A. officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from agency psychologists, the officials said. They said officials from the Justice Department and the National Security Council, which is part of the White House, were involved in the process.
Among the few known documents that address interrogation procedures and that have been made public is an August 2002 legal opinion by the Justice Department, which said that interrogation methods just short of those that might cause pain comparable to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death" could be allowable without being considered torture. The administration disavowed that classified legal opinion in the summer of 2004 after it was publicly disclosed.
A new opinion made public in December 2004 and, signed by James B. Comey, then the deputy attorney general, explicitly rejected torture and adopted more restrictive standards to define it. But a cryptic footnote to the new document about the "treatment of detainees" referred to what the officials said were other still-classified opinions. Officials have said that the footnote meant that coercive techniques approved by the Justice Department under the looser interpretation of the torture statutes were still lawful even under the new, more restrictive standards.
It remains unclear whether all 10 of the so-called enhanced procedures approved in early 2002 remain authorized for use by the C.I.A. In an unclassified report this summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee referred briefly to Mr. Helgerson's report and said that the agency had fully put in effect only 5 of his 10 recommendations. But in testimony before Congress in February Mr. Goss said that eight had.
Some former intelligence officials have said the C.I.A. imposed tighter safeguards on its interrogation procedures after the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison came to light in May 2004. That was about the same time Mr. Helgerson completed his report.
The agency issued its earlier statement on the legality of approved interrogation techniques after Mr. Goss, in testimony before Congress on March 17, said that all interrogation techniques used "at this time" were legal but declined to make the same broad assertion about practices used over the past few years.
On March 18, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, the agency's director of public affairs, said that "C.I.A. policies on interrogation have always followed legal guidance from the Department of Justice."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
November 9, 2005
Report Warned on C.I.A.'s Tactics in Interrogation
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - A classified report issued last year by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials say.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, which was completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the C.I.A. about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terror suspects included one known as waterboarding, and went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, which was drafted by the United Nations, bans torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering, and prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.'s inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under American law, the officials said. But Mr. Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The agency said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." It reaffirmed that statement on Tuesday, but would not comment on any classified report issued by Mr. Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading, and which are not explicitly prohibited in American law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the C.I.A. against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the C.I.A. since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to C.I.A. interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Mr. Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in specific detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the agency's handling of terror suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but did not describe them. The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress, but whose reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the agency's general counsel. To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against only one C.I.A. employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against C.I.A. officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Mr. Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
"The ambiguity in the law must cause nightmares for intelligence officers who are engaged in aggressive interrogations of Al Qaeda suspects and other terrorism suspects," said John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the agency who left in 2004. Mr. Radsan, now an associate professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, would not comment on Mr. Helgerson's report.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the C.I.A. should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow. In opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Mr. Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the C.I.A. should be granted an exemption allowing it extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The issue of the agency's treatment of detainees arose shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, after C.I.A. officers became involved in interrogating prisoners caught in Afghanistan, and the agency sought legal guidance on how far its employees and contractors could go in interrogating terror suspects, current and former intelligence officials said.
The list of 10 techniques, including feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior C.I.A. officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from agency psychologists, the officials said. They said officials from the Justice Department and the National Security Council, which is part of the White House, were involved in the process.
Among the few known documents that address interrogation procedures and that have been made public is an August 2002 legal opinion by the Justice Department, which said that interrogation methods just short of those that might cause pain comparable to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death" could be allowable without being considered torture. The administration disavowed that classified legal opinion in the summer of 2004 after it was publicly disclosed.
A new opinion made public in December 2004 and, signed by James B. Comey, then the deputy attorney general, explicitly rejected torture and adopted more restrictive standards to define it. But a cryptic footnote to the new document about the "treatment of detainees" referred to what the officials said were other still-classified opinions. Officials have said that the footnote meant that coercive techniques approved by the Justice Department under the looser interpretation of the torture statutes were still lawful even under the new, more restrictive standards.
It remains unclear whether all 10 of the so-called enhanced procedures approved in early 2002 remain authorized for use by the C.I.A. In an unclassified report this summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee referred briefly to Mr. Helgerson's report and said that the agency had fully put in effect only 5 of his 10 recommendations. But in testimony before Congress in February Mr. Goss said that eight had.
Some former intelligence officials have said the C.I.A. imposed tighter safeguards on its interrogation procedures after the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison came to light in May 2004. That was about the same time Mr. Helgerson completed his report.
The agency issued its earlier statement on the legality of approved interrogation techniques after Mr. Goss, in testimony before Congress on March 17, said that all interrogation techniques used "at this time" were legal but declined to make the same broad assertion about practices used over the past few years.
On March 18, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, the agency's director of public affairs, said that "C.I.A. policies on interrogation have always followed legal guidance from the Department of Justice."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Times and Reporter Reach Agreement on Her Departure New York Times
The New York Times and Judith Miller, a veteran reporter for the paper, reached an agreement today that ends her 28-year career at the newspaper and caps more than two weeks of negotiations. Ms. Miller went to jail this summer rather than reveal a confidential source in the C.I.A. leak case. But her release from jail 85 days later after she agreed to testify before a grand jury and persistent questions about her actions roiled long-simmering concerns about her in the newsroom and led to her departure.
Miller’s Time To Fly CBS News
Miller resigns from New York Times Hollywood Reporter
Boston Globe - WCBS-TV New York - mediabistro.com - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - all 140 related »
The New York Times and Judith Miller, a veteran reporter for the paper, reached an agreement today that ends her 28-year career at the newspaper and caps more than two weeks of negotiations. Ms. Miller went to jail this summer rather than reveal a confidential source in the C.I.A. leak case. But her release from jail 85 days later after she agreed to testify before a grand jury and persistent questions about her actions roiled long-simmering concerns about her in the newsroom and led to her departure.
Miller’s Time To Fly CBS News
Miller resigns from New York Times Hollywood Reporter
Boston Globe - WCBS-TV New York - mediabistro.com - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - all 140 related »
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/09/news/abuse.php
Report warned CIA about interrogations
By Douglas Jehl The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2005
WASHINGTON A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terrorism suspects went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering. The convention also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under U.S. law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement this week but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading and that are not explicitly prohibited under U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terrorism suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it specifically referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose CIA officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration's view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter Goss, the CIA director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but he did not describe them.
The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress. His reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the CIA's general counsel.
To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against one CIA employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against CIA officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the CIA should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow.
Opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the CIA should be granted an exemption that would allow the agency extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The list of 10 techniques, including waterboarding or feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior CIA officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from CIA psychologists, the officials said.
WASHINGTON A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terrorism suspects went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering. The convention also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under U.S. law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement this week but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading and that are not explicitly prohibited under U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terrorism suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it specifically referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose CIA officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration's view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter Goss, the CIA director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but he did not describe them.
The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress. His reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the CIA's general counsel.
To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against one CIA employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against CIA officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the CIA should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow.
Opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the CIA should be granted an exemption that would allow the agency extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The list of 10 techniques, including waterboarding or feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior CIA officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from CIA psychologists, the officials said.
WASHINGTON A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terrorism suspects went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering. The convention also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under U.S. law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement this week but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading and that are not explicitly prohibited under U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terrorism suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it specifically referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose CIA officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration's view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter Goss, the CIA director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but he did not describe them.
The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress. His reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the CIA's general counsel.
To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against one CIA employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against CIA officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the CIA should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow.
Opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the CIA should be granted an exemption that would allow the agency extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The list of 10 techniques, including waterboarding or feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior CIA officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from CIA psychologists, the officials said.
WASHINGTON A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terrorism suspects went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering. The convention also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under U.S. law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement this week but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading and that are not explicitly prohibited under U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terrorism suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it specifically referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose CIA officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration's view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter Goss, the CIA director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but he did not describe them.
The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress. His reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the CIA's general counsel.
To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against one CIA employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against CIA officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the CIA should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow.
Opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the CIA should be granted an exemption that would allow the agency extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The list of 10 techniques, including waterboarding or feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior CIA officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from CIA psychologists, the officials said.
Report warned CIA about interrogations
By Douglas Jehl The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2005
WASHINGTON A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terrorism suspects went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering. The convention also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under U.S. law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement this week but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading and that are not explicitly prohibited under U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terrorism suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it specifically referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose CIA officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration's view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter Goss, the CIA director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but he did not describe them.
The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress. His reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the CIA's general counsel.
To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against one CIA employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against CIA officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the CIA should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow.
Opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the CIA should be granted an exemption that would allow the agency extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The list of 10 techniques, including waterboarding or feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior CIA officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from CIA psychologists, the officials said.
WASHINGTON A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terrorism suspects went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering. The convention also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under U.S. law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement this week but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading and that are not explicitly prohibited under U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terrorism suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it specifically referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose CIA officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration's view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter Goss, the CIA director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but he did not describe them.
The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress. His reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the CIA's general counsel.
To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against one CIA employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against CIA officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the CIA should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow.
Opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the CIA should be granted an exemption that would allow the agency extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The list of 10 techniques, including waterboarding or feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior CIA officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from CIA psychologists, the officials said.
WASHINGTON A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terrorism suspects went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering. The convention also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under U.S. law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement this week but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading and that are not explicitly prohibited under U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terrorism suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it specifically referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose CIA officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration's view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter Goss, the CIA director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but he did not describe them.
The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress. His reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the CIA's general counsel.
To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against one CIA employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against CIA officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the CIA should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow.
Opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the CIA should be granted an exemption that would allow the agency extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The list of 10 techniques, including waterboarding or feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior CIA officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from CIA psychologists, the officials said.
WASHINGTON A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terrorism suspects went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering. The convention also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under U.S. law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement this week but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading and that are not explicitly prohibited under U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terrorism suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it specifically referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose CIA officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration's view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter Goss, the CIA director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but he did not describe them.
The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress. His reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the CIA's general counsel.
To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against one CIA employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against CIA officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the CIA should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow.
Opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the CIA should be granted an exemption that would allow the agency extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks.
The list of 10 techniques, including waterboarding or feigned drowning, was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that included senior CIA officials who solicited recommendations from foreign governments and from CIA psychologists, the officials said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...L&feed=rss.news
CIA was warned on interrogations
Classified report said procedures could violate global pact
- Douglas Jehl, New York Times
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Washington -- A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials said.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, which was completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against suspected terrorists included one known as waterboarding, and they went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, which was drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering, and prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under American law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement Tuesday but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading, and which are not explicitly prohibited in U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it had discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen suspected terrorists being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
Page A - 13
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...MNG6TFL2B21.DTL
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©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
CIA was warned on interrogations
Classified report said procedures could violate global pact
- Douglas Jehl, New York Times
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Washington -- A classified report issued last year by the CIA's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials said.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, which was completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the CIA about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against suspected terrorists included one known as waterboarding, and they went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, which was drafted by the United Nations, bars torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering, and prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under American law, the officials said. But Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The CIA said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." The agency reaffirmed that statement Tuesday but would not comment on any classified report issued by Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading, and which are not explicitly prohibited in U.S. law.
The officials who described the report said it had discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen suspected terrorists being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
Page A - 13
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...MNG6TFL2B21.DTL
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©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/st...255E663,00.html
Italy goes after CIA
12nov05
MILAN -- Prosecutors yesterday formally asked their Government to have extradited 22 CIA operatives charged with kidnapping a radical Muslim preacher in Italy almost three years ago.
Prosecutor General Donatella Grieco yesterday delivered a 477-page document to Italy's Ministry of Justice, spelling out the case against a panoply of CIA operatives, including paramilitary 007-types, middle-aged women who are experts in physical surveillance and cocktail-party spies posing as diplomats.
In the first case of its kind, the US is accused of violating Italy's sovereignty by mounting a secret intelligence operation on its soil, and snatching away an Islamic radical from under their noses.
Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a native of Egypt, had been living in Italy under a grant of political asylum intended to protect him from retribution by the Egyptian Government.
Italian police had subjected Abu Omar to wire-tapping and physical surveillance, but allowed him to remain free in hopes he would provide useful information about other suspected terrorists.
It is believed the CIA grabbed him instead to recruit him, via Egyptian intelligence, as an informer, outraging Italian police and prosecutors.
Italy goes after CIA
12nov05
MILAN -- Prosecutors yesterday formally asked their Government to have extradited 22 CIA operatives charged with kidnapping a radical Muslim preacher in Italy almost three years ago.
Prosecutor General Donatella Grieco yesterday delivered a 477-page document to Italy's Ministry of Justice, spelling out the case against a panoply of CIA operatives, including paramilitary 007-types, middle-aged women who are experts in physical surveillance and cocktail-party spies posing as diplomats.
In the first case of its kind, the US is accused of violating Italy's sovereignty by mounting a secret intelligence operation on its soil, and snatching away an Islamic radical from under their noses.
Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a native of Egypt, had been living in Italy under a grant of political asylum intended to protect him from retribution by the Egyptian Government.
Italian police had subjected Abu Omar to wire-tapping and physical surveillance, but allowed him to remain free in hopes he would provide useful information about other suspected terrorists.
It is believed the CIA grabbed him instead to recruit him, via Egyptian intelligence, as an informer, outraging Italian police and prosecutors.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1301297_pf.html
washingtonpost.com
CIA Article Sidebar: A Story of Deja Vu
Some Critics See a Plame Parallel
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 14, 2005; C01
Dana Priest, and her newspaper, are being hit from both sides.
Some conservatives are furious over her Washington Post story this month disclosing that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating terror suspects at secret prisons in Eastern Europe. And some liberals are angry that The Post agreed to a request by senior U.S. officials not to name the countries involved.
"We are being accused of being in the pocket of the administration," Priest says. "One student called me up from a Virginia university to tell me they were burning the paper at a protest, because we're complicit in torture."
With the House intelligence committee launching an investigation into the leak of classified information and the CIA referring the matter to the Justice Department, the controversy could mushroom into another Valerie Plame fracas. If prosecutors get involved, Priest could face the same dilemma that confronted Time's Matt Cooper and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller: whether to reveal confidential sources under threat of imprisonment.
"Judy Miller went to jail," said author and radio host Bill Bennett, a fierce critic of the Post story. "This woman might have to go to jail too. . . . The hypocrisy here is for the media establishment to say some great wrong was done to Valerie Plame, but where is the outrage about Dana Priest?"
Says Priest: "My overall goal is to describe how the government is fighting the war on terror, and that gets you right to the CIA. This is a tactic. People can read it and decide whether that's good or bad."
Leonard Downie, the Post's executive editor, says: "There was a lot of debate about every aspect of the story to make sure we were balancing legitimate national security concerns with informing our readers about important things that were being done in their name by the government. There were a number of discussions with senior U.S. officials, and we had a number of discussions in the office over several days with Dana and her editors."
Both the Nov. 2 prison story and the 2003 outing of Plame as a CIA operative relied on unnamed sources giving reporters secret information. In the Plame case, however, senior officials were trying to discredit White House critic Joe Wilson by focusing on the role of his wife in his inquiry into whether Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear material. Many on the left have cheered the resulting perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Democrats want a stepped-up congressional probe of the administration's prewar intelligence.
On the prison story, the unnamed officials -- U.S. and foreign -- were exposing an interrogation program that raises civil liberties concerns on the left. Many on the right are denouncing what they see as the damage to national security, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) -- who joined House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in demanding an investigation -- says he is more concerned about the leak than the secret prisons. Downie and Priest declined to comment on any leak investigation.
But others have plenty to say. John Hinderaker, an attorney and blogger, says on the Web site Power Line: "It would be a great thing if the steady stream of illegal anti-administration leaks out of the CIA and the State Department could be shut down, and some of the Democrat leakers imprisoned. It's time to put the Plame farce to a good use."
Bennett condemned the Post article on National Review Online as "irresponsibility at its highest," saying it would endanger Americans and their allies in the middle of a war. "It's the old question," Bennett says in an interview. "Whose side are you on?"
Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the nonprofit National Security Archive, calls Priest a "brilliant reporter" and says she and The Post deserve credit for "groundbreaking work," and "her sources deserve credit for being courageous, too." But he sharply criticizes the paper's decision not to name the Eastern European countries, two of which were later identified by the Financial Times and other news outlets, citing information from the group Human Rights Watch.
"We are talking about the secret detention and abuse of prisoners," Kornbluh says. "There is an aspect of enabling this to go forward by yielding to the arguments these senior officials made. This is the most significant decision to withhold information since the Bay of Pigs, when President Kennedy twisted the arm of the publisher of the New York Times to take out key details" about the 1961 invasion of Cuba.
Writes Gal Beckerman of Columbia Journalism Review: "The Post is trying to have it both ways: getting credit for breaking the story, without breaking the specific details that might have caused it grief from the CIA."
The Post, for its part, said in its story that U.S. officials "argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation."
Downie calls the piece "a good example of a public-policy question that might not have surfaced without a number of people with knowledge of the debate going on at the CIA and the program itself having to speak to reporters without public attribution."
Priest, who is also an NBC News analyst, hears an echo among liberal critics who fault the decision to withhold the prison locations. "They say, 'This is the same paper that toed the administration line on WMD,' like we were in cahoots with the administration over bad intelligence. That doesn't sit well with me, having tried very hard before the war to truth-squad the WMD reporting."
The fiery passions surrounding the war increasingly seem to be singeing such reporters as Miller, Priest and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, whose flawed report on an allegation of Koran desecration at Guantanamo Bay was blamed for violent protests in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Journalists aren't supposed to take sides, but there is no shortage of detractors asking which side they are on.
Searching for Support
The trial lawyers' lobby has a new technique for pressing its opposition to proposals that would reduce or eliminate liability for drug companies to manufacture vaccines.
Run a Google or Yahoo search for "bird flu" or "avian flu" and a sponsored link will pop up, leading to ads by a group called People Over Profits -- which is actually a unit of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. They bear such headlines as "Bird Flu and Viagra: What do they have in common?" and "President Bush and Bird Flu: What Bush is not telling you." (The group also purchased the search term "Rafael Palmeiro," not because he has anything to do with the issue but because the ballplayer gets Googled a lot in the steroids controversy.)
Now even Web searchers aren't safe from lobbying! And since sponsors can monitor the traffic, says ATLA spokeswoman Chris Mather, "you can change your message during the day if it's not working."
Media Morsels
It may be unpopular in the blogosphere, but the New York Times has signed up 135,000 subscribers at 50 bucks a pop for online access to its columnists and other bonus material (plus an equal number of print subscribers who get the service free). Other news outlets are surely taking note.
Under pressure from Democratic lawmakers, Armed Forces Radio has agreed to carry liberal radio talker Ed Schultz, weeks after a Pentagon political appointee vetoed an earlier deal.
Salon has hired former USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro as its new Washington bureau chief. Shapiro says he had been doing some blogging, but "I felt this irresistible urge to make phone calls and go places, and rather than theorize what people are saying, actually find out what they're saying."
Andrew Sullivan, one of the first bloggers to gain a wide following online, is moving his daily musings to the Time Inc. Web site, which plans to build a cyber-neighborhood around him and other bloggers.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
CIA Article Sidebar: A Story of Deja Vu
Some Critics See a Plame Parallel
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 14, 2005; C01
Dana Priest, and her newspaper, are being hit from both sides.
Some conservatives are furious over her Washington Post story this month disclosing that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating terror suspects at secret prisons in Eastern Europe. And some liberals are angry that The Post agreed to a request by senior U.S. officials not to name the countries involved.
"We are being accused of being in the pocket of the administration," Priest says. "One student called me up from a Virginia university to tell me they were burning the paper at a protest, because we're complicit in torture."
With the House intelligence committee launching an investigation into the leak of classified information and the CIA referring the matter to the Justice Department, the controversy could mushroom into another Valerie Plame fracas. If prosecutors get involved, Priest could face the same dilemma that confronted Time's Matt Cooper and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller: whether to reveal confidential sources under threat of imprisonment.
"Judy Miller went to jail," said author and radio host Bill Bennett, a fierce critic of the Post story. "This woman might have to go to jail too. . . . The hypocrisy here is for the media establishment to say some great wrong was done to Valerie Plame, but where is the outrage about Dana Priest?"
Says Priest: "My overall goal is to describe how the government is fighting the war on terror, and that gets you right to the CIA. This is a tactic. People can read it and decide whether that's good or bad."
Leonard Downie, the Post's executive editor, says: "There was a lot of debate about every aspect of the story to make sure we were balancing legitimate national security concerns with informing our readers about important things that were being done in their name by the government. There were a number of discussions with senior U.S. officials, and we had a number of discussions in the office over several days with Dana and her editors."
Both the Nov. 2 prison story and the 2003 outing of Plame as a CIA operative relied on unnamed sources giving reporters secret information. In the Plame case, however, senior officials were trying to discredit White House critic Joe Wilson by focusing on the role of his wife in his inquiry into whether Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear material. Many on the left have cheered the resulting perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Democrats want a stepped-up congressional probe of the administration's prewar intelligence.
On the prison story, the unnamed officials -- U.S. and foreign -- were exposing an interrogation program that raises civil liberties concerns on the left. Many on the right are denouncing what they see as the damage to national security, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) -- who joined House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in demanding an investigation -- says he is more concerned about the leak than the secret prisons. Downie and Priest declined to comment on any leak investigation.
But others have plenty to say. John Hinderaker, an attorney and blogger, says on the Web site Power Line: "It would be a great thing if the steady stream of illegal anti-administration leaks out of the CIA and the State Department could be shut down, and some of the Democrat leakers imprisoned. It's time to put the Plame farce to a good use."
Bennett condemned the Post article on National Review Online as "irresponsibility at its highest," saying it would endanger Americans and their allies in the middle of a war. "It's the old question," Bennett says in an interview. "Whose side are you on?"
Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the nonprofit National Security Archive, calls Priest a "brilliant reporter" and says she and The Post deserve credit for "groundbreaking work," and "her sources deserve credit for being courageous, too." But he sharply criticizes the paper's decision not to name the Eastern European countries, two of which were later identified by the Financial Times and other news outlets, citing information from the group Human Rights Watch.
"We are talking about the secret detention and abuse of prisoners," Kornbluh says. "There is an aspect of enabling this to go forward by yielding to the arguments these senior officials made. This is the most significant decision to withhold information since the Bay of Pigs, when President Kennedy twisted the arm of the publisher of the New York Times to take out key details" about the 1961 invasion of Cuba.
Writes Gal Beckerman of Columbia Journalism Review: "The Post is trying to have it both ways: getting credit for breaking the story, without breaking the specific details that might have caused it grief from the CIA."
The Post, for its part, said in its story that U.S. officials "argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation."
Downie calls the piece "a good example of a public-policy question that might not have surfaced without a number of people with knowledge of the debate going on at the CIA and the program itself having to speak to reporters without public attribution."
Priest, who is also an NBC News analyst, hears an echo among liberal critics who fault the decision to withhold the prison locations. "They say, 'This is the same paper that toed the administration line on WMD,' like we were in cahoots with the administration over bad intelligence. That doesn't sit well with me, having tried very hard before the war to truth-squad the WMD reporting."
The fiery passions surrounding the war increasingly seem to be singeing such reporters as Miller, Priest and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, whose flawed report on an allegation of Koran desecration at Guantanamo Bay was blamed for violent protests in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Journalists aren't supposed to take sides, but there is no shortage of detractors asking which side they are on.
Searching for Support
The trial lawyers' lobby has a new technique for pressing its opposition to proposals that would reduce or eliminate liability for drug companies to manufacture vaccines.
Run a Google or Yahoo search for "bird flu" or "avian flu" and a sponsored link will pop up, leading to ads by a group called People Over Profits -- which is actually a unit of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. They bear such headlines as "Bird Flu and Viagra: What do they have in common?" and "President Bush and Bird Flu: What Bush is not telling you." (The group also purchased the search term "Rafael Palmeiro," not because he has anything to do with the issue but because the ballplayer gets Googled a lot in the steroids controversy.)
Now even Web searchers aren't safe from lobbying! And since sponsors can monitor the traffic, says ATLA spokeswoman Chris Mather, "you can change your message during the day if it's not working."
Media Morsels
It may be unpopular in the blogosphere, but the New York Times has signed up 135,000 subscribers at 50 bucks a pop for online access to its columnists and other bonus material (plus an equal number of print subscribers who get the service free). Other news outlets are surely taking note.
Under pressure from Democratic lawmakers, Armed Forces Radio has agreed to carry liberal radio talker Ed Schultz, weeks after a Pentagon political appointee vetoed an earlier deal.
Salon has hired former USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro as its new Washington bureau chief. Shapiro says he had been doing some blogging, but "I felt this irresistible urge to make phone calls and go places, and rather than theorize what people are saying, actually find out what they're saying."
Andrew Sullivan, one of the first bloggers to gain a wide following online, is moving his daily musings to the Time Inc. Web site, which plans to build a cyber-neighborhood around him and other bloggers.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Advanced Member
Group: Moderator
Posts: 34,496
Joined: 5-November 04
From: Washington D.C.
Member No.: 9
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13135450.htm
Operatives say CIA exemption on torture a mistake
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Administration officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, are vigorously lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from a ban on mistreatment of detainees. But many former and some current CIA operatives say - morality aside - that mistreatment and torture aren't useful interrogation tactics and the loophole should be rejected.
"We ought to declare we don't do this. We ought to declare the intelligence isn't worth it," said Frank Anderson, a former chief of the CIA's Near East and South Asia division in the agency's Operations Directorate, the clandestine service.
There's also the question of what brutality does to those who carry it out, Anderson said.
"I will rebel against anyone who wants my son to torture, because it won't ever heal," he said, speaking at a conference this week sponsored by the Middle East Institute.
Anderson's views were echoed, with some variation, in interviews with a half-dozen current and former CIA and military officers with extensive field experience. Retired and active officers made similar arguments against abusing prisoners, but none of the current CIA or military officers would agree to speak on the record because they aren't authorized to talk to the media.
Robert Baer, a former CIA covert officer who worked in Iraq and elsewhere, said he recently spent time in an Israeli prison, talking with detainees from the radical Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas for a British documentary about suicide bombers.
The Israelis, Baer said, have learned that they can gain valuable information by establishing personal relationships with the inmates and gaining their trust.
"They found that torture, abusive tactics, made things overall worse for them politically," Baer said. "The Israelis are friendly with their prisoners. They play cards with them and allow them to contact their families. They are getting in their minds to determine what makes up a suicide bomber."
Torture is illegal under international and U.S. law, but the Bush administration Justice Department sometimes has advanced a narrow definition of torture that would allow extremely aggressive tactics.
The real debate is over measures that go beyond those permitted by the Geneva Conventions, which regulate the treatment of prisoners of war.
President Bush has threatened to veto a measure, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was mistreated as a POW during the Vietnam War, that would prohibit cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.
After the Senate approved the measure 90-9, Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss went to Capitol Hill to argue for an exemption for the spy agency.
Advocates for flexibility argue that, in fighting terrorism, sometimes the stakes are so high that repugnant measures are justified.
One is the so-called "ticking time bomb" scenario, in which a captured terrorist has information on an imminent attack that could kill hundreds or thousands of civilians.
Two administration officials, who asked not to be identified because they aren't authorized to speak to the press, said Cheney had described such a scenario several times, in which interrogators using generally approved methods can't pry the particulars out of the prisoner in time to prevent an attack.
Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz has argued that in such cases, torture should be used as a last resort, openly, with approval by the president or a Supreme Court justice.
But intelligence officers and other U.S. officials said the scenario was more likely to be found in James Bond films than in the real war on terrorism.
Asked how he'd handle it, McCain replied: "It's a one in a million issue, and if something was one in a million situation, I would support whatever needs to be done. But that's a one in a million situation."
"If you have exceptions, then there's more exceptions and more exceptions and more exceptions," he said.
John C. Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general who co-authored a controversial memorandum arguing that the Geneva Conventions don't apply in the Afghanistan war, said there were other scenarios in which coercive tactics would be justified.
Yoo, in an appearance this week on C-SPAN, cited the March 2002 arrest of Abu Zubayda, sometimes called al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, who presumably had operational knowledge of terrorist plots under way.
"I wonder whether people would want to give up the ability to interrogate in that way, and the cost of that being those plots and those operations would succeed?" Yoo said.
But intelligence officers said that torture, or tactics just short of it, rarely produced good information, and were more likely to produce bad information.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations and analysis in the CIA Counterterrorist Center, said detainees would say virtually anything to end their torment.
Baer agreed, citing intelligence reports from Arab security services that yielded useless information. "The Saudis and Egyptians torture people all the time, but I have yet to see anything that helped us on the jihad movement and (Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al) Zawahri," he said.
Ibn Sheikh al Libi, an al-Qaida training camp commander who was captured, was a principal source of the Bush administration's prewar claim that Iraq had provided chemical weapons training to bin Laden's network. He was subjected to aggressive interrogation techniques - and the information on Iraq and al-Qaida turned out to have been invented.
Knight Ridder correspondents James Kuhnhenn and John Walcott contributed to this report.
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http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13135450.htm
Operatives say CIA exemption on torture a mistake
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Administration officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, are vigorously lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from a ban on mistreatment of detainees. But many former and some current CIA operatives say - morality aside - that mistreatment and torture aren't useful interrogation tactics and the loophole should be rejected.
"We ought to declare we don't do this. We ought to declare the intelligence isn't worth it," said Frank Anderson, a former chief of the CIA's Near East and South Asia division in the agency's Operations Directorate, the clandestine service.
There's also the question of what brutality does to those who carry it out, Anderson said.
"I will rebel against anyone who wants my son to torture, because it won't ever heal," he said, speaking at a conference this week sponsored by the Middle East Institute.
Anderson's views were echoed, with some variation, in interviews with a half-dozen current and former CIA and military officers with extensive field experience. Retired and active officers made similar arguments against abusing prisoners, but none of the current CIA or military officers would agree to speak on the record because they aren't authorized to talk to the media.
Robert Baer, a former CIA covert officer who worked in Iraq and elsewhere, said he recently spent time in an Israeli prison, talking with detainees from the radical Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas for a British documentary about suicide bombers.
The Israelis, Baer said, have learned that they can gain valuable information by establishing personal relationships with the inmates and gaining their trust.
"They found that torture, abusive tactics, made things overall worse for them politically," Baer said. "The Israelis are friendly with their prisoners. They play cards with them and allow them to contact their families. They are getting in their minds to determine what makes up a suicide bomber."
Torture is illegal under international and U.S. law, but the Bush administration Justice Department sometimes has advanced a narrow definition of torture that would allow extremely aggressive tactics.
The real debate is over measures that go beyond those permitted by the Geneva Conventions, which regulate the treatment of prisoners of war.
President Bush has threatened to veto a measure, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was mistreated as a POW during the Vietnam War, that would prohibit cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.
After the Senate approved the measure 90-9, Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss went to Capitol Hill to argue for an exemption for the spy agency.
Advocates for flexibility argue that, in fighting terrorism, sometimes the stakes are so high that repugnant measures are justified.
One is the so-called "ticking time bomb" scenario, in which a captured terrorist has information on an imminent attack that could kill hundreds or thousands of civilians.
Two administration officials, who asked not to be identified because they aren't authorized to speak to the press, said Cheney had described such a scenario several times, in which interrogators using generally approved methods can't pry the particulars out of the prisoner in time to prevent an attack.
Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz has argued that in such cases, torture should be used as a last resort, openly, with approval by the president or a Supreme Court justice.
But intelligence officers and other U.S. officials said the scenario was more likely to be found in James Bond films than in the real war on terrorism.
Asked how he'd handle it, McCain replied: "It's a one in a million issue, and if something was one in a million situation, I would support whatever needs to be done. But that's a one in a million situation."
"If you have exceptions, then there's more exceptions and more exceptions and more exceptions," he said.
John C. Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general who co-authored a controversial memorandum arguing that the Geneva Conventions don't apply in the Afghanistan war, said there were other scenarios in which coercive tactics would be justified.
Yoo, in an appearance this week on C-SPAN, cited the March 2002 arrest of Abu Zubayda, sometimes called al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, who presumably had operational knowledge of terrorist plots under way.
"I wonder whether people would want to give up the ability to interrogate in that way, and the cost of that being those plots and those operations would succeed?" Yoo said.
But intelligence officers said that torture, or tactics just short of it, rarely produced good information, and were more likely to produce bad information.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations and analysis in the CIA Counterterrorist Center, said detainees would say virtually anything to end their torment.
Baer agreed, citing intelligence reports from Arab security services that yielded useless information. "The Saudis and Egyptians torture people all the time, but I have yet to see anything that helped us on the jihad movement and (Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al) Zawahri," he said.
Ibn Sheikh al Libi, an al-Qaida training camp commander who was captured, was a principal source of the Bush administration's prewar claim that Iraq had provided chemical weapons training to bin Laden's network. He was subjected to aggressive interrogation techniques - and the information on Iraq and al-Qaida turned out to have been invented.
Knight Ridder correspondents James Kuhnhenn and John Walcott contributed to this report.
Pentagon Delays Release Of New Interrogation Policy
http://www.spacewar.com/news/terrorwar-05zzzzq.html
Washington (UPI) Nov 15, 2005 - The Pentagon, while fending off Senate attempts to regulate detention, this week delayed the release of a long-awaited new Army manual on interrogation.
CIA Prison Camp Row Heats Up In Europe
http://www.spacewar.com/news/terrorwar-05zzzzr.html
http://www.spacewar.com/news/terrorwar-05zzzzq.html
Washington (UPI) Nov 15, 2005 - The Pentagon, while fending off Senate attempts to regulate detention, this week delayed the release of a long-awaited new Army manual on interrogation.
CIA Prison Camp Row Heats Up In Europe
http://www.spacewar.com/news/terrorwar-05zzzzr.html
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/17/pfiab/
Top-secret cronies
Bush has stacked his foreign advisory board with his Texas business pals, who stand to profit from access to CIA and military intelligence.
By Robert Bryce
Nov. 17, 2005 | No discussion of cronyism in the Bush administration would be complete without talking about PFIAB, short for the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. George W. Bush's latest appointments to the PFIAB, which advises the president on how various intelligence agencies are performing, represent a who's who of the Halliburton-Texas Rangers-oil business crony club that made Bush into a millionaire and helped propel him into the White House.
On Oct. 27, an announcement by the White House made it clear that despite the disastrous intelligence failures that have been driving Bush's policies over the past few years, he's not going to put up with any independent voices on the PFIAB, especially from anyone who might actually know something about foreign intelligence, like, say, Brent Scowcroft.
In 2001, Bush appointed him to chair the PFIAB. But Scowcroft, who was national security advisor under two presidents, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, has been openly critical of Bush's decision to invade Iraq. "I don't think in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratising the Middle East can be successful," Scowcroft recently told the New Yorker. "If you can do it, fine, but I don't think you can, and in the process of trying to do it you can make the Middle East a lot worse." That kind of independent thinking led Bush to dismiss Scowcroft from the chairmanship of the PFIAB about a year ago.
With Scowcroft out, Bush's cronies are in. Last month, the White House announced that Dallas oil billionaire Ray Hunt, one of Bush's biggest financial backers, was reappointed to the PFIAB. So was Cincinnati financier William DeWitt Jr., who has backed Bush in all of his business deals going back to 1984, when DeWitt's company, Spectrum 7, bailed out the faltering entity known as Bush Oil Co. The new appointee of note to the PFIAB is former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a Bush confidant since his days in Midland, Texas.
(Other notable appointees to the PFIAB include Netscape founder Jim Barksdale, former Reagan White House counsel Arthur Culvahouse, and former U.S. congressman and 9/11 commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton.)
Ray Close, a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group that has been critical of the Bush administration's handling of intelligence matters, doesn't mince words when discussing Bush's latest appointments to the PFIAB. "It's unbelievable," says Close, who worked for the CIA for 27 years as an Arabist. "I can't imagine anyone who has the president's interest in mind allowing him to do this. With the notable exception of Lee Hamilton, most of the choices look very weak, and several scream of cronyism."
Created in 1956 by President Dwight Eisenhower, the PFIAB is designed -- according to the White House press release -- to give the president "objective, expert advice." In an ideal world, the PFIAB members would analyze the intelligence they get and give the president their unvarnished opinions about the relative merits of the different agencies and the work they are doing. PFIAB members are granted access to America's most secret secrets, known as SCI, for Sensitive Compartmented Information. Members of PFIAB have security clearances that are among the highest in the U.S. government. They have access to intelligence that is unavailable to most members of Congress. They are privy to intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the military intelligence agencies and others.
Everything that members do as part of PFIAB is done in secrecy. None of the information that they discuss or view is available to the public. They are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. And unlike other public servants who work for the president, there is no public disclosure of the PFIAB members' financial interests.
In 1999, the PFIAB opened up slightly when it released a report about security at the Department of Energy's nuclear labs. That 1999 report is a prime example of how the PFIAB has -- and could in the future -- play an important role in helping the president deal with intelligence issues. That report bluntly assessed the DOE, saying that a "culture of arrogance -- both at DOE headquarters and the labs themselves -- conspired to create an espionage scandal waiting to happen." That report led to a major reorganization of the labs.
Despite the PFIAB's power, coverage of it by the news media is sparse. Bush's most recent PFIAB appointment was almost completely ignored. The only significant story by the national media on the PFIAB was a snarky item posted on Newsweek's Web site on Nov. 2, which said that after all the recent intelligence failures, "you might think the president would be wary about the appearance of cronyism."
To be fair, the PFIAB has long been stocked with people close to the president in office. Under Bill Clinton, the PFIAB had far more intelligence expertise than it does now. Clinton's PFIAB appointments included former Defense Secretary Les Aspin, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William Crowe. Clinton also appointed a pair of his big money contributors to the PFIAB: New York banker Stan Shuman and Texas real estate whiz Richard Bloch.
For Bush, it appears that campaign cash counts far more than expertise. And few backers have given Bush's campaigns more cash than Ray Hunt, son of the legendary Dallas billionaire bigamist oilman H.L. Hunt. PFIAB membership is a plum position for Hunt, who raised about $100,000 for Bush during the 2000 campaign and also served as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Hunt's position at PFIAB may benefit a familiar entity in the Bush crony network: Halliburton, which is doing billions of dollars' worth of reconstruction and logistics work for the U.S. government in Iraq and on the Gulf Coast. Hunt sits on Halliburton's board of directors. He got his spot on the Halliburton board in 1998 while Dick Cheney was running the company. As soon as Hunt got on the Halliburton board, he was put on its compensation committee, where he helped determine Cheney's pay. Indeed, in 1998, Hunt's committee decided that Cheney deserved a bonus of $1.1 million and restricted stock awards of $1.5 million on top of his regular salary of $1.18 million.
Hunt has been on the PFIAB since 2001. Presumably, months ahead of everyone else, he had access to intelligence indicating that the Bush administration was going to invade Iraq -- information that could have been of value to certain oil service companies with operations in the Middle East.
Hunt isn't the first Halliburton board member to be tied to PFIAB. From 1982 to 1990, the PFIAB was chaired by Anne Armstrong, a wealthy Texan whose Republican ties go back to the Nixon White House. (Karl Rove now occupies Armstrong's old office in the West Wing.) During her entire eight-year stint as chairwoman of the PFIAB, Amstrong also served on Halliburton's board. In fact, Armstrong was on Halliburton's board in 1995, when the company decided to hire Dick Cheney as its CEO. Asked about it later, Armstrong said there was "instant backing" for Cheney when his name was first mentioned for the job.
Hunt can use what he learns at PFIAB to help Halliburton. Or he can help his own company, Hunt Oil, one of the world's largest privately owned energy companies. "Even without taking advantage of any particular intelligence report, the PFIAB affiliation is gold," says Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "It lends itself to exploitation for commercial and other interests."
Among Hunt's biggest projects is the controversial $2.6 billion Camisea liquefied natural gas project in Peru, which will soon begin delivering gas to markets on the West Coast of the U.S. Amazon Watch, a nonprofit environmental group, calls the project the "most damaging project in the Amazon Basin." It points out that the majority of the gas extraction will be done in a reserve that was set aside for local indigenous people. Similarly, Environmental Defense points out that Camisea will affect some of "the most pristine forest regions of the Amazon." In 2003, the Export-Import Bank, which was under heavy pressure from environmental groups, refused to provide financing for Camisea.
Does Hunt's position on PFIAB give him an edge in dealing with Peru and Camisea? There's no way to be certain. But it is clear that Hunt's business operations are so varied that every bit of foreign intelligence he sees at PFIAB might be of value to him.
Hunt's company is also active in Argentina, Chile and Guyana. One of Hunt Oil's most important projects is in Yemen, where his company has been producing oil for more than two decades. Hunt Oil's next Yemen project is a multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas project on the Arabian Sea. The gas will come from Hunt's wells in the the vast desert that separates Saudi Arabia and Yemen. A 199-mile pipeline will carry it to a port on the Yemeni coast. That port is about 200 miles east of Aden, where al-Qaida suicide bombers hit the USS Cole in 2000. Of course, Hunt doesn't have to rely on just the PFIAB for intelligence. His former right-hand man, James Oberwetter, is now the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
An employee of Hunt Oil told Salon that Hunt and his public affairs representative, former ambassador Jeanne Phillips, were traveling and that a return phone call should not be expected anytime soon.
Bush also reappointed DeWitt to the PFIAB. DeWitt has raised more than $300,000 for Bush's presidential campaigns. In addition to backing Bush's failed ventures in the oil patch, DeWitt played a key role in the syndicate that Bush put together to buy the Texas Rangers in 1989. It was DeWitt who told Bush that the baseball team was for sale. DeWitt then became an investor in the syndicate that paid $89 million for the team. (In June of 1998, Dallas billionaire Tom Hicks bought the Rangers for $250 million. The sale gave Bush nearly $15 million, a 24-fold return on his investment. Nine months later, Bush announced that he was running for president.)
DeWitt did not return a phone call to his office.
A new appointee to PFIAB is one of Bush's oldest and best friends, former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. Less than three months after leaving commerce, Evans found a new job as CEO of the Financial Services Forum, which represents 20 of the biggest financial institutions doing business in the U.S. The roster of companies includes GE, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, AIG and Morgan Stanley. According to its Web site, the forum is designed to "promote policies that enhance savings and investment in the United States, and that ensure an open, competitive and sound financial services marketplace."
For Aftergood, from the Project on Government Secrecy, the latest PFIAB appointments represent a missed opportunity to help resolve the disastrous condition of America's intelligence agencies. He says the decision to appoint Hunt, DeWitt and Evans is part of the "familiar pattern that we've seen so often with this administration: The president's pals and supporters are esteemed more highly than those who have genuine competence." He continues: "These people aren't the best and the brightest. They are the best connected. And the quality of our government suffers as a result."
Top-secret cronies
Bush has stacked his foreign advisory board with his Texas business pals, who stand to profit from access to CIA and military intelligence.
By Robert Bryce
Nov. 17, 2005 | No discussion of cronyism in the Bush administration would be complete without talking about PFIAB, short for the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. George W. Bush's latest appointments to the PFIAB, which advises the president on how various intelligence agencies are performing, represent a who's who of the Halliburton-Texas Rangers-oil business crony club that made Bush into a millionaire and helped propel him into the White House.
On Oct. 27, an announcement by the White House made it clear that despite the disastrous intelligence failures that have been driving Bush's policies over the past few years, he's not going to put up with any independent voices on the PFIAB, especially from anyone who might actually know something about foreign intelligence, like, say, Brent Scowcroft.
In 2001, Bush appointed him to chair the PFIAB. But Scowcroft, who was national security advisor under two presidents, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, has been openly critical of Bush's decision to invade Iraq. "I don't think in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratising the Middle East can be successful," Scowcroft recently told the New Yorker. "If you can do it, fine, but I don't think you can, and in the process of trying to do it you can make the Middle East a lot worse." That kind of independent thinking led Bush to dismiss Scowcroft from the chairmanship of the PFIAB about a year ago.
With Scowcroft out, Bush's cronies are in. Last month, the White House announced that Dallas oil billionaire Ray Hunt, one of Bush's biggest financial backers, was reappointed to the PFIAB. So was Cincinnati financier William DeWitt Jr., who has backed Bush in all of his business deals going back to 1984, when DeWitt's company, Spectrum 7, bailed out the faltering entity known as Bush Oil Co. The new appointee of note to the PFIAB is former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a Bush confidant since his days in Midland, Texas.
(Other notable appointees to the PFIAB include Netscape founder Jim Barksdale, former Reagan White House counsel Arthur Culvahouse, and former U.S. congressman and 9/11 commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton.)
Ray Close, a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group that has been critical of the Bush administration's handling of intelligence matters, doesn't mince words when discussing Bush's latest appointments to the PFIAB. "It's unbelievable," says Close, who worked for the CIA for 27 years as an Arabist. "I can't imagine anyone who has the president's interest in mind allowing him to do this. With the notable exception of Lee Hamilton, most of the choices look very weak, and several scream of cronyism."
Created in 1956 by President Dwight Eisenhower, the PFIAB is designed -- according to the White House press release -- to give the president "objective, expert advice." In an ideal world, the PFIAB members would analyze the intelligence they get and give the president their unvarnished opinions about the relative merits of the different agencies and the work they are doing. PFIAB members are granted access to America's most secret secrets, known as SCI, for Sensitive Compartmented Information. Members of PFIAB have security clearances that are among the highest in the U.S. government. They have access to intelligence that is unavailable to most members of Congress. They are privy to intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the military intelligence agencies and others.
Everything that members do as part of PFIAB is done in secrecy. None of the information that they discuss or view is available to the public. They are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. And unlike other public servants who work for the president, there is no public disclosure of the PFIAB members' financial interests.
In 1999, the PFIAB opened up slightly when it released a report about security at the Department of Energy's nuclear labs. That 1999 report is a prime example of how the PFIAB has -- and could in the future -- play an important role in helping the president deal with intelligence issues. That report bluntly assessed the DOE, saying that a "culture of arrogance -- both at DOE headquarters and the labs themselves -- conspired to create an espionage scandal waiting to happen." That report led to a major reorganization of the labs.
Despite the PFIAB's power, coverage of it by the news media is sparse. Bush's most recent PFIAB appointment was almost completely ignored. The only significant story by the national media on the PFIAB was a snarky item posted on Newsweek's Web site on Nov. 2, which said that after all the recent intelligence failures, "you might think the president would be wary about the appearance of cronyism."
To be fair, the PFIAB has long been stocked with people close to the president in office. Under Bill Clinton, the PFIAB had far more intelligence expertise than it does now. Clinton's PFIAB appointments included former Defense Secretary Les Aspin, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William Crowe. Clinton also appointed a pair of his big money contributors to the PFIAB: New York banker Stan Shuman and Texas real estate whiz Richard Bloch.
For Bush, it appears that campaign cash counts far more than expertise. And few backers have given Bush's campaigns more cash than Ray Hunt, son of the legendary Dallas billionaire bigamist oilman H.L. Hunt. PFIAB membership is a plum position for Hunt, who raised about $100,000 for Bush during the 2000 campaign and also served as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Hunt's position at PFIAB may benefit a familiar entity in the Bush crony network: Halliburton, which is doing billions of dollars' worth of reconstruction and logistics work for the U.S. government in Iraq and on the Gulf Coast. Hunt sits on Halliburton's board of directors. He got his spot on the Halliburton board in 1998 while Dick Cheney was running the company. As soon as Hunt got on the Halliburton board, he was put on its compensation committee, where he helped determine Cheney's pay. Indeed, in 1998, Hunt's committee decided that Cheney deserved a bonus of $1.1 million and restricted stock awards of $1.5 million on top of his regular salary of $1.18 million.
Hunt has been on the PFIAB since 2001. Presumably, months ahead of everyone else, he had access to intelligence indicating that the Bush administration was going to invade Iraq -- information that could have been of value to certain oil service companies with operations in the Middle East.
Hunt isn't the first Halliburton board member to be tied to PFIAB. From 1982 to 1990, the PFIAB was chaired by Anne Armstrong, a wealthy Texan whose Republican ties go back to the Nixon White House. (Karl Rove now occupies Armstrong's old office in the West Wing.) During her entire eight-year stint as chairwoman of the PFIAB, Amstrong also served on Halliburton's board. In fact, Armstrong was on Halliburton's board in 1995, when the company decided to hire Dick Cheney as its CEO. Asked about it later, Armstrong said there was "instant backing" for Cheney when his name was first mentioned for the job.
Hunt can use what he learns at PFIAB to help Halliburton. Or he can help his own company, Hunt Oil, one of the world's largest privately owned energy companies. "Even without taking advantage of any particular intelligence report, the PFIAB affiliation is gold," says Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "It lends itself to exploitation for commercial and other interests."
Among Hunt's biggest projects is the controversial $2.6 billion Camisea liquefied natural gas project in Peru, which will soon begin delivering gas to markets on the West Coast of the U.S. Amazon Watch, a nonprofit environmental group, calls the project the "most damaging project in the Amazon Basin." It points out that the majority of the gas extraction will be done in a reserve that was set aside for local indigenous people. Similarly, Environmental Defense points out that Camisea will affect some of "the most pristine forest regions of the Amazon." In 2003, the Export-Import Bank, which was under heavy pressure from environmental groups, refused to provide financing for Camisea.
Does Hunt's position on PFIAB give him an edge in dealing with Peru and Camisea? There's no way to be certain. But it is clear that Hunt's business operations are so varied that every bit of foreign intelligence he sees at PFIAB might be of value to him.
Hunt's company is also active in Argentina, Chile and Guyana. One of Hunt Oil's most important projects is in Yemen, where his company has been producing oil for more than two decades. Hunt Oil's next Yemen project is a multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas project on the Arabian Sea. The gas will come from Hunt's wells in the the vast desert that separates Saudi Arabia and Yemen. A 199-mile pipeline will carry it to a port on the Yemeni coast. That port is about 200 miles east of Aden, where al-Qaida suicide bombers hit the USS Cole in 2000. Of course, Hunt doesn't have to rely on just the PFIAB for intelligence. His former right-hand man, James Oberwetter, is now the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
An employee of Hunt Oil told Salon that Hunt and his public affairs representative, former ambassador Jeanne Phillips, were traveling and that a return phone call should not be expected anytime soon.
Bush also reappointed DeWitt to the PFIAB. DeWitt has raised more than $300,000 for Bush's presidential campaigns. In addition to backing Bush's failed ventures in the oil patch, DeWitt played a key role in the syndicate that Bush put together to buy the Texas Rangers in 1989. It was DeWitt who told Bush that the baseball team was for sale. DeWitt then became an investor in the syndicate that paid $89 million for the team. (In June of 1998, Dallas billionaire Tom Hicks bought the Rangers for $250 million. The sale gave Bush nearly $15 million, a 24-fold return on his investment. Nine months later, Bush announced that he was running for president.)
DeWitt did not return a phone call to his office.
A new appointee to PFIAB is one of Bush's oldest and best friends, former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. Less than three months after leaving commerce, Evans found a new job as CEO of the Financial Services Forum, which represents 20 of the biggest financial institutions doing business in the U.S. The roster of companies includes GE, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, AIG and Morgan Stanley. According to its Web site, the forum is designed to "promote policies that enhance savings and investment in the United States, and that ensure an open, competitive and sound financial services marketplace."
For Aftergood, from the Project on Government Secrecy, the latest PFIAB appointments represent a missed opportunity to help resolve the disastrous condition of America's intelligence agencies. He says the decision to appoint Hunt, DeWitt and Evans is part of the "familiar pattern that we've seen so often with this administration: The president's pals and supporters are esteemed more highly than those who have genuine competence." He continues: "These people aren't the best and the brightest. They are the best connected. And the quality of our government suffers as a result."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1702070_pf.html
Foreign Network at Front of CIA's Terror Fight
Joint Facilities in 2 Dozen Countries Account for Bulk of Agency's Post-9/11 Successes
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 18, 2005; A01
The CIA has established joint operation centers in more than two dozen countries where U.S. and foreign intelligence officers work side by side to track and capture suspected terrorists and to destroy or penetrate their networks, according to current and former American and foreign intelligence officials.
The secret Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers are financed mostly by the agency and employ some of the best espionage technology the CIA has to offer, including secure communications gear, computers linked to the CIA's central databases, and access to highly classified intercepts once shared only with the nation's closest Western allies.
The Americans and their counterparts at the centers, known as CTICs, make daily decisions on when and how to apprehend suspects, whether to whisk them off to other countries for interrogation and detention, and how to disrupt al Qaeda's logistical and financial support.
The network of centers reflects what has become the CIA's central and most successful strategy in combating terrorism abroad: persuading and empowering foreign security services to help. Virtually every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- more than 3,000 in all -- was a result of foreign intelligence services' work alongside the agency, the CIA deputy director of operations told a congressional committee in a closed-door session earlier this year.
The initial tip about where an al Qaeda figure is hiding may come from the CIA, but the actual operation to pick him up is usually organized by one of the joint centers and conducted by a local security service, with the CIA nowhere in sight. "The vast majority of successes involved our CTICs," one former counterterrorism official said. "The boot that went through the door was foreign."
The centers are also part of a fundamental, continuing shift in the CIA's mission that began shortly after the 2001 attacks. No longer is the agency's primary goal to recruit military attaches, diplomats and intelligence operatives to steal secrets from their own countries. Today's CIA is desperately seeking ways to join forces with other governments it once reproached or ignored to undo a common enemy.
George J. Tenet orchestrated the shift during his tenure as CIA director, working with the agency's station chiefs abroad and officers in the Counterterrorist Center at headquarters to bring about an exponential deepening of intelligence ties worldwide after Sept. 11.
Beneath the surface of visible diplomacy, the cooperative efforts, known as liaison relationships, are recasting U.S. dealings abroad.
The White House has stepped up its criticism of Uzbek President Islam Karimov in the past year for his authoritarian rule and repression of dissidents. But joint counterterrorism efforts with Tashkent continued until recently. In Indonesia, as the State Department doled out tiny amounts of assistance to the military when it made progress on corruption and human rights, the CIA was pouring money into Jakarta and developing intelligence ties there after years of tension. In Paris, as U.S.-French acrimony peaked over the Iraq invasion in 2003, the CIA and French intelligence services were creating the agency's only multinational operations center and executing worldwide sting operations.
The CIA has operated the joint intelligence centers in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, according to current and former intelligence officials. In addition, the multinational center in Paris, codenamed Alliance Base, includes representatives from Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Australia.
"CTICs were a step forward in codifying, organizing liaison relationships that elsewhere would be more ad hoc," a former CIA counterterrorism official said. "It's one tool in the liaison tool kit."
The CIA declined to comment for this article. The Washington Post interviewed more than two dozen current and former intelligence officials and more than a dozen senior foreign intelligence officials as well as diplomatic and congressional sources. Most of them spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly or because of the sensitive nature of the subject.
The CTICs are entirely separate from the covert prisons, known in classified documents as "black sites," that the CIA has run at various times in eight countries. Legal experts and intelligence officials have said that the prisons -- whose existence was disclosed in a Washington Post report earlier this month -- would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries. The CTICs, by contrast, are an expansion of the hidden intelligence cooperation that has been a staple of foreign policy for decades.
Deepening Ties
The intelligence centers were modeled on the CIA's counternarcotics centers in Latin America and Asia. Faced with corrupt local police and intelligence services, in the 1980s the CIA persuaded the leaders of these countries to let it select individuals for the assignment, pay them and keep them physically separate from their own institutions.
Officers from the host nations serving in the newer CTICs are vetted through background checks and polygraphs. They are usually supervised by the CIA's chief of station and augmented by officers sent from the Counterterrorist Center at Langley. Such daily interaction with U.S. personnel, say intelligence officials, helps keep the foreign service focused.
The first two CTICs were established in the late 1990s to watch and capture Islamic militants traveling from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Chechnya to join the fighting in Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, two former intelligence officers said.
Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Tenet outlined a global campaign against terrorism to President Bush. It included invading Afghanistan to wipe out al Qaeda's main base of operations as well as a "Worldwide Attack Matrix" detailing operations against terrorists in 80 countries. The matrix also listed priority countries where al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan were likely to flee during a U.S. invasion.
"If you brought a big hammer down on Afghanistan," as a former CIA official described it, "there weren't too many areas where people could squirt out" and hide. The most likely were Yemen, Saudi Arabia, urban areas of Pakistan, and Indonesia.
On Sept. 17, 2001, Bush signed a classified Presidential Finding that authorized an unprecedented range of covert operations. The overall counterterrorism program included authorization of lethal measures against terrorists and the expenditure of vast funds to coax foreign intelligence services into a new era of cooperation with the CIA, current and former intelligence officials said.
To beef up operations in the priority countries and elsewhere, the agency dispatched officers from its proliferation, counternarcotics, Europe, Africa, Asia and Middle East divisions, said several current and former intelligence officials. It sent paramilitary teams from its tiny Special Activities Division and enlisted the military's Special Operations Forces to augment the teams.
But agency officials knew that a surge of hundreds of CIA officers would not be adequate to solidify the new worldwide infrastructure that Tenet and his top aides envisioned. The agency quickly turned to dozens of sometimes reluctant foreign intelligence services, which had much more intimate knowledge of local terrorist groups and their supporters.
The agency had extensive inducements to offer foreign services once Congress opened the spigot, which it quickly did. "The money was just flowing," said one CIA case officer. In fact, the budget for the CIA's operations increased in the first two years by 2 1/2 times what it had been before Sept. 11, according to two government experts.
The Counterterrorist Center at CIA headquarters, which manages the CTICs and all other counterterrorism efforts, bought its friends SUVs, night-vision equipment, automatic weapons and push-to-talk radios for countries where intelligence services were starved for even basic material. It sent instructors in surveillance, data analysis and military Special Forces tactics to teach hostage rescue, VIP protection and counterterrorist assault. Foreign countries sent officers to the CIA's training school for weeks-long courses in counterterrorism operations and analysis.
The new cooperative ventures depended as well on loosening U.S. rules for sharing electronic eavesdropping and other precious "signals intelligence," which experts estimate provides 80 to 90 percent of the information the United States gathers about terrorist networks. Tenet ordered streamlined regulations.
The National Security Agency, which manages, analyzes and distributes electronic intercepts, quickly became a new partner in the joint centers, and established a Foreign Affairs Directorate that now handles sharing information and equipment with 40 countries.
Tenet Courts Yemen
Persuading foreign presidents and intelligence chiefs to begin or deepen relationships with the CIA often took the personal intervention of Bush, Vice President Cheney and the secretary of state. But closing a deal was left to the CIA's chiefs of station, other top officials, and foremost, Tenet, "the master of liaison," as one longtime intelligence officer dubbed him.
Gregarious and comfortable in foreign settings, Tenet by Sept. 11 had earned a reputation among Muslim countries as an honest broker in the Arab-Israeli dispute and for his role in training Palestinian security forces.
He was a natural at bonding with foreign chiefs of service, current and former intelligence officials said. Once, during a dinner for a foreign service chief, the guests asked Tenet about Bush, whom Tenet briefed every morning. "He would tell them what time he gets up. He'd say, 'The president calls me Jorge.' It was really human-being-to-human-being," said a former intelligence official. "He didn't give away anything classified, but they felt important and could go back to their president and say, 'The president calls him Jorge.' "
"George Tenet is a charming man, but also a very tough cookie," said a senior French official.
Yemen, with its terrorist training camps and al Qaeda presence, was one of Tenet's most significant successes. Its president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had little control over the northern border with Saudi Arabia, which had turned into a haven for extremists, and even less over his violent rivals.
Faris Sanabani, a Yemeni presidential adviser, said Tenet's trips to Yemen after Sept. 11 helped persuade Saleh to work with the CIA in a way that would have been unthinkable before. "He made an effort to reach out when people were really scared of Yemen," said Sanabani, who sat in on meetings between Tenet and Saleh. "He's the kind of person who doesn't work from a report or from behind the office desk."
In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Saleh thought Yemen was next on the target list, said one current and one former intelligence official. Tenet did not disabuse him of this idea, they said. "You don't take anything off the table," one said.
At the same time, Tenet "listened to him, took his views seriously and did not rebuke him. He sought to meet Saleh's needs," he said.
Tenet provided millions of dollars for Yemen's cooperation. He gave helicopters, eavesdropping equipment, weapons and bulletproof vests. He brought in 100 Army Special Forces trainers to help Yemen create an antiterrorism unit.
Tenet also won Saleh's approval to fly Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles over the country to hunt and kill al Qaeda figures. In November 2002, the CIA killed six al Qaeda operatives driving in the desert, including Abu Ali al-Harithi, suspected mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
"All of the sudden our enemy became common," Sanabani said. "That's why Yemen and the United States reached out to one other."
Indonesia
Countering terrorism has overshadowed just about all other foreign policy concerns, including "making friends with the sorts of characters you would not have been in the same room with before," one former foreign intelligence official said.
In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country and the center of gravity for an al Qaeda affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah, that meant befriending Lt. Gen. Abdullah Hendropriyono, then head of the intelligence service.
Sporting black hair lacquered with hairspray and colorful jackets with matching ties and socks, Hendropriyono was more flamboyant than most chiefs. A former Indonesian special forces commander trained at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Hendropriyono was accused by human rights activists of ordering attacks that killed more than 100 unarmed villagers in 1989, according to Associated Press and other published reports. In 2004, he threatened action against foreign humanitarian groups monitoring human rights issues, published reports said.
Hendropriyono replaced an intelligence chief who had conducted surveillance against U.S. and Australian officials, according to U.S. and Australian sources. Al Qaeda leader Omar Farouq had the U.S. Embassy under surveillance and U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Gelbard believed that the Indonesians had purposely blown an operation meant to capture a bombing team targeting the U.S. compound in Jakarta.
In August 2001, Hendropriyono was "a breath of fresh air," said one CIA officer who worked with him. "He was focused, very controversial, but very dynamic." Unlike his predecessor, he was willing to work with the Americans, at a price.
Besides phone calls and office visits, Tenet worked hard on Hendropriyono's requests for goods and services. "These guys had 1970s technology," the CIA officer said. "They were dying for equipment, surveillance, wiretaps."
Tenet came through on two of Hendropriyono's personal requests as well: to provide seed money for a regional intelligence school, the International Institute of Intelligence on Batam Island, and to get a relative of Hendropriyono's into a top-rated American university. When his grades proved an obstacle, the CIA director arranged for him to attend the National War College at Fort McNair, four sources said.
Hendropriyono proved his willingness to cooperate by arresting Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, a Egyptian who the CIA believed was linked to British failed shoe bomber Richard C. Reid. He also agreed to allow the CIA to take Madni to Egypt for interrogation under a process known as "rendition."
Hendropriyono agreed to expand the cooperation, and officers arrested a few dozen Indonesians suspected of links to terrorism. He began efforts to close down terrorist financing.
Then he secured the approval of his political leadership to apprehend Farouq, believed to be a top al Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia. "He forced [the Indonesian security services ] to work with us and we started picking up the bigger fish," Gelbard said. Attempts to reach Hendropriyono were unsuccessful.
The Goss Era
Porter J. Goss, who succeeded Tenet as CIA director just over a year ago, could hardly be more different. For all of Tenet's gregariousness, Goss is the picture of reserve. And there are indications that Goss may not place as much emphasis on combining forces with others overseas.
When Goss took over, he said he valued these partnerships but announced a goal of improving what he called "unilateral" intelligence collection and operations. "We have gotten more unilateral, though still not as much as I'd like," he told employees in a staff meeting. "It's getting the right kind of people trained in the right places under the right cover against the right targets."
There are plans to send more case officers into the field and to increase deep-cover positions that would require officers to spend longer periods, and perhaps their careers, in one country, integrated into the culture and, in some cases, cut off from the traditional embassy-based CIA station.
Stories about Goss's reluctance to meet with his foreign counterparts are rife, fueled in part by a cable from headquarters to overseas station chiefs, saying appointments with foreign services should be arranged for Tuesdays or Thursdays. The memo, CIA officials have said, was not meant to discourage such meetings but to assure officers that Goss would set aside time for such important visitors.
During a recent trip to the U.S. Special Operations Command base in Qatar, Goss did not meet with the head of the country or Qatar's intelligence chief. Intelligence officials say that is because Goss had met with them recently. Others say Tenet would never had flown so far and missed a chance to schmooze.
In any case, current and former intelligence officials predicted that the new, deeper relationships with foreign intelligence agencies will endure because the countries involved have a strong, common interest in confronting terrorism. And they said CIA station chiefs will continue to cultivate and encourage the ties, given the success they've yielded thus far.
"Most of these relationships are built on the ground," said a former intelligence official who spent most of his career overseas.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Foreign Network at Front of CIA's Terror Fight
Joint Facilities in 2 Dozen Countries Account for Bulk of Agency's Post-9/11 Successes
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 18, 2005; A01
The CIA has established joint operation centers in more than two dozen countries where U.S. and foreign intelligence officers work side by side to track and capture suspected terrorists and to destroy or penetrate their networks, according to current and former American and foreign intelligence officials.
The secret Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers are financed mostly by the agency and employ some of the best espionage technology the CIA has to offer, including secure communications gear, computers linked to the CIA's central databases, and access to highly classified intercepts once shared only with the nation's closest Western allies.
The Americans and their counterparts at the centers, known as CTICs, make daily decisions on when and how to apprehend suspects, whether to whisk them off to other countries for interrogation and detention, and how to disrupt al Qaeda's logistical and financial support.
The network of centers reflects what has become the CIA's central and most successful strategy in combating terrorism abroad: persuading and empowering foreign security services to help. Virtually every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- more than 3,000 in all -- was a result of foreign intelligence services' work alongside the agency, the CIA deputy director of operations told a congressional committee in a closed-door session earlier this year.
The initial tip about where an al Qaeda figure is hiding may come from the CIA, but the actual operation to pick him up is usually organized by one of the joint centers and conducted by a local security service, with the CIA nowhere in sight. "The vast majority of successes involved our CTICs," one former counterterrorism official said. "The boot that went through the door was foreign."
The centers are also part of a fundamental, continuing shift in the CIA's mission that began shortly after the 2001 attacks. No longer is the agency's primary goal to recruit military attaches, diplomats and intelligence operatives to steal secrets from their own countries. Today's CIA is desperately seeking ways to join forces with other governments it once reproached or ignored to undo a common enemy.
George J. Tenet orchestrated the shift during his tenure as CIA director, working with the agency's station chiefs abroad and officers in the Counterterrorist Center at headquarters to bring about an exponential deepening of intelligence ties worldwide after Sept. 11.
Beneath the surface of visible diplomacy, the cooperative efforts, known as liaison relationships, are recasting U.S. dealings abroad.
The White House has stepped up its criticism of Uzbek President Islam Karimov in the past year for his authoritarian rule and repression of dissidents. But joint counterterrorism efforts with Tashkent continued until recently. In Indonesia, as the State Department doled out tiny amounts of assistance to the military when it made progress on corruption and human rights, the CIA was pouring money into Jakarta and developing intelligence ties there after years of tension. In Paris, as U.S.-French acrimony peaked over the Iraq invasion in 2003, the CIA and French intelligence services were creating the agency's only multinational operations center and executing worldwide sting operations.
The CIA has operated the joint intelligence centers in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, according to current and former intelligence officials. In addition, the multinational center in Paris, codenamed Alliance Base, includes representatives from Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Australia.
"CTICs were a step forward in codifying, organizing liaison relationships that elsewhere would be more ad hoc," a former CIA counterterrorism official said. "It's one tool in the liaison tool kit."
The CIA declined to comment for this article. The Washington Post interviewed more than two dozen current and former intelligence officials and more than a dozen senior foreign intelligence officials as well as diplomatic and congressional sources. Most of them spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly or because of the sensitive nature of the subject.
The CTICs are entirely separate from the covert prisons, known in classified documents as "black sites," that the CIA has run at various times in eight countries. Legal experts and intelligence officials have said that the prisons -- whose existence was disclosed in a Washington Post report earlier this month -- would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries. The CTICs, by contrast, are an expansion of the hidden intelligence cooperation that has been a staple of foreign policy for decades.
Deepening Ties
The intelligence centers were modeled on the CIA's counternarcotics centers in Latin America and Asia. Faced with corrupt local police and intelligence services, in the 1980s the CIA persuaded the leaders of these countries to let it select individuals for the assignment, pay them and keep them physically separate from their own institutions.
Officers from the host nations serving in the newer CTICs are vetted through background checks and polygraphs. They are usually supervised by the CIA's chief of station and augmented by officers sent from the Counterterrorist Center at Langley. Such daily interaction with U.S. personnel, say intelligence officials, helps keep the foreign service focused.
The first two CTICs were established in the late 1990s to watch and capture Islamic militants traveling from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Chechnya to join the fighting in Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, two former intelligence officers said.
Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Tenet outlined a global campaign against terrorism to President Bush. It included invading Afghanistan to wipe out al Qaeda's main base of operations as well as a "Worldwide Attack Matrix" detailing operations against terrorists in 80 countries. The matrix also listed priority countries where al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan were likely to flee during a U.S. invasion.
"If you brought a big hammer down on Afghanistan," as a former CIA official described it, "there weren't too many areas where people could squirt out" and hide. The most likely were Yemen, Saudi Arabia, urban areas of Pakistan, and Indonesia.
On Sept. 17, 2001, Bush signed a classified Presidential Finding that authorized an unprecedented range of covert operations. The overall counterterrorism program included authorization of lethal measures against terrorists and the expenditure of vast funds to coax foreign intelligence services into a new era of cooperation with the CIA, current and former intelligence officials said.
To beef up operations in the priority countries and elsewhere, the agency dispatched officers from its proliferation, counternarcotics, Europe, Africa, Asia and Middle East divisions, said several current and former intelligence officials. It sent paramilitary teams from its tiny Special Activities Division and enlisted the military's Special Operations Forces to augment the teams.
But agency officials knew that a surge of hundreds of CIA officers would not be adequate to solidify the new worldwide infrastructure that Tenet and his top aides envisioned. The agency quickly turned to dozens of sometimes reluctant foreign intelligence services, which had much more intimate knowledge of local terrorist groups and their supporters.
The agency had extensive inducements to offer foreign services once Congress opened the spigot, which it quickly did. "The money was just flowing," said one CIA case officer. In fact, the budget for the CIA's operations increased in the first two years by 2 1/2 times what it had been before Sept. 11, according to two government experts.
The Counterterrorist Center at CIA headquarters, which manages the CTICs and all other counterterrorism efforts, bought its friends SUVs, night-vision equipment, automatic weapons and push-to-talk radios for countries where intelligence services were starved for even basic material. It sent instructors in surveillance, data analysis and military Special Forces tactics to teach hostage rescue, VIP protection and counterterrorist assault. Foreign countries sent officers to the CIA's training school for weeks-long courses in counterterrorism operations and analysis.
The new cooperative ventures depended as well on loosening U.S. rules for sharing electronic eavesdropping and other precious "signals intelligence," which experts estimate provides 80 to 90 percent of the information the United States gathers about terrorist networks. Tenet ordered streamlined regulations.
The National Security Agency, which manages, analyzes and distributes electronic intercepts, quickly became a new partner in the joint centers, and established a Foreign Affairs Directorate that now handles sharing information and equipment with 40 countries.
Tenet Courts Yemen
Persuading foreign presidents and intelligence chiefs to begin or deepen relationships with the CIA often took the personal intervention of Bush, Vice President Cheney and the secretary of state. But closing a deal was left to the CIA's chiefs of station, other top officials, and foremost, Tenet, "the master of liaison," as one longtime intelligence officer dubbed him.
Gregarious and comfortable in foreign settings, Tenet by Sept. 11 had earned a reputation among Muslim countries as an honest broker in the Arab-Israeli dispute and for his role in training Palestinian security forces.
He was a natural at bonding with foreign chiefs of service, current and former intelligence officials said. Once, during a dinner for a foreign service chief, the guests asked Tenet about Bush, whom Tenet briefed every morning. "He would tell them what time he gets up. He'd say, 'The president calls me Jorge.' It was really human-being-to-human-being," said a former intelligence official. "He didn't give away anything classified, but they felt important and could go back to their president and say, 'The president calls him Jorge.' "
"George Tenet is a charming man, but also a very tough cookie," said a senior French official.
Yemen, with its terrorist training camps and al Qaeda presence, was one of Tenet's most significant successes. Its president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had little control over the northern border with Saudi Arabia, which had turned into a haven for extremists, and even less over his violent rivals.
Faris Sanabani, a Yemeni presidential adviser, said Tenet's trips to Yemen after Sept. 11 helped persuade Saleh to work with the CIA in a way that would have been unthinkable before. "He made an effort to reach out when people were really scared of Yemen," said Sanabani, who sat in on meetings between Tenet and Saleh. "He's the kind of person who doesn't work from a report or from behind the office desk."
In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Saleh thought Yemen was next on the target list, said one current and one former intelligence official. Tenet did not disabuse him of this idea, they said. "You don't take anything off the table," one said.
At the same time, Tenet "listened to him, took his views seriously and did not rebuke him. He sought to meet Saleh's needs," he said.
Tenet provided millions of dollars for Yemen's cooperation. He gave helicopters, eavesdropping equipment, weapons and bulletproof vests. He brought in 100 Army Special Forces trainers to help Yemen create an antiterrorism unit.
Tenet also won Saleh's approval to fly Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles over the country to hunt and kill al Qaeda figures. In November 2002, the CIA killed six al Qaeda operatives driving in the desert, including Abu Ali al-Harithi, suspected mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
"All of the sudden our enemy became common," Sanabani said. "That's why Yemen and the United States reached out to one other."
Indonesia
Countering terrorism has overshadowed just about all other foreign policy concerns, including "making friends with the sorts of characters you would not have been in the same room with before," one former foreign intelligence official said.
In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country and the center of gravity for an al Qaeda affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah, that meant befriending Lt. Gen. Abdullah Hendropriyono, then head of the intelligence service.
Sporting black hair lacquered with hairspray and colorful jackets with matching ties and socks, Hendropriyono was more flamboyant than most chiefs. A former Indonesian special forces commander trained at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Hendropriyono was accused by human rights activists of ordering attacks that killed more than 100 unarmed villagers in 1989, according to Associated Press and other published reports. In 2004, he threatened action against foreign humanitarian groups monitoring human rights issues, published reports said.
Hendropriyono replaced an intelligence chief who had conducted surveillance against U.S. and Australian officials, according to U.S. and Australian sources. Al Qaeda leader Omar Farouq had the U.S. Embassy under surveillance and U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Gelbard believed that the Indonesians had purposely blown an operation meant to capture a bombing team targeting the U.S. compound in Jakarta.
In August 2001, Hendropriyono was "a breath of fresh air," said one CIA officer who worked with him. "He was focused, very controversial, but very dynamic." Unlike his predecessor, he was willing to work with the Americans, at a price.
Besides phone calls and office visits, Tenet worked hard on Hendropriyono's requests for goods and services. "These guys had 1970s technology," the CIA officer said. "They were dying for equipment, surveillance, wiretaps."
Tenet came through on two of Hendropriyono's personal requests as well: to provide seed money for a regional intelligence school, the International Institute of Intelligence on Batam Island, and to get a relative of Hendropriyono's into a top-rated American university. When his grades proved an obstacle, the CIA director arranged for him to attend the National War College at Fort McNair, four sources said.
Hendropriyono proved his willingness to cooperate by arresting Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, a Egyptian who the CIA believed was linked to British failed shoe bomber Richard C. Reid. He also agreed to allow the CIA to take Madni to Egypt for interrogation under a process known as "rendition."
Hendropriyono agreed to expand the cooperation, and officers arrested a few dozen Indonesians suspected of links to terrorism. He began efforts to close down terrorist financing.
Then he secured the approval of his political leadership to apprehend Farouq, believed to be a top al Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia. "He forced [the Indonesian security services ] to work with us and we started picking up the bigger fish," Gelbard said. Attempts to reach Hendropriyono were unsuccessful.
The Goss Era
Porter J. Goss, who succeeded Tenet as CIA director just over a year ago, could hardly be more different. For all of Tenet's gregariousness, Goss is the picture of reserve. And there are indications that Goss may not place as much emphasis on combining forces with others overseas.
When Goss took over, he said he valued these partnerships but announced a goal of improving what he called "unilateral" intelligence collection and operations. "We have gotten more unilateral, though still not as much as I'd like," he told employees in a staff meeting. "It's getting the right kind of people trained in the right places under the right cover against the right targets."
There are plans to send more case officers into the field and to increase deep-cover positions that would require officers to spend longer periods, and perhaps their careers, in one country, integrated into the culture and, in some cases, cut off from the traditional embassy-based CIA station.
Stories about Goss's reluctance to meet with his foreign counterparts are rife, fueled in part by a cable from headquarters to overseas station chiefs, saying appointments with foreign services should be arranged for Tuesdays or Thursdays. The memo, CIA officials have said, was not meant to discourage such meetings but to assure officers that Goss would set aside time for such important visitors.
During a recent trip to the U.S. Special Operations Command base in Qatar, Goss did not meet with the head of the country or Qatar's intelligence chief. Intelligence officials say that is because Goss had met with them recently. Others say Tenet would never had flown so far and missed a chance to schmooze.
In any case, current and former intelligence officials predicted that the new, deeper relationships with foreign intelligence agencies will endure because the countries involved have a strong, common interest in confronting terrorism. And they said CIA station chiefs will continue to cultivate and encourage the ties, given the success they've yielded thus far.
"Most of these relationships are built on the ground," said a former intelligence official who spent most of his career overseas.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Former CIA Director Accuses Cheney of Overseeing Torture :
Admiral Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director, accused US Vice President Dick Cheney of overseeing policies of torturing terrorist suspects and damaging the nation's reputation, in a television interview Thursday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11068.htm
Admiral Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director, accused US Vice President Dick Cheney of overseeing policies of torturing terrorist suspects and damaging the nation's reputation, in a television interview Thursday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11068.htm
===
Cheney 'vice president for torture':
A former director of America's intelligence agency has branded the country's deputy leader a "vice president for torture".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11066.htm
===
Foreign network at front of CIA’s "terror" fight :
The Americans and their counterparts at the centers, known as CTICs, make daily decisions on when and how to apprehend suspects, whether to whisk them off to other countries for interrogation and detention, and how to disrupt al Qaeda's logistical and financial support.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11059.htm
Cheney 'vice president for torture':
A former director of America's intelligence agency has branded the country's deputy leader a "vice president for torture".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11066.htm
===
Foreign network at front of CIA’s "terror" fight :
The Americans and their counterparts at the centers, known as CTICs, make daily decisions on when and how to apprehend suspects, whether to whisk them off to other countries for interrogation and detention, and how to disrupt al Qaeda's logistical and financial support.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11059.htm
Torturers? Who, us?:
Even Bush's most loyal lieutenants are at each other's throats, and the issue beginning to divide them publicly is torture, with constitutional crises looming fast. Poor Hadley, an ultra-loyalist, can hardly contain his exasperation with his boss and increasingly sounds like a sorrowful father having to explain the words of a wayward, dim-witted son.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11063.htm
Even Bush's most loyal lieutenants are at each other's throats, and the issue beginning to divide them publicly is torture, with constitutional crises looming fast. Poor Hadley, an ultra-loyalist, can hardly contain his exasperation with his boss and increasingly sounds like a sorrowful father having to explain the words of a wayward, dim-witted son.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11063.htm
Mr. Woodward's Sources Washington Post
WE'VE SAID from the start of the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity that if administration officials deliberately set out to unmask a secret agent, they should be punished. But we've also said that, absent evidence of such behavior, criminalizing communication by officials to journalists would run counter to the public interest. Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation is continuing -- he said yesterday he's going back to a grand jury -- and new facts may come to light. But the principle remains valid: It's not in the public interest for reporters to be forced to reveal their confidential sources in cases such as this. That's why Post reporter Bob Woodward should not be vilified for protecting the identity of his source in this complex affair. Here we remind readers that the editorial page operates separately from those who gather and publish news in The Post. Mr. Woodward doesn't answer to us, and he has no input on our page. Like other interested observers, we have noted that Executive Editor Leonard Downie, to whom Mr. Woodward does report, has faulted his investigative reporter for failing to tell him sooner what was going on and for expressing personal opinions on television about the Fitzgerald investigation, and Mr. Woodward has apologized. Both rebukes strike us as reasonable -- as does Mr. Downie's characterization of Mr. Woodward as "one of the most careful, accurate and fair journalists I have ever worked with." But the Woodward flap has significance beyond The Post's newsroom. The longtime Post reporter disclosed this week that, while conducting research for a book, he received information from an administration official about Ms. Plame before her identity was revealed by Robert D. Novak in a July 2003 column. That information was potentially relevant to Fitzgerald's investigation and to a news story that has been extensively covered in this and other papers. Mr. Woodward said he told one Post reporter at the time what he had learned but did not disclose the source. Mr. Woodward recently testified to the prosecutor, with the source's permission and after the source had spoken with Mr. Fitzgerald, but still (again according to his agreement) has not publicly identified the source. Much of the public finds the media's extensive use of confidential sources objectionable, and understandably so. Their use should be as limited as possible. When they are relied upon, reporters should impart as much information as possible about the sources' motives. Those guidelines are accepted but too often ignored by the press. But over the years innumerable cases of official corruption and malfeasance have come to light thanks to sources being able to count on confidentiality. It's astonishing to see so many people -- especially in the journalism establishment -- forget that now. Many of those who condemn Mr. Woodward applauded when The Post recently revealed the existence of CIA prisons around the world, a story that relied on unnamed sources. Is there a distinction to be made based on the motives of the leakers? If so, Mr. Woodward might have had to pass up his first big scoops three decades ago, because his Watergate source, Deep Throat -- recently revealed as FBI official W. Mark Felt -- was disgruntled at having been passed over for the post of FBI director. Newspapers face difficult questions all the time in evaluating the reliability of sources and the appropriateness of publishing their secrets. But if potential sources come to believe that they cannot count on promises of confidentiality, more than the media will suffer.
Prosecutor to Offer More CIA Leak Evidence San Francisco Chronicle
CIA leak prosecutor to seek new grand jury MSNBC
Los Angeles Times - CNN - Guardian Unlimited - New York Times - all 1,226 related »
WE'VE SAID from the start of the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity that if administration officials deliberately set out to unmask a secret agent, they should be punished. But we've also said that, absent evidence of such behavior, criminalizing communication by officials to journalists would run counter to the public interest. Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation is continuing -- he said yesterday he's going back to a grand jury -- and new facts may come to light. But the principle remains valid: It's not in the public interest for reporters to be forced to reveal their confidential sources in cases such as this. That's why Post reporter Bob Woodward should not be vilified for protecting the identity of his source in this complex affair. Here we remind readers that the editorial page operates separately from those who gather and publish news in The Post. Mr. Woodward doesn't answer to us, and he has no input on our page. Like other interested observers, we have noted that Executive Editor Leonard Downie, to whom Mr. Woodward does report, has faulted his investigative reporter for failing to tell him sooner what was going on and for expressing personal opinions on television about the Fitzgerald investigation, and Mr. Woodward has apologized. Both rebukes strike us as reasonable -- as does Mr. Downie's characterization of Mr. Woodward as "one of the most careful, accurate and fair journalists I have ever worked with." But the Woodward flap has significance beyond The Post's newsroom. The longtime Post reporter disclosed this week that, while conducting research for a book, he received information from an administration official about Ms. Plame before her identity was revealed by Robert D. Novak in a July 2003 column. That information was potentially relevant to Fitzgerald's investigation and to a news story that has been extensively covered in this and other papers. Mr. Woodward said he told one Post reporter at the time what he had learned but did not disclose the source. Mr. Woodward recently testified to the prosecutor, with the source's permission and after the source had spoken with Mr. Fitzgerald, but still (again according to his agreement) has not publicly identified the source. Much of the public finds the media's extensive use of confidential sources objectionable, and understandably so. Their use should be as limited as possible. When they are relied upon, reporters should impart as much information as possible about the sources' motives. Those guidelines are accepted but too often ignored by the press. But over the years innumerable cases of official corruption and malfeasance have come to light thanks to sources being able to count on confidentiality. It's astonishing to see so many people -- especially in the journalism establishment -- forget that now. Many of those who condemn Mr. Woodward applauded when The Post recently revealed the existence of CIA prisons around the world, a story that relied on unnamed sources. Is there a distinction to be made based on the motives of the leakers? If so, Mr. Woodward might have had to pass up his first big scoops three decades ago, because his Watergate source, Deep Throat -- recently revealed as FBI official W. Mark Felt -- was disgruntled at having been passed over for the post of FBI director. Newspapers face difficult questions all the time in evaluating the reliability of sources and the appropriateness of publishing their secrets. But if potential sources come to believe that they cannot count on promises of confidentiality, more than the media will suffer.
Prosecutor to Offer More CIA Leak Evidence San Francisco Chronicle
CIA leak prosecutor to seek new grand jury MSNBC
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Sources of Confusion Newsweek
The Plame drama thickens, as Washington once again tries to guess who Bob Woodward's been talking to. By Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff. Nov. 28, 2005 issue - Who was Bob Novak's source? It's a parlor game any Washington insider or media junkie can play—and most do. Novak, a conservative columnist sometimes called "the Prince of Darkness," was the journalist who kicked off the whole Valerie Plame imbroglio that has obsessed Washington and so far resulted in the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Scooter Libby, for perjury. It was Novak who identified Plame as the CIA operative who helped send her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Africa to check on reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the country of Niger. Depending on whom you believe, the leak was (1) an insidious smear by the White House to retaliate against a critic of the Iraq war or (2) mildly interesting gossip. The game became more intriguing last week when the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward was dragged in. Woodward revealed that he had been told about Plame and her role before Novak had, but that in order to protect his source and avoid a subpoena from the grand jury, he had told no one, not even his editor, Leonard Downie. Woodward's admission, along with an unusual apology, set off a wave of journalistic clucking among news organizations, including his own. Woodward has long been an object of envy and resentment because he has been free to absent himself from The Washington Post newsroom while he reports his megaselling books. But more than journalistic schadenfreudewas at stake. Though he gave testimony to the special prosecutor, Woodward refused to publicly identify his source. But he has repeatedly emphasized on talk shows and in interviews that when all the facts become known, the Plame affair will be seen as much ado about very little. In private conversations with journalists, Novak has suggested the same. So who is Novak's source—and Woodward's source—and why will his identity take the wind out of the brewing storm? One by one last week, a parade of current and former senior officials, including the CIA's George Tenet and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, denied being the source. A conspicuous exception was former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, whose office would only say, "We're not commenting." He was one of a handful of top officials who had access to the information. He is an old source and friend of Woodward's, and he fits Novak's description of his source as "not a partisan gunslinger." Woodward has indicated that he knows the identity of Novak's source, which further suggests his source and Novak's were one and the same. If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson. On "Larry King Live" last month, Woodward was dismissive of the special prosecutor's investigation, suggesting that the original leak was not the result of a "smear campaign" but rather a "kind of gossip, as chatter... I don't see an underlying crime here." That doesn't mean special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will fold his tent. Last week he announced he would present evidence to a new grand jury. While Scooter Libby's lawyers exulted that Woodward's revelation helped their client's case, Libby still faces strong evidence that he lied to the Feds. And it's not clear that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove is out of the woods. When and if the true identity of Novak and Woodward's source becomes known (if indeed they are one in the same), the two-year-old mystery may be resolved. But the game is not over yet.
Fitzgerald announces new grand jury San Francisco Chronicle
A black mark for media Boston Globe
Los Angeles Times - New York Daily News - Independent - New York Times - all 1,163 related »
The Plame drama thickens, as Washington once again tries to guess who Bob Woodward's been talking to. By Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff. Nov. 28, 2005 issue - Who was Bob Novak's source? It's a parlor game any Washington insider or media junkie can play—and most do. Novak, a conservative columnist sometimes called "the Prince of Darkness," was the journalist who kicked off the whole Valerie Plame imbroglio that has obsessed Washington and so far resulted in the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Scooter Libby, for perjury. It was Novak who identified Plame as the CIA operative who helped send her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Africa to check on reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the country of Niger. Depending on whom you believe, the leak was (1) an insidious smear by the White House to retaliate against a critic of the Iraq war or (2) mildly interesting gossip. The game became more intriguing last week when the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward was dragged in. Woodward revealed that he had been told about Plame and her role before Novak had, but that in order to protect his source and avoid a subpoena from the grand jury, he had told no one, not even his editor, Leonard Downie. Woodward's admission, along with an unusual apology, set off a wave of journalistic clucking among news organizations, including his own. Woodward has long been an object of envy and resentment because he has been free to absent himself from The Washington Post newsroom while he reports his megaselling books. But more than journalistic schadenfreudewas at stake. Though he gave testimony to the special prosecutor, Woodward refused to publicly identify his source. But he has repeatedly emphasized on talk shows and in interviews that when all the facts become known, the Plame affair will be seen as much ado about very little. In private conversations with journalists, Novak has suggested the same. So who is Novak's source—and Woodward's source—and why will his identity take the wind out of the brewing storm? One by one last week, a parade of current and former senior officials, including the CIA's George Tenet and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, denied being the source. A conspicuous exception was former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, whose office would only say, "We're not commenting." He was one of a handful of top officials who had access to the information. He is an old source and friend of Woodward's, and he fits Novak's description of his source as "not a partisan gunslinger." Woodward has indicated that he knows the identity of Novak's source, which further suggests his source and Novak's were one and the same. If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson. On "Larry King Live" last month, Woodward was dismissive of the special prosecutor's investigation, suggesting that the original leak was not the result of a "smear campaign" but rather a "kind of gossip, as chatter... I don't see an underlying crime here." That doesn't mean special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will fold his tent. Last week he announced he would present evidence to a new grand jury. While Scooter Libby's lawyers exulted that Woodward's revelation helped their client's case, Libby still faces strong evidence that he lied to the Feds. And it's not clear that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove is out of the woods. When and if the true identity of Novak and Woodward's source becomes known (if indeed they are one in the same), the two-year-old mystery may be resolved. But the game is not over yet.
Fitzgerald announces new grand jury San Francisco Chronicle
A black mark for media Boston Globe
Los Angeles Times - New York Daily News - Independent - New York Times - all 1,163 related »
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions
Take bad intel, twist it, and run with it
An administration eager to attack Iraq tapped a pipeline of bad information. Now the White House and the CIA are trying to avoid blame.
By David Wise, David Wise, who writes frequently about intelligence, is the author of "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America."
LIKE AN ALBATROSS that castaways hope will not alight on their raft, the question of who misled America into the war in Iraq hovers above Washington, flapping its wings, but so far choosing not to land on either CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., or the White House.
The debate over prewar intelligence reemerged with last month's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is accused of lying about his role in the leak of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic. Democrats pounced on the indictment, saying the real issue it raised was the administration's manipulation of intelligence.
President Bush, facing record-low approval ratings and public discontent over the war, escalated the controversy on Veterans Day, when he attacked those who charge that his administration "manipulated the intelligence" to go to war. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) fired back, assailing Bush for attempting "to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek the truth."
The intelligence issue has always been intensely political. To the extent that the president, with the loyal support of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), can shift the blame to the CIA, it deflects responsibility from the White House. But the debate has been framed the wrong way from the start.
Congress and the public were persuaded to back the war because the president asserted that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States. In the months after the quick U.S. military victory in 2003, however, it became clear there were no WMD in Iraq. As the argument over the roots of the war evolved, it has taken a simplistic either/or form: Did the CIA provide bad intelligence, or did the Bush administration exaggerate and shape the intelligence to build the case for war?
In fact, both things happened.
That can be demonstrated in several ways. The intelligence about nuclear weapons provides the most dramatic example. The now-infamous National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 claimed that Iraq "is reconstituting" its nuclear weapons program. It wasn't. The CIA's experts did not predict, however, that Hussein, absent outside help, would have the bomb before the close of the decade. Yet in the months before the invasion, both then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Bush warned of a looming "mushroom cloud." Bad intelligence that the administration took and ran with and exaggerated.
Another startling example of the administration's use of bad intelligence to promote its cause originated with the Iraqi defector aptly codenamed "Curveball." The defector, though discredited as being a fabricator, claimed he was an eyewitness to Iraq's production of biological weapons in mobile labs. The "intelligence" found its way into then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that helped build the case for war.
Once again, the intelligence was wrong, but the administration seized on it to ballyhoo its arguments. Had the White House bothered to ask, it would have learned that the CIA had never talked to "Curveball" before Powell's speech. When the agency did seek to interview the source, whose reports were provided by the German intelligence service, it was told, "You don't want to see him because he's crazy." Yet "Curveball" was the principal source that the administration relied on in claiming to the world that Iraq had biological weapons.
The attempt to link Hussein to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, an effort led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Libby, was yet another example of the warping of bad intelligence. Cheney and his staff retailed a report, since widely discredited, that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. Cheney and Libby pushed hard to persuade Powell to include this "intelligence" in his U.N. speech, but the secretary, to his credit, refused.
Only moments before Powell addressed the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003, Libby was frantically trying to reach the secretary's chief of staff, Lawrence B. Wilkerson, by cellphone to persuade Powell to include the supposed link between Hussein and 9/11 in his speech.
Because the Iraq intelligence was mostly wrong, one may ask, why? Was it mere incompetence on the part of the CIA or did the agency tell the president what George Tenet, then the agency's director, knew Bush wanted to hear?
That still unanswered question leads to another: Did the CIA's Iraq analysts succumb to pressure from the White House?
Despite pious assurances to the contrary by two official inquiries, there was pressure. Why else did Cheney, often accompanied by Libby, pay at least 10 visits to the CIA and meet with the analysts in the run-up to the war? Richard J. Kerr, the former deputy director of the CIA for intelligence, who investigated the Iraq debacle, concluded that there was indeed pressure on the analysts, in the form of repeated requests for rewrites.
The intelligence, though mostly bogus, was not entirely wrong. Buried in footnotes and passing references in the National Intelligence Estimate, for example, were dissents by the State Department and the Air Force. And Tenet cautioned both the White House and Congress that Hussein was unlikely to use his supposed weapons of mass destruction unless the U.S. backed him into a corner by invading. The dissents and Tenet's caveat were lost amid the rhetoric leading to war.
But for the most part, the intelligence was atrocious, yet embraced and inflated by a White House determined to march on Baghdad.
Take bad intel, twist it, and run with it
An administration eager to attack Iraq tapped a pipeline of bad information. Now the White House and the CIA are trying to avoid blame.
By David Wise, David Wise, who writes frequently about intelligence, is the author of "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America."
LIKE AN ALBATROSS that castaways hope will not alight on their raft, the question of who misled America into the war in Iraq hovers above Washington, flapping its wings, but so far choosing not to land on either CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., or the White House.
The debate over prewar intelligence reemerged with last month's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is accused of lying about his role in the leak of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic. Democrats pounced on the indictment, saying the real issue it raised was the administration's manipulation of intelligence.
President Bush, facing record-low approval ratings and public discontent over the war, escalated the controversy on Veterans Day, when he attacked those who charge that his administration "manipulated the intelligence" to go to war. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) fired back, assailing Bush for attempting "to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek the truth."
The intelligence issue has always been intensely political. To the extent that the president, with the loyal support of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), can shift the blame to the CIA, it deflects responsibility from the White House. But the debate has been framed the wrong way from the start.
Congress and the public were persuaded to back the war because the president asserted that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States. In the months after the quick U.S. military victory in 2003, however, it became clear there were no WMD in Iraq. As the argument over the roots of the war evolved, it has taken a simplistic either/or form: Did the CIA provide bad intelligence, or did the Bush administration exaggerate and shape the intelligence to build the case for war?
In fact, both things happened.
That can be demonstrated in several ways. The intelligence about nuclear weapons provides the most dramatic example. The now-infamous National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 claimed that Iraq "is reconstituting" its nuclear weapons program. It wasn't. The CIA's experts did not predict, however, that Hussein, absent outside help, would have the bomb before the close of the decade. Yet in the months before the invasion, both then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Bush warned of a looming "mushroom cloud." Bad intelligence that the administration took and ran with and exaggerated.
Another startling example of the administration's use of bad intelligence to promote its cause originated with the Iraqi defector aptly codenamed "Curveball." The defector, though discredited as being a fabricator, claimed he was an eyewitness to Iraq's production of biological weapons in mobile labs. The "intelligence" found its way into then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that helped build the case for war.
Once again, the intelligence was wrong, but the administration seized on it to ballyhoo its arguments. Had the White House bothered to ask, it would have learned that the CIA had never talked to "Curveball" before Powell's speech. When the agency did seek to interview the source, whose reports were provided by the German intelligence service, it was told, "You don't want to see him because he's crazy." Yet "Curveball" was the principal source that the administration relied on in claiming to the world that Iraq had biological weapons.
The attempt to link Hussein to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, an effort led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Libby, was yet another example of the warping of bad intelligence. Cheney and his staff retailed a report, since widely discredited, that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. Cheney and Libby pushed hard to persuade Powell to include this "intelligence" in his U.N. speech, but the secretary, to his credit, refused.
Only moments before Powell addressed the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003, Libby was frantically trying to reach the secretary's chief of staff, Lawrence B. Wilkerson, by cellphone to persuade Powell to include the supposed link between Hussein and 9/11 in his speech.
Because the Iraq intelligence was mostly wrong, one may ask, why? Was it mere incompetence on the part of the CIA or did the agency tell the president what George Tenet, then the agency's director, knew Bush wanted to hear?
That still unanswered question leads to another: Did the CIA's Iraq analysts succumb to pressure from the White House?
Despite pious assurances to the contrary by two official inquiries, there was pressure. Why else did Cheney, often accompanied by Libby, pay at least 10 visits to the CIA and meet with the analysts in the run-up to the war? Richard J. Kerr, the former deputy director of the CIA for intelligence, who investigated the Iraq debacle, concluded that there was indeed pressure on the analysts, in the form of repeated requests for rewrites.
The intelligence, though mostly bogus, was not entirely wrong. Buried in footnotes and passing references in the National Intelligence Estimate, for example, were dissents by the State Department and the Air Force. And Tenet cautioned both the White House and Congress that Hussein was unlikely to use his supposed weapons of mass destruction unless the U.S. backed him into a corner by invading. The dissents and Tenet's caveat were lost amid the rhetoric leading to war.
But for the most part, the intelligence was atrocious, yet embraced and inflated by a White House determined to march on Baghdad.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1121/dailyUpdate.html
Germany: CIA knew 'Curveball' was not trustworthy
German intelligence alleges Bush administration repeatedly 'exaggerated' informant's claims in run-up to war.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
Five top German intelligence officers say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly ignored warnings about the veracity of the information that an Iraqi informant named 'Curveball' was giving about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The Los Angeles Times, in a massive report published Sunday, reports that "the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq." They also say that 'Curveball,' whom the Germans described as "not a psychologically stable guy," never claimed that he had produced germ weapons, nor had he ever seen anyone do it.
According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.
Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm. "This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."
The Times report also says that the White House ignored evidence presented by the United Nations that showed that Curveball was wrong, and that the CIA "punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and [the CIA] refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion." Much of the information Curveball gave to the CIA later turned out to be stories he had gleaned from research on the Internet.
11/17/05
Arab opinions of US: good news, bad news
11/16/05
Discovery of abused Iraqi prisoners sparks outrage
11/15/05
Indonesian police: More bombmakers on the loose
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What is this?
The Independent reports that proof of Curveball's lack of credibility came when the US sent its own team of inspectors to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They discovered the informants's personnel files in Baghdad.
It showed he had been a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted. Moreover he had been dismissed in 1995 – just when he claimed to have begun work on bio-warfare trucks.
The Independent also provides what it calls its list of "intelligence red herrings." There was Curveball himself. There was Ahmed Chalabi, who brought to US attention defectors that "proved to be false, as was his claim that US invaders would be met with bouquets." There was the Niger-Iraq uranium story, which later turned out to have been fabricated by a former Italian spy. And there was Iraq's possession of aluminum tubes, which the administration said were for nuclear weapons, yet turned out to be for small conventional military rockets.
David Wise, author of "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America," writes in a separate article in the Los Angeles Times that the argument over the war has taken on a simplistic "either/or form." Either the CIA provided bad intelligence, or the Bush administration "exaggerated and shaped" the intelligence. Wise argues that both things actually happened.
Another startling example of the administration's use of bad intelligence to promote its cause originated with the Iraqi defector aptly codenamed "Curveball." The defector, though discredited as being a fabricator, claimed he was an eyewitness to Iraq's production of biological weapons in mobile labs. The "intelligence" found its way into then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that helped build the case for war.
Once again, the intelligence was wrong, but the administration seized on it to ballyhoo its arguments. Had the White House bothered to ask, it would have learned that the CIA had never talked to "Curveball" before Powell's speech. When the agency did seek to interview the source, whose reports were provided by the German intelligence service, it was told, "You don't want to see him because he's crazy." Yet "Curveball" was the principal source that the administration relied on in claiming to the world that Iraq had biological weapons.
On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld struck back against those who have charged the administration with manipulating prewar information, saying that "it does great disservice to the country." The Washington Times also reports that Mr. Rumsfeld refused to set a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq, and that "such talk encourages the terrorists and sends the wrong message to the Iraqis."
"Think of the enemy listening to an argument that we should withdraw immediately, or soon," he said. "All they would say to themselves is, 'Fair enough. All we have to do is wait 'em out.'?"
"Put yourself in the shoes of the Iraqis, the Iraqi people, who risked their lives to run for public office and to go out and vote to ratify a constitution, and who are getting prepared to have an election," Mr. Rumsfeld told CBS' "Face the Nation."
The Guardian reports that Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both denied Sunday that they had told Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward about the CIA identity of former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valarie Plame. The Washington Post's ombudsman criticized Mr. Woodward yesterday for withholding what he knew about the leak investigation from his editor and for making public statements that were dismissive of the Plame investigation without disclosing his involvement.
Deborah Howell said the newspaper took a "hit to its credibility" and called for Woodward's work to be overseen. "He has to operate under the rules that govern the rest of the staff - even if he's rich and famous," she wrote.
Finally, the Associated Press reported Friday that the Inspector General's office for the Department of Defense said it had begun an investigation into the "Pentagon team [known as The Office of Special Plans] that former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith used to build the US case against Saddam Hussein and plan the Iraq war."
In a letter Wednesday to Feith's successor, Eric Edelman, and to Rumsfeld's intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone, the inspector general's office asked for points of contact for the investigation no later than Dec. 1.
"The overall objective will be to determine whether personnel assigned to the Office of Special Plans from September 2002 through June 2003 conducted unauthorized, unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities," the letter said. A copy was released by the Pentagon late Friday afternoon.
Mr. Feith called the allegations "groundless," and said that the matter had been "carefully reviewed already," referring to a bipartisan congressional inquiry in 2004.
Germany: CIA knew 'Curveball' was not trustworthy
German intelligence alleges Bush administration repeatedly 'exaggerated' informant's claims in run-up to war.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
Five top German intelligence officers say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly ignored warnings about the veracity of the information that an Iraqi informant named 'Curveball' was giving about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The Los Angeles Times, in a massive report published Sunday, reports that "the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq." They also say that 'Curveball,' whom the Germans described as "not a psychologically stable guy," never claimed that he had produced germ weapons, nor had he ever seen anyone do it.
According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.
Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm. "This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."
The Times report also says that the White House ignored evidence presented by the United Nations that showed that Curveball was wrong, and that the CIA "punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and [the CIA] refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion." Much of the information Curveball gave to the CIA later turned out to be stories he had gleaned from research on the Internet.
11/17/05
Arab opinions of US: good news, bad news
11/16/05
Discovery of abused Iraqi prisoners sparks outrage
11/15/05
Indonesian police: More bombmakers on the loose
Sign up to be notified daily:
Find out more.
Subscribe via RSS:
What is this?
The Independent reports that proof of Curveball's lack of credibility came when the US sent its own team of inspectors to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They discovered the informants's personnel files in Baghdad.
It showed he had been a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted. Moreover he had been dismissed in 1995 – just when he claimed to have begun work on bio-warfare trucks.
The Independent also provides what it calls its list of "intelligence red herrings." There was Curveball himself. There was Ahmed Chalabi, who brought to US attention defectors that "proved to be false, as was his claim that US invaders would be met with bouquets." There was the Niger-Iraq uranium story, which later turned out to have been fabricated by a former Italian spy. And there was Iraq's possession of aluminum tubes, which the administration said were for nuclear weapons, yet turned out to be for small conventional military rockets.
David Wise, author of "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America," writes in a separate article in the Los Angeles Times that the argument over the war has taken on a simplistic "either/or form." Either the CIA provided bad intelligence, or the Bush administration "exaggerated and shaped" the intelligence. Wise argues that both things actually happened.
Another startling example of the administration's use of bad intelligence to promote its cause originated with the Iraqi defector aptly codenamed "Curveball." The defector, though discredited as being a fabricator, claimed he was an eyewitness to Iraq's production of biological weapons in mobile labs. The "intelligence" found its way into then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that helped build the case for war.
Once again, the intelligence was wrong, but the administration seized on it to ballyhoo its arguments. Had the White House bothered to ask, it would have learned that the CIA had never talked to "Curveball" before Powell's speech. When the agency did seek to interview the source, whose reports were provided by the German intelligence service, it was told, "You don't want to see him because he's crazy." Yet "Curveball" was the principal source that the administration relied on in claiming to the world that Iraq had biological weapons.
On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld struck back against those who have charged the administration with manipulating prewar information, saying that "it does great disservice to the country." The Washington Times also reports that Mr. Rumsfeld refused to set a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq, and that "such talk encourages the terrorists and sends the wrong message to the Iraqis."
"Think of the enemy listening to an argument that we should withdraw immediately, or soon," he said. "All they would say to themselves is, 'Fair enough. All we have to do is wait 'em out.'?"
"Put yourself in the shoes of the Iraqis, the Iraqi people, who risked their lives to run for public office and to go out and vote to ratify a constitution, and who are getting prepared to have an election," Mr. Rumsfeld told CBS' "Face the Nation."
The Guardian reports that Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both denied Sunday that they had told Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward about the CIA identity of former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valarie Plame. The Washington Post's ombudsman criticized Mr. Woodward yesterday for withholding what he knew about the leak investigation from his editor and for making public statements that were dismissive of the Plame investigation without disclosing his involvement.
Deborah Howell said the newspaper took a "hit to its credibility" and called for Woodward's work to be overseen. "He has to operate under the rules that govern the rest of the staff - even if he's rich and famous," she wrote.
Finally, the Associated Press reported Friday that the Inspector General's office for the Department of Defense said it had begun an investigation into the "Pentagon team [known as The Office of Special Plans] that former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith used to build the US case against Saddam Hussein and plan the Iraq war."
In a letter Wednesday to Feith's successor, Eric Edelman, and to Rumsfeld's intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone, the inspector general's office asked for points of contact for the investigation no later than Dec. 1.
"The overall objective will be to determine whether personnel assigned to the Office of Special Plans from September 2002 through June 2003 conducted unauthorized, unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities," the letter said. A copy was released by the Pentagon late Friday afternoon.
Mr. Feith called the allegations "groundless," and said that the matter had been "carefully reviewed already," referring to a bipartisan congressional inquiry in 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2600857_pf.html
Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity
Fears of Post-9/11 Terrorism Spur Proposals for New Powers
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 27, 2005; A06
The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world.
The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.
The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.
The proposals, and other Pentagon steps aimed at improving its ability to analyze counterterrorism intelligence collected inside the United States, have drawn complaints from civil liberties advocates and a few members of Congress, who say the Defense Department's push into domestic collection is proceeding with little scrutiny by the Congress or the public.
"We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview.
Wyden has since persuaded lawmakers to change the legislation, attached to the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill, to address some of his concerns, but he still believes hearings should be held. Among the changes was the elimination of a provision to let Defense Intelligence Agency officers hide the fact that they work for the government when they approach people who are possible sources of intelligence in the United States.
Modifications also were made in the provision allowing the FBI to share information with the Pentagon and CIA, requiring the approval of the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, for that to occur, and requiring the Pentagon to make reports to Congress on the subject. Wyden said the legislation "now strikes a much fairer balance by protecting critical rights for our country's citizens and advancing intelligence operations to meet our security needs."
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the data-sharing amendment would still give the Pentagon much greater access to the FBI's massive collection of data, including information on citizens not connected to terrorism or espionage.
The measure, she said, "removes one of the few existing privacy protections against the creation of secret dossiers on Americans by government intelligence agencies." She said the Pentagon's "intelligence agencies are quietly expanding their domestic presence without any public debate."
Lt. Col. Chris Conway, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said that the most senior Defense Department intelligence officials are aware of the sensitivities related to their expanded domestic activities. At the same time, he said, the Pentagon has to have the intelligence necessary to protect its facilities and personnel at home and abroad.
"In the age of terrorism," Conway said, "the U.S. military and its facilities are targets, and we have to be prepared within our authorities to defend them before something happens."
Among the steps already taken by the Pentagon that enhanced its domestic capabilities was the establishment after 9/11 of Northern Command, or Northcom, in Colorado Springs, to provide military forces to help in reacting to terrorist threats in the continental United States. Today, Northcom's intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas fuse reports from CIFA, the FBI and other U.S. agencies, and are staffed by 290 intelligence analysts. That is more than the roughly 200 analysts working for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and far more than those at the Department of Homeland Security.
In addition, each of the military services has begun its own post-9/11 collection of domestic intelligence, primarily aimed at gathering data on potential terrorist threats to bases and other military facilities at home and abroad. For example, Eagle Eyes is a program set up by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which "enlists the eyes and ears of Air Force members and citizens in the war on terror," according to the program's Web site.
The Marine Corps has expanded its domestic intelligence operations and developed internal policies in 2004 to govern oversight of the "collection, retention and dissemination of information concerning U.S. persons," according to a Marine Corps order approved on April 30, 2004.
The order recognizes that in the post-9/11 era, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity will be "increasingly required to perform domestic missions," and as a result, "there will be increased instances whereby Marine intelligence activities may come across information regarding U.S. persons." Among domestic targets listed are people in the United States who it "is reasonably believed threaten the physical security of Defense Department employees, installations, operations or official visitors."
Perhaps the prime illustration of the Pentagon's intelligence growth is CIFA, which remains one of its least publicized intelligence agencies. Neither the size of its staff, said to be more than 1,000, nor its budget is public, said Conway, the Pentagon spokesman. The CIFA brochure says the agency's mission is to "transform" the way counterintelligence is done "fully utilizing 21st century tools and resources."
One CIFA activity, threat assessments, involves using "leading edge information technologies and data harvesting," according to a February 2004 Pentagon budget document. This involves "exploiting commercial data" with the help of outside contractors including White Oak Technologies Inc. of Silver Spring, and MZM Inc., a Washington-based research organization, according to the Pentagon document.
For CIFA, counterintelligence involves not just collecting data but also "conducting activities to protect DoD and the nation against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, assassinations, and terrorist activities," its brochure states.
CIFA's abilities would increase considerably under the proposal being reviewed by the White House, which was made by a presidential commission on intelligence chaired by retired appellate court judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.). The commission urged that CIFA be given authority to carry out domestic criminal investigations and clandestine operations against potential threats inside the United States.
The Silberman-Robb panel found that because the separate military services concentrated on investigations within their areas, "no entity views non-service-specific and department-wide investigations as its primary responsibility." A 2003 Defense Department directive kept CIFA from engaging in law enforcement activities such as "the investigation, apprehension, or detention of individuals suspected or convicted of criminal offenses against the laws of the United States."
The commission's proposal would change that, giving CIFA "new counterespionage and law enforcement authorities," covering treason, espionage, foreign or terrorist sabotage, and even economic espionage. That step, the panel said, could be taken by presidential order and Pentagon directive without congressional approval.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the CIFA expansion "is being studied at the DoD [Defense Department] level," adding that intelligence director Negroponte would have a say in the matter. A Pentagon spokesman said, "The [CIFA] matter is before the Hill committees."
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a recent interview that CIFA has performed well in the past and today has no domestic intelligence collection activities. He was not aware of moves to enhance its authority.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has not had formal hearings on CIFA or other domestic intelligence programs, but its staff has been briefed on some of the steps the Pentagon has already taken. "If a member asks the chairman" -- Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) -- for hearings, "I am sure he would respond," said Bill Duhnke, the panel's staff director.
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity
Fears of Post-9/11 Terrorism Spur Proposals for New Powers
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 27, 2005; A06
The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world.
The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.
The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.
The proposals, and other Pentagon steps aimed at improving its ability to analyze counterterrorism intelligence collected inside the United States, have drawn complaints from civil liberties advocates and a few members of Congress, who say the Defense Department's push into domestic collection is proceeding with little scrutiny by the Congress or the public.
"We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview.
Wyden has since persuaded lawmakers to change the legislation, attached to the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill, to address some of his concerns, but he still believes hearings should be held. Among the changes was the elimination of a provision to let Defense Intelligence Agency officers hide the fact that they work for the government when they approach people who are possible sources of intelligence in the United States.
Modifications also were made in the provision allowing the FBI to share information with the Pentagon and CIA, requiring the approval of the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, for that to occur, and requiring the Pentagon to make reports to Congress on the subject. Wyden said the legislation "now strikes a much fairer balance by protecting critical rights for our country's citizens and advancing intelligence operations to meet our security needs."
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the data-sharing amendment would still give the Pentagon much greater access to the FBI's massive collection of data, including information on citizens not connected to terrorism or espionage.
The measure, she said, "removes one of the few existing privacy protections against the creation of secret dossiers on Americans by government intelligence agencies." She said the Pentagon's "intelligence agencies are quietly expanding their domestic presence without any public debate."
Lt. Col. Chris Conway, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said that the most senior Defense Department intelligence officials are aware of the sensitivities related to their expanded domestic activities. At the same time, he said, the Pentagon has to have the intelligence necessary to protect its facilities and personnel at home and abroad.
"In the age of terrorism," Conway said, "the U.S. military and its facilities are targets, and we have to be prepared within our authorities to defend them before something happens."
Among the steps already taken by the Pentagon that enhanced its domestic capabilities was the establishment after 9/11 of Northern Command, or Northcom, in Colorado Springs, to provide military forces to help in reacting to terrorist threats in the continental United States. Today, Northcom's intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas fuse reports from CIFA, the FBI and other U.S. agencies, and are staffed by 290 intelligence analysts. That is more than the roughly 200 analysts working for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and far more than those at the Department of Homeland Security.
In addition, each of the military services has begun its own post-9/11 collection of domestic intelligence, primarily aimed at gathering data on potential terrorist threats to bases and other military facilities at home and abroad. For example, Eagle Eyes is a program set up by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which "enlists the eyes and ears of Air Force members and citizens in the war on terror," according to the program's Web site.
The Marine Corps has expanded its domestic intelligence operations and developed internal policies in 2004 to govern oversight of the "collection, retention and dissemination of information concerning U.S. persons," according to a Marine Corps order approved on April 30, 2004.
The order recognizes that in the post-9/11 era, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity will be "increasingly required to perform domestic missions," and as a result, "there will be increased instances whereby Marine intelligence activities may come across information regarding U.S. persons." Among domestic targets listed are people in the United States who it "is reasonably believed threaten the physical security of Defense Department employees, installations, operations or official visitors."
Perhaps the prime illustration of the Pentagon's intelligence growth is CIFA, which remains one of its least publicized intelligence agencies. Neither the size of its staff, said to be more than 1,000, nor its budget is public, said Conway, the Pentagon spokesman. The CIFA brochure says the agency's mission is to "transform" the way counterintelligence is done "fully utilizing 21st century tools and resources."
One CIFA activity, threat assessments, involves using "leading edge information technologies and data harvesting," according to a February 2004 Pentagon budget document. This involves "exploiting commercial data" with the help of outside contractors including White Oak Technologies Inc. of Silver Spring, and MZM Inc., a Washington-based research organization, according to the Pentagon document.
For CIFA, counterintelligence involves not just collecting data but also "conducting activities to protect DoD and the nation against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, assassinations, and terrorist activities," its brochure states.
CIFA's abilities would increase considerably under the proposal being reviewed by the White House, which was made by a presidential commission on intelligence chaired by retired appellate court judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.). The commission urged that CIFA be given authority to carry out domestic criminal investigations and clandestine operations against potential threats inside the United States.
The Silberman-Robb panel found that because the separate military services concentrated on investigations within their areas, "no entity views non-service-specific and department-wide investigations as its primary responsibility." A 2003 Defense Department directive kept CIFA from engaging in law enforcement activities such as "the investigation, apprehension, or detention of individuals suspected or convicted of criminal offenses against the laws of the United States."
The commission's proposal would change that, giving CIFA "new counterespionage and law enforcement authorities," covering treason, espionage, foreign or terrorist sabotage, and even economic espionage. That step, the panel said, could be taken by presidential order and Pentagon directive without congressional approval.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the CIFA expansion "is being studied at the DoD [Defense Department] level," adding that intelligence director Negroponte would have a say in the matter. A Pentagon spokesman said, "The [CIFA] matter is before the Hill committees."
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a recent interview that CIFA has performed well in the past and today has no domestic intelligence collection activities. He was not aware of moves to enhance its authority.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has not had formal hearings on CIFA or other domestic intelligence programs, but its staff has been briefed on some of the steps the Pentagon has already taken. "If a member asks the chairman" -- Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) -- for hearings, "I am sure he would respond," said Bill Duhnke, the panel's staff director.
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news3/latimes161.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WORLD
Investigator Calls Secret CIA Prisons Unlikely
Official doubts Europe has covert bases housing suspected terrorists but says questions remain.
From Associated Press
November 26, 2005
BUCHAREST, Romania — The head of a European investigation into alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe said Friday that it was unlikely there were large clandestine detention centers in the region.
Dick Marty, the Swiss senator heading the investigation on behalf of the Council of Europe, said he did not believe a prison like the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was possible in the region.
"But it is possible that there were detainees that stayed 10, 15 or 30 days," Marty told reporters, without referring to any country. "We do not have the full picture." He was in Romania for a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the council, Europe's main human rights watchdog.
The council's secretary-general, Terry Davis, said he had written to member nations asking whether they had laws against secret prisons and transportation of prisoners. The countries have until Feb. 21 to respond.
The council began investigations after published reports said CIA planes transported suspected terrorists through European countries. The reports raised the possibility that the CIA had set up secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe.
Human Rights Watch said flights stopped at the Romanian air base of Mihail Kogalniceanu and Poland's Szczytno-Szymany airport, basing its information on flight logs of suspected CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004.
Romanian leaders and the Pentagon have denied that the Mihail Kogalniceanu base was the site of a covert detention center, and the Romanians insist the U.S. never used it as a transit point for Al Qaeda captives. Poland's prime minister said the reports were worth investigating.
Marty has asked the Brussels-based Eurocontrol air safety organization to provide details of 31 aircraft.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WORLD
Investigator Calls Secret CIA Prisons Unlikely
Official doubts Europe has covert bases housing suspected terrorists but says questions remain.
From Associated Press
November 26, 2005
BUCHAREST, Romania — The head of a European investigation into alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe said Friday that it was unlikely there were large clandestine detention centers in the region.
Dick Marty, the Swiss senator heading the investigation on behalf of the Council of Europe, said he did not believe a prison like the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was possible in the region.
"But it is possible that there were detainees that stayed 10, 15 or 30 days," Marty told reporters, without referring to any country. "We do not have the full picture." He was in Romania for a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the council, Europe's main human rights watchdog.
The council's secretary-general, Terry Davis, said he had written to member nations asking whether they had laws against secret prisons and transportation of prisoners. The countries have until Feb. 21 to respond.
The council began investigations after published reports said CIA planes transported suspected terrorists through European countries. The reports raised the possibility that the CIA had set up secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe.
Human Rights Watch said flights stopped at the Romanian air base of Mihail Kogalniceanu and Poland's Szczytno-Szymany airport, basing its information on flight logs of suspected CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004.
Romanian leaders and the Pentagon have denied that the Mihail Kogalniceanu base was the site of a covert detention center, and the Romanians insist the U.S. never used it as a transit point for Al Qaeda captives. Poland's prime minister said the reports were worth investigating.
Marty has asked the Brussels-based Eurocontrol air safety organization to provide details of 31 aircraft.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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