Times's Risen Stokes Eavesdropping Debate in Book on CIA, NSA Bloomberg
The White House is still scrambling to douse the political firestorm ignited by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau with their Dec. 16 New York Times article disclosing that the National Security Agency had begun eavesdropping without court warrants on Americans after 9/11. Less than a month later, Risen returned to the subject in a book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration'' (Free Press, 240 pages, $26). It's an earnest, often thought-provoking view of "how the most covert tools of American national security policy have been misused,'' Risen writes. But it's ultimately a problematic companion to the pre- Christmas scoop. For one thing, events of the past month have inevitably overtaken the book: President George W. Bush's confirmation of the NSA program, the Justice Department's investigation of who leaked the story, a call for congressional hearings, a 42-page legal brief from Justice and a full-court press from the White House, including scheduled speeches this week by Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former NSA Director General Michael Hayden. While Risen is a skilled journalist -- gaining access to former and current intelligence officials who have spoken at risk to themselves, including potential jail time -- some of the avoidable flaws here also are journalistic, including gaps in sourcing, information and logic. (Note to publisher: Correct the inaccurate reference to "National Security Administration'' on the book jacket.)

CIA and Iraq
A member of the Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for explanatory reporting of the 9/11 attacks and terrorism, Risen focuses on the CIA, which works overseas, and on the NSA, the nation's largest intelligence branch. It's responsible for electronic eavesdropping and interception of usually just foreign conversations, e-mail and other communications. Risen explores the prewar climate in the CIA as it addressed the question of weapons of mass destruction. Contrary to the consensus at the CIA and intelligence agencies worldwide that Iraq had an active WMD program, "many CIA officials -- from rank and file analysts to senior managers -- knew before the war that they lacked sufficient evidence.'' The chapter on "The Program,'' the NSA's post-9/11 eavesdropping, is the book's centerpiece and worth the purchase. To Risen, the NSA operation is part of a "disquieting pattern'' by the Bush administration to skirt or ignore "long-standing rules governing the military and intelligence communities'' that "may be violating the civil liberties of American citizens.''

Tapping Into Telecom
Although the Times story steals fire from it, the chapter is still a useful primer on NSA tradecraft and how the agency has exploited -- with assistance from "major telecommunications companies'' -- the global flood of e-mail and voice communications that flows through U.S. networks. One tidbit not in the Times piece is that the "major telecommunications companies'' have made it "easy for the agency to eavesdrop on large numbers of people in the United States without their knowledge.' That's accomplished by allowing the NSA access to large U.S.-based telecommunications switches carrying the bulk of America's phone calls and, more important, to foreign phone calls and e-mail from the Middle East to Asia that are routed through those switches. Risen doesn't name the companies or cooperative executives. As intriguing as these revelations may be, many of the episodes meant to illustrate a "secret history'' of agencies running amok suffer from scant details and too many unnamed "U.S. sources,'' "American sources'' and "CIA officials.'' Risen offers a lot of loose ends without weaving them into a coherent, believable tapestry.

Bush and the Painkillers
The worst example is Risen's account of how a ``well-placed source with a proven track record'' relayed a conversation between President Bush and CIA Director George Tenet in March 2002. During a discussion about wounded top-level al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, Bush asked Tenet, "Who authorized putting him on painkillers?'' Risen doesn't say whether this source was present during the talk. He goes on to concede that the exchange "has been challenged'' and that it's unclear whether the president was "implicitly encouraging the director of Central Intelligence to order the harsh treatment of prisoners.'' Yet within a page, Risen tacitly links the conversation to legal opinions that set the climate for the documented abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Previously `Unreported'
Overall, there are too many instances in which Risen tantalizes with previously "unreported'' claims that sound too good to be true and raise questions about why the New York Times or another major news organization hasn't previously disclosed them. For instance:

• Vice President Dick Cheney, during one unspecified weekend before the war, called the Dutch prime minister, who isn't named, to ask his cooperation in recruiting an Iraqi agent in the Netherlands. The prime minister said no.
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the most important al-Qaeda prisoner in U.S. custody, has recanted parts of his CIA interrogations.
• U.S. troops have been involved in firefights with Pakistani soldiers along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but "both sides have largely covered up the incidents.''

Whether the insights and information of Risen's book offset the flaws and rush-to-print feel, there's no question that "State of War'' carries a powerful, timely warning about potential abuses of power in the global war on terrorism.
Intelligence Chief Defends Domestic Spying Program Washington Post
Former NSA Chief Defends Intercept Program ABC News
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Probe into CIA prisons to focus on secret flights Newsweek
The CIA conducted illegal activities when it detained and transported terrorist suspects in Europe, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the head of a European investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons. in Europe said Tuesday there was evidence the United States outsourced torture to other countries and it was likely European governments knew about it. But Swiss senator Dick Marty said there was no formal evidence so far of the existence of clandestine detention centers in Romania or Poland as alleged by the New York-based Human Rights Watch. “There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ’relocation’ or ’outsourcing’ of torture,” Marty said in a report presented to the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog investigating the alleged secret prisons.
US was 'outsourcing' torture - European probe Reuters.uk
Report on 'rendition' expected today RTE.ie
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http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3aabef02-8cb5-11d...00779e2340.html

US employs ‘gangster’ methods, says report on CIA
By Daniel Dombey in Strasbourg
Published: January 24 2006 08:49 | Last updated: January 24 2006 17:21

The head of a high-profile probe of CIA prisons in Europe accused the US administration of “gangster-style methods” on Tuesday but failed to produce hard evidence that European governments had hosted any such facilities.


Dick Marty, the Swiss politician looking into the case for the Council of Europe, the 46-nation human rights organisation, said in an interim report that US renditions, or extra-legal abductions, had challenged “the very foundation of the law-based state and its democratic foundation”.

“Individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and all rights, and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture,” he said. “If governments resort to gangster-style methods, I say no,” he added.

The US maintains rendition is compatible with international law and that it does not transport people to countries where they would be at risk of torture. But Washington uses a more narrow definition of torture than do many European states.

Mr Marty said it was “highly unlikely that European governments or at least their intelligence services were unaware” of “hundreds” of CIA flights and more than 100 renditions on European soil or passing through European airspace.

“There is a great deal of coherent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ‘relocation’ or ‘outsourcing’ of torture” by the US, said Mr Marty.

But he admitted that many of his findings – such as the number of likely renditions – were based on press reports and acknowledged that an in-depth study by a Romanian human rights organisation had not substantiated allegations that Romania had hosted a CIA prison.

Nor did he uncover any evidence of such sites in Poland, the other country that has come under most suspicion. He had received satellite pictures and flight records from official European agencies only this week and would now analyse them.

“The Marty report has more holes than a Swiss cheese,” said Denis MacShane, Britain’s former Europe minister, who attended the Council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg. “It is sad that Mr Marty refuses to accept the categorical denials of the Polish and Romanian governments.”

It is the behaviour of European states – rather than the actions of the US – that comes under the competence of the Council of Europe. Mr Marty criticised European governments for their reluctance to provide information and was backed by a call from the European Commission. Last week, the European parliament set up a parallel investigation, led by a 46-member committee.

In the UK, Mr Marty’s report fuelled renewed calls for the British government to broaden its own investigations into allegations that British airports may have been used as part of the “rendition” strategy.

The UK civil rights group Liberty is considering taking legal action against ministers on the basis that the Foreign Office’s investigations have been inadequate to allay public concern that the UK government might have been complicit in acts of torture.

“It is time for our [the UK] government to get its story straight – not about what it did not know, but what it is going to do about such serious alleged violations of human rights and UK sovereignty.”

Opposition parties say they remain unconvinced by UK foreign secretary Jack Straw’s statement to MPs that he had found no evidence of detainees being transported through the UK or British Overseas Territories since 11 September 2001.

January 24, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.

Report alleges 'outsourcing of torture' by US

Council of Europe report says European governments knew rendition was happening, despite claims to the contrary.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

Despite claims to the contrary, European governments probably knew that the US was flying prisoners across their territory for "interrogation and torture" in other countries, a report claims Tuesday. The interim report from the 46-nation Council of Europe confirms the rendition of more than 100 prisoners through Europe, but it also found "no firm evidence" of a network of secret prisons in Europe. The Council of Europe is guardian of the Human Rights Convention, to which all 25 European nations are signatories.
Swiss member of Parliament Dick Marty headed the Council's investigation into the rendition allegations, which were first raised in November in an article in The Washington Post.

In Mr. Marty's interim report, he says, "It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware of the 'rendition' of more than a hundred persons affecting Europe." He says there is "a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing' of torture", adding: "It has been proved – and in fact never denied – that individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported ... in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered ... torture."
Bloomberg News reports that Marty also says that the Bush administration seems to "start from the principle that the principles of the rule of law and human rights are incompatible with efficient action against terrorism." The Financial Times reports that Marty considers these actions by the US both illegal and counterproductive in the battle against terrorism.
The US position on the issue is that rendition, or extralegal abduction, is compatible with international law and that it has never transported people to countries where they would be at risk of torture. Rob Watson of the BBC told NPR in a radio interview Tuesday that part of the problem is a disagreement between the US and Europeans over the way to fight terrorism. Many Europeans see it as a fight against crime in which rules and laws must be followed. The US sees it as a new kind of battle against terrorism under which none of the old rules apply.
According to The Guardian, Marty says at this stage he has found no "formal, irrefutable evidence" into allegations by Human Rights Watch that Poland and Romania are or were running secret detention facilities for the US. But he did say that "there are many indications from various sources which must be considered reliable, justifying the continuation of ... investigative work."

The Associated Press reports that Marty focused on three cases in particular: an Egyptian cleric who was kidnapped in Italy by CIA agents, and taken to Egypt, where he was tortured; a German who turned out not to be a terrorist but was captured in Macedonia and taken to Afghanistan, where he says he was tortured; and six Bosnians who were abducted by US agents in that country and taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite a Bosnian judgment ordering their release.

EUobserver reports that Marty's findings did not come as a surprise to European governments, since he had hinted at his findings in the past few weeks.

Earlier this month he accused European leaders of "shocking" passivity, arguing they knew about the illegal detainment and transportation of prisoners in their countries, and that they had known for at least two to three years. "There are countries that have collaborated actively, and there are others who have tolerated. Others have simply looked the other way," he had said.
Marty also indicated that it is unfair to single out member states as possible sites for secret prison camps, as governments all across Europe had been "willingly silent" about the facilities.

Critics of the report say that Marty, who relied primarily on media reports, along with some information provided by governments, didn't add anything to what was already known about the secret rendition program.
The Swiss news website Swissinfo.com reports that several other organizations have begun investigations into the allegations of rendition flights and secret prisons run on European soil. Separate investigations are also under way in Switzerland after a Sunday newspaper in that country published in early January a leaked confidential fax sent by Egypt's Foreign Ministry to the Egyptian Embassy in London. The fax, intercepted by Swiss intelligence in November, allegedly confirms the existence of the prisons in Europe.

The International Herald Tribune reported last week that Egyptian authorities deny that the fax was a "secret," and that it was nothing more than an ordinary press summary of news events. "We don't do any exceptional procedures," [Fatma Al Zahra Atman, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Cairo] said in a phone interview with the IHT. "We just sent this by fax. Anybody could intercept it. Nothing is secret."

Still, Egypt complained to the Swiss government last week over the leak of the "official document," according to the website of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The Swiss government expressed regret over the incident, but did not officially apologize.

January 25, 2006
Europe's C.I.A. Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Secret Prisons
By CRAIG S. SMITH
STRASBOURG, France, Jan. 24 - An inquiry by the Council of Europe into allegations that the C.I.A. has operated secret detention centers in Eastern Europe has turned up no evidence that such centers ever existed, though the leader of the inquiry, Dick Marty, said there are enough "indications" to justify continuing the investigation.

The report added, however, that it was "highly unlikely" that European governments were unaware of the American program of renditions, in which terrorism suspects were either seized in or transferred through Europe to third countries where they may have been tortured. Drawing from news reports, Mr. Marty contended that "more than a hundred" detainees have been moved anonymously and illegally through Europe under the program.

The findings, delivered to the Council on Tuesday, drew scornful reactions from some representatives of the Council's 46 member states, particularly from the British, who called the interim report "as full of holes as Swiss cheese" and "clouded in myth and motivated by a desire to kick America."

Mr. Marty, a Swiss senator and chairman of Council's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, was charged with the inquiry after an article in The Washington Post in November cited unidentified intelligence officials as saying that the C.I.A. had maintained detention centers in eight countries, including some in Eastern European democracies.

A subsequent report by Human Rights Watch cited Poland and Romania as two of those countries. Both countries, as well as others in Europe, have denied the allegations.

Mr. Marty's findings to date amount to little more than a compendium of press clippings.

"It would seem from confidential contacts that the information revealed by The Washington Post, Human Rights Watch and ABC came from different sources, probably all well-informed official sources," a passage in the report reads. "This is clearly a factor that adds to the credibility of the allegations, since the media concerned have not simply taken information from one another."

Part of the reason Mr. Marty finds the allegations credible are other well-documented cases of America's rendition of terrorism suspects on European soil, including the 2003 C.I.A. abduction of an Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who was sent to Egypt.

Mr. Marty said he was equally wary of Romanian and Polish denials of the detention center allegations, noting that both countries are part of the American-led coalition fighting in Iraq and "escaped long dictatorships thanks largely to the American intelligence services."

He has requested data on aircraft movements from the Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control agency, and satellite images from the European Union's Satellite Center. It is not clear what he hopes to find in the data or photographs. His assertion that more than a hundred detainees have been moved through Europe - a number he took from an article in the German newspaper Die Zeit - is not of a scale that would show in satellite images.

The debate over renditions and secret prisons reflects the deep mistrust that has developed in Europe toward the Bush administration and its Eastern European coalition partners since the invasion of Iraq.

Both Mr. Marty and the Council of Europe's secretary general, Terry Davies, are convinced that the American press knows more about the alleged detention centers, but are under government pressure to keep the information secret.

"I know of a television company that has information that they are not willing to broadcast out of concern for their employees," Mr. Davies said. He declined to identify the broadcaster or the source of the allegation.

Mr. Davies is scheduled to issue a report in February on what the Council's member states have done to ensure that such breaches of the Council's European Convention on Human Rights do not occur. Mr. Marty is expected to issue a final report on his inquiry in March or April.

"This is no easy task," said John Swift, terrorism researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The information doesn't fall out of the sky."

For now, though, there is nothing concrete to the allegations of secret prisons beneath the chatter.

"At this stage of the investigations, there is no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret C.I.A. detention centers in Romania, Poland or any other country," Mr. Marty's report said.

Doreen Carvajal contributed reporting from Paris for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Report on CIA says 'gangster' methods used Financial Times
By Daniel Dombey in Strasbourg, Sarah Laitner in Brussels and,Jimmy Burns in London. The head of a high-profile probe of CIA prisons in Europe accused the US administration of "gangster-style methods" yesterday but failed to produce hard evidence that European governments had hosted any such facilities. Dick Marty, the Swiss politician looking into the case for the Council of Europe, the 46-nation human rights organisation, said in an interim report that US renditions, or extra-legal abductions, had challenged "the very foundation of the law-based state and its democratic foundation". "Individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and all rights, and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture," he said. "If governments resort to gangster-style methods, I say no," he added. The US maintains rendition is compatible with international law and that it does not transport people to countries where they would be at risk of torture. But Washington uses a more narrow definition of torture than do many European states. Mr Marty said it was "highly unlikely that European governments or at least their intelligence services were unaware" of "hundreds" of CIA flights and more than 100 renditions on European soil or passing through European airspace. "There is a great deal of coherent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing' of torture" by the US, said Mr Marty. But he admitted that many of his findings - such as the number of likely renditions - were based on press reports and acknowledged that an in-depth study by a Romanian human rights organisation had not substantiated allegations that Romania had hosted a CIA prison. Nor did he uncover any evidence of such sites in Poland, the other country that has come under most suspicion. He had received satellite pictures and flight records from official European agencies only this week and would now analyse them. "The Marty report has more holes than a Swiss cheese," said Denis MacShane, Britain's former Europe minister, who attended the Council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg. "It is sad that Mr Marty refuses to acceptthe categorical denials ofthe Polish and Romanian governments." It is the behaviour of European states - rather than the actions of the US - that comes under the competence of the Council of Europe. Mr Marty criticised European governments for their reluctance to provide information and was backed by a call from the European Commission. Last week, the European parliament set up a parallel investigation, led by a 46-member committee. In the UK, Mr Marty's report fuelled renewed calls for the British government to broaden its own investigations into allegations that British airports may have been used as part of the "rendition" strategy. The UK civil rights group Liberty is considering taking legal action against ministers on the basis that the Foreign Office's investigations have been inadequate to allay public concern that the UK government might have been complicit in acts of torture. "It is time for our [the UK] government to get its story straight - not about what it did not know, but what it is going to do about suchserious alleged violationsof human rights and UKsovereignty."
US accused of using gangster tactics over terror suspects Guardian Unlimited
Inquiry Finds No Proof of CIA Jails But Stays Skeptical New York Times
Times Online - Christian Science Monitor - Independent - United Press International - all 501 related »

How to Lose Friends and Gain Enemies
CIA Bombs Pakistan, Hits America
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

Well done the CIA! In an act of astonishing incompetence the Agency has in one fluid motion created millions more enemies for America, fostered a recruiting drive for the anti-American Taliban that will keep it in dedicated manpower for the next couple of decades, driven a friendly government to despair and shattered its attempts to counter the excesses of dangerous religious lunatics, and contributed massively to the already grave instability of a volatile region.

This bizarre shambles was caused by US aerial assaults which killed civilians in Pakistani villages in its North West Frontier Province which lies along the Afghan border. The US military, which is fighting the tribes on the Afghan side of the border, declares it knows nothing of the attacks, and the Pakistan army, which is fighting the tribes on the Pakistan side of the border at the command of Washington (although naturally Pakistan denies this is the reason), knows nothing about them, either, other than the fact they took place.

So we have a chaotic international situation in which buildings within a sovereign country have been smashed to smithereens and their inhabitants blown to pieces by persons unknown to the government of the territory where the strike was made. By any national or international criterion the destruction and killing were illegal. It all sounds a bit like 9/11, in fact - - except that many people who condemned the 9/11 slaughter in the US have supported the slaughter on January 13, 2006 in Pakistan.

There is no point in anyone trying to claim there is a moral difference: there were about 3000 killed in New York, and 18 killed in Damadola hamlet. All who died were innocent of any action against their murderers. The difference is that those who planned the atrocity in New York are regarded quite rightly as demented fanatics, and those who planned and executed the killing of villagers in Damadola are considered to be American heroes by such as Bush, Cheney and McCain and many millions of their zealous adherents.

The responsibility for both atrocities in Pakistan (there was another random bombing that killed another 8 Pakistani villagers on January 7) has been laid at the door of our favorite wham 'em, bam 'em, slam 'em amateurs, the troglodytes of the Central Intelligence Agency. Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury characters are alive, active, and guiding missile-firing drones on yippee shoots wherever and whenever they want, and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it.

Forget international law - - forget any law - - because these people are above the law and out of control and there isn't a chance that anyone will be held accountable for the death of some raghead tribal kids and their parents. But before we continue describing the CIA's most recent off-the-wall delinquency, let's examine the region where it took place, because the customs and culture of the tribes are relevant to any action taken in their homeland. It is essential that US citizens gain understanding of the wider world, because America is deeply involved in every country on our planet.


*****

Let me add something here: The English language newspapers of the Gulf, Pakistan and India are packed full of news and comment. They carry more hard international news than any US newspaper. (Forget UK papers. Apart from the Guardian and the Independent they're a juvenile joke.) So, while traveling from Dubai to Pakistan last month (I spent much of December-January in the region), when a steward came down the cabin handing out reading material I was happy to take the Gulf News and the Khaleej Times. Behind me, a voice said in a tone of contemptuous disbelief: "You only got LOCAL papers?" I looked round to see if it was Donald Rumsfeld or Porter Goss but it was neither. It was an anonymous American who was traveling to Pakistan and didn't want to know or learn anything about the region. Just like Rumsfeld and Goss, I suppose.



*****

In Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas the central government in Islamabad is considered to be as foreign as was the British Raj which quit the region in 1947 after a century in which the British army failed to overcome the ferocious independence of the tribes. Its 5 million inhabitants are largely illiterate (the literacy rate for men is 18%; for women, negligible), and are as profoundly ignorant of the outside world as it is of them. (And we can certainly include the CIA in that latter category. And maybe the former, come to think of it.) They are devoutly religious, devious, brave, extremely hardy (western Special Forces don't even begin to measure up), and most aggressive. They are also bound by a code of honor incomprehensible to most westerners and implacably opposed to developments that might alter their way of life. They are loosely contained by the Frontier Crimes Regulations (1861) which are based on collective responsibility in that the authorities, if they dare, can detain members of a law-breaking fugitive's tribe or quarantine his village should he fail to surrender or if tribal punishment (a monetary fine for a killing, for example -- we'll come on to that later) is not administered. The place is not civilized in the western sense. I know it quite well, having traveled there a lot over the past 25 years, and although I never felt myself to be in danger from the tribes, and was always made welcome, there is no doubt it is a wild and woolly territory.

Here is a typical local press report of an incident last December: "Muhammad Naseer was on his way to [the town of] Dara Adam Khel, when he was hit by shots being fired indiscriminately by rival Haji Munaf and Haji Jamil groups near Bazid Khel in the tribal territory. Naseer died on the spot while a truck driver, Jamil, and an unknown cyclist, received injuries. Faridullah, the helper of the injured driver, told Daily Times that around 20 armed men who had positioned themselves on both sides of the highway suddenly appeared and started firing at each other."

It's all in a day's feuding. Heaven knows what the original dispute between the Munafs and the Jamils was about. (It's usually land, water or women.) But the point is that blood must have been spilled, so blood must be exacted in retribution.

And the CIA has ensured that no American will ever be safe in the tribal areas. Because the US has spilled innocent blood, and the tribes - - all the tribes in Pakistan and along the border within Afghanistan (for they are blood-kin) - - will hate them until the end of time. Most Pakistanis in other provinces have little time for the tribes, whom they regard with as little sympathy as they do the religious loonies who try to ban mixed-sex marathons (the most recent irrationality) and want to impose hand-chopping and other quasi-religious savagery ; but the CIA's barbarity has, as usual, drawn disparate groups together. The idiot US blitz in the tribal areas has ensured that America is even more despised, distrusted and hated than it was before the attacks. Great work, fellas!

The murder of Pakistani civilians by the Bush Administration took place in a tribal Agency (there are seven of them) called Bajaur. As Reuters reported, "The incident came just days after Pakistan lodged a strong protest with US-led forces in Afghanistan, saying cross-border firing in the nearby Waziristan area last weekend killed eight people."

Pakistan's military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, whom I know well, said he did not know the cause of the blasts, but that "People heard explosions and as a result, there were a number of casualties. My information is that 11 to 14 people have been killed"." It definitely wasn't the Pakistan military who killed the kids.

Let's turn to the US military's spokespersons, who have all the credibility of Mafia chieftains stating soulfully that they love feeding fishes. Here are some news agency reports on their pathetic responses:

· "A U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry O'Hara, said there were no reports of US forces operating in that area."

· "Asked if a pilotless Predator Drone was operating in the area, Major Todd Vicion, a public affairs officer at the Pentagon, said he did not know. "Those are operational details that we don't track," he said."

· "Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence officials all said they had no information on the reports . . . A US military spokesman in Afghanistan, Lt. Mike Cody, referred questions on the matter to the Pentagon."

It is absurd to imagine that the United States Army, with 20,000 troops who have been searching for three years for Osama bin Laden (remember him? The 9/11 fellow?) and his supposed second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, does not know prescisely what is happening in its own area of operations. Are we expected to believe that a United States-operated missile-armed drone can carry out a strike inside a military AO without the US Army being notified?

It is ludicrous to claim that the Pentagon "does not track" whether missile-armed Predators are operating in a region in which 20,000 US troops are pursuing the Bush Administration's most wanted men. Are we expected to believe that there is no passage of information to the Pentagon concerning the attacks of a missile-firing drone within the region's most important area of US army operations?

It is ridiculous that the US Army in Afghanistan has to refer questions on local operational matters back to Washington. And it is bizarre that the Pentagon and the State Department deny knowledge of what is taking place in Afghanistan and the immediate region. Are we expected to believe that the two major US Departments are kept in complete ignorance of what a US agency is doing in one of the most sensitive areas of the world?

Of even more importance, are we to believe that aerial destruction of houses and people within the territory of a friendly (or any other) country is official policy of the US administration?


*****

The answer to all questions, as any intelligent person would know, is YES.

Yes: it is a fact that US military operations and diplomatic engagements can be totally wrecked by a bunch of freaks who don't need to tell anyone anything about what they do, because "considerations of national security" prevent their being accountable to anyone ­ or to any law, be that made by God or man. And YES: it is the official policy of the United States of America to murder children if its representatives think it necessary to do so.

Who would have thought that a US senator could possibly endorse the killing of children? Yet here is McCain, sonorous, ponderous, pompous, presidential-ambitious, totally amoral, and evil:

". . . this war on terror has no boundaries . . . We have to go where these people are, and we have to take them out . . . The United States' priorities are to get rid of al-Qaeda, and this attack on was an effort to do so . . . I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again."

Yeah: All these al Qaeda kids have gotta go! McCain, the supporter of kid-killing, would be happy if the CIA did the same thing again. He would encourage the CIA to kill kids on the off-chance there might be a bad guy next door.

The murder of villagers, as in the tiny hamlet of Damadola, will be repeated again and again and again elsewhere whenever some techno-dweeb intelligence operative imagines there is an enemy to be killed. And he or she and the drone operators who blasted the kids to smithereens will forever be supported by politically-motivated moral chameleons like McCain.

The CIA, acting on orders (or approval) from the White House, has destroyed the credibility of the United States in the tribal areas and far, far beyond them. But the most fatuous aspect of the atrocities is the non-apology factor. The idiot Rice, for example, refused to even consider saying she is sorry that the Bush administration murdered these children and their parents.

As anyone with the most basic knowledge of the region could tell them, the tribes accept blood-money for such barbarity. Once it is paid, along with a proper apology, in person by a dignitary, the matter is closed. It is their custom, and has been for centuries. This sort of attitude, this alien culture, is not understood by the savage buffoons of the Bush administration. They want to go in and kill people. If they kill the wrong people - - kids and their parents, for example - - then they say the Hell with it because it's all for America, so by definition it can't be bad and we certainly ain't going to say Sorry to any damn ragheads.

They are ignorant, arrogant and very stupid. And I'm still not convinced that the American fellow behind me on the plane to Pakistan who refused to read local newspapers wasn't in fact Porter Goss.

Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com

Bush visits super-secret spies CNN
While pressing his campaign to explain stepped-up domestic spying in the terrorism era, President Bush is taking time out to boost the morale of people carrying out this work at the National Security Agency. Bush was traveling to the heavily secured site of the super-secret spy agency in suburban Maryland Wednesday to give a speech behind closed doors and meet with employees in advance of Senate hearings on the much-criticized domestic surveillance. Responding to an outcry from many congressional Democrats, human rights and civil liberties groups about warrantless eavesdropping of calls and other communications made overseas from the United States, Bush has recently stepped up a series of public appearances. In Manhattan, Kansas, on Monday, he brushed aside arguments by critics that he broke the law by authorizing domestic eavesdropping without a warrant, saying he was doing what Congress authorized him to do to protect Americans from terrorist attacks. His attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, repeated that argument in a speech Tuesday.
Permission to Eavesdrop? TIME
Bush to Visit NSA for Pep Talk Forbes
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Europe Pretended to be Unaware of CIA's Torture Prisons Zaman Online
The European Council Parliamentary Assembly (ECPA) member Dick Marty declared European administrations were in fact aware of the CIA's secret torture prisons. Swiss Senator Dick Marty, who carried out the investigation launched by the Council of Europe following the allegations alleging the existence of CIA secret prisons in Europe, presented his first official report yesterday. In the report, Marty revealed the high possibility that the administrations and intelligence services in Europe were aware of the situation. They failed to prove the existence of secret detention centers in Romania and Poland, Marty reported, however he continued, "It is obvious that the CIA attempted to conduct illegal activities in Europe, which the European intelligence services were aware of." The report avoided referring to Turkey, which did not reportedly forward its official response about the CIA's activities to the Council of Europe (CE). Turkey is expected to forward an official response to the CE by 21 February.
Europeans likely aware of torture, report says Globe and Mail
Swiss investigator says US is 'outsourcing torture' Boston Globe
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Pentagon, CIA refer 20 detainee-abuse cases to DOJ
By David Morgan
Tue Jan 24, 10:15 PM ET



Twenty cases of detainee abuse allegations against CIA and Defense Department employees have been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, a senior U.S. official said in a letter released on Tuesday.

Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said in a January 17 letter to Sen. Richard Durbin (news, bio, voting record), an Illinois Democrat, that the cases span both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and contain not only allegations of physical abuse but also possible violations of federal law and U.S. treaties.

Civil liberties advocates said the cases involve civilian interrogators and showed a double-standard in light of recent convictions of lower-ranking soldiers accused of abuse.

Only one CIA case has resulted in a criminal indictment. In that case, former CIA contractor David Passaro has been charged in North Carolina in a federal case involving the 2003 death of an Afghan detainee.

Moschella said the other 19 cases referred to the Justice Department have been reviewed by a federal prosecution task force in Virginia. Two have been closed for lack of sufficient evidence, and all others remain under investigation.

"It is now clear that enlisted men and women in a soldier's uniform are being convicted while CIA agents and civilian contractors who allegedly participated in the same crimes remain free," Christopher Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

WAR ZONES

Administration officials said the investigation of detainee abuse cases by civilian investigators required extended periods of time because alleged acts often occur in war zones where the alleged victims can be difficult to track down.

"The president has directed that detainees be treated humanely," said Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson. "The U.S. continues to aggressively investigate credible allegations of abuse and to hold individuals responsible for wrongdoing."

She declined to comment about the cases disclosed in the Justice Department letter because of ongoing investigations.

Moschella was writing in response to a letter Durbin sent to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in November seeking details of abuse case referrals to the Justice Department from the Defense Department and the CIA.

"Since the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan, the Defense Department has referred 11 allegations of detainee abuse to the (Justice) Department, and another agency has referred nine allegations of detainee abuse," the assistant attorney general wrote.

A copy of the letter was obtained by Reuters.

Defense Department spokeswoman Cynthia Smith had no immediate comment on the letter, which she had not seen. "It is our policy that all detainees are treated humanely and to report any suspected detainee mistreatment and investigate that thoroughly," Smith said.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: "The letter from the Department of Justice speaks for itself. I have nothing to add to it."




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Pelosi Questions Bush's Spying Program Forbes
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says President Bush should have used his extensive authority under the law to monitor suspected terrorists rather than approve the National Security Agency's disputed monitoring program. "I would not want any president - Democrat or Republican - to have the expanded power the administration is claiming in this case," Pelosi, D-Calif., said in an interview with The Associated Press. Pelosi did not say the NSA's surveillance program was illegal. But she said the administration should follow the procedures in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows government lawyers to ask a secretive court for warrants for surveillance in the United States during national security investigations.
Domestic Spying Defense Washington Post
Experts challenge need for warrantless spying San Jose Mercury News
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From the Los Angeles Times
THE NATION
CIA Expands Use of Drones in Terror War
'Targeted killing' with missile-firing Predators is a way to hit Al Qaeda in remote areas, officials say. Host nations are not always given notice.
By Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writer

January 29, 2006

WASHINGTON — Despite protests from other countries, the United States is expanding a top-secret effort to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles as it pursues an increasingly decentralized Al Qaeda, U.S. officials say.

The CIA's failed Jan. 13 attempt to assassinate Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri in Pakistan was the latest strike in the "targeted killing" program, a highly classified initiative that officials say has broadened as the network splintered and fled Afghanistan.

The strike against Zawahiri reportedly killed as many as 18 civilians, many of them women and children, and triggered protests in Pakistan. Similar U.S. attacks using unmanned Predator aircraft equipped with Hellfire missiles have angered citizens and political leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

Little is known about the targeted-killing program. The Bush administration has refused to discuss how many strikes it has made, how many people have died, or how it chooses targets. No U.S. officials were willing to speak about it on the record because the program is classified.

Several U.S. officials confirmed at least 19 occasions since Sept. 11 on which Predators successfully fired Hellfire missiles on terrorist suspects overseas, including 10 in Iraq in one month last year. The Predator strikes have killed at least four senior Al Qaeda leaders, but also many civilians, and it is not known how many times they missed their targets.

Critics of the program dispute its legality under U.S. and international law, and say it is administered by the CIA with little oversight. U.S. intelligence officials insist it is one of their most tightly regulated, carefully vetted programs.

Lee Strickland, a former CIA counsel who retired in 2004 from the agency's Senior Intelligence Service, confirmed that the Predator program had grown to keep pace with the spread of Al Qaeda commanders. The CIA believes they are branching out to gain recruits, financing and influence.

Many groups of Islamic militants are believed to be operating in lawless pockets of the Middle East, Asia and Africa where it is perilous for U.S. troops to try to capture them, and difficult to discern the leaders.

"Paradoxically, as a result of our success the target has become even more decentralized, even more diffused and presents a more difficult target — no question about that," said Strickland, now director of the Center for Information Policy at the University of Maryland.

"It's clear that the U.S. is prepared to use and deploy these weapons in a fairly wide theater," he said.

Current and former intelligence officials said they could not disclose which countries could be subject to Predator strikes. But the presence of Al Qaeda or its affiliates has been documented in dozens of nations, including Somalia, Morocco and Indonesia.

High-ranking U.S. and allied counter-terrorism officials said the program's expansion was not merely geographic. They said it had grown from targeting a small number of senior Al Qaeda commanders after the Sept. 11 attacks to a more loosely defined effort to kill possibly scores of suspected terrorists, depending on where they were found and what they were doing.

"We have the plans in place to do them globally," said a former counter-terrorism official who worked at the CIA and State Department, which coordinates such efforts with other governments.

"In most cases, we need the approval of the host country to do them. However, there are a few countries where the president has decided that we can whack someone without the approval or knowledge of the host government."

The CIA and the Pentagon have deployed at least several dozen of the Predator drones throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and along the borders of Pakistan, U.S. officials confirmed. The CIA also has sent the remote-controlled aircraft into the skies over Yemen and some other countries believed to be Al Qaeda havens, particularly those without a strong government or military with which the United States can work in tandem, a current U.S. counter-terrorism official told The Times.

Such incursions are highly sensitive because they could violate the sovereignty of those nations and anger U.S. allies, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Predator, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego, is a slender craft, 27 feet long with a 49-foot wingspan. It makes a clearly audible buzzing sound, and can hover above a target for many hours and fly as low as 15,000 feet to get good reconnaissance footage. They are often operated by CIA or Pentagon officials at computer consoles in the United States.

The drones were designed for surveillance and have been used for that purpose since at least the mid-1990s, beginning with the conflict in the Balkans. After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush ordered a rapid escalation of a project to arm the Predators with missiles, an effort that had been mired in bureaucratic squabbles and technical glitches.

Now the Predator is an integral part of the military's counter-insurgency effort, especially in Iraq. But the CIA also runs a more secretive — and more controversial — Predator program that targets suspected terrorists outside combat zones.

The CIA does not even acknowledge that such a targeted-killing program exists, and some attacks have been explained away as car bombings or other incidents. It is not known how many militants or bystanders have been killed by Predator strikes, but anecdotal evidence suggests the number is significant.

In some cases, the destruction was so complete that it was impossible to establish who was killed, or even how many people.

Among the senior Al Qaeda leaders killed in Predator strikes were military commander Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Qaed Sinan Harithi, a suspected mastermind of the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen, in 2002. Last year, Predators took out two Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan: Haitham Yemeni in May and Abu Hamza Rabia in December, one month after another missile strike missed him.

The attack on Rabia in North Waziristan also killed his Syrian bodyguards and the 17-year-old son and the 8-year-old nephew of the owner of the house that was struck, according to a U.S. official and Amnesty International, which has lodged complaints with the Bush administration following each suspected Predator strike.

Another apparent Predator missile strike killed a former Taliban commander, Nek Mohammed, in South Waziristan in June 2004, along with five others. A local observer said the strike was so precise that it didn't damage any of the buildings around the lawn where Mohammed was seated. At the time, the Pakistani army said Mohammed had been killed in clashes with its soldiers.

Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA's special unit hunting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, said he was aware of at least four successful targeted-killing strikes in Afghanistan alone by November 2004, when he left the agency.

In the attack on Zawahiri, word spread quickly that a U.S. plane had been buzzing above the target beforehand. Afterward, villagers reportedly found evidence of U.S. involvement.

The missiles intended for Bin Laden's chief deputy incinerated several houses in Damadola, a village near Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan. But Zawahiri was not there, U.S. officials now believe. Pakistan said it was investigating whether the strikes killed other high-ranking militants.

There were some well-publicized failures before the Zawahiri strike. In February 2002, a Predator tracked and killed a tall man in flowing robes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The CIA believed it was firing at Bin Laden, but the victim turned out to be someone else.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government had targeted Bin Laden in at least one Cruise missile strike. But the CIA was reluctant to engage in targeted killings because it said the laws regarding assassinations were too vague and the agency could face criminal charges.

Even today, documents and interviews suggest that the U.S. policy on targeted killings is still evolving.

Some critics, including a U.N. human rights watchdog group and Amnesty International, have urged the Bush administration to be more open about how it decides whom to kill and under what circumstances.

A U.N. report in the wake of the 2002 strike in Yemen called it "an alarming precedent [and] a clear case of extrajudicial killing" in violation of international laws and treaties. The Bush administration, which did not return calls seeking comment for this story, has said it does not recognize the mandate of the U.N. special body in connection with its military actions against Al Qaeda, according to Amnesty International.

"Zawahiri is an easy case. No one is going to question us going after him," said Juliette N. Kayyem, a former U.S. government counter-terrorism consultant and Justice Department lawyer. "But where can you do it and who can you do it against? Who authorizes it? All of these are totally unregulated areas of presidential authority."

"Paris, it's easy to say we won't do it there," said Kayyem, now a Harvard University law professor specializing in terrorism-related legal issues. "But what about Lebanon?"

Paul Pillar, a former CIA deputy counter-terrorism chief, said the authority claimed by the Bush administration was murky.

"I don't think anyone is dealing with solid footing here. There is legal as well as operational doctrine that is being developed as we go along," Pillar said. "We are pretty much in uncharted territory here."

Pillar, who was also the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia before retiring in mid-2005, said there had long been disagreement within the intelligence community over whether targeted killings were legally permissible, or even a good idea.

Before Sept. 11, Pillar said, CIA officers were issued vaguely worded guidelines that seemed to give them authority to kill Bin Laden, but only during an attempt to capture him.

The 9/11 commission investigating the attacks in New York and Washington concluded that such vaguely worded laws and policies gave little reassurance to those who might be pulling the trigger that they would not face disciplinary action — or even criminal charges.

Although presidents Ford and Reagan issued executive orders in 1976 and 1981 prohibiting U.S. intelligence agents from engaging in assassinations, the Bush administration claimed the right to kill suspected terrorists under war powers given to the president by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It is the same justification Bush has used for a recently disclosed domestic spying program that has the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants, and a CIA "extraordinary rendition" program to seize suspected terrorists overseas and transport them to other countries with reputations for torture.

Strickland, like some other officials, said the Predator program served as a deterrent to foreign governments, militias and other groups that might be harboring Al Qaeda cells.

"You give shelter to Al Qaeda figures, you may well get your village blown up," Strickland said. "Conversely, you have to note that this can also create local animosity and instability."

The CIA's lawyers play a central role in deciding when a strike is justified, current and former U.S. officials said. The lawyers analyze the credibility of the evidence, how many bystanders might be killed, and whether the target is enough of a threat to warrant the strike.

Other agencies, including the Justice Department, are sometimes consulted, Strickland said. "The legal input is broad and extensive," he said.

Scheuer said he believed the process was too cumbersome, and that the agency had lost precious opportunities to slay terrorists because it was afraid of killing civilians.

But others said they had urged the Bush administration to adopt a multi-agency system of checks and balances similar to that used by Israel, which for decades has convened informal tribunals to assess each proposed targeted killing before carrying it out.

Amos N. Guiora, a senior Israeli military judge advocate who participated in such tribunals, said that although the failed Zawahiri strike itself appeared to be justifiable, the result suggested a lack of adequate deliberations on the quality of the intelligence.

"I think [the] attack was a major screw-up, because so many kids died. It raises questions about the entire process," said Guiora, who now a professor at Case Western Law School and director of its Institute for Global Security Law and Policy.

"It shows the absolute need to have a well-thought-through and developed process that examines the action from a legal perspective, an intelligence perspective and an operational perspective. Because the price you pay here is that you are going to have to be hesitant the next time you pull the trigger."

Alerting humanitarians to emergencies

CIA unlikely to back off al Qaeda attacks in Pakistan
29 Jan 2006 18:26:25 GMT

Source: Reuters

By David Morgan and Simon Cameron-Moore

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The Bush administration is unlikely to shy away from using Predator missile attacks on al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, despite the risk of political backlash for U.S. ally, President Pervez Musharraf, officials and intelligence experts say.

The CIA has used pilotless Predator drones to carry out at least three attacks against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan over the past eight months, including a Jan. 13 airstrike targeted at al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, which killed 18 civilians including women and children.

"He (Musharraf) is walking a tightrope. He thinks that the United States' support is vital, both for Pakistan and himself. But he cannot allow an impression to form that ... the Americans can conduct such operations without consulting," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani military general turned political analyst.

The January strike on Damadola village failed to kill Zawahri, who was not there, according to Pakistani intelligence sources. It may have killed four other al Qaeda leaders, the sources said. But no bodies have been found and their deaths remain unconfirmed more than two weeks later.

U.S. sources say the prospect for civilian casualties and political fallout is part of a strategic calculus that the CIA uses in deciding whether the targeted killing of a specific al Qaeda member is worthwhile.

"It's all a question of who the target is. And if the target is right, they'll attack again with the Predator," said Ruel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle Eastern specialist.

Retired generals in Pakistan think the same. A former head of the ISI said that ruthlessly destroying potential threats is part of U.S. military culture. "If they suspect the enemy is there, then they go for it," said the former Pakistani spy chief, retired Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani.

Pakistan lodged a public protest a day after the Damadola airstrike, saying it would not allow such attacks to happen again, while demonstrations spread across the country and anti-American sentiment seethed in the Pashtun tribal belt on the border.

But there is a strong belief in U.S. and Pakistani intelligence circles that the Pakistani leadership knew of the attack ahead of time and that the military's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, shared information that prompted the CIA to seek clearance for the airstrike.

Musharraf himself did not condemn the U.S. action explicitly until last week, in media interviews during a visit to Europe.

WHITE HOUSE DECISION

U.S. President George W. Bush and other senior White House officials were apprised of the Damadola plan before the attack, according to intelligence sources who say the Americans considered the January missile strike to be especially sensitive because of the risk of civilian deaths.

"It was a White House decision. The CIA director generally has command and control. But this one was of such sensitivity that it needed a White House check-off," said a former U.S. intelligence officer with knowledge of the Damadola operation.

The White House, when contacted about the claim, had no comment.

Interrogations of Abu Faraj Farj al Liby, an al Qaeda operations chief captured in Pakistan last May, led the CIA and security forces to focus surveillance on Damadola.

"He's the one who told them Zawahri frequented it," said the former U.S. intelligence officer. "They got something from al Liby, and they've widened the search based on intelligence leads."

U.S. experts say Predator attacks give Washington leverage to pressure Pakistan into asserting greater control over the tribal badlands along the Afghan border, where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Zawahri are believed to be still roaming free.

Pakistani analysts say security forces have been successful in decimating the militant network's operational commanders there.

The Pakistani army has around 80,000 troops deployed on the border in addition to the tribal militias that form the Frontier Corps. But there are parts of the semi-autonomous regions where the army remains wary of going and where any troop movements would be quickly spotted and potential targets alerted.


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http://www.lavanguardia.es/web/20060129/51228977945.html

==========================================

WHAT IS THE SURPRISE IN PALESTINE?
Graham E. Fuller

What's the surprise in the victory of the Palestinian movement Hamas in
the Palestinian elections this week? To those who follow the Middle
East closely, the Hamas victory is part of a broad pattern we see all
over the Muslim world: Islamists (moderate and radical) are the
dominant political force. They have few rivals-- not even nationalists
or leftists-- in most countries.

Islamists flourish where there is no democracy--where people have no
voice over their own fates, their own regime, and the actions of
distant powers. In the elections in Egypt last month President Mubarak,
under pressure, made a small opening in the electoral system and the
Muslim Brotherhood immediately made great gains. If the elections in
Egypt had been truly open, the Muslim Brotherhood would probably have
won a majority in Egypt as well.

Washington and most of the Europeans still don't understand the
political and social dynamic in Palestine. The number one force that
dominates the daily life and entire psychology of the Palestinians is
39 years of Israeli occupation -almost two generations. Palestinians
are bitter and angry. They support Hamas because Hamas has not been
corrupt, it speaks in the name of Islam and Palestinian nationalism,
and it has been willing to undertake armed struggle against the Israeli
state that occupies them. It has fought a guerrilla warfare, attacking
occupying Israeli security forces. It has also employed terrorism
against Israeli civilians with the claim that it is responding to the
indiscriminate use of Israeli force against Palestinian civilians that
also kills thousands of women and children. This is not to justify
Hamas policies, but to make it clear why they have turned even to
terrorism on occasion in order to resist the occupation and why most
impotent Palestinians see that as justified.

If Washington and the Europeans insist that first there must be peace
and calm in the area before peace negotiations can move forward, then
peace will never come. If we seek to untie the complex knot of fifty
years of Palestinian-Israeli confrontation we must begin at the source
of the problem: the occupation itself. To insist on "law and order
first" is to deliberately choose not to deal with the root cause of the
problem.

So the situation in Palestine today should come as no surprise. Those
who are surprised are those who do not understand the problem.

Is Hamas happy? Hamas is obviously delighted with the demonstration of
its power and support in Palestine; it is no longer possible for the
world to ignore it. But Hamas is probably not delighted with now having
responsibility for the all the problems of Palestine, domestic and
international. Rather than being a "very, very bad step for peace" as
Italian Premier Berlusconi said yesterday, however, this victory
possibly could be a very, very positive step forward. I do not wish to
be simple-minded or naïve about the problems ahead. But if Islamist
movements wish to maintain their powerful base of social support in the
Muslim world, they are going to have to deliver what the people want.
It is a luxury for them to remain out of power where they can freely
criticize but not take responsibility for policies. Hamas now faces
major political problems in just making the infrastructure of Palestine
work.

We can expect that Hamas will want to share the burdens of power
broadly across the whole spectrum of Palestinian society. It will now
have to examine the effectiveness of engaging in guerrilla or even
terrorist attacks. My guess is that Hamas will refrain from such
actions as it explores the possibility of political progress. But if
Hamas comes to believe that diplomacy and negotiations are not working,
if it believes that Israel is not serious about giving up almost all of
the West Bank, then it will probably resign from power and return to
the armed struggle. It obviously cannot do both simultaneously. The
problem is that neither the Likud party, nor the warrior Sharon, had
any intention of really giving the Palestinians a united, functional
and sovereign state in the West Bank. They wanted to maintain dominant
Israeli control with lots of settlements. That is why we have no peace
today, not because of terrorism. Terrorism is the result of unending
occupation.

Hamas will now speak with a powerful political voice that has powerful
popular backing among Palestinians. Israel now faces a major challenge:
will it become serious about permitting a viable Palestinian state to
emerge, or will it continue delaying tactics - the key strategy of
Sharon - as Israel continues to create new facts on the ground?

Hamas has indeed used some quite radical language in the past about
Israel, denying its existence, or even calling for Palestinians to
regain all of the land Israel took in order to build its new state in
1947. We can find hundreds of quotations that "prove" that Hamas could
never become a partner in negotiations of peace. (Some Israelis do not
want negotiations but prefer the status quo.) But let us remember that
all national liberation organizations, including Jews themselves in
their own struggle with the British for a state in Palestine, can
employ extreme language in the name of their cause. Palestinians are no
exception. Israeli zealots speak of retaining all of the territories,
or even of the natural right of Jews to occupy all lands between the
Nile and the Euphrates as promised in the Bible. Soviet extremists
spoke of "world-wide communism."

But in the end, reality imposes itself. Hamas is not just a terrorist
organization, but also a political organization, and a social
organization. It has political aspirations that call for the
liberation of Palestine but it generally sees the "full liberation of
all of Palestine" as a very long range goal. It is almost certain that
Hamas in power will concentrate on liberation of the West Bank and
gaining a capital in East Jerusalem, the Arab part of the Holy City. It
will seek a more "Islamic" society in Palestine, but that does not
suggest something like the Taliban or the rule of clerics as in Iran.
Palestinians do not want that. Tomorrow will bring a new day, and
Palestinians satisfied with their own lives in their own state will
lose most of their militant aspirations.

So Hamas now confronts the reality of power, of Palestinian needs, and
of the art of the possible. It will undoubtedly seek to use political
instruments in achieving its goals. But if there is no recognition from
the Israeli side that Israel must give up almost all of the occupied
territories, then Hamas will probably not stay quiet, or in power for
long. Both sides will now be tested in this moment of truth - the
reality is on the table.
===============================================

Graham E. Fuller is former Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence
Council at CIA; his most recent book is "The Future of Political Islam."

U.S. agencies find no proof of looming al Qaeda attack
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 2, 2006


Despite statements by senior al Qaeda leaders, U.S. intelligence agencies do not have information indicating the group is ready to conduct a major attack, U.S. counterterrorism officials said.
The audio and video statements appear to be part of a propaganda campaign by the terrorist group to bolster morale in its ranks, the officials said.
Intelligence officials said al Qaeda has been damaged since the beginning of the global war on terrorism in 2001 but remains capable of a major attack.
John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and senior intelligence officials are scheduled to testify today before the Senate as part of an annual threat briefing. Mr. Negroponte will highlight the continuing but changing threat posed by al Qaeda, which U.S. intelligence officials regard as the most serious national security challenge to the nation.
However, there are no signs of an impending attack like the hijacked airline strikes on the Pentagon and World Trade Center that killed almost 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, the officials said.
The officials discussed, on the condition of anonymity, the analysis of an audio statement by Osama bin Laden and a subsequent video from his key deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.
Bin Laden said in an audio message broadcast by Arab satellite television station Al Jazeera on Jan. 19 that an attack "is being prepared and you'll see it in your homeland very soon."
Eleven days later, al-Zawahri appeared in a videotaped message, also broadcast on Al Jazeera, saying that the "truce" offered by bin Laden had been rejected because of a Jan. 13 U.S. air strike that killed several top al Qaeda leaders but missed al-Zawahri.
Al-Zawahri said in the message Monday that al Qaeda would conduct further attacks on the United States.
A U.S. intelligence official said no hard intelligence relates to the al Qaeda statements and nothing indicates that the group is set to carry out an attack.
"Not every tape that comes out has been followed by an attack," the official said. "However, when they make these kinds of statements, you have to take them seriously."
This official said al Qaeda, and specifically its leadership, has been "damaged" by U.S. efforts, including the captures and killings of numerous top leaders.
"There has been a great erosion of the leadership, but al Qaeda does remain a danger and has [attack] capabilities," the official said.
The official noted that other groups that are "inspired" by al Qaeda have formed and may have "faint" ties or no links to "al Qaeda central" -- the group led by bin Laden and al-Zawahri.
A second official said bin Laden's offer of a truce and al-Zawahri's statements against U.S. leaders are part of "a propaganda ploy" designed to "buck up the morale of the rank and file" and prove they are still alive.
"It's also part of an effort to make the United States and Pakistan appear ineffective" in the war on terrorism, the official said.

Media articles about the intelligence community are notoriously hard to assess. The following is no exception in that it attempts to draw big conclusions from patchy evidence. But it is not easy to find anyone (other than spokesmen) who says that intelligence reform is going well.


Seeking Spies
Why the CIA is having such a hard time keeping its best

By Linda Robinson and Kevin Whitelaw
2/13/06

Three top-drawer commissions, ranking members of both parties in Congress, and President Bush all agreed that Washington needed to dramatically improve and expand its human intelligence-gathering abilities--in layman's terms, putting more spies on the ground. But more than four years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency, current and former intelligence officials say, is nowhere near to achieving that goal. After bearing the brunt of the criticism for the intelligence failures on 9/11 and for blowing the analysis on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, the agency has been buffeted further by more recent allegations of torture and mishandling of detainees under its control.

Now a new CIA director appears to be at loggerheads with many of the agency's most experienced operatives, who feel they are being disregarded and mismanaged. On top of that is a widely held perception of a deep political rift between the career professionals at the agency and the White House. (One anecdote suggests how bad things have gotten. Two years ago, the CIA's Baghdad station chief wrote a darkly pessimistic assessment of the situation in Iraq, projecting the possible growth of the insurgency. When President Bush was briefed on the station chief's conclusions, in July 2004, a former senior intelligence official tells U.S. News, he asked, "What is he, some kind of defeatist?")

The crux of the current crisis involves the agency's National Clandestine Service, or directorate of operations, as it was known until it was renamed last fall. The D.O., as intelligence initiates still call it, has some 1,200 case officers around the world, men and women trained to recruit spies from foreign governments and hostile groups, gather information on weapons and other threats, and, when necessary, conduct offensive operations. Over the years, the D.O. has been home to some of the CIA's most respected, courageous, and colorful operatives. And they have scored some major--and largely still secret--successes since 9/11. They placed a paramilitary force on the ground in Afghanistan before the Pentagon had a single soldier there to take down the Taliban regime. They have foiled several serious terrorist plots overseas and worked closely and creatively with foreign intelligence services to nab key al Qaeda figures. They have also used a missile-firing pilotless drone called the Predator to kill al Qaeda members or associates overseas, although some strikes, like that on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border late last month, also resulted in civilian deaths.

Despite such results, however, a triple hex of plummeting morale, a hemorrhage of field-tested veterans, and the drain of trying to counter a seemingly intractable insurgency in Iraq has left the D.O. today facing some of the most serious challenges in its history.

Attrition. After the 9/11 attacks, the White House ordered the CIA to increase the number of clandestine case officers by 50 percent, to some 1,800 operatives. It is an extraordinarily ambitious goal, one that is proving very difficult to meet. The agency is attracting new recruits, but veteran officers have been leaving one after another. Although CIA-wide attrition is said to be below 5 percent--less than the average in the private sector--insiders say the problem is more serious for the D.O. Official figures for the clandestine service are classified, but dozens of current and former officers who spoke with U.S. News for this account say the attrition there is significantly higher--and has increased greatly in the past year. The CIA says its attrition rate is returning to historical levels after dipping in the immediate post-9/11 period, but it is concerned about the number departing after just five to 10 years.

Among the CIA's four directorates--the other three are the directorates of intelligence, science and technology, and support--the clandestine service has always seen itself as first among equals. President Bush's new CIA director, Porter Goss, has a different view. Agency spokesperson Jennifer Millerwise Dyck says: "The director's view is that the agency is at its best when all four directorates are working collectively for the same objectives." A new reorganization plan, announced at an offsite seminar in late January, proposes melding the four directorates into a new functional design. Also, intelligence sources criticize what they say is a diversion of resources intended for the "core collectors" of the clandestine service--the case officers assigned to recruit spies and the reports officers who are charged with writing up the intelligence they collect.

More important than the number of departing spies is the fact that so many have been its most seasoned veterans, inhabitants of "baron" posts, like those of the regional division chiefs and directors of the counterterrorism and counterproliferation centers. Within the past year, according to current and former case officers and supervisors, virtually the entire top level of the D.O. has turned over. One intelligence official estimates that at least 20 of the most coveted senior spots have been vacated in the 17 months since Goss arrived. The post of European division chief has turned over twice, as has the No.2 official of the directorate, the associate deputy director for operations. Some have moved to new positions, but many have departed or retired. Agency spokesperson Dyck says: "As more agencies get into the intelligence business, they're coming to the CIA for senior leaders to help set up their shops."

For the nation's premier intelligence agency, this amounts to the loss of hundreds of years of experience in some of the most difficult and dangerous parts of the world--precisely the places Washington needs experienced eyes and ears as it continues to prosecute the war on terrorism. Because virtually all of these individuals worked in clandestine capacities, U.S. News will not reveal their names or publish information that could lead to exposure of their identities.

The extent of the exodus from the operations directorate has not previously been reported. Several senior D.O. officials have made their departures public, however, citing disagreements with Goss, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee. The respected top two officials in the D.O., Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick, were pushed out shortly after Goss arrived at the CIA's collegelike campus just outside Washington. In September, Sulick's replacement, Robert Richer, also announced his resignation--after less than nine months on the job. It took more than three months to find someone willing to fill Richer's post, a plum job considered a steppingstone to the top spot in the D.O. Three others turned down the job.

Other senior case officers are reportedly planning to leave as soon as they turn 50. Should that happen, coming on the heels of those who have already left, the D.O. will be fielding perhaps the most inexperienced team of intelligence officers in its history. Burton Gerber, who retired from the D.O. in 1995 after 39 years, including five stints as station and division chief, says, "The skills can only be acquired on the job; there is no other training. "Compared with someone like Gerber, a recently retired case officer estimates that today as many as 1 in 5 station chiefs has had just two or fewer overseas postings before being promoted. "These people are competent," this retired officer says. "But they don't have the level of experience--they have been pushed into these jobs before their time, in a sense."

Why the mass exodus? A veteran official cites two reasons: morale and money. The most senior operatives, this man says, are leaving because they are unhappy with the leadership of the agency. "Goss," this man says dismissively, "is not seen as serious by the careerists." While Goss may say the right things, some agency veterans say, he is not actively managing the agency. Goss has told officials he "doesn't do personnel," leaving such issues to the clutch of aides he brought from Capitol Hill, most of whom had only short tours at the CIA years before. These aides, known to insiders as "Gosslings," are seen by many as arrogant and unapproachable.

Goss supporters dispute such assertions. The new director, they say, came in with an agenda of change, which many veterans resisted. The bad blood began when some leaked to the press the shoplifting history of one of the "Gosslings." Both sides dug in their heels, and things soon went from bad to worse. One ambitious D.O. official began encouraging others to leave in protest, a senior official says--then stayed on and moved up the ladder.

"Barons." Others say that all the talk about departures misses the bigger picture. A senior intelligence official points out that 120,000 men and women applied to the agency last year and says that in November the largest class in the D.O.'s history graduated from training at "the farm," in rural Virginia. Disputing the magnitude of the exodus from the D.O., this official says: "The folks who have been here 15 to 25 years are a valuable asset," but he characterizes most of the departures as demographic in nature. "They've reached their time." Another senior intelligence official dismisses the critics in more strenuous terms. "With no disrespect to our Cold War barons, it is time for a new generation. We have a new innovative leadership team who are truly coming into their own. They are more in tune with today's threats. They know how to use the Internet; they don't dictate to secretaries."

Despite all the internal wrangling, the men and women of the D.O. clearly face serious challenges--and questions about whether their talents are being used to best advantage. In Iraq, case officers are being ordered to collect tactical military rather than strategic intelligence. Regulations from CIA headquarters require that they leave Baghdad's Green Zone and other secure compounds only in armored three-car convoys. Security concerns dictate such precautions, but they also severely limit case officers' ability to gather useful information and, basically, do their jobs. One intelligence source recounts how the Baghdad station chief went out one night more than a year ago to meet with an Iraqi informant, taking the required convoy. "The difficulties of having a clandestine meeting when you are accompanied by a three-car convoy should be obvious," says a retired intelligence official. A case officer told another former senior official that he regularly leaves the confines of Baghdad alone, in violation of the agency's regulations, packing a pistol and a shotgun; he is one of the few case officers there, he adds, who do so.

In the movie Syriana, the case officer portrayed by George Clooney meets alone with his sources throughout the film. That's the way it must be done, says Bob Baer, the real-life model for Clooney's character and the author of See No Evil, a memoir of his years as a covert operative in the Middle East. "You cannot pick up an asset with three cars, "Baer says. "... If [CIA officers] can't get out of the Green Zone, they've been marginalized. They are not able to see Iraqis in their native plumage."

Whipsawed? Compounding the challenges for the D.O. is a new wave of political uncertainty that some veteran case officers say is having a profound impact on morale. The public drubbing of the CIA over its failures of 9/11 and the prewar intelligence on Iraq was bad enough, but the controversy over aggressive questioning of terrorist suspects and the legal authorization to do so is also deeply worrisome to many in the D.O. Some case officers are concerned about being whipsawed for doing their jobs--punished by the courts after following orders approved by the executive branch--and left swinging in the wind.

Ignominy. Regardless of their view, many agree that when the rules change, people get hurt, and careers get ended. For example, after the Iran-contra affair in President Reagan's second term, several senior D.O. officers were forced out in ignominy; a few were prosecuted criminally. "That memory cast a long shadow," a Cold War-era veteran says. "These are U.S. government employees being told to do these things. They fear being hung out to dry."

It's not just the uncertainty and the plunging morale that are causing case officers to pack it in, some say; today it's the lure of big money. Private contractors like Blackwater, Science Applications International Corp., and Abraxas, a company formed in 2001 by former CIA officials, are hiring even midlevel CIA employees for salaries of $200,000 or more. Abraxas, founded by former D.O. veteran Hollis Helms, has hired 200 former intelligence officers and has won awards in the past two years for being one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America. Its senior management is composed of former officials who left the CIA some years ago, including the CIA's former director of administration, its chief polygrapher, a former Africa division chief, and a China station chief. In an interview with Entrepreneur Weekly in November, Helms said, "At one point, we calculated that our employees have over 3,000 years of experience in foreign intelligence." Abraxas opened an office in China in 2004, expanding its offerings of "global risk mitigation services" to private and government clients. One of those services uses proprietary technology to detect suspected terrorists' surveillance of airports or industrial installations. Another provides business-intelligence units that perform "deception detection" with experts trained to spot physical and behavioral clues that someone is lying.

A particular irony of the current situation in the D.O. is that its personnel needs are so great that executives often turn to newly minted contractors, known as "green badgers," and invite them to return to work at the agency. As contractors, they generally cannot serve as supervisors, although exceptions can be made. Like regular case officers, the green badgers collect intelligence and serve as watch officers, but their administrative and mentoring talents are largely lost to the agency. Some contractors have reopened stations in countries where the CIA had closed them in the 1990s. Some see their reopening as a positive development except for the fact, as one agency veteran notes, that the taxpayers are "just paying more."

Few experts believe that using contractors is the way to achieve the 50 percent increase in clandestine personnel. But a big factor limiting the expansion is a bottleneck in the security-clearance process that all new D.O. recruits must undergo. The CIA's Office of Security has been overwhelmed by the numbers, and much of the vetting is now being outsourced. The push to find second-generation Americans with the desired language skills and cultural backgrounds, or at least Americans with international experience or ties, further complicates the vetting process since overseas background checks typically take far longer than domestic ones. "This issue has been of intense interest to us," says House Intelligence panel member Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican. "It is a very high priority for us not to have a six-month or longer backlog in security clearances."

Even if the vetting issues can be resolved more rapidly, the D.O. will still be fielding a cadre of case officers greener than perhaps at any time in the CIA's nearly 60-year history. More than a third of the current estimated 1,200 case officers have been on the job less than five years, but this problem predates Director Goss. Since there was very little hiring during the 1990s, the managerial corps that should be taking over now was never brought on board, and the agency is now reaping the consequences. It takes five years to grow and season an effective case officer, according to testimony by former director George Tenet. The process includes a rigorous training program at Camp Peary, as "the farm" is officially known, language school, and a shakedown tour overseas. In the late 1990s, a 105-room dorm was added to Camp Peary, and class sizes were doubled and opened to non-CIA operatives. So now there are many new case officers, but they're finding fewer veterans with deep experience to guide them. "They spend two years training," says Baer, the former case officer, "and now they are sitting in D.C. working for someone who's never been overseas."

Fresh blood. On top of all the many difficult issues the clandestine leadership faces is that of Iraq. The precise number of case officers assigned there could not be determined, but several estimates placed the number of all CIA employees at about 500. That includes support staff, but most of the experts consulted for this account say that anything like several hundred case officers there is far too high. Baer, who spent most of his career in the Middle East, estimates that 100 or fewer is probably appropriate, especially given the way they are being used and the fact that so few of them speak Arabic fluently. A senior intelligence official says, "We are not just strategic collectors." But he acknowledges that "we should continually watch that we don't just have bodies over there."

Whatever the right number in Iraq is, the D.O.'s massive investment there is leaving it uncovered, or barely covered, in other key places, intelligence officials say. "Terrorists are just going to move into these and other ungoverned spaces, where we have no case officers," says a veteran case officer. In a speech to agency employees at CIA headquarters last September, Goss said that many of the stations and bases closed in the 1990s had been or would be reopened.

If the D.O. can somehow manage to stanch the flow of experienced case officers, bring in more fresh blood, and begin to meet the 50 percent expansion target, it will be an achievement of real significance. But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, still more tough new challenges have been placed before the CIA. The agency has been directed to take the lead in all human intelligence-gathering efforts throughout the sprawling U.S. intelligence community. This means not just managing and coordinating the activities of spies from other agencies but establishing and enforcing common standards for training and tradecraft to help operatives avoid reliance on shaky sources, as the Defense Intelligence Agency did with the Iraqi exile code-named "Curveball," who delivered a lot of bogus information about Saddam Hussein's supposed stores of banned weapons. The agency is also responsible now for developing new capabilities for overt and covert intelligence action overseas and for developing more-advanced and innovative technologies to help America's spies collect intelligence on terrorists and rogue states.

Drawing lines. This, obviously, is much easier said than done. If clear, simple lines could be drawn between the CIA's domain of foreign intelligence, the FBI's domain of domestic intelligence, and the military's traditional domain of tactical battlefield intelligence, things might not be so difficult. In an effort to begin enforcing its new mandate to lead and coordinate all human intelligence gathering, the CIA signed memoranda of understanding with the FBI and the Pentagon last year that outlined procedures for informing one another of the activities each is undertaking. Under the agreement, the Pentagon informs the CIA of its military-related collection, but there are still reports of friction in the field. In a new book, Transforming U.S. Intelligence, John MacGaffin, the CIA's former associate deputy director of operations, warns that "if the DOD continues on this path, we could soon have two entities--CIA and DOD--conducting the same intelligence-collection activities in the same space, without a clear, authoritative controlling mechanism." A Pentagon source says that in recent months, however, the two agencies have made significant progress in defining which activities are military and which are the CIA's domain.

The CIA has made strides in increasing its covert-action capabilities, but there are still significant challenges in what are arguably the most difficult jobs in this difficult profession. The covert-action arm of the agency, called the Special Activities Division, has been expanding. Some of the recruits have military experience. But in the view of an official who has worked in both the agency and the military, the division still lacks sufficient ability to plan and execute military-style operations, even though it has the legal mandate to conduct covert action.

Transformation is painful for any institution. But the malaise in the D.O.--Goss recently referred to it as just one among "four equal tribes"--is pervasive. If the controversies about interrogation tactics and secret prisons blow up, and if congressional committees begin turning the place inside out as they did back in the 1970s, even some D.O. veterans critical of the current regime say the consequences could be tragic. "We are still not getting it right," one former senior official says, "but there is no alternative."

http://www.forbes.com/business/2006/02/03/...tml?partner=rss

Europe, U.S. Governments At Risk Over CIA Flights
Oxford Analytica, 02.06.06, 6:00 AM ET

This article is part of Oxford Analytica's Daily Brief Service.
Switzerland allowed non-commercial U.S. aircraft access to Swiss air space again on Feb. 1, after Washington provided assurances that it had not used it to transport terrorist suspects. There is growing evidence of widespread illegal activities linked to the "rendition" of terrorist suspects by many governments. If it is authenticated, a number of European Union governments will find themselves politically embarrassed.

Dick Marty, the Swiss parliamentary deputy leading the Council of Europe's investigation into allegations of secret CIA interrogation camps in Europe, submitted an interim report on Jan. 22 that offered the first formal findings from Europe's main democracy and human rights body into the CIA flights controversy. The report concluded that "it is highly unlikely" that EU governments were unaware of illegal activities, as most have thus far insisted. The final report will constitute a serious appraisal of the extent of EU collaboration with U.S. anti-terror activities, which few governments will be able to brush aside. A number of parallel investigations will increase the pressure on European governments.

Central and Eastern European countries present a special case, as allegations of detention camps on their soil could prove most damaging:

--Poland: The government has ordered an inquiry into allegations about a secret CIA prison in the country. A report was expected in December, but has not yet appeared. Both the outgoing and incoming Polish governments have formally denied any involvement.

--Romania: The Romanian parliament also set up a commission of inquiry in December and the main Romanian nongovernmental organization dealing with human rights, OADO, has conducted its own investigation. Both have concluded that no detention centers existed in the country.

However, reports from news sources continue to point to the existence of such camps.

While there has been intense media attention on this issue, European civil society has been relatively subdued:

Government quandary: Marty told Swiss television that, in his opinion, some EU governments have "collaborated actively", some have "tolerated" CIA activities and the rest have "looked the other way". Such governments are now faced with the choice of cooperating fully with the Council of Europe investigation, or privileging any ties with the CIA.

Disinterested populace? The mood of relative popular disinterest in Europe over the affair appears to belie the traditionally strongly-held views of the public about the importance of human rights. However, should embarrassing facts emerge, the public could turn more critical.

Nevertheless, difficulties in producing hard and fast evidence to date suggest that little information that is sufficiently damaging to cause a popular outcry may emerge.

Prior to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip to Europe in December, many European governments had taken the moral high road, publicly deploring the allegations about CIA practices and distancing themselves from them. Rice's statements before and during this trip presented a politically workable position for the United States:

--She avoided altogether any statement on the existence of the prisons.

--She affirmed that the United States does not "permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances".

--She reminded Europeans that the "war on terror" requires extraordinary measures and extraordinary EU-U.S. solidarity.

In general, EU governments fell in line with this approach. It appears that broad swathes of the U.S. public are also willing to do the same on this and related issues.

Despite the potentially damaging allegations that European governments knowingly allowed the CIA to transit rendition flights and even run secret interrogation camps on their territory, the response of civil society has been muted. However, this could change should unequivocal evidence emerge from the many investigations now under way.

To read an extended version of this article log on to Oxford Analytica's Web site.

Oxford Analytica is an independent strategic consulting firm drawing on a network of more than 1,000 scholar experts at Oxford and other leading universities and research institutions around the world.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=1587307

EXCLUSIVE: Is CIA Leak Probe a 'Witch Hunt'?
Director Launches Internal Investigation Into Who Gave Sensitive Information to the Media
By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO
Feb. 7, 2006 — - The director of the CIA has launched a major internal probe into media leaks about covert operations. In an agencywide e-mail, Porter Goss blamed "a very small number of people" for leaks about secret CIA operations that, in his words, "do damage to the credibility of the agency."

According to people familiar with the Goss e-mail, sent in late January and classified secret, the CIA director warned that any CIA officer deemed suspect by the agency's Office of Security and its Counter Intelligence Center (which handles internal affairs) could be subjected to an unscheduled lie detector test. CIA personnel are subjected to polygraphs at regular intervals in their careers, but one former intelligence officer called the new warning a "witch hunt." Others said Goss' e-mail was narrowly focused and did not suggest agencywide, random lie detector tests.

"It would make no sense at all to give everyone here a lie detector test," said one person who knew about the e-mail.

Goss told CIA employees there were ways other than talking to the news media to resolve any issues they had with classified CIA operations.

The memo informs its recipients that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to prosecute any leakers within its ranks. This comes in connection with recent news reports that detailed the CIA's operation of secret prisons in Europe and its far-flung flights of suspected terrorists to foreign prisons.

Crime reports from the CIA are sent to the FBI and the Department of Justice, and constitute a statement that the CIA believes a crime has been committed.

Current and former employees say there have been only a handful of such agencywide memos in recent years. One dealt with sexual harassment in the workplace and another with the embezzlement of agency money.

Goss confirmed the general outline of the leak probe in his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 2.

"We also have an investigation of finding out what leakage, if any, is coming out of that building," he said, referring to CIA headquarters. "And I'm afraid there is some coming out. I also believe that there has been an erosion of the culture of secrecy. And we're trying to reinstill that."

CIA officers are given lie detector tests when they formally become candidates, upon completion of their probation, and then at five-year intervals throughout their careers.

CIA officers also agree to undergo "aperiodic" lie detector tests if requested.

Goss told the Intelligence Committee that "on the external side, I've called in the FBI, the Department of Justice. It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

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Chief of CIA's Counter-Terror Center Ousted
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Robert Grenier is criticized for not pursuing Al Qaeda and its ilk aggressively enough. No successor is announced.

By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer

February 7 2006

WASHINGTON ; The head of the CIA's counter-terrorism center was forced to step down Monday over concerns that he was not aggressive enough in leading the agency's pursuit of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, current and former intelligence officials said.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...0,6112370.story

Top Counterterrorism Officer Removed Amid Turmoil at CIA

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer

The CIA's top counterterrorism officer was relieved of his position yesterday after months of turmoil atop the agency's clandestine service, according to three knowledgeable officials.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

CIA's antiterrorist chief ousted
AFP via Yahoo! News Wed, 08 Feb 2006 1:55 PM PST
The CIA's Counterterrorist Center chief Robert Grenier has been forced to resign after clashing with his boss who thought he lacked aggression in tracking down terrorist suspects, CIA officials told US newspapers.

US police charge CIA employee with crime spree
AFP via Yahoo! News Wed, 08 Feb 2006 11:07 AM PST
Police outside Washington said they had charged a CIA employee with a string of 17 robberies which netted a treasure trove of goods worth tens of thousands of dollars.

CIA chief looks inside agency for media leaks-ABC
Reuters via Yahoo! News Tue, 07 Feb 2006 7:12 PM PST
CIA director Porter Goss has launched an internal investigation into leaks of secret information about covert operations to the media, ABC News reported on Tuesday.

CIA Worker Charged in Burglaries Near Work
AP via Yahoo! News Tue, 07 Feb 2006 5:40 PM PST
A CIA worker was arrested and charged with being a serial burglar responsible for more than a dozen incidents near the spy agency's headquarters.

CIA counter-terrorism chief steps down
Reuters via Yahoo! News Tue, 07 Feb 2006 3:20 PM PST
The head of the CIA's counter-terrorism center has been forced to step down as part of efforts by the spy agency to bolster its pursuit of al Qaeda, current and former intelligence officials said on Tuesday.

‘Hello, CIA?'
Delta Democrat Times Wed, 08 Feb 2006 1:09 PM PST
Some folks really go overboard trying to sell me books. Like this recent offer: “What The CIA Doesn't Want You To Know!” My, my, my. I can see it now; deep in the bowels of the building from which our spies spy, a group is planning a super-secret plot.

Basescu: “I never said that CIA flights landed at Kogalniceanu”
Nine O'Clock Wed, 08 Feb 2006 1:33 PM PST
Romanian head of state denied telling Washington Post about approving CIA flights few hours after defence minister admited flights.

CIA worker accused in thefts
Richmond Times-Dispatch Tue, 07 Feb 2006 8:52 PM PST
ALEXANDRIA -- A CIA worker is accused of being a serial burglar who stole tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry from more than a dozen Fairfax County homes.

CIA Leak Investigation
ERT.gr Wed, 08 Feb 2006 4:28 AM PST
CIA Director Porter Goss ordered an internal investigation over the leak of confidential information to the media.

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=8517

February 9, 2006
How Not to Ban Torture in Congress
by Alfred McCoy and Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch
Alfred McCoy, an expert on the CIA and its history of torture, has some actual news – the sort that's been sitting unnoticed right in front of our collective, reportorial eyes. Last year's clash between John McCain and the Bush administration over the senator's successful attempt to attach a ban on torture and other abusive interrogation techniques to the Defense Appropriations Bill was heavily reported. After all, it was a heroic tale of a man – himself tortured pitilessly earlier in his life – who held off the powers-that-be, rejected their attempts to amend his ban, and finally triumphed by a handy margin in Congress. The ban, now in place, is the law. End of story. Only one problem, reality turns out to lurk in the fine print – and the McCain amendment has some striking fine print that mainstream reporters failed to attend to; in fact, McCoy tells us, it has a loophole big enough to absolve torturers of their acts and, in combination with an amendment by Sen. Lindsey Graham, drive testimony obtained by torture directly into our courts. I would call that news.

While the torture debate is somewhat in abeyance in the United States right now, it continues in Europe. There, a major scandal brews over the ways in which Eastern European countries were used as CIA secret prison sites, European citizens and others were kidnapped from European soil, and CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights used European air space and airports. All this, by the way, seems to have happened with the support of various European intelligence services, which, by the evidence, may work as much for the Bush administration as for their own governments.

The Council of Europe has deputized Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty to conduct an extensive investigation of both alleged CIA "black" sites and Agency rendition flights. His preliminary report to the Council on Jan. 22 concluded, albeit tentatively, that six Agency aircraft had, since 2001, made 800 rendition flights – a level of covert activity far beyond anything reported in the U.S. press. Marty is under significant pressure to get to the bottom of this scandal, which may end up producing more torture headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, various American media outlets continue to investigate the torture story, insuring occasional bombshells like ABC TV's sensational Nov. 18 story detailing CIA "waterboarding" techniques and its Dec. 5 exposé of the locations of secret CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.

Finally, it's well known that only those in the lowest ranks of the military are being held in any way accountable for torture practices mandated from the top and overseen by top civilian, military, and intelligence officials. Even at the lowest levels, accountability has proved, at best, a moving target, as is clear from the most recent torture case tried in this country. After Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush voluntarily surrendered in November 2003, he was tortured with rubber hoses by "Iraqi nationals, reportedly in the employ of the CIA," while Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr., 43, of the U.S. Army looked on. Mowhoush then suffered other mistreatment before he fell into Welshofer's waiting hands. Welshofer has since used the Nuremberg defense – that he was just following orders in coming up with "creative interrogation techniques" to make Mowhoush talk – to explain his subsequent actions. He forced Mowhoush, face-first, into a sleeping bag, wrapped him in electrical wire, and sat on the 57-year-old prisoner's chest. After 20 minutes, Mowhoush was dead.

Recently, Welshofer faced American military justice for his crimes. While tried on murder charges, he was convicted only of the lesser counts of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty. These still carried a maximum three-year prison sentence and dismissal from the service (which would have denied him his pension). In the end, however, a military jury sentenced Welshofer to no prison time and only a formal reprimand. He was given 60 days restriction to his home, office, and church; and a forfeiture of $6,000 – apparently the going rate for an Iraqi life. No one in our self-professed "no-torture" administration thought this worth a comment.

The American Empire Project series I co-edit has just published McCoy's newest book, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. I can testify that, while the book's focus is grim indeed – a half-century-plus history of CIA torture research and how it was applied globally – it is also, simply put, riveting to read. It offers a window into an almost unknown world that we ignore at our peril. I could not recommend it to all of you more strongly. To get a taste of its early sections, check out McCoy's previous TomDispatch piece (from which the book developed) or read a Buzzflash review of the book. Tom

Why the McCain Torture Ban Won't Work
The Bush legacy of legalized torture
by Alfred W. McCoy

Just before Christmas, two of the world's most venerable legislative bodies engaged in erudite, impassioned debate over what the right balance should be between the imperatives of national security and international prohibitions on torture. They arrived at starkly divergent conclusions that reveal the depth of damage the war on terror is doing to this country's civil liberties.

On Dec. 7, the House of Lords, reviewing cases in which a dozen Muslim militants were to be deported, spoke with moral clarity on the issue of torture, branding it "an unqualified evil" that should have no place in the proud, thousand-year tradition of British justice. Just a week later, the U.S. Senate amended the Defense Appropriations Bill to prohibit the "abuse" of detainees in American custody, including the many Muslims at our Guantanamo prison, but did so on the purely pragmatic, almost amoral grounds that it "leads to bad intelligence." Under pressure from the White House, the senators also loaded this legislation with loopholes that may soon allow coerced testimony – extracted through torture – into American courts for the first time in two centuries.

This disconcerting contrast is but one sign that, under the Bush administration, the United States is moving to publicly legitimate the use of torture, even to the point of twisting this congressional ban on inhumane interrogation in ways that could ultimately legalize such acts. And following their president's lead, the American people seem to be developing a tolerance, even a taste, for torture.

This country may, in fact, be undergoing an historic shift with profound implications for America's international standing. It seems to be moving from the wide-ranging but highly secretive tortures wielded by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War decades to an open, even proud use of coercive interrogation as a formal weapon in the arsenal of American power, acceptable both to U.S. courts and the American people.

In the early years of its war on terror, the administration maintained the long-standing yet informal executive policy of ordering clandestine CIA torture in times of crisis. Minutes after his public address to a shaken nation on Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush barked to his aides, "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass."

As administration lawyers translated these words into formal directives, they carefully cloaked this otherwise unlawful demand in three controversial constitutional arguments – that the president's commander-in-chief powers allow him to override all laws and treaties; that U.S. anti-torture laws can be stretched to provide a winning legal defense for any CIA interrogator accused of torture; and most tenuously of all, that the detainee prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was not on American territory and so was beyond the writ of U.S. courts.

Two years later, when the infamous photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison exposed the administration's illegal interrogation tactics in lurid color, the White House was faced with an historic choice that, in practice, proved no choice at all: either definitively ban torture or defy the international community by promoting the practice.

Bartering Away Legal Birthrights

That the upper deliberative bodies of the United States and Great Britain found themselves facing the question of torture at exactly the same moment had a certain ironic appropriateness. After all, the two countries share a secret history of torture reaching back to the dark early days of the Cold War. In 1951, these two nations collaborated in a covert CIA-run mind-control research project into which the American government ultimately poured several billion dollars. Late in that decade, CIA scientists elaborated that research into a revolutionary new form of torture, more psychological than physical, that would prove both legally elusive and highly destructive to the human psyche.

Even though this "no-touch" psychological form of torture generally did greater lasting damage than its physical variant, it was surrounded by an appealing scientific aura and was, at least in theory, devoid of the obvious signs of brutality that might trouble the public and provide telling evidence for prosecutors.

For the next 20 years, Washington deployed these torture techniques against communists and other revolutionaries in Asia and Latin America. Simultaneously, London used them to fight nationalists in its far-flung territories during the long, bloody eclipse of the British empire – in places like Aden, Brunei, British Guiana, and Northern Ireland.

In 1978, charged before the European Court of Human Rights with torturing IRA suspects, Britain swore "a solemn undertaking" that it would never again deploy these psychological torture techniques. Last month, in reversing the deportations of Muslims convicted on "evidence procured by torture inflicted by foreign officials," London's law lords cited this case in ruling that "bedrock moral principle" from centuries of common law and recent international conventions made torture anathema in the country's courts.

By contrast, confronted with strong evidence of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the Bush White House has fought back by defending torture as a presidential prerogative and so precipitating an epic political struggle in this country. As a powerfully symbolic state practice, synonymous with brutal autocrats, torture, even of the few, raises profound moral and legal questions about the limits of presidential power, the quality of our justice, and ultimately the character of this American civilization.

While the Bush White House has protected and promoted senior officials implicated in the torture scandal, an ad hoc civil-society coalition of courts, media, and human rights groups has mobilized to stop the abuse. In June 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case, Rasul v. Bush, that the Guantanamo detainees were indeed on U.S. territory, no matter what the administration's lawyers claimed, and so deserved access to American courts. This decision prompted some of the country's top law firms, working pro bono, to file 160 habeas corpus cases on behalf of some 300 Guantanamo detainees.

Last summer, Sen. John McCain proposed an amendment to the must-pass Defense Appropriation Bill that would ban all "cruel, inhumane, and degrading" treatment of detainees and set the U.S. Army Field Manual as the standard for any interrogation, whether by the military or the CIA. President Bush reacted by vowing to veto the bill, should it somehow pass the Republican-controlled Congress.

When Bush's bluff failed, the White House began lobbying for the insertion of loopholes into the proposed prohibition. First, Vice President Cheney pressed McCain to exempt the CIA from his ban. The senator refused. Next, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley weighed in, urging broad legal exemptions for CIA torturers. Again, the senator stood his ground. Suddenly, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon rewrote the Army Field Manual to teach interrogators, as the New York Times reported, "how to walk right up to the line between legal and illegal interrogation" – changes one Defense official termed "a stick in McCain's eye."

To placate the White House, McCain eventually softened his prohibition by adding a legal defense for accused CIA and military interrogators that mimes the extreme exculpatory logic of the Justice Department's notorious August 2002 Bybee memo. Drafted to protect CIA interrogators after 9/11, this now-disavowed document argued that torture, as defined under U.S. law, required that the suffering inflicted "be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." In a section of McCain's amendment called "Protection of United States Government Personnel," the final legislation opened a little-noticed but similarly cavernous legal loophole for future torturers. It allowed U.S. officials "engaging in specific operational practices that involve interrogation of aliens" to claim, if charged, that they "did not know that the practices [they used] were unlawful."

After the Senate passed McCain's torture ban by a resounding 90-9 vote, ending any hope of a presidential veto, the administration tried to further neutralize its impact by backing an amendment authored by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. As originally drafted, this amendment would have allowed the courts to consider all evidence collected under any but the most outrageous uses of "undue coercion." No less startlingly, it denied detainees in places like Guantanamo – those "unlawful combatants" – any right to challenge their detention by filing writs of habeas corpus in U.S. courts. Complaining that "Non-Citizen Terrorists" at Guantanamo were filing cases over "the quality of their food," Graham urged passage of his amendment to spare "our troops fighting in the War on Terror" from being "sued in every court in the land by our enemies." For a mess of partisan pottage, the senator was bartering away this nation's constitutional birthright of habeas corpus, a foundational legal protection born of Parliament's long struggle to ban royal torture writs by the infamous Court of Star Chamber.

After the Senate approved Graham's amendment by a 49-42 vote on Nov. 10, reformers led by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin fought an uphill battle to moderate these extreme proposals – replacing the bill's blanket acceptance of "coerced" evidence with ground rules for its evaluation by the courts and trying to limit the ban on habeas corpus appeals from Guantanamo to future cases, allowing those already filed to proceed.

But in the final legislation, titled "The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005," McCain's now-compromised ban on cruel treatment of detainees was effectively eviscerated by Graham's denial of legal redress. To nullify the landmark Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo is, in fact, American territory and so falls under the purview of U.S. courts, Graham also stipulated in the final legislation that "the term 'United States,' when used in a geographic sense, does not include the United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay." In this way, he tried once again to deny detainees any legal basis for access to the courts. In effect, McCain's motion more or less bans torture, but Graham's removes any real mechanism for enforcing such a ban.

The Media Mirage of a Torture Ban

Last Dec. 15, all these tensions seemed to dissolve in a dramatic Oval Office handshake between Sen. McCain and President Bush who announced that the landmark legislation made it "clear to the world that this government does not torture."

That White House photo-op was, however, a complete media mirage. Within hours, the administration began moving deftly to pull any teeth left in this legislation. Speaking to CNN, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales quickly dismissed McCain's reform as insignificant, insisting that existing legislation only banned the infliction of "severe" physical or psychological pain in interrogations – the same linguistic legerdemain that had allowed the administration to start torturing back in 2002. The attorney general seemed to be echoing the opinions of his subordinates who, according to the Washington Post, were already arguing that the McCain amendment would, "under certain circumstances," still allow "waterboarding" – the same method that the French Inquisition had once called the "question de l'eau" (water question) or "torturae Gallicae ordinariae" (standard Gallic torture) – and other harsh techniques.

On Dec. 30, right after signing a defense bill that included the McCain amendment at his Crawford ranch, President Bush issued a "signing statement" – carefully released at the extremely unnewsworthy hour of 8:00 p.m. that Friday night – insisting that his powers as commander in chief and head of the "unitary executive branch" still allowed him to do whatever was necessary to defend America. So much for McCain's efforts as the year ended.

Just four days into 2006, Sen. McCain, though claiming confidence that the "President understands Congress' intent" in passing the torture ban, promised "strict oversight to monitor the administration's implementation of the new law." Faced with nullification by the presidential signing statement, Sen. Edward Kennedy warned, during Judge Alito's confirmation hearings, that President Bush was insisting "whatever the law of the land might be, whatever Congress might have written, the executive branch has the right to authorize torture without fear of judicial review."

As if to confirm this pessimistic view, the administration quickly deployed the new Detainee Treatment Act to quash any judicial oversight of its actions – particularly the dubious designation of detainees as "unlawful enemy combatants" unworthy of any protection by the Geneva Conventions or the U.S. Constitution.

On Jan. 3, the Justice Department, citing this new law, notified federal judges that it would soon seek the immediate dismissal of all 160 habeas corpus cases already filed for 300 Guantanamo detainees. On Jan. 12, the solicitor general, again citing the new law, told the Supreme Court it no longer had jurisdiction over Guantanamo and asked the justices to dismiss another potential landmark "unlawful combatant" case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Then, putting the cherry atop the administration's many-layered legal confection, on Jan. 24 the Army changed its standing orders to allow military executions at Guantanamo, thus keeping the U.S. courts from intervening in any drumhead death sentences for detainees.

All these maneuvers were part of a White House campaign essentially aimed at formalizing those three dubious legal doctrines that had long underpinned its torture policy. Recoiling from the prospect of an "Imperial Presidency" implicit in these moves, the New York Times of Jan. 15 called on Congress "to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power" and his "unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law."

Looking through a glass darkly into the future, the possible implications of these trends for the quality of American justice are troubling indeed. The military tribunals at Guantanamo are not required to reveal the sources of their evidence against the 500 detainees on trial, even though significant parts of it undoubtedly come from torture and abuse of either the accused or other detainees. Moreover, under the Detainee Treatment Act, federal courts will be able to consider the use of this same coerced information in hearing any appeals from Guantanamo. In a sharp, sad contrast with Britain's law lords, our congressional legislation allows the courts to weigh the probative value of tortured testimony, potentially introducing coerced evidence into the federal courts for the first time in our nation's history.

One question seldom asked is: Why has the public response to issues that cut to the very core of America's national identity been so muted? The short answer: The administration's increasingly unapologetic advocacy of torture has echoed subtly but effectively with the trauma of 9/11.

With the horrific reality of the Twin Towers attack still resonating and endless nuclear-bomb-in-Times-Square/ticking-bomb interrogation scenarios ricocheting around the media and pop culture, torture seems to have gained an eerie emotional traction. Polls taken over the last three years have confirmed this. With a complex reality reduced to a few terrifyingly simple, fantasy-ridden scenarios, torture in defense of the "homeland" has gained surprisingly wide acceptance, while the torture debate has been reframed – to the administration's great advantage – as a choice between public safety and the lives of millions or private morality and bleeding-heart qualms over a few slaps up the side of the head. In this way, old-fashioned morality has been made to seem little short of immoral.

Through the invisible tendrils that tie a state to its society, the media has often reflected aspects of administration policy on such subjects. Television, in particular, has had a powerful effect in its repeated portrayals of harsh, even abusive interrogations as effective and morally justified acts – when, in fact, they are neither. After years of watching television shows such as NYPD Blue and 24 with plots that mimic the ticking-bomb scenario, millions of ordinary Americans seem to believe that we have entered an era when abuse, or even torture, is necessary to save lives.

Each week, for instance, up to 20 million Americans have watched the fictional detectives of NYPD Blue use harsh methods to "tune up" suspects in the "pokey,'" or interrogation room, risking their careers to extract information that regularly saved lives and made the city safer. Accepting the need to torture just one criminal in this week's episode, or just one terrorist with a ticking bomb in Fox Television's popular CIA drama 24, opens ordinary Americans to consider whether the torture of real terrorists is not only justifiable but imperative. It seems likely that these televised scenarios have lent a hand in creating a public climate tolerant of governmental torture.

Does Bush administration policy really reflect a fundamental shift in moral choices by the American public? Have we really developed a taste for torture?

As a people, we are now faced with a decision that will influence the character of our nation and its reputation in the eyes of the world. We can agree with the Bush administration's decision to make torture a permanent weapon in the American arsenal – or we can reject this policy and join the international community by honoring our commitments under the UN convention, as well as under U.S. law, and banning torture unconditionally.

Alfred W. McCoy is the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (Metropolitan Books, The American Empire Project, 2006) and a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Copyright 2006 Alfred W. McCoy

CIA CAN'T CONFIRM OR DENY MUCH AT ALL

The Central Intelligence Agency continues to make a mockery of its
legal obligations under the Freedom of Information Act and the
national security classification system.

The Project on Government Oversight recently asked the CIA to
undertake a declassification review of the December 2002 Iraqi
declaration on weapons of mass destruction that was presented to
the United Nations Security Council.

Incredibly, CIA official Scott Koch rejected the request by
claiming that "the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence
or nonexistence of records responsive to your request."

See "We Know That You Know" on the POGO blog:

http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2006/02/w...ow_that_yo.html

A copy of the Table of Contents from the 12,000 page Iraqi
declaration, which plainly does exist, was obtained by Secrecy
News and may be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/12/iraq120702.pdf

Senate Republican Policy Committee Releases Policy Paper: 'Examining the Continuing Iraq Pre-war Intelligence Myths'

2/9/2006 10:18:00 AM

To: National Desk

Contact: Mary Sutcliffe of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, 202-224-2946

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Following is an executive summary of a Senate Republican Policy Committee Paper titled "Examining the Continuing Iraq Pre-war Intelligence Myths," released Feb. 8.:

Executive Summary

Critics of the Iraq war continue to reissue their assertions/charges that the President "manufactured" or "misused" intelligence to justify the war.

In the most egregious cases, they continue to promulgate misleading critiques involving:

-- Iraq's procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes;

-- the source code-named "Curveball";

-- claims that Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress ("INC") tricked the United States into war; and

-- the State Department "dissent" holding that Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program.

When the facts surrounding these issues are examined, it becomes clear that it is not the President who is misrepresenting information; rather, it is the critics.

The Department of Energy's intelligence agency was in the minority when it assessed that the aluminum tubes were not destined for a nuclear program, and DOE still concluded, overall, that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.

Policymakers did not deliberately misuse Curveball's information; they were never even made aware of hints that Curveball might be unreliable.

Intelligence professionals concluded that the program by which they obtained access to information about Iraq through the INC was a valuable program. Moreover, the INC's information was essentially irrelevant to the intelligence community's pre-war assessments.

The "alternative view" of the State Department's intelligence agency, INR, was no alternative. It still concluded that Iraq was "pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapons-related capabilities."

------

Copies of this paper are also available at http://www.rpc.senate.gov. This site offers an up-to-date publication archive, as well as links to current RPC products.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq
Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; A01



The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.

"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.

Pillar's critique is one of the most severe indictments of White House actions by a former Bush official since Richard C. Clarke, a former National Security Council staff member, went public with his criticism of the administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and its failure to deal with the terrorist threat beforehand.

It is also the first time that such a senior intelligence officer has so directly and publicly condemned the administration's handling of intelligence.

Pillar, retired after 28 years at the CIA, was an influential behind-the-scenes player and was considered the agency's leading counterterrorism analyst. By the end of his career, he was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University.

White House officials did not respond to a request to comment for this article. They have vehemently denied accusations that the administration manipulated intelligence to generate public support for the war.

"Our statements about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein were based on the aggregation of intelligence from a number of sources and represented the collective view of the intelligence community," national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said in a White House briefing in November. "Those judgments were shared by Republicans and Democrats alike."

Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to argue over whether, or how, to investigate accusations the administration manipulated prewar intelligence.

Yesterday, the Senate Republican Policy Committee issued a statement to counter what it described as "the continuing Iraq pre-war intelligence myths," including charges that Bush " 'misused' intelligence to justify the war." Writing that it was perfectly reasonable for the president to rely on the intelligence he was given, the paper concluded, "it is actually the critics who are misleading the American people."

In his article, Pillar said he believes that the "politicization" of intelligence on Iraq occurred "subtly" and in many forms, but almost never resulted from a policymaker directly asking an analyst to reshape his or her results. "Such attempts are rare," he writes, "and when they do occur . . . are almost always unsuccessful."

Instead, he describes a process in which the White House helped frame intelligence results by repeatedly posing questions aimed at bolstering its arguments about Iraq.

The Bush administration, Pillar wrote, "repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war," including information on the "supposed connection" between Hussein and al Qaeda, which analysts had discounted. "Feeding the administration's voracious appetite for material on the Saddam-al Qaeda link consumed an enormous amount of time and attention."

The result of the requests, and public statements by the president, Vice President Cheney and others, led analysts and managers to conclude the United States was heading for war well before the March 2003 invasion, Pillar asserted.

They thus knew, he wrote, that senior policymakers "would frown on or ignore analysis that called into question a decision to go to war and welcome analysis that supported such a decision. . . . [They] felt a strong wind consistently blowing in one direction. The desire to bend with such a wind is natural and strong, even if unconscious."

Pillar wrote that the prewar intelligence asserted Hussein's "weapons capacities," but he said the "broad view" within the United States and overseas "was that Saddam was being kept 'in his box' " by U.N. sanctions, and that the best way to deal with him was through "an aggressive inspections program to supplement sanctions already in place."

"If the entire body of official intelligence analysis on Iraq had a policy implication," Pillar wrote, "it was to avoid war -- or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath."

Pillar describes for the first time that the intelligence community did assessments before the invasion that, he wrote, indicated a postwar Iraq "would not provide fertile ground for democracy" and would need "a Marshall Plan-type effort" to restore its economy despite its oil revenue. It also foresaw Sunnis and Shiites fighting for power.

Pillar wrote that the intelligence community "anticipated that a foreign occupying force would itself be the target of resentment and attacks -- including guerrilla warfare -- unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall of Saddam."

In an interview, Pillar said the prewar assessments "were not crystal-balling, but in them we were laying out the challenges that would face us depending on decisions that were made."

Pillar wrote that the first request he received from a Bush policymaker for an assessment of post-invasion Iraq was "not until a year into the war."

That assessment, completed in August 2004, warned that the insurgency in Iraq could evolve into a guerrilla war or civil war. It was leaked to the media in September in the midst of the presidential campaign, and Bush, who had told voters that the mission in Iraq was going well, described the assessment to reporters as "just guessing."

Shortly thereafter, Pillar was identified in a column by Robert D. Novak as having prepared the assessment and having given a speech critical of Bush's Iraq policy at a private dinner in California. The column fed the White House's view that the CIA was in effect working against the Bush administration, and that Pillar was part of that. A columnist in the Washington Times in October 2004 called him "a longstanding intellectual opponent of the policy options chosen by President Bush to fight terrorism."

Leaked information "encouraged some administration supporters to charge intelligence officers (including me) with trying to sabotage the president's policies," Pillar wrote. One effect of that, he said, was to limit challenges to consensus views on matters such as the Iraqi weapons program.

When asked why he did not quit given his concerns, Pillar said in the interview that he was doing "other worthwhile work in the nation's interest" and never thought of resigning over the issue.

Pillar suggests that the CIA and other intelligence agencies, now under Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, remain within the executive branch but "be given greater independence."

The model he cites is the Federal Reserve, overseen by governors who serve fixed terms. That, he said, would reduce "both the politicization of the intelligence community's own work and the public misuse of intelligence by policymakers."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Ex-CIA official says Bush 'cherry-picked' Iraq intelligence Fri Feb 10, 3:02 PM ET



A former CIA official who oversaw US intelligence on the Middle East accused the US administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war.

Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, delivered the scathing criticism in a lengthy article in the latest issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.

"The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," he wrote.

Pillar alleged the administration of President George W. Bush had ignored warnings that Iraq could easily fall into violence after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein. And the White House asserted that Saddam and Al-Qaeda had forged an alliance without reliable evidence from intelligence agencies.

"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote.

Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."

Pillar said US intelligence agencies' mistakes in assessing whether the Hussein government possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had not driven the administration's decision to invade.

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.

Considered a leading counter-terrorism analyst, Pillar said the clear message from official intelligence analysis was "to avoid war" because the threat posed by Saddam had been largely contained.

Intelligence agencies had warned that occupying Iraq could trigger attacks on US forces and sectarian conflict and play into the hands of Islamic militants in the region, he wrote.

US analysts had predicted that it was likely "war and occupation would boost political Islam and increase sympathy for terrorists' objectives -- and Iraq would become a magnet for extremists from elsewhere in the Middle East."

Pillar was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University.

In his article, he said he believes that the "politicization" of intelligence on Iraq had occurred "subtly" and in many forms, but almost never resulted from a policymaker directly asking an analyst to reshape his or her results.

Instead, Pillar describes a process in which the White House helped frame intelligence results by repeatedly posing questions aimed at bolstering its arguments about Iraq.

The Bush administration, Pillar wrote, "repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war," including information on the "supposed connection" between Hussein and Al-Qaeda, which analysts had discounted.

"The greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD ... but the relationship between Saddam and Al-Qaeda," he wrote.

"The intelligence community never offered any analysis that supported the notion of an alliance between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.

"Yet it was drawn into a public effort to support that notion."



Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

February 11, 2006
Intelligence
Ex-C.I.A. Official Says Iraq Data Was Distorted
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — A C.I.A. veteran who oversaw intelligence assessments about the Middle East from 2000 to 2005 on Friday accused the Bush administration of ignoring or distorting the prewar evidence on a broad range of issues related to Iraq in its effort to justify the American invasion of 2003.

The views of Paul R. Pillar, who retired in October as national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, echoed previous criticism from Democrats and from some administration officials, including Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism adviser, and Paul H. O'Neill, the former treasury secretary.

But Mr. Pillar is the first high-level C.I.A. insider to speak out by name on the use of prewar intelligence. His article for the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs, which charges the administration with the selective use of intelligence about Iraq's unconventional weapons and the chances of postwar chaos in Iraq, was posted Friday on the journal's Web site after it was reported in The Washington Post.

"If the entire body of official intelligence on Iraq had a policy implication, it was to avoid war — or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath," Mr. Pillar wrote. "What is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in decades."

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Pillar said he recognized that his views would become part of the highly partisan, three-year-old battle over the administration's reasons for going to war. But he said his goal in speaking publicly was to help repair what he called a "broken" relationship between the intelligence produced by the nation's spies and the way it is used by its leaders.

"There is ground to be replowed on Iraq," said Mr. Pillar, now a professor at Georgetown University. "But what is more important is to look at the whole intelligence-policy relationship and get a discussion and debate going to make sure what happened on Iraq doesn't happen again."

President Bush and his aides have denied that the Iraq intelligence was politicized. Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said in November, "Our statements about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein were based on the aggregation of intelligence from a number of sources, and represented the collective view of the intelligence community. Those judgments were shared by Republicans and Democrats alike."

Reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the presidential commission on weapons intelligence headed by Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, the former Virginia governor and senator, found that C.I.A. analysts had not been pressed to change their views. A second phase of the Senate committee review, on how administration officials used intelligence, has not been completed.

Mr. Pillar alleged that the earlier studies had considered only "the crudest attempts at politicization" and that the real pressures were far more subtle. "Intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions that had already been made," chiefly to topple Mr. Hussein in order to "shake up the sclerotic power structures of the Middle East," he wrote.

According to Mr. Pillar's account, the administration shaped the answers it got in part by repeatedly asking the same questions, about the threat posed by Iraqi weapons and about ties between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda. When intelligence analysts resisted, he wrote, some of the administration's allies accused Mr. Pillar and others of "trying to sabotage the president's policies."

In light of such accusations, he wrote, analysts began to "sugarcoat" their conclusions.

Mr. Pillar called for a formal declaration by Congress and the White House that intelligence should be clearly separated from policy. He proposed the creation of an independent office, modeled on the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office, to assess the use of intelligence at the request of members of Congress.

Mr. Pillar suggested that the root of the problem might be that top intelligence officials serve at the pleasure of the president.

A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, said the agency had no comment.

Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that the C.I.A. had long resisted intervention in Iraq, and that internal pressure on analysts to resist war was greater than any external pressure.

"If the C.I.A. had spent less time leaking its opinions, throughout the 1990's, opposed to any conflict with Iraq, and more time developing assets inside Iraq, the agency would have more credibility and better intelligence," said Ms. Pletka, who served for a decade, until 2002, as a Republican staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2036182,00.html

CIA chief sacked for opposing torture
Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith, Washington



The CIA’s top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as “water boarding”, intelligence sources have claimed.
Robert Grenier, head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, was relieved of his post after a year in the job. One intelligence official said he was “not quite as aggressive as he might have been” in pursuing Al-Qaeda leaders and networks.



Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: “It is not that Grenier wasn’t aggressive enough, it is that he wasn’t ‘with the programme’. He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists.”

Grenier also opposed “excessive” interrogation, such as strapping suspects to boards and dunking them in water, according to Cannistraro.

Porter Goss, who was appointed head of the CIA in August 2004 with a mission to “clean house”, has been angered by a series of leaks from CIA insiders, including revelations about “black sites” in Europe where top Al-Qaeda detainees were said to have been held.

In last Friday’s New York Times, Goss wrote that leakers within the CIA were damaging the agency’s ability to fight terrorism and causing foreign intelligence organisations to lose confidence. “Too many of my counterparts from other countries have told me, ‘You Americans can’t keep a secret’.”

Goss is believed to have blamed Grenier for allowing leaks to occur on his watch.

Since the appointment of Goss, the CIA has lost almost all its high-level directors amid considerable turmoil.

AB “Buzzy” Krongard, a former executive director of the CIA who resigned shortly after Goss’s arrival, said the leaks were unlikely to stop soon, despite proposals to subject officers to more lie detector tests.

Krongard said it was up to President George Bush to stop the rot. “The agency has only one client: the president of the United States,” he said. “The reorganisation is the way this president wanted it. If he is unwilling to reform it, the agency will go on as it is.”

“History will judge how good an idea it was to destroy the teams and the programmes that were in place.”

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Europe_Com...Flight_Row.html
TERROR WARS
Europe Complicit In CIA Flight Row

illustration only
by Gareth Harding
UPI Chief European Correspondent
Brussels, Belgium (UPI) Feb 26, 2006
The European Union agreed to allow the United States freer access to its airspace to move unwanted people around the world in 2003 -- and then tried to cover up the deal, according to censored EU documents seen by United Press International. The revelation adds further weight to claims that EU governments preferred to turn a blind eye to a practice that they were fully aware of.
Documents obtained by British civil liberties group Statewatch show that at a high-level meeting of European and American justice officials in Athens on Jan. 22, 2003, the two sides agreed on the "increased use of European transit facilities to support the return of criminal/inadmissible aliens."

This crucial phrase was deleted from the minutes of the meeting made available on the Web site of the Council of Ministers, the body that represents EU governments in Brussels. A spokesman for the council told Statewatch the deletions were made out of "courtesy" for the United States.

"Whether these U.S. transit flights are for "criminals," "inadmissible aliens" or for rendition, the same questions arise," said Statewatch editor Tony Bunyan. "Do EU governments know how many times their airports have been used for "transit" by U.S. government flights? Which airports were used? How many people have been moved in this way? How many "criminals" and how many "inadmissible aliens?" If they do know, then why are the facts and figures not available? And if they do not know, why not?"

Bunyan Thursday accused EU governments of creating a "climate of complicity" when testifying at the European Parliament's first hearing about alleged CIA covert prisons and extraordinary renditions in Europe, which saw several lawmakers fume with frustration over the lack of cooperation from national governments.

"It is entirely legitimate to have EU-U.S. cooperation in combating terrorism and serious crime," said Baroness Ludford, the vice-chair of the special parliamentary committee. "But EU governments refuse to permit proper parliamentary scrutiny, which can ensure this respects fundamental rights. They therefore have a real difficulty in convincing members of the European Parliament not to regard agreement on 'increased use of European transit facilities' as collusion in U.S. illegal rendition, torture and disappearances."

Allegations of illegal U.S. intelligence activities in Eastern Europe first surfaced in November when Human Rights Watch published details of CIA planes landing in Poland and Romania. A cluster of European governments and organizations have since launched investigations into the affair, including the EU parliament and the Council of Europe.

Terry Davies, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, said 41 of the human rights body's 46 member states had provided information on the flights by Tuesday's deadline, but Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Italy and San Marino had not yet replied. Noting that all members had a legal obligation to supply the requested data under the European Convention on Human Rights, Davies said: "The breach should be rectified as a matter of urgency."

The European Parliament's committee, on the other hand, has no legal or judicial power and cannot single-handedly impose sanctions on any member state found to have breached human rights laws. Nor does it have the power to subpoena U.S. officials such as CIA Director Porter Goss, although this was suggested by several lawmakers.

What it does have is the ability to make trouble for the U.S. administration and cause embarrassment for European governments. It used both powers to full effect Thursday as representatives of human rights groups were invited to make their 'case for the prosecution.'

"There is no doubt that the United States held and tortured detainees," said Joanne Mariner, a terrorism expert at Human Rights Watch. "The only doubt is whether these detainees were being held on European soil."

Amnesty International's Anne Fitzgerald told EU legislators that her organization had records of 800 flights around Europe that were linked with the CIA. But when Italian conservative member Jas Gawronski appeared skeptical about the conclusions to be drawn from such "circumstantial evidence," she acknowledged: "The fact that the CIA has been flying planes in and out of Europe is not conclusive: it is indicative."

Pushed by German Green member Cem Ozdemir to provide information on any possible detention centers in Europe, Fitzgerald admitted Amnesty had "no hard evidence of any black sites on European territory."

The Council of Europe's investigator Dick Marty also struggled to back up his claim that the CIA had moved 100 suspects through European camps, possibly for torture. Satellite images of airbases in Romania, which the human rights watchdog obtained last month, have still not provided any conclusive evidence but are being scrutinized by experts, the Swiss senator told the assembly.

The hardest piece of evidence of CIA involvement in Europe was provided by Italian prosecutor Armando Spartato, who last year indicted 22 U.S. agents for the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian Islamist in Milan. Spartato said he had no conclusive evidence of Italian secret service complicity, leading Ludford to remark: "One is extremely puzzled as to how such a large CIA operation could have taken place in broad daylight without the Italian secret service's knowledge."


Source: United Press International

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11570067/site/newsweek/

Investigation: The CIA's No. 3 Has a Friend in the Spotlight

Denis Proby / AP
Newsweek
March 6, 2006 issue - As logistics chief at the CIA's main base near Frankfurt, Germany, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo sat at the crossroads of agency operations. Operatives and VIPs passed through, and former top spies say Foggo was customarily on hand to greet them. After Porter Goss took over as CIA director, many agency veterans were astonished when the former House intel chair chose Foggo, a midranking bureaucrat, to become CIA executive director, the agency's third-ranking official, responsible for day-to-day operations. Insiders attributed his rise to his mastery of office politics. But Foggo's glad-handing has raised awkward questions. Federal prosecutors have accused (as an unindicted co-conspirator) one of Foggo's closest friends, San Diego businessman Brent Wilkes, of participating in a scheme to bribe Randall (Duke) Cunningham, the GOP congressman from San Diego who resigned his seat after pleading guilty to federal corruption and tax charges.

Wilkes ran a network of companies that did business with defense and intel agencies, and according to two sources familiar with the investigation, who requested anonymity because the probe is ongoing, Foggo's name has surfaced in the federal inquiry. At the same time, NEWSWEEK has learned, the CIA inspector general's office has opened its own investigation into Foggo's relationship with Wilkes. This inquiry is sufficiently serious that Congress was notified about it in writing.

Foggo and Wilkes are old buddies. Pals in San Diego say that between assignments overseas, the genial, hefty Foggo was a conspicuous presence at Wilkes's parties. In a court document made public last week, prosecutors charged that former representative Cunningham, whom prosecutors asked a judge to imprison for 10 years, hit up an unnamed "Co-conspirator No. 1"—identified as Wilkes by government and defense sources—for $525,000, which Wilkes allegedly agreed to hand over in return for $6 million worth of government contracts. Wilkes has not been charged with any wrongdoing, and his lawyer declined to comment. But last week a D.C. businessman, Mitchell Wade, ID'ed in Cunningham court documents as "Co-conspirator No. 2," pleaded guilty to corrupting both Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials. So far, no proof has emerged that Wilkes, whose companies did a lot of business with the Pentagon, also did business with the CIA. A source close to Foggo, declining to be ID'ed while talking about the case, said Foggo had no knowledge of the criminal inquiry and had not been contacted by investigators. Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, told NEWSWEEK: "It is stand-ard procedure for the inspector general to look into assertions that mention agency officers. That should in no way be seen as lending credibility to any allegation." Gimigliano added that Foggo had "overseen many contracts," all of which were "properly awarded and administered."
—Mark Hosenball and Jamie Reno

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc. | Subscribe to Newsweek

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/febru...squebombing.htm

Former CIA Analyst: Western Intelligence May Be Behind Mosque Bombing
Ray Mcgovern says US in most danger ever, from its own government

Prison Planet | February 26 2006

Former CIA analyst a and presidential advisor Ray McGovern does not rule out Western involvement in this week's Askariya mosque bombing in light of previous false flag operations that have advanced hidden agendas of the ruling elite.

During the mid-eighties, McGovern was one of the senior analysts conducting early morning briefings of the PDB one-on-one with the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

He joined Alex Jones to discuss many topics from martial law to government false flag terrorism and provocation tactics.

McGovern firstly suggested that Posse Comitatus, the law that forbids the military to take on a policing role within the US, is being systematically overthrown.

"Not only have the top ranks of the intelligence community been politicized and corrupted, so has the army. The military establishment is goose stepping around, saluting the President and saying whatever the President wants them to."

A former officer himself, McGovern declared that the unprecedented movement towards a martial law mentality within government and military is a deeply unsettling one and that the US is hurtling toward a dictatorship.

"As I look at the top Pentagon brass, I have to conclude that unlike my days as a US army officer, those folks have been so politicized that if the US President told them to go ahead and exercise police functions in this country they would go ahead and salute and they would do it, and that's really scary."

Moving on to the "war on terror", 27 year veteran McGovern concurred that staged terror has long been used by our governments in order to forward their own agendas at home and elsewhere:

"There's lots of evidence that the government in the past has used these things for its own purposes, for overthrowing governments, as it did in Iran in 1953, and in Guatemala in 1954, the Gulf of Tonkin was a little different...LBJ did deceive Congress and the war went on for seven years."



Concerning 9/11 McGovern declared that although he is still in two minds, he is deeply suspicious of the official version of events and "there is certainly a cover up." The amount of unanswered questions and blatant lies told by Cheney and the NeoCons makes it very easy for him to believe the government was involved.

Moving on to the recent Askariya mosque bombing in Samarra, Iraq McGovern commented;

"The main question is Qui Bono? Who benefits from this kind of thing? You don't have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not only the Sunnis. You know, the British officers were arrested, dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes on."

Ray McGovern is part of a collective of former Intelligence officers who call themselves Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Their writing can be found on www.truthout.com

February 28, 2006
Year Into Revamped Spying, Troubles and Some Progress
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — A year after a sweeping government reorganization began, the agencies charged with protecting the United States against terrorist attacks remain troubled by high-level turnover, overlapping responsibilities and bureaucratic rivalry, former and current officials say.

Progress has been made, most of the officials say, toward one critical goal: the sharing of terrorist threat information from all agencies at the National Counterterrorism Center. But many argue that the biggest restructuring of spy agencies in half a century has bloated the bureaucracy, adding boxes to the government organization chart without producing clearly defined roles.

John O. Brennan, the interim director of the center until July, said the Bush administration was "still struggling" with the redesign.

"I still don't see an overarching framework that assigns roles and responsibilities to each agency in counterterrorism," said Mr. Brennan, who spent 23 years at the Central Intelligence Agency. He was replaced as head of the National Counterterrorism Center by John Scott Redd, a retired vice admiral selected by President Bush in June.

Mr. Brennan, now head of an intelligence contractor, said he remained "a strong believer" in the center but feared that it could end up "just another layer on top of everything else."

His concerns are widely echoed in Washington, where John D. Negroponte is approaching the end of his first year as the first director of national intelligence, a job created by Congress in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Negroponte is scheduled to testify about threats to national security before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on Tuesday.

Among the critics is Steven Simon, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration and a co-author of two books on terrorism. "If people weren't fighting each other or scrambling for resources or trying to clarify who does what," Mr. Simon said, "they could be doing more to make us safe."

In the background of the skirmish among agencies new and old is a more fundamental conflict. Like other government veterans, Mr. Brennan said he did not believe that Mr. Negroponte had moved decisively enough to limit efforts by the Pentagon, which controls 80 percent of the intelligence budget, to expand its role in spying.

Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who played a central role in negotiating the intelligence reorganization, said she was "very concerned" about what she viewed as Mr. Negroponte's passivity in the face of assertive moves by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"I think Director Negroponte has battles to fight within the bureaucracy, and particularly with the Department of Defense," Ms. Collins said. "D.O.D. is refusing to recognize that the director of national intelligence is in charge of the intelligence community."

Asked about Ms. Collins's remarks, a Negroponte spokesman, Carl Kropf, said his office worked closely with the Defense Department.

"We are involved in a full range of information sharing with the D.O.D. that encompasses frequent high-level discussions, meetings and coordination on budget, policy and operational topics," Mr. Kropf said.

Gregory F. Treverton, a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said turbulence and jostling for turf were unavoidable in the reshuffling of spy agencies.

"I think on the whole we're better off" because of greater sharing of information, Mr. Treverton said, "although it certainly isn't pretty."

Mr. Treverton, now at the RAND Corporation, spoke of a "food fight" between two agencies: the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, and the newer National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC. He also called relations between federal agencies and state and local law enforcement "a complete mess."

Other former officials described disputes over things like parking spaces and job titles, a continuing incompatibility of computer systems, and battles over who works where.

Such tensions have hastened an exodus of counterterrorism and intelligence veterans, often lured away by lucrative jobs with contractors in the area. In recent weeks, the head of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorist Center, Robert Grenier, and Mr. Negroponte's chief of information sharing, John Russack, announced they were stepping down.

Amy B. Zegart, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is writing a book on the intelligence reorganization, has interviewed 60 officials representing all of the agencies and has concluded that the overhaul has been superficial.

"The solution so far has been to add more spies and stir," said Dr. Zegart, who worked on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration and advised the Bush campaign in 2000. "Changing the wiring diagram isn't enough."

Though she has studied the topic for months, Dr. Zegart said, "it's hard for me to tell who's in charge."

Some experts counsel patience. James Jay Carafano, who studies domestic security at the Heritage Foundation, said it took about a decade in the 1940's and 50's to settle on the intelligence model that lasted through the cold war.

"With federal agencies, you create them, let them run and see what happens," Dr. Carafano said.

The most profound changes have come from Mr. Bush's appointment of Mr. Negroponte, a veteran diplomat, as the first director of national intelligence, a post created by intelligence overhaul legislation passed in December 2004. The new position, with oversight of all the intelligence agencies, was intended to remove any doubt about who was in charge.

Mr. Negroponte said in a Feb. 17 speech at Georgetown University that his office had "begun reshaping the cultures of United States national intelligence and begun the arduous process of deeply integrating our considerable resources."

Mr. Negroponte's own language emphasized that change had only just begun. He highlighted the role played by the National Counterterrorism Center, which is intended to prevent the hoarding of leads on Al Qaeda by different agencies.

Even outspoken critics like Dr. Zegart describe the NCTC as a valuable addition. Based in a Washington suburb, it oversees three video teleconferences a day linking main counterterrorism officials and posts intelligence on a classified Web site accessible to some 5,000 government analysts, said Mark Mansfield, the spokesman for the center.

In addition to uniting terrorism analysis, the center does "strategic operational planning" for counterterrorism. In both roles, there is clearly some overlap with the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorist Center, the unit responsible for pursuing Qaeda operatives around the world.

"People don't know where CTC's responsibilities end and NCTC's begin," said Paul R. Pillar, a former C.I.A. official who spent years at the counterterrorism center. "There's confusion about who does what."

Asked about reports of conflict between the two centers, Mr. Mansfield said, "It is fair to say that there are some differences, but given the intelligence reorganization and the new legislation, that is to be expected."

Officials are "working very hard to resolve differences," he said.

The C.I.A. center now has its fourth chief since 2002, as Mr. Grenier was replaced this month by an agency veteran who is still under cover. Turnover has been even more rapid at the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division, which is on its sixth director since 2001.

Expressing a view widely heard among retired officials, Vincent M. Cannistraro, a top counterterrorism official at the C.I.A. before he retired in 1991, described the high-level turnover as "disastrous."

"Just as soon as someone gets up to snuff on counterterrorism — understands what Hamas and Al Qaeda are — they're moved out," Mr. Cannistraro said.

But Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee, was more sanguine.

Asked about the turnover, Mr. Roberts said that "losing veterans presents some challenges" but that "new blood is often good."

"The fact that we have not been hit again on our home soil speaks volumes on how we are doing in the war on terror," he said.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/02/2...ive_reality.php
The Peril Of Selective Reality
Wayne White
February 28, 2006


Wayne White is an adjunct scholar with the Middle East Institute in Washington. Before his retirement in 2005, he served as Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Near Eastern Division and coordinated Iraqi intelligence for INR.

According to an article in the February 13 issue of U.S. News & World Report, President George W. Bush reportedly reacted to a “darkly pessimistic assessment of the situation in Iraq” written by the CIA’s Baghdad station chief in mid-2004 by remarking: “What is he, some kind of defeatist?”

The president’s sharply negative reaction to what was one of the most refreshingly frank assessments on the situation in Iraq is notable. It begs the question: What, then, was the president’s reaction to the July 2004 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) addressing the troubled future of governance in Iraq, released roughly at the same time? It was a report labored over by many intelligence analysts, including this writer and Paul Pillar—then National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia—and others from across official Washington and the military.

President Bush’s comment dramatizes one of the most daunting challenges facing analysts and supervisors throughout the U.S. intelligence community. Although policymakers frequently say they want the most objective analysis they can get—the truth, as best we can see it— in reality, their reaction to assessments that run counter to expectations is all too often to shoot the messenger.

One example comes to mind. During the agonizing 1979-1981 Iran-U.S. hostage crisis, a senior official in the State Department's Near East Bureau (NEA) reacted angrily when the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) told him secret talks with Iranian diplomats in Europe would likely fail. INR was correct. Ayatollah Khomeini held the cards, not the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and he was utterly uninterested in such talks. This would become painfully clear later when solutions had to be sought elsewhere. The frustrated—but honorable—NEA official made a point of apologizing to his INR colleagues. Such apologies, however, are relatively rare.

More commonly, such negative reactions produce a snowball effect in which the more the boss gets upset when receiving “bad news,” the less such painfully realistic judgments are passed up the line or read and taken seriously if they are. The result is often a policymaker who becomes even more isolated from the basics he or she needs in order to make an informed judgment. And that is the first step down the slippery slope toward mistake and miscalculation.

Indeed, this negativity has become so common among senior officials that it has given rise to yet another problem: the temptation among subordinates within the intelligence community to engage in self-censorship.

When it become clear, for example, during the coordination of an NIE in late 2003 on violence and instability in Iraq that prospects for tamping down the insurgency were unexpectedly grim, the senior official chairing the meeting looked around at his fellow intelligence analysts and exclaimed rhetorically, “How can I take this upstairs?” to then-CIA Director George Tenet.

Some policymakers provide refreshing surprises to otherwise wary intelligence professionals. In the spring of 2004, INR submitted to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell an especially pessimistic memorandum warning of the grave situation in Iraq's Sunni heartland. Powell not only took it seriously, he faxed copies of it to presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director Tenet as recommended reading. Rumsfeld was still mulling it over a week later.

In January 2005, in Washington, the heads of intelligence agencies (including our British allies) received another gloomy read-out of the overall Iraq situation. Virtually all these senior intelligence professionals agreed with the thrust of the presentation. Secretary Powell heard about the briefing and asked for a copy of the text. Later, the Secretary of State told the head of INR that he had used some of the contents of the briefing in his last meeting with the president. Only Powell knows what the president’s reaction was.

Clearly, given the continued gravity of the situation in Iraq, with respect to the insurgency, terrorism, governance and the economy, the administration must take frank—and often pessimistic—assessments more seriously. Repeated promises that go unfulfilled, statements of “progress” in the face of sustained violence, repeated delays in reconstruction and continued Iraqi governmental dysfunction, brutality and corruption are partly the result of leaders replacing hardheaded analysis with wishful thinking.

The attack last week on the mosque in Samarra and the violence that followed only underline how much more vulnerable and volatile the situation in Iraq has become. The continuing turmoil contradicts recent statements by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before Congress, when she offered yet another seemingly indignant reassurance that things were on track, in the face of tough questioning by Senator Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. Despite the smoke screen, recent polling indicates that the American public has a better grasp of reality when it comes to the troubling situation in Iraq than some of their leaders.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=710...id=awBC4rZa8loo
Negroponte Says U.S. Security Risk `Low' in Port Deal (Update1)
Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The top U.S. intelligence official said a state-owned Dubai company's planned takeover of facilities at six U.S. seaports presents a ``low'' risk to national security.

``We assessed the threat to U.S. national security posed by DP World to be low,'' National Intelligence Director John Negroponte told the Senate Armed Services Committee. ``We didn't see any red flags come up during the course of our inquiry.''

Negroponte said the U.S. intelligence community gave the findings of its month-long review to the Bush the Bush administration panel that reviewed the deal on Dec. 5. He showed no concern over a Coast Guard report a week later that said ``intelligence gaps'' made a threat assessment impossible.

U.S. lawmakers may try to block DP World's deal to take over some terminal operations at Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York and Newark, New Jersey from London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. The Bush administration approved the transaction last month and it's slated to close March 2.

Lawmakers say that giving control of some port facilities to a company based in the United Arab Emirates might threaten U.S. security, and DP World on Feb. 26 agreed to a second review of the deal. The container terminals are among the 29 DP World is acquiring as part of its purchase of P&O.

Legislation

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate yesterday would require the 45-day review and then give Congress 30 days to weigh the results and pass on the deal.

The measure also would require that President George W. Bush put a hold on the acquisition and that administration officials brief Congress on the review's findings. Currently, the administration alone determines whether the acquisition goes through.

Bush today said he stood by his administration's decision to let the deal proceed and his threat to veto any legislation passed by Congress that would block the transaction.

``If there was any doubt in my mind, or people in my administration's mind, that our ports would be less secure and the American people in danger, this deal wouldn't go forward,'' Bush said today after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the White House.

Bush said U.S. port security would remain in the hands of the Coast Guard and Customs Service. Bush also noted that ``there are a lot of foreign companies managing U.S. ports.''

`Personal Interest'

Negroponte's comments came during his annual briefing on threats to U.S. security to the armed services panel. Lawmakers pressed him for his views on the port deal and urged that he take an active role in the second review.

Negroponte said that, while the intelligence community is ``not per se a member'' of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, ``You can be assured that I will take a personal interest'' in this review.

John Warner of Virginia, who chairs the armed services panel, urged lawmakers to consider the support given by the United Arab Emirates to the war on terror and the ``high degree of mutual trust'' that exists between that nation and the U.S.

``You cannot look in isolation at a business contract like this without considering the diplomatic ramifications, the economic ramifications with other nations who are contemplating transactions with the United States and, indeed, as I've said, the military ramifications,'' Warner said.

Warning from U.A.E.

The emirates' economy minister today said that Arab and Muslim investors may divert funds away from the U.S. to Europe and Asia because of political opposition to this deal.

``Some of the countries will probably start thinking there are easier countries to invest money in,'' the emirates' economy minister, Sheikha Lubna al-Qasimi, 48, said in an interview in Abu Dhabi.

Dubai last year spent more than $1 billion on New York real estate. Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which the U.A.E. is the fourth largest, held $66.7 billion of U.S. Treasury securities at the end of 2005, up from $62.1 billion a year earlier, according to the Treasury Department.

The U.S. is treating DP World's request for a second review as a new application, separate from its previous assessment.

``The transaction is different,'' Tony Fratto, the Treasury Department's chief spokesman, told reporters yesterday.

``The company since its initial filing back in December has come forward with new assurances and changes to the transaction involving the treatment of the six U.S. ports,'' Fratto said.

Bush, Snow to Sign Off

The final decision will be left to the president, who has 15 days to accept or reject the transaction after receiving the panel's recommendation. Treasury Secretary John Snow will sign off on the recommendation this time before the report is sent to the White House, Fratto said.

Snow and Bush have said they didn't learn of the planned takeover until well after the first review was completed and the deal approved.

Fratto said he understood that some people may question the objectivity of the second review, given the administration's support of the transaction the first time around. ``The best thing we can do is ensure that these people are allowed to do their jobs,'' he said.



To contact the reporter on this story:
Judy Mathewson in Washington at jmathewson@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 28, 2006 12:07 EST

Spy Chief: Iraq May Spark Regional Battle
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer

A civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East, pitting the region's rival Islamic sects against each another, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said in an unusually frank assessment Tuesday.

"If chaos were to descend upon Iraq or the forces of democracy were to be defeated in that country ... this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world," Negroponte said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on global threats.

Negroponte served as U.S. ambassador to Baghdad before taking over as the nation's top intelligence official last April.

Iraqis have faced a chain of attacks and reprisals since bombs destroyed the gold dome of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra last week. Hundreds, if not thousands, have died, including more than 65 who were killed Tuesday by suicide attackers, car bombers and insurgents firing mortars.

President Bush condemned the surge in violence and said Iraqis must make a choice between "a free society or a society dictated ... by evil people who will kill innocents." Later, in an interview with ABC News' "World News Tonight," he said he did not believe the escalation of civil unrest would lead to a general civil war.

Negroponte tried to focus on progress in Iraq, but he acknowledged a civil war would be a "serious setback" to the global war on terror.

"The consequences for the people of Iraq would be catastrophic," he said. "Clearly, it would seriously jeopardize the democratic political process on which they are presently embarked. And one can only begin to imagine what the political outcomes would be."

Saudi Arabia and Jordan could support Iraq's Sunnis, Negroponte said. And Iran, run by a Shiite Islamic theocracy, "has already got quite close ties with some of the extremist elements" inside Iraq, he added.

While Iraq's neighbors "initially might be reluctant" to get involved in a broader Sunni-Shiite conflict, "that might well be a temptation," Negroponte said.

Still, he told senators he is seeing progress in the overall political and security situation in Iraq. "And if we continue to make that kind of progress, yes, we can win in Iraq," he said.

Democrats noted that Negroponte wouldn't go quite as far as Bush did in his January State of the Union address. "We are winning," Bush said then.

James Jeffrey, the State Department coordinator for Iraq, told reporters Tuesday that Iraqi security forces have managed to establish a normal and calm situation — "by Iraq standards." The level of violence, he said, was about the same as before the shrine bombing.

At the Senate hearing, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, painted a similarly stark picture of Afghanistan.

While the government has made progress in disarming private militias, Maples said, his agency estimates that violence from the Taliban and other anti-coalition groups in Afghanistan increased 20 percent last year.

"Insurgents now represent a greater threat to the expansion of Afghan government authority than at any point since late 2001, and will be active this spring," Maples said in his written statement.

Afghan insurgents increased their suicide attacks almost fourfold and more than doubled their use of improvised explosive devices, he said.

Also at the hearing:

_Negroponte would not provide an updated assessment of the number of nuclear weapons believed to be in North Korea's arsenal, although a former DIA head has previously said Pyongyang has one or two.

"We assess that they probably have nuclear weapons, as they claim that they do, but we don't know for a fact that they've got such weapons," Negroponte said. To provide a number "would merely be an extrapolation or a speculation on our part."

_Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., was critical of the Bush administration's reliance on the six-party talks aimed at disarming North Korea.

"I worry that the six-party talks have really devolved into the Chinese talks, and the Chinese have their own agenda," she said. "I'm not sure that the six-party talks is the only route we should be following."

_On Venezuela, Negroponte said U.S. intelligence expects President Hugo Chavez to deepen his relationship with Cuban President Fidel Castro and "seek closer economic, military and diplomatic ties with Iran and North Korea."

Negroponte said the U.S. is concerned about Chavez's arms purchases, using profits from oil production. "I would say that it's clear that he is spending hundreds of millions, if not more, for his very extravagant foreign policy" at the expense of the impoverished Venezuelan population, he said.

__

AP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid contributed to this report.



Copyright © 2006 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 © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Seeking Spies By Linda Robinson and Kevin Whitelaw
Sat Feb 4, 4:25 PM ET
US News and World Report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20060204/ts...ws/seekingspies

Three top-drawer commissions, ranking members of both parties in Congress, and President Bush all agreed that Washington needed to dramatically improve and expand its human intelligence-gathering abilities--in layman's terms, putting more spies on the ground. But more than four years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency, current and former intelligence officials say, is nowhere near to achieving that goal. After bearing the brunt of the criticism for the intelligence failures on 9/11 and for blowing the analysis on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, the agency has been buffeted further by more recent allegations of torture and mishandling of detainees under its control.


Now a new CIA director appears to be at loggerheads with many of the agency's most experienced operatives, who feel they are being disregarded and mismanaged. On top of that is a widely held perception of a deep political rift between the career professionals at the agency and the White House. (One anecdote suggests how bad things have gotten. Two years ago, the CIA's Baghdad station chief wrote a darkly pessimistic assessment of the situation in Iraq, projecting the possible growth of the insurgency. When President Bush was briefed on the station chief's conclusions, in July 2004, a former senior intelligence official tells U.S. News, he asked, "What is he, some kind of defeatist?")


The crux of the current crisis involves the agency's National Clandestine Service, or directorate of operations, as it was known until it was renamed last fall. The D.O., as intelligence initiates still call it, has some 1,200 case officers around the world, men and women trained to recruit spies from foreign governments and hostile groups, gather information on weapons and other threats, and, when necessary, conduct offensive operations. Over the years, the D.O. has been home to some of the CIA's most respected, courageous, and colorful operatives. And they have scored some major--and largely still secret--successes since 9/11. They placed a paramilitary force on the ground in Afghanistan before the Pentagon had a single soldier there to take down the Taliban regime. They have foiled several serious terrorist plots overseas and worked closely and creatively with foreign intelligence services to nab key al Qaeda figures. They have also used a missile-firing pilotless drone called the Predator to kill al Qaeda members or associates overseas, although some strikes, like that on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border late last month, also resulted in civilian deaths.


Despite such results, however, a triple hex of plummeting morale, a hemorrhage of field-tested veterans, and the drain of trying to counter a seemingly intractable insurgency in Iraq has left the D.O. today facing some of the most serious challenges in its history.


Attrition. After the 9/11 attacks, the White House ordered the CIA to increase the number of clandestine case officers by 50 percent, to some 1,800 operatives. It is an extraordinarily ambitious goal, one that is proving very difficult to meet. The agency is attracting new recruits, but veteran officers have been leaving one after another. Although CIA-wide attrition is said to be below 5 percent--less than the average in the private sector--insiders say the problem is more serious for the D.O. Official figures for the clandestine service are classified, but dozens of current and former officers who spoke with U.S. News for this account say the attrition there is significantly higher--and has increased greatly in the past year. The CIA says its attrition rate is returning to historical levels after dipping in the immediate post-9/11 period, but it is concerned about the number departing after just five to 10 years.


Among the CIA's four directorates--the other three are the directorates of intelligence, science and technology, and support--the clandestine service has always seen itself as first among equals. President Bush's new CIA director, Porter Goss, has a different view. Agency spokesperson Jennifer Millerwise Dyck says: "The director's view is that the agency is at its best when all four directorates are working collectively for the same objectives." A new reorganization plan, announced at an offsite seminar in late January, proposes melding the four directorates into a new functional design. Also, intelligence sources criticize what they say is a diversion of resources intended for the "core collectors" of the clandestine service--the case officers assigned to recruit spies and the reports officers who are charged with writing up the intelligence they collect.


More important than the number of departing spies is the fact that so many have been its most seasoned veterans, inhabitants of "baron" posts, like those of the regional division chiefs and directors of the counterterrorism and counterproliferation centers. Within the past year, according to current and former case officers and supervisors, virtually the entire top level of the D.O. has turned over. One intelligence official estimates that at least 20 of the most coveted senior spots have been vacated in the 17 months since Goss arrived. The post of European division chief has turned over twice, as has the No.2 official of the directorate, the associate deputy director for operations. Some have moved to new positions, but many have departed or retired. Agency spokesperson Dyck says: "As more agencies get into the intelligence business, they're coming to the CIA for senior leaders to help set up their shops."


For the nation's premier intelligence agency, this amounts to the loss of hundreds of years of experience in some of the most difficult and dangerous parts of the world--precisely the places Washington needs experienced eyes and ears as it continues to prosecute the war on terrorism. Because virtually all of these individuals worked in clandestine capacities, U.S. News will not reveal their names or publish information that could lead to exposure of their identities.


The extent of the exodus from the operations directorate has not previously been reported. Several senior D.O. officials have made their departures public, however, citing disagreements with Goss, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee. The respected top two officials in the D.O., Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick, were pushed out shortly after Goss arrived at the CIA's collegelike campus just outside Washington. In September, Sulick's replacement, Robert Richer, also announced his resignation--after less than nine months on the job. It took more than three months to find someone willing to fill Richer's post, a plum job considered a steppingstone to the top spot in the D.O. Three others turned down the job.


Other senior case officers are reportedly planning to leave as soon as they turn 50. Should that happen, coming on the heels of those who have already left, the D.O. will be fielding perhaps the most inexperienced team of intelligence officers in its history. Burton Gerber, who retired from the D.O. in 1995 after 39 years, including five stints as station and division chief, says, "The skills can only be acquired on the job; there is no other training. "Compared with someone like Gerber, a recently retired case officer estimates that today as many as 1 in 5 station chiefs has had just two or fewer overseas postings before being promoted. "These people are competent," this retired officer says. "But they don't have the level of experience--they have been pushed into these jobs before their time, in a sense."


Why the mass exodus? A veteran official cites two reasons: morale and money. The most senior operatives, this man says, are leaving because they are unhappy with the leadership of the agency. "Goss," this man says dismissively, "is not seen as serious by the careerists." While Goss may say the right things, some agency veterans say, he is not actively managing the agency. Goss has told officials he "doesn't do personnel," leaving such issues to the clutch of aides he brought from Capitol Hill, most of whom had only short tours at the CIA years before. These aides, known to insiders as "Gosslings," are seen by many as arrogant and unapproachable.


Goss supporters dispute such assertions. The new director, they say, came in with an agenda of change, which many veterans resisted. The bad blood began when some leaked to the press the shoplifting history of one of the "Gosslings." Both sides dug in their heels, and things soon went from bad to worse. One ambitious D.O. official began encouraging others to leave in protest, a senior official says--then stayed on and moved up the ladder.


"Barons." Others say that all the talk about departures misses the bigger picture. A senior intelligence official points out that 120,000 men and women applied to the agency last year and says that in November the largest class in the D.O.'s history graduated from training at "the farm," in rural Virginia. Disputing the magnitude of the exodus from the D.O., this official says: "The folks who have been here 15 to 25 years are a valuable asset," but he characterizes most of the departures as demographic in nature. "They've reached their time." Another senior intelligence official dismisses the critics in more strenuous terms. "With no disrespect to our Cold War barons, it is time for a new generation. We have a new innovative leadership team who are truly coming into their own. They are more in tune with today's threats. They know how to use the Internet; they don't dictate to secretaries."


Despite all the internal wrangling, the men and women of the D.O. clearly face serious challenges--and questions about whether their talents are being used to best advantage. In Iraq, case officers are being ordered to collect tactical military rather than strategic intelligence. Regulations from CIA headquarters require that they leave Baghdad's Green Zone and other secure compounds only in armored three-car convoys. Security concerns dictate such precautions, but they also severely limit case officers' ability to gather useful information and, basically, do their jobs. One intelligence source recounts how the Baghdad station chief went out one night more than a year ago to meet with an Iraqi informant, taking the required convoy. "The difficulties of having a clandestine meeting when you are accompanied by a three-car convoy should be obvious," says a retired intelligence official. A case officer told another former senior official that he regularly leaves the confines of Baghdad alone, in violation of the agency's regulations, packing a pistol and a shotgun; he is one of the few case officers there, he adds, who do so.


In the movie Syriana, the case officer portrayed by George Clooney meets alone with his sources throughout the film. That's the way it must be done, says Bob Baer, the real-life model for Clooney's character and the author of See No Evil, a memoir of his years as a covert operative in the Middle East. "You cannot pick up an asset with three cars, "Baer says. "... If [CIA officers] can't get out of the Green Zone, they've been marginalized. They are not able to see Iraqis in their native plumage."


Whipsawed? Compounding the challenges for the D.O. is a new wave of political uncertainty that some veteran case officers say is having a profound impact on morale. The public drubbing of the CIA over its failures of 9/11 and the prewar intelligence on Iraq was bad enough, but the controversy over aggressive questioning of terrorist suspects and the legal authorization to do so is also deeply worrisome to many in the D.O. Some case officers are concerned about being whipsawed for doing their jobs--punished by the courts after following orders approved by the executive branch--and left swinging in the wind.


Ignominy. Regardless of their view, many agree that when the rules change, people get hurt, and careers get ended. For example, after the Iran-contra affair in President Reagan's second term, several senior D.O. officers were forced out in ignominy; a few were prosecuted criminally. "That memory cast a long shadow," a Cold War-era veteran says. "These are U.S. government employees being told to do these things. They fear being hung out to dry."


It's not just the uncertainty and the plunging morale that are causing case officers to pack it in, some say; today it's the lure of big money. Private contractors like Blackwater, Science Applications International Corp., and Abraxas, a company formed in 2001 by former CIA officials, are hiring even midlevel CIA employees for salaries of $200,000 or more. Abraxas, founded by former D.O. veteran Hollis Helms, has hired 200 former intelligence officers and has won awards in the past two years for being one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America. Its senior management is composed of former officials who left the CIA some years ago, including the CIA's former director of administration, its chief polygrapher, a former Africa division chief, and a China station chief. In an interview with Entrepreneur Weekly in November, Helms said, "At one point, we calculated that our employees have over 3,000 years of experience in foreign intelligence." Abraxas opened an office in China in 2004, expanding its offerings of "global risk mitigation services" to private and government clients. One of those services uses proprietary technology to detect suspected terrorists' surveillance of airports or industrial installations. Another provides business-intelligence units that perform "deception detection" with experts trained to spot physical and behavioral clues that someone is lying.

A particular irony of the current situation in the D.O. is that its personnel needs are so great that executives often turn to newly minted contractors, known as "green badgers," and invite them to return to work at the agency. As contractors, they generally cannot serve as supervisors, although exceptions can be made. Like regular case officers, the green badgers collect intelligence and serve as watch officers, but their administrative and mentoring talents are largely lost to the agency. Some contractors have reopened stations in countries where the CIA had closed them in the 1990s. Some see their reopening as a positive development except for the fact, as one agency veteran notes, that the taxpayers are "just paying more."

Few experts believe that using contractors is the way to achieve the 50 percent increase in clandestine personnel. But a big factor limiting the expansion is a bottleneck in the security-clearance process that all new D.O. recruits must undergo. The CIA's Office of Security has been overwhelmed by the numbers, and much of the vetting is now being outsourced. The push to find second-generation Americans with the desired language skills and cultural backgrounds, or at least Americans with international experience or ties, further complicates the vetting process since overseas background checks typically take far longer than domestic ones. "This issue has been of intense interest to us," says House Intelligence panel member Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican. "It is a very high priority for us not to have a six-month or longer backlog in security clearances."

Even if the vetting issues can be resolved more rapidly, the D.O. will still be fielding a cadre of case officers greener than perhaps at any time in the CIA's nearly 60-year history. More than a third of the current estimated 1,200 case officers have been on the job less than five years, but this problem predates Director Goss. Since there was very little hiring during the 1990s, the managerial corps that should be taking over now was never brought on board, and the agency is now reaping the consequences. It takes five years to grow and season an effective case officer, according to testimony by former director George Tenet. The process includes a rigorous training program at Camp Peary, as "the farm" is officially known, language school, and a shakedown tour overseas. In the late 1990s, a 105-room dorm was added to Camp Peary, and class sizes were doubled and opened to non-CIA operatives. So now there are many new case officers, but they're finding fewer veterans with deep experience to guide them. "They spend two years training," says Baer, the former case officer, "and now they are sitting in D.C. working for someone who's never been overseas."

Fresh blood. On top of all the many difficult issues the clandestine leadership faces is that of Iraq. The precise number of case officers assigned there could not be determined, but several estimates placed the number of all CIA employees at about 500. That includes support staff, but most of the experts consulted for this account say that anything like several hundred case officers there is far too high. Baer, who spent most of his career in the Middle East, estimates that 100 or fewer is probably appropriate, especially given the way they are being used and the fact that so few of them speak Arabic fluently. A senior intelligence official says, "We are not just strategic collectors." But he acknowledges that "we should continually watch that we don't just have bodies over there."

Whatever the right number in Iraq is, the D.O.'s massive investment there is leaving it uncovered, or barely covered, in other key places, intelligence officials say. "Terrorists are just going to move into these and other ungoverned spaces, where we have no case officers," says a veteran case officer. In a speech to agency employees at CIA headquarters last September, Goss said that many of the stations and bases closed in the 1990s had been or would be reopened.

If the D.O. can somehow manage to stanch the flow of experienced case officers, bring in more fresh blood, and begin to meet the 50 percent expansion target, it will be an achievement of real significance. But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, still more tough new challenges have been placed before the CIA. The agency has been directed to take the lead in all human intelligence-gathering efforts throughout the sprawling U.S. intelligence community. This means not just managing and coordinating the activities of spies from other agencies but establishing and enforcing common standards for training and tradecraft to help operatives avoid reliance on shaky sources, as the Defense Intelligence Agency did with the Iraqi exile code-named "Curveball," who delivered a lot of bogus information about Saddam Hussein's supposed stores of banned weapons. The agency is also responsible now for developing new capabilities for overt and covert intelligence action overseas and for developing more-advanced and innovative technologies to help America's spies collect intelligence on terrorists and rogue states.

Drawing lines. This, obviously, is much easier said than done. If clear, simple lines could be drawn between the CIA's domain of foreign intelligence, the FBI's domain of domestic intelligence, and the military's traditional domain of tactical battlefield intelligence, things might not be so difficult. In an effort to begin enforcing its new mandate to lead and coordinate all human intelligence gathering, the CIA signed memoranda of understanding with the FBI and the Pentagon last year that outlined procedures for informing one another of the activities each is undertaking. Under the agreement, the Pentagon informs the CIA of its military-related collection, but there are still reports of friction in the field. In a new book, Transforming U.S. Intelligence, John MacGaffin, the CIA's former associate deputy director of operations, warns that "if the DOD continues on this path, we could soon have two entities--CIA and DOD--conducting the same intelligence-collection activities in the same space, without a clear, authoritative controlling mechanism." A Pentagon source says that in recent months, however, the two agencies have made significant progress in defining which activities are military and which are the CIA's domain.

The CIA has made strides in increasing its covert-action capabilities, but there are still significant challenges in what are arguably the most difficult jobs in this difficult profession. The covert-action arm of the agency, called the Special Activities Division, has been expanding. Some of the recruits have military experience. But in the view of an official who has worked in both the agency and the military, the division still lacks sufficient ability to plan and execute military-style operations, even though it has the legal mandate to conduct covert action.

Transformation is painful for any institution. But the malaise in the D.O.--Goss recently referred to it as just one among "four equal tribes"--is pervasive. If the controversies about interrogation tactics and secret prisons blow up, and if congressional committees begin turning the place inside out as they did back in the 1970s, even some D.O. veterans critical of the current regime say the consequences could be tragic. "We are still not getting it right," one former senior official says, "but there is no alternative."

Bush's spying rationale receives mixed reviews
By Charlie Savage The Boston Globe

THURSDAY, MARCH 2, 2006

WASHINGTON A group of legal specialists told a Senate committee that President George W. Bush's domestic spying program is illegal and may set a precedent that allows wartime presidents to break laws freely in the name of national security.

In its second hearing on the once- secret surveillance program, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony Tuesday from a number of law professors and former officials. Most voiced skepticism of the president's assertion that his wartime powers allow him to bypass the courts and spy on Americans' international calls and e-mail messages without warrants. Bush's legal theory, they said, is both wrong and dangerous.

"This is a defining moment in the constitutional history of the United States," said Bruce Fein, a lawyer who served in the administration of President Ronald Reagan. He said the theory used by the administration "could equally justify mail openings, burglary, torture, or internment camps, all in the name of gathering foreign intelligence. Unless rebuked, it will lie around like a loaded weapon ready to be used by any incumbent who claims an urgent need."

But other specialists disagreed.

In his testimony, Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor who was a Reagan administration lawyer, endorsed the White House's assertion that Bush's power as commander in chief allowed him to set aside the warrant law and eavesdrop on Americans.

And a former CIA director, R. James Woolsey, who served under President George H.W. Bush, said the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, transformed all of the United States into a battlefield, and that Congress could not restrict a president's constitutional power to conduct war as the commander in chief sees fit.

"Unlike the Cold War, our intelligence requirements are not just overseas," Woolsey said. "The country has been invaded, though of course not occupied, and defending against an invasion is at the heart of the president's powers."

Still, Robert Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies with the libertarian Cato Institute, sought to preserve a distinction between "real" battlefields, such as the Afghanistan war zone, and the threat of terrorism at home.

The Tuesday hearing was the second Judiciary Committee inquiry into the National Security Agency spying program since its existence was first disclosed by The New York Times nearly three months ago. Called to testify in January, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the program's legality, supplementing his testimony with six pages of written answers.

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Tuesday that the spying issue would remain a priority. He made no announcements about future hearings. Aides said it was possible that a third hearing, featuring the previous attorney general, John Ashcroft, and the former deputy attorney general, James Comey, could take place in March. The two reportedly had doubts about the program's legality, and the White House has discouraged Ashcroft and Comey from testifying.

Specter has also drafted a bill that could resolve the legal dispute over the program. The bill would direct a special national security court to hear the classified details of the spying program. If the court decided the warrantless eavesdropping program does not violate the Constitution, it could continue despite the warrant law.

At the hearing, however, the witnesses were nearly unanimous in expressing caution about the bill. Several specialists said Specter's proposal was a good first step, but all agreed that the draft, as written, is hamstrung by technical legal problems and significant policy concerns.

Kmiec, for example, expressed concern that the proposed law could interfere with the goal of any surveillance: making sure the president is able to get the wartime intelligence needed to prevent attacks.

Fein, on the other hand, said it would be irresponsible for Congress to change surveillance laws without demanding that the White House provide more details on how the spying program works to justify its assertion that it cannot get timely warrants.

The hearing unfolded as the Senate voted to end debate on reauthorizing the USA Patriot Act, the law that granted the FBI sweeping search and surveillance powers after the Sept. 11 attacks. The vote clears the way for final passage of the law's extension this week.

CIA Is Investigating Its No. 3
WASHINGTON - The CIA inspector general has launched an
investigation of the agency's No. 3 officer and his ties to a
defense contractor accused of seeking to bribe former Rep. Randy
"Duke" Cunningham, according to current and former U.S.
intelligence officials. By Greg Miller.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ezE...Io30G2B0HLSZ0Ej

Negroponte's Battle for Authority

One test for Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte in his first year in office was how, as President Bush's top intelligence adviser, he would meet challenges to his authority that came from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0603/S00100.htm


Leopold: CIA Leak Path: Cheney, Libby, Woodward
Tuesday, 7 March 2006, 11:31 am
Opinion: Jason Leopold

CIA Leak Path: Cheney, Libby, Woodward

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030606Z.shtml
Monday 06 March 2006
In mid-June 2003, when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's criticism against the White House's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence started to make national headlines, Vice President Dick Cheney told his former chief of staff and close confidant I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to leak classified intelligence data on Iraq's nuclear ambitions to a legendary Washington journalist in order to undercut the charges made against the Bush administration by the former ambassador.

On June 27, 2003, Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, became the first journalist to whom Libby leaked a portion of the classified National Intelligence Estimate that purportedly showed how Iraq tried to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger.

This story is based on interviews with current and former administration officials who work or worked at the CIA, the State Department and the National Security Council. All of the individuals are familiar with the events that took place in the days that led up to Libby's meeting with Woodward and other journalists in which the NIE was discussed.

Woodward, currently an assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, did not return calls for comment. Leonard Downie, the executive editor of the Post, would not comment for this story. A spokeswoman for Cheney said she could not comment for this story, and attorneys for Libby did not return calls for comment.

Libby was indicted in October on five-counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife.

The leak of the NIE to Woodward was orchestrated by Cheney and Libby in mid-June 2003 in hopes that Woodward would write a story for the Washington Post that would contradict the assertions made by Wilson - that there was no truth to intelligence cited by the Bush administration on numerous occasions that Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger.

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Just two weeks earlier, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus wrote an article attacking the administration's use of the Niger uranium allegations in President Bush's January 28, 2003 State of the Union address. Pincus's article was based on an unnamed source - later learned to be Joseph Wilson - who called into question the veracity of the White House's use of the documents that supposedly proved Iraq sought uranium from Niger.

Cheney and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley led a campaign beginning in March 2003 to discredit Wilson, according to current and former State Department and CIA officials. Although the officials said they helped prepare negative information on Wilson about his personal and professional life and had given it to Libby and Cheney, Wilson seemed to drop off the radar once the Iraq war started on March 19, 2003.

With no sign of weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq, news accounts started to call into question the credibility of the administration's pre-war intelligence. In May 2003, Wilson re-emerged at a political conference in Washington sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. There he told the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff that he had been the special envoy who traveled to Niger in February 2002 to check out allegations that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the country. He told Kristoff that he briefed a CIA analyst that the claims were untrue. Wilson said he believed the administration had ignored his report and had been dishonest with Congress and the American people.

Then rumors started to swirl inside the Beltway in mid-June 2003 that Wilson would soon go public and reveal that he was tapped by the CIA to travel to Niger a year earlier to check out whether there was any truth to the intelligence that claimed Iraq tried to acquire uranium from the African country. He reported back to the CIA in March 2002 that the intelligence was bogus.

A day or two after Pincus's article was published in the Post, a meeting took place in Cheney's office to coordinate a response to the charges. In attendance were Libby, Cheney, and several other senior aides to the vice president as well as officials from the State Department, and the National Security Council.

It was then that Cheney decided the only way to counter Wilson's criticism was by having Libby leak portions of the NIE to a select group of reporters whose previous work in their respective publications had advanced the White House's political agenda.

For an administration that despises leaks, the decision by Cheney to declassify highly sensitive portions of the NIE and have his most trusted aide leak it to reporters in order to attack the former ambassador's credibility shows how personal the Wilson issue had become for the vice president.

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but the timing of an executive order signed by President Bush supposedly granting Cheney the authority to declassify such national security intelligence fits nicely into the time frame when he and his senior aides spearheaded a campaign to discredit Wilson.

The executive order was signed on March 23, 2003, four days after the start of the Iraq war, and two weeks after Wilson first appeared on the administration's radar.

In an interview with Fox News last month, Cheney said he had the legal authority to declassify intelligence as he saw fit. There is still strong debate about the interpretation of the executive order Cheney referred to that provided him with such power. Cheney's comments came on the heels of a disclosure Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made in a letter to defense attorneys representing Libby in the leak case.

In the letter, Fitzgerald said Libby testified before a grand jury that he was authorized by his "superiors" to leak portions of the NIE to journalists.

Woodward was first on deck. He met with Libby on June 27, 2003, in Libby's office next to the White House. A week or so earlier, Woodward met with two other government officials, one of whom told him in a "casual" and off-handed manner that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

Woodward said the meeting with Libby and the other government officials had been set up simply as "confidential background interviews for my 2004 book "Plan of Attack" about the lead-up to the Iraq war, ongoing reporting for the Washington Post and research for a book on Bush's second term to be published in 2006."

Woodward wrote a first-person account for the Washington Post after he gave sworn deposition to Fitzgerald about information he had learned about Valerie Plame Wilson. It was a shocking revelation at the time. Woodward had publicly discounted the importance of the Plame Wilson leak and had referred to Fitzgerald as a "junkyard dog" prosecutor. He then revealed in November that he had been told about Plame Wilson's CIA employment in June 2003 - before any other journalist.

In that first person account published in the Post, the Watergate-era journalist wrote that when he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, "Libby discussed the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, mentioned "yellowcake" and said there was an effort by the Iraqis to get it from Africa. It goes back to February '02. This was the time of Wilson's trip to Niger."

The information in the NIE about Niger was still considered highly classified and extremely sensitive, and although Woodward had been the recipient of classified information on other occasions during the course of gathering material for his books, the data he was provided with concerning the NIE had been authorized by Cheney in order to rebut Wilson. Woodward never wrote a story for the Post about the intelligence information he was given.

Libby also met with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, another Pulitzer Prize winner, and leaked the same portions of the NIE when questions were raised by Miller about Wilson's claims about the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence.

Miller and Woodward had been handpicked by Libby to receive the information contained in the NIE, sources familiar with the events that led up to the meetings said, and were urged by Libby to write stories to undercut Wilson's credibility by showing that the NIE disagreed with Wilson's claims.

Miller never wrote a story for the Time, either. She testified before a grand jury that Libby gave her information in the NIE concerning Iraq's attempt to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger.

In the meantime, while Libby had been leaking portions of the NIE in late June to back up the administration's use of the Niger claims, other officials from Cheney's office and the National Security Council had been speaking with a select group of journalists and had revealed Plame Wilson's identity.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson went public. A week later, his wife's name and covert status were published in newspaper reports.

In the interest of fairness, any individual named in this story who believes he has been portrayed unfairly will have the opportunity to use this space to respond.


*************
Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak invesigation, and will be a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.

CIA SUED OVER PREPUBLICATION REVIEW

A former Central Intelligence Agency employee, Thomas Waters Jr.,
filed a lawsuit against the Agency last week, arguing that publication
of his book had been improperly blocked in the prepublication review
process.

"The Central Intelligence Agency has unlawfully imposed a prior
restraint upon Thomas Waters by obstructing and infringing on his
right to publish his unclassified memoirs and threatening him with
civil and criminal penalties," according to the March 3 complaint
filed in DC District Court.

The case seems to reflect the tightening of controls on public
disclosure of information at the CIA.

Almost all of Waters' manuscript had been cleared for publication by
the CIA in September 2004, according to the complaint. But last
month, the Agency notified him that substantial portions of the book,
including some material that had previously been approved, could not
be published after all.

"The CIA continues to deliberately create a hostile environment for its
former employees who are seeking to do nothing other than publish
nonsensitive, unclassified information," said Mark S. Zaid, Waters'
attorney. "Its actions are completely unconstitutional and designed
to disable the First Amendment."

A news release about the case may be found here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/03/waters.html

The March 3 complaint in Waters v. CIA is posted here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/waters030306.pdf

See also "CIA Sued Over Right to Publish" by Shaun Waterman, United
Press International, March 6:

http://tinyurl.com/z86kk

CIA Fights Libby's Request for Information
By TONI LOCY, Associated Press Writer

The CIA signaled Tuesday it likely will fight the release of highly classified presidential intelligence briefings that Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide wants to use in his defense against perjury charges.

Gathering the materials sought by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, would take up to nine months, Marilyn Dorn, a CIA information review officer, said in a sworn statement filed in U.S. District Court.

Dorn said the CIA believes disclosure of the information would damage national security and wants a chance to be heard in court before any material is turned over to Libby, who is charged with lying in the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

"The defense's requests clearly implicate highly classified, compartmentalized information and potential claims of executive privilege for presidential communications and the deliberative process," Dorn wrote.

"Compartmentalized" information requires a special security clearance, meaning the CIA could not assign just anyone to help gather the material Libby's lawyers want, Dorn said.

Dorn's affidavit was filed under seal last Friday but made public Tuesday.

Libby, 55, was indicted last year on charges that he lied to the FBI and a federal grand jury about how he learned the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame and when he subsequently told reporters.

Lawyers for Libby want access to nearly a year of the President's Daily Brief, a summary of intelligence about threats against the United States. Dorn estimated it would take nine months for the small staff responsible for producing the intelligence briefing to assemble the material.

But Dorn estimated it would take about three months to comply with a more streamlined request of about 40 days of the briefings that U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton suggested. That period would cover when Libby allegedly spoke to three reporters, along with two days before and after he was interviewed by FBI agents and testified before the grand jury.

"While the size of the task would be reduced if the time periods were restricted, the process is nevertheless time-consuming and laborious," Dorn said.

Walton, in an effort to try to give the defense some of what it says it needs, suggested that the CIA determine whether it could provide summaries of the briefings Libby received six days a week, often along with Cheney.

But Dorn warned the judge that summaries pose as grave a danger to national security as turning over the actual reports.

"Referring to the topics ... even in an abstracted or generalized manner presents the same concerns about disclosure of classified information," she wrote. "The very fact that these topics were presented to the president discloses sensitive information concerning U.S. intelligence and policy priorities."

The defense lawyers said they need all of the briefings to show that Libby was busy with important national security matters and may have forgotten or remembered incorrectly what he had said to reporters about Plame.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald opposed the request, calling it "simply breathtaking," and accused the defense of trying to derail the case.

In seeking the middle ground, Walton appears to be trying to avoid a showdown with President Bush over access to the documents.

But Dorn suggested there is no middle ground. "Any disclosure ... beyond its intended narrow audience — the president and his most senior advisers — increases the possibility of damage to the national security," she wrote.

Libby usually received intelligence briefings with Cheney. But, sometimes, Dorn said, the CIA told Cheney things it did not tell Libby.

Frequently, she said, Libby received more information than Cheney because Libby often asked the CIA additional questions.

The CIA official who briefed Libby learned to "customize" the report by including additional information in anticipation of the former White House aide's questions, Dorn said.

"As a result, the briefing provided to Mr. Libby on any given day usually differed from, and only rarely would have been identical to, the briefing provided to the vice president and the president," Dorn wrote.



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