Intelligence Agencies: harsh techniques are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable

May 30, 2007
Intelligence Agencies: harsh techniques are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable

WASHINGTON, May 29 — As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.

Ghost Prisons, Ghost Courtrooms

March 25, 2007
Ghost Prisons, Ghost Courtrooms

"What are we going to do with these people when we're finished . . . with them? Are they going to disappear?"
Jack Cloonan, senior FBI agent on the Bin Laden Squad, speaking of the terrorism suspects hidden in CIA secret cells, Nightline, May 13, 2004.

On September 17, 2001, the president told the National Security Council that, at the advice of then CIA director George Tenet (who was later awarded the Medal of Freedom by the president) he was going to issue a classified Memorandum of Notification that would give the CIA permission to use "special authorities to detain Al Qaeda operatives worldwide."

Without consulting Congress or any court, Bush had given the CIA the power to ignore American laws and our international treaty obligations to—among other war crimes under the Geneva Conventions—create its own secret prisons around the world. The CIA could also continue to conduct "renditions" to kidnap terrorism suspects to be interrogated in countries known for torturing their prisoners.

CIA and torture

MARCH 29 - APRIL 4, 2007
CIA and torture

When the world trade center crumbled in 2001, so did America's commitment to the Geneva Convention and its pledge not to use torture against its enemies.

Following that horrible fall day six years ago, CIA planes began delivering suspected al Qaeda operatives to countries that use torture as an everyday investigative tool.

The story of how the United States began ferrying prisoners to totalitarian regimes, including Syria, which it says has ties to international terrorism itself, is brilliantly told in Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane.

Washington's Covert War inside Iran

March 23, 2007
Washington's Covert War inside Iran

The provision of aid to anti-government forces offers certain advantages to the Bush Administration. No effort needs to be expended in winning support for the policy. Operations can be conducted away from the public eye during a time of growing domestic opposition to the war in Iraq, and international opinion is simply irrelevant where the facts are not well known. In terms of expenditures, covert operations are a cost-effective means for destabilizing a nation, relative to waging war.

According to a former CIA official, funding for armed separatist groups operating in Iran is paid from the CIA's classified budget. The aim, claims Fred Burton, an ex-State Department counter-terrorism agent, is "to supply and train" these groups "to destabilize the Iranian regime." (1)

The largest and most well known of the anti-government organizations is Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), operating out of Iraq. For years MEQ had launched cross-border attacks and terrorist acts against Iran with the support of Saddam Hussein. Officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 1997, and disarmed of heavy weaponry by the U.S. military six years later, Washington has since come to view MEK in a different light. Three years ago, U.S. intelligence officials suggested looking the other way as the MEK rearmed and to use the organization to destabilize Iran, a recommendation that clearly has been accepted. (2)

Day in Court Denied for Victim of CIA Kidnapping and Rendition

March 3, 2007
Day in Court Denied for Victim of CIA Kidnapping and Rendition

NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that it will continue to pursue a fair hearing for Khaled El-Masri, a victim of the CIA policy of illegal abduction and detention known as extraordinary rendition. The ACLU said that the government is abusing the state secrets privilege to cover up its kidnapping and torture of an innocent man.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied El-Masri access to justice yesterday because, according to the court, the simple fact of holding proceedings would jeopardize state secrets, a position advanced by the CIA.

"The court's decision gives the government a blank check to shield even its most shameful conduct from any scrutiny or accountability," said Ben Wizner, an attorney with the ACLU. "Depriving Khaled El-Masri of his day in court on the ground that the government cannot disclose facts that the whole world already knows only compounds the brutal treatment he endured."

Italy Indicts 26 Americans in C.I.A. Abduction Case

February 16, 2007
Italy Indicts 26 Americans in C.I.A. Abduction Case

ROME, Feb. 16 — An Italian judge today ordered the first trial involving the American program of kidnapping terror suspects on foreign soil, indicting 26 Americans, most of them C.I.A. agents, but also Italy's former top spy.

The indictments covered the episode in which a radical Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who disappeared near his mosque in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, says he was kidnapped. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, was freed this week from jail in Egypt, where he says he was taken and then tortured.

Ex-Agent Ties Firing to CIA Pressure on WMD

February 10, 2007
Ex-Agent Ties Firing to CIA Pressure on WMD

A federal judge has ruled that a CIA agent identified only as "Doe," allegedly fired after he gathered prewar intelligence showing that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction, can proceed with his lawsuit against the CIA. The judge has ordered both parties to submit discovery requests–evidence they want for their case–to be completed by March 15, according to the CIA agent's lawyer and a spokesman for the Justice Department, which is defending the CIA in court.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued her ruling after what Doe's attorney, Roy Krieger, described as an extraordinary, secret status conference by telephone this afternoon that lasted nearly a half an hour. So concerned was the CIA about the agent's identity becoming public that the Justice Department prevailed upon the judge to issue a highly restrictive order regarding press contacts by the agent and Krieger. The order barred them from "requesting, allowing, encouraging, or directing" any members of the media from appearing at Krieger's office or even
within a two-block vicinity of the building where he works or of any other location of the status conference, until two hours after the conference was completed.

Intelligence agencies disagreed with many of its prewar findings

February 10, 2007
Intelligence agencies disagreed with many of its prewar findings

WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration began assembling its case for war, analysts across the U.S. intelligence community were disturbed by the report of a secretive Pentagon team that concluded Iraq had significant ties to Al Qaeda.

Analysts from the CIA and other agencies "disagreed with more than 50%" of 26 findings the Pentagon team laid out in a controversial paper, according to testimony Friday from Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general of the Pentagon.

13 CIA operatives charged

February 1, 2007
13 CIA operatives charged

BERLIN - The CIA's clandestine program of abducting terror suspects and taking them to secret sites for interrogation unraveled further Wednesday as German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 agency operatives in the kidnapping of a German citizen in the Balkans in December 2003.

The case is the second in which European prosecutors have filed charges against CIA employees involved in counterterrorism operations. Italian prosecutors have charged 25 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force officer with kidnapping a radical cleric on a Milan street in 2003 and taking him to Cairo, where he claims he was tortured.