The bin Laden Seal Team was prepared to fight their way out of Pakistan

In an interesting article the New York Times today wrote

WASHINGTON — President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said Monday.

In revealing additional details about planning for the mission, senior officials also said that two teams of specialists were on standby: One to bury Bin Laden if he was killed, and a second composed of lawyers, interrogators and translators in case he was captured alive. That team was set to meet aboard a Navy ship, most likely the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea.

Mr. Obama’s decision to increase the size of the force sent into Pakistan shows that he was willing to risk a military confrontation with a close ally in order to capture or kill the leader of Al Qaeda.

Add this to the fact that Pakistan was not trusted with the news that American troops were going into Abbotabad to get bin Laden and that someone in Pakistan has released the name of the U.S. CIA chief of station in Pakistan to the local press in retaliation for the raid on Abbotabad and it's pretty clear that Pakistan and the U.S. are not on very good terms right now.

Very probably this demonstrates that there are major elements inside Pakistan who support the Taliban and al Qaeda and oppose the U.S. The government of Pakistan does not fully control Pakistan so it does not speak consistently.

A glimpse into the U.S. - Pakistan relationship

Remember Raymond Davis, the "consular employee" in Pakistan who was arrested and is being held by the Pakistanis for killing two armed individuals who apparently tried to kill him? Obviously it is a lot more complicated than that snippet of a story. It is at the core of the very explosive set of disagreements between the United States and Pakistan. emptywheel at firedoglake has an excellent analysis of what has recently been published on the subject.

Davis appears to be a spy of some sort, perhaps a contractor but now claimed by the CIA in Pakistan. Were the two men he shot security agents from the Pakistani ISI? Was Davis collecting targeting information on the Taliban in Northwest Pakistan? Was there a connection between the fact that American drone strikes in North Waziristan ended four days before the shooting Davis was involved in? Did John Kerry really ferry Davis' backup team out of Pakistan when Kerry returned from Pakistan? Those individuals were apparently supposed to protect or rescue Davis and failed to do so. According to ABC they are now back in the U.S. and the Pakistani authorities really want them.

For details go read emptywheel's article. It doesn't have all the answers, but it brings to light a lot of very interesting questions.The commenters add a great deal more information.

The Pakistani ISI it part of the South Asia problem

The recent problem in which the American CIA station chief in Islamabad was "outed" and forced to leave the country, probably by members of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, is just part of the South Asia problem. The arrest and convictions of David Coleman Headley, an American who participated in the Mumbai terror attack, has provided a great deal more information about the relationship between the Pakistani ISI and the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistan's powerful intelligence service has been accused for years of playing a "double game:" acting as a front-line U.S. ally in the fight against terror while supporting selected terrorist groups which serve Pakistani interests.

Now, for the first time, there is a detailed inside account of how that game is played. The U.S. investigation of the 2008 Mumbai attacks [1] has built a strong case that officers in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) collaborated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group in the plot that killed 166 people, six of them Americans. U.S. and Indian investigators say their understanding of the ISI-Lashkar alliance is drawn from the confessions of David Coleman Headley, an American convicted of participating in the Mumbai plot, as well as documents, phone records and electronic eavesdropping.

Officials from both countries say they are persuaded that ISI officers recruited and trained Headley in spying techniques and gave him money and instructions to scout targets in Mumbai and elsewhere. Headley has told investigators that a Pakistani Navy frogman helped plan the maritime attack on Mumbai, according to a 119-page report recounting his interrogation this year by Indian authorities. The report, which was obtained by ProPublica, quotes Headley as saying his Pakistani intelligence handler took part in a discussion about a subsequent Lashkar plot to attack a Danish newspaper -- information that Pakistan did not share with Danish authorities.

In essence, U.S. and Indian officials say, Headley was more than a terrorist: He served as a Pakistani spy.

During the period that ISI officers allegedly helped Lashkar plan to kill Americans and Jews in Mumbai, the intelligence service was working closely with the CIA and U.S. military in counter-terrorism efforts and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was pledging his support for the U.S. campaign against militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials deny any link to Lashkar and point out that hundreds of ISI officers have died in clashes with militants. They accuse India of politically motivated distortion in the report on Headley's interrogation.

"It is a stereotype, a Pakistan-specific version of an Indian interrogation," said a Pakistani official who requested anonymity because of the sensitive topic. "The Indian version is totally distorted and fabricated as there was no involvement of the ISI whatsoever. Nor did any serving official interact with Headley or any of the perpetrators."

But U.S. investigators see much of Headley's account as credible, U.S. officials said. The investigators believe his main handler, a man identified only as Major Iqbal, was a serving member of ISI and one of several Pakistani intelligence officers who had contact with Headley, according to U.S. officials.

The Obama administration has expressed frustration with Pakistan's failure to bring to justice the suspected masterminds of Mumbai and to rein in Lashkar, the ISI's longtime proxy army against India. Recent intelligence shows Lashkar remains intent on striking the West, according to a U.S. official who requested anonymity.

While the civilian government of Pakistan denies that the ISI was involved in the attack on Mumbai, their denial has to be recognized as necessary because if they failed to deny the ISI involvement then they would be admitting that the Pakistan government is so weak that it cannot prevent rogue elements of the ISI from attacking Pakistan's neighboring countries. Admission of that weakness could easily attract internal opponents to try to replace them. The same dynamic applies to the public complaints the government makes about the American drone strikes against the Taliban in North Wiziristan even though elements of the government are said to be providing targeting information to the Americans in order to guide the drone attacks.

My previous articles on Pakistan are

• CIA Chief in Islamabad reportedly exposed by Pakistani ISI
• US reported to be considering expanding operations inside Pakistan

US reported to be considering expanding operations inside Pakistan

Reuters reports that U.S. Commanders are considering expanding U.S. special operations activities inside Pakistan..

The U.S. troops in Afghanistan are reported to be gaining control over previously Taliban controlled portions of Afghanistan, but Taliban leaders and fighters have a reasonably safe sanctuary inside neighboring Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is not going after those Taliban, so U.S. commanders are talking of doing it themselves.

The following analysis is mine. As indicated in the previous post, I have no credentials that give me any special qualifications to perform this analysis, nor do I have an information that I have not provided links to in this and the previous post.

The leak of the identity of the U.S. CIA station chief in Islamabad may have been the initial public example of the battle between the CIA and the ISI. The Pakistan government over the weekend denied that the ISI had anything to do with that leak, but what would they say? We did it?? It seems reasonable that the leak that led Reuters to post this report is the next stage in bringing that conflict into the public and putting additional public pressure on the ISI, the Pakistani military and on the Pakistan government.

As indicated in today's Reuters story, the U.S. and its NATO allies are all discussing leaving Afghanistan beginning next Summer. But as long as the Taliban leaders are sitting fat, dumb and happy in Pakistan next door and the Afghanistan government cannot control anything outside of Kabul then for the U.S. and NATO to leave means the Taliban will swoop in and regain control over all the territory they had previously held. Unless...

An escalation on the weak point in the battle for Afghanistan - Pakistan - is a very rational move to be making at this time. Either the U.S, will have to carry out the threat to go into Pakistan or the Pakistanis are going to have to clean out the Taliban on their territory themselves.

The next step in this will happen quite soon. No telling what it is or what we will see in the media, but it has to happen soon.

CIA Chief in Islamabad reportedly exposed by Pakistani ISI

The Indian English-language on-line newspaper The Hindu today reported that the CIA station chief in Islamabad had to leave Pakistan in a hurry because his cover was blown. The leak was suspected to have come from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Jonathan Banks was identified as the head of the CIA’s Pakistan office, in a lawsuit filed against the United States’ secretive spy agency by a resident of North Waziristan. The resident, Kareem Khan, was said to have filed the case against the CIA and Mr. Banks for their role in organising drone strikes that killed his son and brother.

The legal case brought by Mr. Khan called for murder charges to be brought against Mr. Banks and the CIA, and also reportedly said they should be executed for their crimes. Mr. Khan’s lawyer was quoted by the Guardian saying he had obtained Mr. Banks’ name from Pakistani journalists.

While Pakistan was quick to deny any involvement in leaking Mr. Banks’ name, U.S. officials were quoted as saying that since he had been identified publicly Mr. Banks “had received a number of death threats,” and they “strongly suspected” that the ISI had a hand in the leak.

[...]

Intelligence officers here were also quoted by the New York Times as saying that the leak may have been in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in New York City last month implicating the ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha in the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.

The incident laid bare the deep and growing mistrust between the U.S. and Pakistani spy agencies even as U.S. President Barack Obama made a speech this week in which he warned that “terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with.”

That's the news as reported from India. I am no expert on Pakistan, but my reading of news reports over recent years has often included statements that the Taliban in Afghanistan was a creation of elements of the ISI and that some elements of the ISI still support the Taliban.

The removal of the military dictator Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan in 2008 allowed a civilian government to be put into place and returned Pakistan to more of a nation under the rule of law. But the civilian heads of government do not appear to have control of all elements of the government and certainly do not have control of all of the territory that is generally recognized as part of the nation of Pakistan. Politically, from what I can tell Pakistan has both a strong fear of its neighbors, resulting in a demand for military power, but that the same time a surprisingly strong desire for a democracy operating under the rule of law.

The core of the problem is often described in the American media as centered on the conflict between Pakistan and India over control of the disputed the state of Kashmir. A quick review of the Wikipedia article on Pakistan suggests that is much too simplistic. In the period since Pakistan became independent in 1947 that nation has constantly been at war or defending its borders on all sides. Briefly, during this period Pakistan has fought wars against India, against China and has fought against aggression from Afghanistan. It is no surprise then that Pakistan has the 7th largest military in the world. Nor should it be a surprise that the ISI would set up and support the Taliban to weaken any Afghanistan government. A strong government in Afghanistan would appear to threaten Pakistan. Since Pakistan faces both China and India on other borders it would be very much to their military advantage to ensure that Afghanistan remains militarily weak and politically divided. However, the Taliban in the Province of Wizirastan are reported to be a threat to the civilian government of Pakistan. The military elements of Pakistan may not consider the Taliban as much of a threat. Since the Taliban are religious extremists, they are unlikely to have much interest in a secular government under the rule of law.

Then there are Pakistan's nuclear weapons. In the threatening neighborhood where Pakistan exists it is no surprise that they would do almost anything to become stronger in a military sense. From the point of view of their neighbors, though, the threat of a nuclear war between Pakistan and India is unthinkably dangerous. (That's assuming such a war would not create a world-wide nuclear winter.) America considers the control of those nuclear weapons by the religious extremist terrorists of the Taliban or al Qaeda to be unthinkable. That remains a major motivation for America to continue to fight against the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and using drone attacks, inside nominally Pakistani territory. Since those drone attacks display the weakness of the current government as well as the inability of the Pakistani military to control the Taliban reliably but at the same time but at the same time weaken the Taliban in Pakistan the mostly negative public response to those attacks is quite reasonable. A government publicly known to be weak draws attackers.

With all of these threats to Pakistan what is really surprising is the effort the Pakistanis are putting into recreating and maintaining a democracy that operates under the rule of law. But the fear of attack from any of their neighbors is very likely a major cause of the weakness of the civilian government since that fear encourages people who want to return to a military-controlled government. That fear also strengthens extremist religious factions, to include those focused on the dispute over Kashmir. So it is organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba which planned and conducted the Terror attack on Mumbai, India in 2008. It seems very likely that Lashkar-e-Taiba has support from some of the military factions inside the Pakistani government and from significant elements of the public.

In short, the entire region including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Northern India and Southwestern China is politically highly unstable. The instability makes it susceptible to disruption by religious extremists, but it is the political instability that is creating and attracting the religious extremists and allowing them to operate. The religious extremists are a symptom of the problems rather than their cause.

That said, elements of the ISI which dislike the interference by the Americans (who for the most part seem to not understand the situation) are unsurprisingly upset about the American drone attacks on elements of the Taliban operating inside Pakistan. Leaking the identity of the Islamabad CIA station chief looks a lot like a statement from Pakistani hardliners to the Amricans to tell them to back off their pressures.

The recent death of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke who reputedly understood this part of the world may leave American diplomacy in the hands of conservative Ugly Americans who think that American military power can solve such problems. Whether that is the case or not, it certainly reflects the reputation that Americans in Asia have had as being ignorant ham-handed clueless cowboys since the Vietnam era.

This is a highly speculative article based on news reports, Wikipedia and my own unresearched opinions. The statement in The Hindu stating that the CIA chief in Islamabad has quickly left Pakistan is probably reasonably accurate. The attribution of the leak to the ISI seems reasonable, but doesn't have the same likelihood of being true since the source is not attributed. The rest of this is a collection of facts from Wikipedia (the history found there is probably quite accurate) and my speculations built on those reported facts. We all know that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, but it usually provides a decent overview of any subject.

Anyone who has better information is requested to leave a comment.

A few items of interest from over the weekend

• Juan Cole says that the al-Maliki government and the new Iraqi military were able to successfully shepherd large numbers of Shiite pilgrims through a pilgrimage over the weekend without a major terrorist bombing to disrupt it. That may suggest that Obama's plan to withdraw American troops from Iraq soon can work - if the relations of the Kurds to the north with the rest of Iraq don't blow up in the meantime.
  


• Juan Cole also reports that the political battle between the Iranian hardliners and the more moderate groups who have opposed the recent (stolen?) reelection of Ahmadinejad continues as the hardliners slam Rafsanjani. This followed Rafsanjani's Friday sermon which encouraged continued resistance against the hardliners.
  
• From Ben Katcher at the Washington Note we learn of the potential competition between Iran and Russia to provide natural gas to Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Austria and Hungary. This highlights the rather complicated relationship between Russia and Iran. The proposed 2,050 mile natural gas pipeline that aims to diversify Europe's gas supplies away from Russia has interesting political as well as economic ramifications for the entire middle east and eastern Europe. Here is Katcher's view of how it looks from Russia's point of view:

  Russia perceives Iran as both a tactical ally against the United States and as a strategic competitor as an energy supplier to Europe. Russia fears that a rapprochement between the United States and Iran would open Iran's energy markets and threaten Russia's dominant position as Europe's primary natural gas supplier.

  
  


• Faith Smith writes an interesting article in the Washington Note on the conflict between the Chinese Communist Government and the Uighur population in Xinjiang province. Here is a key insight in her article

  "Fundamentally, the Chinese Communist Party, which was founded on materialist principles and encourages atheism among its members, doesn't understand religion. Its leaders see every non-state-supervised religious gathering, or attempt to impart values to children, as a potential threat to their political authority."
  
  This immense lack of understanding has led the Chinese government to create a threat where one previously did not exist and an enemy out of a traditionally peaceful people.

  That same insight would seem to also apply to Tibet. Could it be generalized to apply to any ideology or religious doctrine attempting to run a government over a culturally non-homogeneous population? Enforcing a doctrine or ideology seems to cause a government to abandon the most important basic function of any government. That function is to provide peace and stability to the population it governs.
  
  Any government which does not provide peace and stability will inevitably face threats to its existence. The normal government reaction to those threats will be authoritarian actions unless it abandons its efforts to enforce the doctrine or ideology. If it does not abandon those efforts the threats will continue and grow until that government is replaced by another. The biggest advantage of democracy is that it provides non-violent methods for replacing such a failed government.
  


• Sunday the Washington Post published an interesting article on the early stages of the development of torture techniques used by the CIA during the Bush administration. The article highlights the role of contractors, particularly James E. Mitchell, a retired clinical psychologist for the Air Force and John "Bruce" Jessen,another former CIA contractor. The two of them were important in developing the interrogation policies the CIA used. But at least equally important if not more so was the constant pressure from Langley saying in essence "You aren't getting enough Intelligence. If there is another terrorist attack you will be responsible. Get tougher and get more Intelligence."
  
  This isn't stated in the article, but it is certainly implied. The reported pressure from Langley almost certainly originated in Cheney's Vice Presidential office and was transmitted through the political appointees that Cheney had placed in the CIA when he was running the staffing function at the time of the transition from the Clinton White House to the Bush White House.
  

Re: Pelosi torture briefing - so what?

There's been a lot of talk, primarily by right-wingers who want to defend their support of the use of torture on captives, that then minority leader Nancy Pelosi was somehow briefed that the CIA was using maybe planned to use enhanced questioning techniques to get Intelligence about terrorists and proposed terrorism acts.

Vicki Divoll [*], in an OpEd published in the New York Times, points out that there is no legally constituted body called "The Gang of Four" to begin with. Even assuming that the CIA did actually honestly brief Rep. Pelosi about the proposed use of waterboarding (it's not at all certain that they did) she was restricted from telling any of her colleagues about it. What was she supposed to do with the information if it was actually given to her?

The Constitution gives "...aggregate, not individual, powers to the legislative branch." The minority leader is relatively powerless in the first place. With the restrictions placed on communicating any information actually provided to any other member of Congress, there was nothing she could have done.

I'd also point out that there is no way of showing that the CIA actually told her anything. The so-called memo does not have any credibility since the CIA does not present the person who wrote it and placed it in the files. That could easily have been done last week, and with the CIA very invested in deflecting blame from themselves and also with the CIA populated by people whose normal job description includes large measures lying to the various publics to manipulate political responses, they are innately under suspicion. The fact that Sen. Mel Martinez also says he was not briefed on the use of actual torture techniques adds credibility to Rep. Nancy Pelosi's denial that she was briefed.

But the while the fact that Nancy Pelosi was briefed in a timely manner on the use of torture techniques by the CIA is very much in doubt, that doesn't matter. With the restrictions on her communication to other in Congress even if she was briefed, there was nothing she had any power to do with the information. The whole issue is right-wing deflection of blame from anyone who actually is responsible to someone else who could not have been responsible.

The real question is whether there was a crime committed (almost certain) and if so, who might be prosecuted for such a crime (less certain.)

A second and perhaps even more important question, as become whether Dick Cheney and his evil twin, David Addington, were actually attempting to justify the then proposed invasion of Iraq by torturing false confessions that purported to prove a link between Sadaam Hussein and al Qaeda. It is now well-known that torture does not elicit useful Intelligence. It instead forces the victim of torture to say whatever the torturer wants to hear just to make the torture stop. So while torture is effectively useless as an Intelligence-gathering tool, it is excellent for creating false confessions that can be used to justify actions the torturer wants the public to support.

It now appears that Dick Cheney's defense of torture as a way of gathering Intelligence is actually a cover-up of his office's pressure to torture confessions that justified Cheney's belief that Sadaam was allied with al Qaeda and had nuclear weapons. That makes the torture of prisoners at his clear direction the equivalent of the discredited "Italian Letter" that purported to show that Iraq was getting Yellow cake unranium to build nukes. In fact, the next question that should be revived was whether Ahmed Chalibi was the point-man who the Iranians used to run a highly successful Intelligence scam on Dick Cheney and his right-wing allies like the columnists/propagandists Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer.

Compared to all these real questions, the idea that because Nancy Pelosi might have been briefed on the CIA's use of torture techniques is nothing more than an irrelevant distraction. It is pure right-wing propaganda designed and pushed to prevent the real criminals from being identified and punished.

[*] Vicki Divoli is former CIA CTC deputy general counsel. She knows what she is talking about.

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Laura Rozen has a very good analysis of all the events that have led to the current attacks on Nancy Pelosi and to her spirited pushback. The entire briefing process and its misuse and the lies apparently told by the CIA go back to the office of the Vice President and Dick Cheney.

On Panetta as CIA Director

TPM is all over the designation by the Obama transition team of Leon Panetta as CIA Director. It is surprising. He is NOT an intelligence professional. However, he is well known as a guy who gets things done, having been Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff after being a successful California congressman.

The choice came out of left field to almost everyone. Interestingly, the incoming Senate Intel Committee Chairwoman, Diane Feinstein, and the outgoing SSCI Chairman, Jay Rockefeller, both stated that they had not been informed of Panetta's selection. Feinstein has hinted that she might oppose Panetta for the CIA job. This failure to contact the current and prior chairs of the Senate Intel Committee has led to speculation that the Obama transition team made a uncharacteristic protocol error.

However, the Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden, a less senior member of the committee, states that he WAS informed of the selection in advance. This strongly suggests that not informing Feinstein and Rockerfeller in advance was not a simple oversight. If not, then what could have motivated the transition team to skip a simple phone call?

Don't you just love inside politics?

A retired Intelligence professional took the time to write Josh Marshall an email that gave his opinion of what is going on. Josh published it here. His opinion is that Feinstein did not want the CIA Director to be someone who had his own wide network of independent power base of political supporters as Panetta clearly does. She would have a great deal of control over an intel professional who had risen to become CIA Director, but a lot less control over someone with broad outside support like Panetta. This would explain both the failure to call her and her sour comments on his designation as Obama's choice.

The emailer goes on to state that the big issue for the incoming CIA Director was going to be whether the CIA was focused on providing immediate tactical intelligence to the troops on the ground, or if it was going to be refocused to provide strategic intelligence to the President as the agency was originally designed to do. In the last decade and a half many agencies in the Intelligence Community have greatly expanded their ability to provide tactical intelligence, but the funds at CIA have been prioritized to support that effort, leaving strategic Intel for the President lacking.

There is also the issue that with General Jones as National Security Advisor and Blair as Director of National Intelligence, the entire Intelligence Community is being focused on the Military. He calls it "the [continuing] militarization of intelligence." Panetta will bring a civilian orientation in at the top.

I find the emailer's comments rather persuasive. The ex-White House Chief of Staff was certainly in a position to know what Intelligence the President needed and at the same time what he was getting. If that's the direction the CIA is to be reoriented towards, Panetta is an inspired choice. It doesn't appear that the CIA has yet fully broken the blinders of being totally focused on the USSR, and now America's problems are found in many other parts of the world.

The CIA has suffered a lot of blame for what the Bush administration has done, and its reputation is definitely down at this time. (While I don't think the CIA was blameless, an awful lot was the Bush administration blaming the CIA for Bush's failure to manage the government well.) Panetta's appointment, with his broad political base, should also help the agency to recover a lot of its reputation.

Still, the Panetta hearings in the Senate are going to be interesting.

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Addendum 11:04 am -- Just a thought.

Rockefeller is leaving the SSCI. Why is he upset about the proposed appointment of Panetta to the CIA? He's not losing any power.

My first reaction is that Rockefeller got the nickname of "Jello Jay" for so frequently caving to the right wing on important issues. What if Panetta surfaces evidence that Rockefeller was in the Administration's pocket and was directly responsible for encouraging, permitting or approving war crimes? With an intel professional with no outside-the-agency base of power as Director, Diane Feinstein could rather easily cover up such problems for Rockefeller. As the Senate Democrat's treatment of Joe Lieberman shows, the Senate Democrats do that a lot. She'll have a lot less such control over Panetta.

Or Panetta may just want to cut or redirect some of Rockefeller's pet programs, and again will be less subject to control.

With Panetta in that office it might just come out why Rockefeller so rarely supported Democratic positions when he was Chairman or Ranking Member. That has always been a puzzle.

Foggo's plea agreement left CIA with a sigh of relief

Frankly, financial melt-down is getting to be a drag. Fortunately, the Bush administration is such a total disaster that there are a lot of interesting pieces of Bush-related crap to distract us from the bail-out. Laura Rozen has been kind enough to provide a particularly juicy story out of the CIA. On Monday Dusty Foggo, the number three manager of the CIA under Porter Goss, pled guilty to wire fraud instead of airing the CIA's dirty laundry about "Duke" Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, and his boss, Porter Goss, in public in a federal court.

As court documents laid out in 28 charges, the man known to colleagues as "Dusty," a former logistics officer, served as the CIA's number three official and effectively day to day manager when he badgered the Agency to hire one of his mistresses, identified in the indictment as "E.R.": "On or about March 19, 2005," the indictment reads, "Foggo sent the CIA Acting General Counsel an email stating, in part, that his staff would tag E.R.'s conditional offer of employment as 'ExDir Interest' in order to 'zip her to the top of the pile.'" (E.R. was indeed hired, to a new position Foggo created—deputy director of administration. "ExDir" refers to Foggo's position as CIA Executive Director.)

Foggo's generosity extended beyond his girlfriend: He also, according to the indictment, engineered the hiring of his best childhood friend's company for a CIA contract to provide bottled water to staff in Iraq at a 60 percent price markup over the offer of another contractor (who, under the deal worked out by Foggo, was hired as the subcontractor to actually perform the work). He was frequently dealt into a weekly poker game at various memorable Washington hotels (the Watergate was one) popular with congressmen such as Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), lobbyists, and House intelligence committee staff members; as well as—according to other court documents—prostitutes. That childhood friend, Brent Wilkes, also turned out to be among two defense contractors bribing House intelligence committee member Duke Cunningham with tens of thousands of dollars in antiques, travel, fancy meals, house payments, and hookers in exchange for earmarks steering more than $100 million worth of government contracts to Wilkes' San Diego-based firm, ADCS.

But it wasn't the hookers, the card games, the water contract, or even the staff mistress that concerned the Agency's executives when Foggo spared them by entering a guilty plea on a single count of wire fraud Monday. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop the 27 other charges and requested only three years prison time out of the 20 Foggo could have faced. ("Your lawyers did a good job for you," US District judge James C. Cacheris told Foggo after he accepted his guilty plea, with evident understatement.)

No, what truly worried Agency brass were the darker secrets their former top logistics officer was threatening to spill had his case gone to trial as scheduled on November 3. They included the massive contracts Foggo was discussing with Wilkes, estimated by one source at over $300 million dollars. "Wilkes was working on several other huge deals when the hammer fell," a source familiar with Foggo's discussions with Wilkes told me. What kinds of deals? According to the source, they included creating and running a secret plane network, for whatever needs the CIA has for secret planes now that the network it used for extraordinary rendition flights has been outed. "In or about December 2004," the Foggo indictment says, "Foggo discussed with Wilkes and J.C. the idea that Foggo might be able to get Wilkes a classified government contract to supply air support services to the CIA…. In or about January 2005, Wilkes directed various ADCS employees to begin developing an air support proposal that would be designed to answer the CIA's classified needs as outlined by Foggo."

The indictment continues: "On or about February 3, 2005, an employee of Wilkes' corporation emailed J.C. with an offer to update him on their work developing the air support proposal. …" (J.C., the indictment explains, is Wilkes' nephew, whom I've identified as Joel G. Combs, the nominal head of a Wilkes' front company, Archer Logistics.) The "classified air support contract" and its implied purposes for renditions are among the truly damaging national security secrets, along with the methods the CIA uses to create front companies and dole out black contracts, that the CIA and Bush White House would have been anxious not to have exposed, especially in a trial set to take place the day before the election in a suburban DC courtroom within a ten-minute drive of the entire national security press corps.

Needless to say the CIA is heaving a great sigh of relief. The only real loss is that individuals like myself who are curious about the processes the CIA uses to perform its Intelligence magic will not have all the dirty laundry to root through. But no doubt the CIA management has a lot of better things to do that keep those of us spy story junkies who are interested in Intelligence procedures entertained.

(Laura Rozen has another interesting article here providing some interesting gossip about her reporting on the Foggo story.)

More support for Ron Suskind's accusations that the CIA planted the Habash Letter at the direction of the White House

Joe Conason has stepped into the issue of whether the Bush administration (Cheney) directed the CIA to create and plant the forged Habash Letter to justify the invasion of Iraq just as the administration's earlier lies were falling apart. Joe points to the evidence that supports Ron Suskind's story.

The letter itself was handed by Ayad Allawi to the Sunday Telegraph's foreign editor and Chief MidEast reporter, Con Coughlin. Allawi is well known to be a paid operator who worked for years for the CIA, while Coughlin is known to be a source of a lot of NeoCon claptrap that has appeared in print over the years.

Specifically, Allawi was a longtime asset of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had funded his struggle against Saddam for years prior to the invasion. His CIA sponsorship is noted in nearly every news article about Allawi, usually contrasted with the Pentagon sponsorship of his political rival, Ahmed Chalabi, the infamous fabricator of WMD intelligence (and suspected double agent for Iran).

And where was Allawi right before Coughlin broke the story of the Habash Letter?

On Dec. 11, 2003 -- three days before the Telegraph launched its "exclusive" on the Habbush memo -- the Washington Post published an article by Dana Priest and Robin Wright headlined "Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. to Stem Attacks." Buried inside on Page A41, their story outlined the CIA's efforts to create a new Iraqi intelligence agency:

"The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, a former exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials.

"Badran and Ayad Allawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam Hussein." (The Web link to the full story is broken but it can be found on Nexis.) [Snip]

That picture becomes sharper in the months that followed Allawi's release of the Habbush forgery, when he suddenly returned to favor in Baghdad and eclipsed Chalabi, at least for a while. Five months later, in May 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council elected Allawi as his country's interim prime minister, reportedly under pressure from the American authorities. Combining subservience to the occupiers with iron-fisted tactics, he quickly squandered any popularity he might have enjoyed, and his INA party placed a humiliating third in the 2005 national elections.

So RonSuskind has extensive tapes with sources in the CIA who were aware of the instructions from the White House to forge and plant the Habash Letter. (See the partial transcript Suskind has posted with Rob Richer.)Then we have a well-known CIA asset, Allawi, who the reporter Coughlin reports gave him the letter who oddly enough was in the U.S. working with the CIA (as was independently reported by Dana Priest and and Robin Wright of the Washington Post) immediately prior to the date the Telegram printed the letter.

Shortly after the letter was printed, the U.S. government pressured the Iraqis to appoint Allawi as interim Prime Minister. A payoff?

This is a story that supports Suskind's book. The Bush administration will clearly push back as hard as it can. This story, published by Ron Suskind, may well determine the legacy of George Bush and his administration. It comes down to a question of the relative reliability of the known liars in the Bush/Cheney administration against the reputation of a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Ron Suskind. The weight so far is heavily on Suskind's side. Any allegation that Suskind is wrong will be seen as coming from known liars and will very likely have been planted - much as was the Habash letter itself.

We will hear more about the Habash Letter. A lot more.

The Italian trial of Americans for kidnapping and "rendering" Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr

Twenty-six Americans (CIA) and Italian intelligence officers (Italian SISMI military intelligence)are currently on trial in Italy in the kidnapping and rendition of an Egyptian cleric as part of the CIA's extraordinary renditions program. The CIA officers are being tried in absentia, and the U.S. government has said that if the Italian government asks that they be sent to Italy, the U.S. will refuse.

The current report in USA Today focuses on the Italian trial of the Intelligence officers, both U.S. and Italian, who conducted the clearly illegal kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. This report focuses on the kidnapping in Italy and Europe and his rendition to Egypt.

Earlier (March 13, 2005) the Washington Post reported on the investigation that led to the current trial. The same reporter, Craig Whitlock, reported Dec 13, 2005 on a ruse by the CIA to misdirect the investigation.

Italian judicial authorities publicly disclosed the CIA operation in the spring. But a review of recently filed court documents and interviews in Milan offer fresh details about how the CIA allegedly spread disinformation to cover its tracks and how its actions in Milan disrupted and damaged a major Italian investigation.

The European edition of the Stars and Stripes reported Dec 10, 2006 on an attempt to get Lt. Col. Joseph Romano, the former commander of the 31st Security Forces Squadron at Aviano Air Force Base in Northeastern Italy, to comment on the Italian investigation of the kidnapping. Col. Romano declined to comment.

Then the BBC reported Feb 12, 2007 that the Egyptians had released Abu Omar.

Prosecutors have said the cleric was snatched on a Milan street and flown, via Germany, to his native Egypt where he was interrogated.

The cleric has accused Egyptian agents of using electric shocks, beatings and rape threats against him.

He had been initially charged with membership of an illegal organization [allegedly al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya] but the charges were later dropped. Mr Nasr was briefly released in 2004 but was later detained without charge under the north African country's emergency laws.

This is the surface story, the part that can be told in public. Much of the details are covered by secrecy, both American and Italian. The Chicago Tribune addressed why Abu Omar was kidnapped in their story published July 3, 2005.

Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?

Neither the Bush administration nor the CIA has acknowledged any role in the operation. But U.S. government officials privately paint Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, as a dangerous terrorist who once plotted to kill the Egyptian foreign minister and was worthy of an audacious daylight abduction involving more than 20 operatives, weeks of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition that she not be identified, asserted: "The world's a better place with this guy off the streets."

But evidence gathered by prosecutors here, who have charged 13 CIA operatives with Abu Omar's kidnapping, indicates that the abduction was a bold attempt to turn him back into the informer he once was. [Snip]

Milanese prosecutors and police, who had been closely monitoring Abu Omar and knew nothing about his planned abduction, are furious.

"Instead of having an investigation against terrorists, we are investigating this CIA kidnapping," a senior prosecution official fumed last week.

According to the prosecutor's application for the 13 warrants, when Abu Omar reached Cairo on a CIA-chartered aircraft, he was taken straight to the Egyptian interior minister.

If he agreed to inform for the Egyptian intelligence service, Abu Omar "would have been set free and accompanied back to Italy," the document said.

Alternatively, the senior official said, the Americans may have hoped the Egyptians could learn something by interrogating Abu Omar about planned resistance to the impending war on Iraq.

Abu Omar refused to inform, according to the document, and spent the next 14 months in an Egyptian prison facing "terrible tortures." After a brief release in April 2004, he was imprisoned again.

The source of the prosecution's information is Mohammed Reda, another Egyptian imam living in Milan and one of the first people Abu Omar called during his brief release.

Asked to assess Reda's credibility, the prosecution official asserted that "in this case, he had no reason to lie. And when he made his first statements, he was unaware he was being intercepted" by a police wiretap on his cell phone.

If this was all about an effort by the CIA to coerce Abu Omar into becoming an informer again, it certainly got out of hand and screwed up badly.

There will be more about this story as the Italian trial continues.

Congress had approved torture for interrogation

Laura Rozen points out that although Congress has been quick to have hearings on the destruction of the interrogation-by-torture tapes in Thailand, the focus has been on the destruction of the tapes, not what was on them. Why?

Because Congress knew that torture was being used to interrogate prisoners, and approved of it. They're as guilty as the the Bush administration. Investigating torture would mean that Congress would have to investigate itself as well as the Republican administration.

That's sick. Our government, in its entirety, has abandoned American principles. The Republicans led the way, but the Democrats have gone quietly along with the crowd.

The torture tapes: a history

Credit where credit is due. The Washington Post has a good article (informative and plausible) explaining why the torture tapes were made and what happened to them.

Worth reading.

Ex-CIA Philip Agee dead at age 72

An interesting piece of American history has just been closed out with the death of ex-CIA agent Philip Agee in Cuba at age 72. Laura Rozen reports on his death, based on a New York Times article.

After he left the CIA, Philip Agee published the book Inside the Company: CIA Diary which described a series of CIA misdeeds, and included "a 22-page list of purported agency operatives." I had always heard that the list included the name and address of the CIA Station Chief in Athens (Richard S. Welch) and resulted in Welch's death, but apparently from the story in the New York Times Welch was not among those named by Agee.

Welch's name apparently was published by a Greek publication, and when Barbara Bush accused Agee of causing Welch's death, he sued her. This from the New York Times article:

She settled the issue by dropping the reference to Agee, who had not mentioned Welch in his book. Instead, she blamed a magazine Agee worked for that also named alleged CIA agents. Agee's defenders said that Welch's identity was already known.

While Agee's actions inspired the law against exposing covert U.S. operatives, he drew a distinction between what he did and the naming of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had raised questions about the basis of President Bush's Iraq policy.

''This is entirely different than what I was doing in the 1970s,'' Agee said at the time. ''This is purely dirty politics in my opinion.''

Agee said that he disclosed the identities of his former colleagues to ''weaken the instrument for carrying out the policy of supporting military dictatorships'' in Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

Those regimes ''were supported by the CIA and the human cost was immense: torture, executions, death squads,'' he said.

I guess the story that Agee caused Welch's death is more agit-prop from the CIA aimed to sway American public opinion. (The story that Iranian patrol boats threatened American warship in the Persian Gulf is beginning to appear to be another such US government fiction designed to fool the American public. See this New York Times article by Mike Nizza.)

I had always considered Agee to be a traitor to the U.S., but after what the Bush administration has done by exposing Valerie Plame for purely internal political purposes, the lies about WMD's designed and used to justify the purposeless invasion of Iraq, and the realization that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was in fact a lie designed to justify a massively increased attack on North Vietnam, I find little reason to believe anything that comes from official Washington any more.

Is it possible that the narrative that we Americans have been fed about the Communist take-over of Cuba was simply spin to justify the efforts of the Mafia - CIA dominated brigade of Cuban adventurers who attempted to reverse the very justified revolution against Batista and the Mafia who dominated Post WW II Cuba and exploited the Cuban people? As Agee pointed out in his book, the CIA was supporting a bunch of extremely nasty dictatorships in South and Latin America all in the name of "anti-Communism."

Such speculations have been squashed by the American government, but the Bush administration has demonstrated thoroughly that the U.S. government is simply not a reliable source of information. Who do we trust more today in the story about the Iranian boats harassing the American Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf? The Americans have no more credibility than the Iranians.

That loss of credibility by the U.S.government should go back at least as far as WW II. Everything since then needs to be reevaluated, particularly the relations between Cuba and the U.S. Maybe we should look more closely at Philip Agee's writings.

The destroyed torture tapes

Larry Johnson has posted an article that describes the timeline of the torture tapes that everyone is currently concerned with. Larry bases his article on interviews with CIA people he knows, with an excerpt from The One Percent Doctrine and his own experience with the CIA.

The tapes were made when Abu Zubaydah, captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was interrogated by the CIA in Thailand. I haven't learned why the tapes were made, nor does Larry address this. But

George Bush is briefed regularly by George Tenet on the details of Zubaydah’s interrogation (see p. 22, State of War by James Risen). Cofer Black is in charge of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and oversees the CIA’s hunt for the terrorists. Zubaydah is interrogated in Thailand, where the sessions were filmed. He was waterboarded sometime in the May-June 2002 time frame. Enhanced interrogation methods were used and approval for them came from Jim Pavitt (see p. 21 of ABC News interview of former CIA case officer, John Kiriakou). Pavitt was the DDO (i.e., Deputy Director of Operations). Stephen Kappes, who currently serves as the Deputy Director of the CIA, was named Assistant Deputy Director of Operations in June 2002. Ron Suskind confirms Risen’s report that the President and his National Security team were regularly briefed on the results of Zubaydah’s torture sessions (see The One Percent Doctrine, pp. 111-115).

What we know for certain is that the CIA was keeping the President and his National Security team fully briefed on the methods and results of interrogating Abu Zubaydah. In fact, it is highly likely that George Tenet showed part of the videotape of the interrogation to the President.

From then until June 2005 there were several times that the CIA was asked about tapes of interrogations and answered that it did not make such tapes. (See Larry's article for details.) But then

late June 2005–An Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 13 U.S. CIA agents accused of kidnapping imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in Italy in 2003, and sending him to Egypt for questioning regarding possible terrorist activities.

14 November 2005–In response to an order of the U.S. District Court for the C.I.A. to confirm or deny that it has video or audio tapes of interrogations of C.I.A. subjects, the C.I.A. the “U.S. Government does not have any video or audio tapes of the interrogations of (two terrorist suspects whose names are blacked out)” (see p. 4 of U.S. Attorney letter)

Larry says that this event apparently triggered the destruction of the tapes. Apparently Jose Rodriguez, then Deputy Director of Operations, checked with both the CIA Inspector General and the Directorate of Operation’s assigned Assistant General Counsel before destroying the DO’s copies of the tapes. Larry emphasizes that Jose is a lawyer and can be expected to have records of who he spoke to.

There's more detail in the article. It's worth a read.

Color me cynical, but I have no doubt at all that Bush and everyone in the chain of command up to him were completely aware of what was being done, both in the torture and in the disposal of the tapes. The history of this administration is that if you believe the very worst of them, then you are still giving them too much credit.

Larry's conclusion:

Jose Rodriguez did not consult beforehand with Kyle “Dusty” Foggo. However, Jose did inform Dusty subsequently of the advice he received from the OGC’s counsel. Jose may not be in as much trouble as some imagined. If he destroyed the tapes before November 14, 2005 then the C.I.A. told the truth to the judge. The May 2003 date puts the onus on Jim Pavitt and George Tenet rather than Jose Rodriguez. They knew about the tapes and the C.I.A. General Counsel lied to a Federal Judge. Who told whom what then? That’s going to be the interesting question.

And last but not least. The top two Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees–the so-called “gang of eight”–were fully briefed in interrogation techniques several times during 2002-3. They concurred unanimously that the interrogation techniques were OK. This means that Democrats as well as Republicans backed this process.

It seems reasonably clear that members of the bush administration, right up to and including Bush himself, committed actions that are criminal under both U.S. law and international law regarding human rights.

Why? That's simple. Because they wanted to since the 90's at least, and they very likely felt that 9/11 freed them to conduct torture. They wanted to, and they felt justified. After a while I'm sure some doubts crept in, and some government officials weren't willing to conduct criminal operations just because the boss said to, so lawyers like John Yoo cranked out what appeared to be legal justifications for their actions. I'd guess they still had relatively little faith in those justifications, because they kept them so tightly hidden under rules of security.

If anyone of any significant rank goes on trial, there will be a combination of PR justification and contributions to the legal fund like "Scooter" Libby has gotten, as well as a decent job on wingnut welfare when it is over. (Scooter is at the Hudson Institute at $168,000 per year while he writes a book that will net even more money. Then he will probably start making speeches after the Bush administration ends. He is too controversial to do so now. My bet is $30,000 to $50,000 per speech.) The final element of protection will be the list of Pardons that Bush will sign sometime between the election in November and the time he leaves office in late January 2009. so although I am certain that crimes were committed, I am a lot less certain that anyone will pay any penalty for committing them.

TPM Muckraker has been kind enough to provide a timeline of the torture tapes incident. It is an excellent complement to the article by Larry Johnson, and both provide links to other sources.

Here's what torturing suspects gets us - besides world opprobrium.

Does anyone really think torture works outside of the fiction of "24"? Kevin Drum did some research into why the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, was tortured

After the 2002 capture of Abu Zubaydah, a bin Laden deputy, failed to yield much information due to his drowsiness from medical treatment, Bush allegedly told Tenet, "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?

and how effective the torture (depicted on the videotapes that were destroyed by the CIA) really was:

So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was

• (a) unimportant and low-ranking,
• (b) mentally unstable,
• (c) had no useful information, and
• (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress.

This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.

Nice trifecta there. And just think: there's an entire political party in this country that still thinks this is OK.
[Bullet points added to increase clarity]

Remember, not only is the torture clearly ineffective, it is morally wrong. Yet the Republican Party, largely populated by people who call themselves Christians, applaud this behavior and conceal it from investigation when they can.

Go read the rest of Kevin's excellent post.

Then go read Larry Johnson's post Torture Tapes on the CIA backstory behind the tapes that were destroyed.

In addition, TPM has been all over the story. Here are some of their recent posts:

• CIA ignored warnings about interrogation videos
  
• Hamilton sees obstruction and
  
• Compromising prosecutions?

This should give the flavor of the story. Kevin's post gives the best analysis of why captured al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was tortured and what the real result of that torture was.

Here is why Carol Lam was removed as U.S. Attorney, San Diego

Nov 26, 2007 - The most recent analysis of record from the Wilkes trial gives Emptywheel a lot to discuss. This came from the transcripts and subpoenas in the Wilkes case. Emptywheel at the Next Hurrah has been tracking the story. Below are earlier posts in time sequence.

The traditional media will not be discussing this because the CIA, the Department of Justice and the White House all don't want it publicized.

Apr 27, 2007 - About that FBI Special Agent In Charge. FBI Special Agent in Charge Dzwilewski commented on what happened to cause Carol Lam's dismissal and the manner it which it was done. Six weeks later he retired. Asked if there was any pressure to resign, Dzwilewski said: “I can't speak for what's behind all that, what's the driving force behind this or the rationale. I guarantee politics is involved.”

May 08, 2007 - The Foggo-Wilkes Leaks.

May 11, 2007 - Emptywheel looks at the Leaks. About that DOJ Leak.

Aug 09, 2007 - In The Leak Wars: Revisiting the Pre-Indictment Leaks. EmptyWheel looks more deeply into the alleged media leaks and the connection to the trial of Kontogiannis.

Aug o8, 2007 - Carol Lam did not know why she was dismissed, even after she left. But Elston at DoJ accused her of leaking the reasons she was removed to the press. The Leak Wars: Elston Accuses Lam IN actual practice, Lam was fired because she was threatening to indict Foggo, the third ranking man at CIA and Kontogianis, an individual who the CIA was protecting because he had been laundering money they were using for operations.

Larry Johnson decries David Brook's intellectual dishonesty. He doesn't like Brook's mailbox either.

The reich-wing putz, David Brooks, went onto the Jim lehrer Newshour Friday and disgraced himself (again) with his intellectually dishonest and lazy defense of the Bush administration and its handling of Libby and the criminal outing the covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson. Larry Johnson, who was another covert CIA agent and went through the intake training with Valerie Plame takes him to task.

Go read it.

Larry also posts a picture of David Brook's sad-sack mailbox. I doubt that anyone can make Brooks into an intellectually honest analyst, but we need to let him know that the mailbox has to be replaced by something decent.

What did the CIA do?

Here are some articles from the Washington Post that describe a few things in the CIA document dump:

• CIA Releases Files On Past Misdeeds
• Fighting War Protesters
• Keeping an Eye on Communism
• The Keeper of Secrets Earned His reputation
• Trying to Kill Fidel Castro
• Experimenting with the Mind

Then from The Australian as they dug through the same documents:

EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities".

"Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects."

Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest. [Snip]

The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims' brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium.

"The CIA bought my services from my grandfather in 1952 starting at the tender age of four," wrote Carol Rutz of her experiences.

"Over the next 12 years, I was tested, trained, and used in various ways. Electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other types of trauma were used to make me complain and split my personality (to create multiple personalities for specific tasks). Each alter or personality was created to respond to a post-hypnotic trigger, then perform an act and (I would) not remember it later.

"This Manchurian Candidate program was just one of the operational uses of the mind-control scenario by the CIA. [Snip]

Some conspiratorial theorists believe the CIA completed its goal, initially outlined in the early 1950s, of altering a personality and having someone "perform an action contrary to an individual's basic moral principles".

The attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, Lawrence Teeter, has said his client was programmed to assassinate Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, volunteered to take part in CIA mind-control experiments when he was a student at Harvard University in the late 50s.

I have never seen in the press any explanation for what motivated Sirhan Sirhan to assassinate Robert F. Kennedy. Nor am I saying that a CIA program caused it. I don't rule it out, however.

Similarly, I was unaware that Ted Kaczynski had been part of the CIA mind-control experiment.

If there ever was any real evidence, it was certainly weeded out before these documents were released.

CIA to declassify, release unflattering historical documents

This should be fascinating.

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians.

Some of it has come out over the years, of course. This should make the agency somewhat more transparent for control purposes.

On the opposite side of the issue, no major nation can afford to try to operate without an effective Intelligence Agency. This is going to be ancient history, not anything current. That in my opinion is as it should be. You don't want to give away current sources and methods, but you don't want the people in the bureaucracy of the CIA to believe that their decisions will never be known, either. This should provide that transparency so that we Americans know what has being done in our name. With luck, the historical research that will result will lead to more effective Intelligence gathering and analysis methods.

For example, I'd bet this will permit the first outside review of what happened when the CIA tried to focus almost entirely on technical Intelligence gathering and supplemented that with Human Intelligence from allied nation Intelligence agencies.

If nothing else, it is going to be interesting.

Side note: I wonder if this is designed to take some heat off the Bush administration as the news is filled with events that happened decades in the past?