Outgoing CIA head confirms Obama backing down on torture

January 16, 2009 by 3 Comments

Hayden

Hayden

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On January 15, I suggested that, after nominating Panetta, incoming US President Barack Obama was slowly backing away from his dispute with the CIA leadership. This interpretation has now been publicly confirmed by no other than departing CIA Director, Michael V. Hayden. Speaking to journalists about his imminent departure from the Agency, Hayden made sure to let them know that Mr. Obama privately assured him “he has no plans to launch a legal inquiry” into the CIA’s use of controversial interrogation methods in the “war on terrorism”. He also stated that the President Elect offered similar guarantees to Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnel, during a secret meeting in Chicago in December 2008. Read more of this post

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Obama said to be backing down in rift with CIA

January 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
This author has been reporting on the continuing rift between the incoming Democratic Administration and many in ledership positions at the CIA. The latter openly warned the President Elect last month that he “may have difficulty finding a candidate who can be embraced by both veteran officials at the agency and the left flank of the Democratic Party”. As I explained on January 6, Obama’s nomination of Leon Panetta to head the CIA should be expected to spark further protests by the troubled agency. It now appears that, having nominated Panetta, the Obama team is slowly backing away from its dispute with the country’s intelligence leadership. The New York Times reports that there is “a growing sense” among observers that the incoming President is “not inclined” to pursue any broad inquiries on warrantless eavesdropping (Operation STELLAR WIND) or the use of torture against CIA detainees in the “global war on terrorism”. Read more of this post

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Speculation about NSA vetting of Obama’s wireless gadgets

January 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

Obama calling

Obama calling

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Longtime technology correspondent Declan McCullagh has published a lengthy article speculating about the wireless communications options for incoming US President Barack Obama. He suggests that Obama’s heavy use of Blackberry distinctly raises “the possibility of eavesdropping [on wireless Presidential communications] by hackers and other digital snoops” and reminds that the President-Elect’s cell phone records with Verizon “were improperly accessed last year” by unauthorized company technicians. McCullagh speculates that the incoming President will be separated from his Blackberry and will be given instead a National Security Agency (NSA)-approved PDA phone designed under the US Pentagon’s SME-PED project, which stands for Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device. SME-PED communications are said to be user-friendly Blackberry replacements for high-level US government officials. McCullagh contacted the NSA for his article. The Agency, of course, declined to comment.

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CIA officer behind “Syriana” comes out in favor of Panetta

January 11, 2009 by 2 Comments

Robert Baer

Robert Baer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Robert Baer, the former CIA field officer whose memoir, See No Evil, formed the basis of the 2005 motion picture Syriana, has publicly endorsed Leon Panetta, US President Elect Barack Obama’s nominee to head the CIA. In an article published on Friday in The New Republic, Baer describes Panetta as an experienced political operator who “knows his way around the Oval Office” and will thus have “the stature to stroll into the [White House] and tell the president, ‘no'”. More importantly, Baer seconds this author’s assessment, expressed here on January 6, that Panetta’s nomination by the incoming US President is part of a broader effort to “demilitarize[e] the CIA [by] reaffirming the Agency’s operational independence from the Pentagon”. Baer notes that “[t]he Pentagon is [currently] firmly on top of the intelligence heap” by controlling “80 percent of the intelligence budget” while trying to “take the rest”. Baer further notes, as I indicated on January 8, that “Panetta will be faced with an armature of wariness, mistrust, and anxiety as soon as he walks through the [CIA’s] front door”.

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Obama to restructure White House oversight of domestic security

January 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

Brennan

Brennan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Almost immediately following the 9/11 attacks, President George Bush reorganized the White House supervision of domestic security issues by appointing a new Homeland Security Advisor to the President. Shortly afterwards he issued a directive creating a Homeland Security Council operating inside the White House, and tasked it with overseeing domestic security efforts. The main idea behind the reorganization was to allow the National Security Council (NSC) to concentrate on international security issues by transferring responsibility for domestic security to the new Homeland Security Council. Bush’s plan has been criticized as reflecting a simplistic and artificial separation of domestic versus international security. It now appears that US President Elect Barack Obama is intent on scrapping the majority of Bush’s 2001 reorganization, by eliminating the Homeland Security Council and reassigning the task of domestic security to the National Security Council. Furthermore, under Obama’s plan, the Homeland Security Advisor will be replaced by a new National Security Advisor who will be reporting to the President on domestic security issues, as instructed by the NSC.  Read more of this post

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Comment: CIA Insiders Issue Political Threats Against Obama, Panetta

January 8, 2009 by 14 Comments

Panetta

Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On January 6, I explained that US President Elect Barack Obama’s nomination of Leon Panetta to head the CIA will intensify his ongoing quarrel with the troubled agency. I further stated that the CIA, which is not known for welcoming previous Directors it perceives as outsiders, has already “shown signs of refusing to cooperate with the incoming Administration”. This is now becoming clearer, as numerous CIA sources come forward to sharply denounce Panetta’s nomination and, in some cases, even hurtle political threats at the Obama Administration and its nominee. In one such case, a “former intelligence official” speaking to The Washington Post reminded Obama and Panetta that “many of the people Panetta will be expected to lead [at the CIA] would have participated in implementing [torture-based] interrogation polic[ies]”. Another “former senior official” warned Obama and Panetta to “think twice about pledges they make now [about the handling of terrorism detainees] because they may come back to haunt them in the future if some dire circumstances occur”. Read more of this post

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Obama to nominate wiretapping critic for critical DoJ post

January 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Yesterday we wrote that Leon Panetta’s nomination to direct the CIA is part of a broader effort by US President Elect Barack Obama to reestablish governmental “oversight over the intelligence community, which […] was effectively terminated [after] 9/11”. Now rumors of yet another nomination come to support the view of a broader plan by Barack Obama “to depart from some of the most controversial legal policies of the Bush administration”. The President Elect is shortly expected to nominate David Kris, a former national security legal adviser in the Department of Justice, to lead the DoJ’s National Security Division. The Division was established in 2006 to oversee intelligence activities by US government agencies relating to counterespionage and counterterrorism. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Panetta’s CIA Nomination Part of Broader Obama Plan

January 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
America’s largest newspapers describe US President Elect Barack Obama’s choice of Leon E. Panetta as CIA’s next Director as “a surpris[ing] and unusual choice” that has “stunned the national intelligence community“. These descriptions are not far from the truth. More importantly, however, the selection of the former Bill Clinton aide to head the nation’s most powerful intelligence agency reveals the continuing rift between the incoming Democratic Administration and many conservative hawks at the CIA. The latter openly warned the President Elect last month that he “may have difficulty finding a candidate who can be embraced by both veteran officials at the agency and the left flank of the Democratic Party”. Keep reading →

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Obama’s choice for DNI ignored Timor massacres

December 19, 2008 by Leave a comment

It has emerged that US President Elect Barack Obama intends to nominate retired US Navy Admiral Dennis Cutler Blair to succeed Mike McConnel as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). What most news outlets are not reporting is that in 2000 Blair led a group of Pentagon officials who were determined to maintain close relations with Indonesia’s military establishment, despite its documented involvement in horrendous massacres in East Timor. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Who is giving Obama advice on national security?

December 16, 2008 by Leave a comment

On Monday, US President-Elect Barack Obama chaired the first official meeting of the national security team he assembled earlier this month. But according to an article published today in The International Herald Tribune, an extended list of national security advisers to the President-Elect includes several conservatives, such as Brent Scowcroft, George Shultz and even Richard Armitage (!), whom he has contacted seeking counsel. Why does Barack Obama continue to court such Reaganite and neoconservative figures? Is he simply contacting them as a standard procedural duty, wishing perhaps to ensure some kind of managerial continuum between the current and incoming administrations? But if this is the case, then why do his senior advisers insist on releasing these names to the press in connection with the very first official meeting of Obama’s national security team? Read Article →

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Analysis: Former CIA clandestine officer paints bleak picture of Agency

December 15, 2008 by Leave a comment

In a brutally honest exposé, a 25-year veteran of the CIA has publicly described the Agency as an organization mired in failure, mediocrity and incompetence. Art Brown, who headed the Asia division of the CIA’s Clandestine Service from 2003 to 2005, has called the Agency’s seven-year, multi-billion operation to find Osama bin Laden a “failure” that “no amount of ‘rendition’ of bin Laden lieutenants can mask”. Writing in The New York Times, the CIA veteran has revealed that Syria’s alleged construction of a nuclear reactor in the country’s eastern desert came “as a surprise” to the Agency. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Obama urged to get to bottom of NSA warrantless wiretap scheme

December 15, 2008 by Leave a comment

Patrick Keefe, Century Foundation fellow and author of Chatter: Uncovering the Echelon Surveillance Network and the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping, has published an editorial in The New York Times urging US Congress and President-Elect Barack Obama to engage in a “thorough course correction on domestic surveillance”. Keefe describes the post-9/11 enhancement of the domestic wiretapping powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) as a direct violation of “one of the signature prohibitions of the post-Watergate era”, which allowed the US government to turn “its formidable eavesdropping apparatus on its own citizens”. Read more of this post

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Candidates currently considered by Obama for top intelligence posts

December 13, 2008 by Leave a comment

According to the Associated Press, some of the top candidates considered by US President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition team for Director of the CIA are: John Gannon (CIA’s Deputy Director of Intelligence during the Clinton Administration); Jami Miscik (CIA’s former chief analyst); Steve Kappes (current Deputy Director at the CIA); Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA, leader of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence); and John McLaughlin (former interim CIA chief). For the post of Director of National Intelligence, the top considerations are: Denny Blair (retired US Navy Admiral and former commander of the US Pacific Command); Don Kerr (currently Deputy Director of National Intelligence); Jami Miscik (see above); and former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-IN). IntelNews has previously reported on the possibility that Barack Obama may in fact retain the current CIA leadership “for a while”. [JF]

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Comment: Negroponte Carries US Message to India, Pakistan

December 12, 2008 by 1 Comment

In early December, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited India and Pakistan to spearhead Washington’s handling of the two countries’ response to the Mumbai attacks. Now the State Department has appointed Deputy Secretary John Negroponte to oversee the situation. The US government-affiliated Voice of America network reports that Negroponte’s main mission during his trip to India and Pakistan is “to advise […] political leaders on improving the[ir] intelligence agencies”. Now, Negroponte does many things, but “advising” is not one of them. Read more of this post

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Article questions 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran

December 10, 2008 by 2 Comments

The International Herald Tribune has published an article by investigative journalist Dr. Edward J. Epstein (author of the 1989 book Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA) questioning the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate’s (NIE) view on Iran’s nuclear program. The NIE is an annual report produced cooperatively by all 16 agencies of the US intelligence community. The 2007 NIE caused controversy by marking a spectacular break from long-term US policy of warning that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear program. It specifically asserted “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”.  Epstein now argues that the CIA got it wrong and that Iran did not terminate, but simply restructured, Project 1-11 -its clandestine nuclear armament research operation. He details developments in the past year and urges US President-Elect Barack Obama to “confront the reality that Iran now has the capability to change the balance of power in the Gulf, if it so elects to do, by building a nuclear weapon”. [IA]

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