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CIA loses turf war as new US interrogation unit is unveiled

August 27, 2009 by intelNews 3 Comments

CIA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The CIA appears to have been stripped of its senior role in America’s post-9/11 interrogation program, as the Obama Administration announced this week the creation of a new interrogation unit. The new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) will be an elite interagency squad, which will report to the National Security Council and answer directly to the White House. But, according to several insiders, the unit will be housed at the FBI, and not the CIA. The two agencies have been fighting a bitter turf war after 9/11. Officials at Langley view this development as a severe blow to the Agency, which the Bush Administration had tasked with overseeing America’s post 9/11 interrogation program. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 9/11, Bush Administration, CIA, FBI, High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, intelligence outsourcing, interrogation techniques, Ishmael Jones, National Security Council, News, Obama Administration, torture, turf wars, United States, War on Terrorism

World poring over released CIA documents

August 26, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

CIA report cover

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It will take some time before the world’s media and other interested parties manage to comb through the recently released report (.pdf) by the CIA inspector general, as well as a host of other newly declassified documents pertaining to the Agency’s post-9/11 interrogation program. The volume of data is so extensive that some news outlets are apparently requesting assistance from readers. The report on the CIA’s counterterrorism detention and interrogation activities between 2001 and 2003 is not new. It was originally produced in May of 2004 and was released in 2008 by the Bush Administration, in a heavily redacted version. Although the current release is less heavily redacted, several observers have questioned the wisdom of remaining redactions (the National Security Archive has published a useful side-by-side comparison of the Bush and Obama Administration versions of the report). Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bush Administration, CIA, declassification, interrogation techniques, News, Obama Administration, torture, United States, War on Terrorism

CIA certified interrogators after two-week training

August 26, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Dick Cheney

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Among numerous revelations in the CIA interrogations documents, released Monday, is information which suggests that the Agency haphazardly certified spies as “interrogators” after training them for only two weeks. Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star appears to be the only news source that has picked up on the revelation, noting that it takes twice that long to train an individual to drive a truck in the United States. It appears that the CIA resorted to the haphazard certification process shortly after 9/11; never prior to that time had the Agency been involved in the interrogation business on a large scale. The documents also show that, until 2003, Langley routinely supplied CIA interrogators with conduct rules that tended to change from case to case. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, declassification, Dick Cheney, intelligence training, interrogation techniques, News, torture, United States, War on Terrorism

News you may have missed #0068

August 13, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

US overt aid to Pakistan revealed. The United States provided around $15.4 billion in overt aid to Pakistan between Fiscal Years 2002 and 2009, according to a newly updated Congressional Research Service tabulation.
Intolerance of Arabs, Muslims led to torture, says US interrogator. Former Air Force Major Matthew Alexander is promoting his book, How To Break a Terrorist: The US Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.
China drops Rio Tinto espionage charges. Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto faces charges of stealing commercial secrets and bribery, but the Chinese government has dropped charges of spying.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Australia, China, energy resources, espionage, financial aid, interrogation techniques, Iraq War, Matthew Alexander, News, news you may have missed, Pakistan, racism, Rio Tinto, Stern Hu, torture, UK, US, US Air Force, War on Terrorism

Analysis: Can Obama’s inter-agency interrogation unit overcome turf-wars?

July 28, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The task force set up by President Barack Obama to reform US interrogation policies will shortly be unveiling its long-awaited report. There are rumors in the US intelligence community that the report will call for a new inter-agency interrogation unit that will combine experts from several US military and intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI. But in a well-argued article in Time magazine, Bobby Ghosh asks the important question of whether such a plan is represents mere wishful thinking, by ignoring the “brief and bleak” history of inter-agency cooperation on interrogation. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abu Zubaida, al-Qaeda, Analysis, CIA, FBI, interrogation techniques, Obama Administration, Pakistan, torture, turf wars, United States, US DoD, War on Terrorism, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn

Psychologists behind CIA torture named

May 5, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two American psychologists behind the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program, which the President of the United States has described as torture, have been named by ABC News. They are Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, former military officers and partners in Mitchell, Jessen and Associates, a company based in Spokane, WA. The two psychologists were hired by the CIA to design an elaborate ten-stage interrogation program, which culminated in waterboarding. Interestingly, the Agency hired the two scientists, offering them a lucrative $1000-a-day contract, without checking whether they had any experience in interrogation techniques. Agency officials later discovered that Mitchell and Jessen has significantly less professional experience in the psychology of interrogation than they had led the CIA to believe. The two psychologists were contacted by ABC News, but declined to comment, citing non-disclosure contracts with the CIA.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bruce Jessen, CIA, interrogation techniques, Jim Mitchell, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, News, psychology, Spokane, torture, United States, waterboarding

British MPs to consider torture allegations of MI5 detainees

February 2, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In 2007, British newspaper The Guardian disclosed that several Pakistani “war on terror” detainees in Pakistan were severely tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being interrogated by British security officers. Nearly two years after the revelations, a joint British Parliament committee has agreed to consider the allegations. On Tuesday, February 3, the British Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights will hear evidence that interrogators with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) brutally tortured a number of prisoners before handing them over to interrogators working for MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency. In exposing the story in 2007, The Guardian suggested that the MI5 agents were aware of the torture, which involved severe beatings, fingernail extractions, and even physical threats with electric drills. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Human Rights Watch, interrogation techniques, ISI, Joint Committee on Human Rights (UK), MI5, News, Pakistan, Rawalpindi, torture, UK, War on Terrorism

USAF interrogator says torture caused thousands of US troops’ deaths in Iraq

December 3, 2008 by intelNews Leave a comment

Matthew Alexander is the pseudonym used by a former US Air Force interrogator. He served for fourteen years, undertook special missions in over 30 countries and conducted or supervised over 1,300 interrogations. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his tour in Iraq, which he completed in 2006. Alexander has authored an editorial in The Washington Post, titled “I’m Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq”. The article is deeply critical of what Alexander describes as “the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the US military conducts interrogations in Iraq”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda in Iraq, interrogation techniques, Iraq, Matthew Alexander, News, torture, United States

New information unearthed on CIA mind experimentation projects

December 1, 2008 by intelNews Leave a comment

The CIA’s past mental-related experimentation (projects MKULTRA and others) is well-known and well-documented. Now new information has surfaced, which seems to implicate yet another doctor and yet another hospital in the CIA mental experimentation projects. Dr. Robert K. Hyde is said to have performed CIA-funded experimentation on non-consenting patients in Boston, in the 1950s. He then relocated to Vermont State Hospital’s Waterbury facility. Further research and some “new evidence, though incomplete, [now] suggests that similar tests might have been conducted at the Vermont State Hospital”. Although further research on this subject will always be hampered by the CIA’s deliberate and illegal destruction of relevant documentary evidence in the early 1970s, the issue remains relevant and important in light of the fact that “techniques developed through testing […] on [non-consenting] mental health patients […] are related to the interrogation methods used [today] in the war on terror”. [IA]