Analysis: Is Afghanistan really important in the “war on terrorism”?

Paul P. Pillar

Paul P. Pillar

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Deputy Chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 1997 to 1999, Paul Pillar, has authored an interesting editorial in which he asks “how important are physical havens to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda?”. The answer: not very. Writing in The Washington Post, Pillar points out that the main unstated assumption behind the US invasion of Afghanistan, namely that the country must not be allowed to again become a haven for terrorist groups, is incompatible with what we know about how such groups organize. If they are offered a haven, groups such as al-Qaeda will use it for basic training of recruits, says Pillar. But operations planning and training does not require such a base, nor is such a center crucial for successful execution of operations. Read more of this post

Comment: Daring US Raid in Somalia is Risky Policy

Saleh Nabhan

Saleh Nabhan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The political aftereffect of a recent raid by US Special Forces in southern Somalia may be more significant than its outcome. The operation, which took place in the early hours of Monday, killed a number of al-Qaeda-linked militants and captured at least two, according to local witnesses. Unnamed US officials said that among the dead is Saleh Ali Nabhan, a 30-year-old Kenyan al-Qaeda operative who is said to have participated in the 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned resort in his homeland, among other acts. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0102

  • NSA helped UK arrest convicted bomb plotters. Email correspondence intercepted by the US National Security Agency in 2006 helped lead to the arrest and conviction of three Muslim militants, who were planning attacks in Britain. IntelNews learns that this case was brought up by American intelligence officials who recently threatened to terminate all intelligence cooperation with the UK, in reaction to the release from a Scottish prison of convicted Libyan bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
  • Bush Administration tried to alter “enforced disappearances” international treaty standards. The aim of the global treaty, long supported by the United States, was to end official kidnappings, detentions and killings like those that plagued Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and that allegedly still occur in Russia, China, Iran, Colombia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. But the documents suggest that initial US support for the negotiations collided head-on with the then-undisclosed goal of seizing suspected terrorists anywhere in the world for questioning by CIA interrogators or indefinite detention by the US military at foreign sites. So the Bush Administration tried to alter the language of the treaty from 2003 to 2006, reveals The Washington Post.

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US spy agencies still lack foreign language experts

Urdu script

Urdu script

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A US media outlet has finally followed up on the warnings, made by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last July, about the lack of trained foreign-language speakers in the US intelligence community. Following similar warnings by the US House intelligence panel in June, the Senate Intelligence Committee used the opportunity of its authorization (.pdf) of the 2010 intelligence budget to draw attention to “the continuing lack of critical language-capable personnel in the Intelligence Community, and the need to address this shortage”. According to The Washington Times, which noticed the Senate Committee’s brief but critical alert, US intelligence agencies remain “woefully short” of foreign-language speakers, let alone experts. Read more of this post

Ex-CIA agent says Cheney “damaged the CIA more than anybody has”

Robert Baer

Robert Baer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Robert Baer, the retired CIA field officer whose bestselling memoir, See No Evil, formed the basis of the 2005 motion picture Syriana, has said that former Vice President’ Dick Cheney “damaged the CIA more than anybody has, including the press or the Department of Justice”. Speaking on PBS’ The Tavis Smiley Show, Baer claimed that Cheney was the leading proponent of the CIA’s torture program, which the Bush Administration “invented as we went along”, and which never provided any critical intelligence. Baer said that in some cases FBI interrogators resorting to torture tactics extracted false leads from detainees. Read more of this post

Comment: CIA Insiders Issue Torture Probe Warnings

A.B. Krongard

A.B. Krongard

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Sensing that a government probe into its post-9/11 practices is around the corner, the CIA has employed its usual practice of issuing public warnings through friendly news outlets. Several Agency insiders appear to have simultaneously decided to break their customary silence. Speaking to The Washington Post, they sternly warned that “[m]orale has sagged at the CIA” because of the rumored government investigation into torture of detainees and other controversial intelligence projects.

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News you may have missed #0087

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CIA loses turf war as new US interrogation unit is unveiled

CIA HQ

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

World poring over released CIA documents

CIA report cover

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

CIA certified interrogators after two-week training

Dick Cheney

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

Taliban execute Mehsud’s family members on espionage charges

Baitullah Mehsud

Baitullah Mehsud

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Four relatives of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were reportedly arrested last week by Taliban militants, who suspect them of having informed Pakistani and US intelligence about Mehsud’s whereabouts. Pakistani and US officials say they are almost certain that Mehsud was killed in an unmanned drone air strike (probably remotely operated by the CIA) earlier this month. Mehsud’s family members arrested by the Taliban include his father-in-law, Ikramuddin Mehsud, his son, Ziauddin Mehsud, his brother, Saeedullah Mehsud, and his nephew, Iqbal Mehsud. Earlier today, Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, told reporters that the Taliban have executed Mehsud’s family members, listed above, after “confirming” their espionage activities. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0076

  • Revealing CIA report published today. The CIA is expected to come under some of its toughest scrutiny for years, after the publication today of a report detailing the agency’s use of mock executions, and the threatening of detainees with power drills and guns during interrogations.
  • North Korean spy director meets South Korean officials. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met a delegation of visiting North Korean officials on Sunday, including Kim Yang Gon who heads the United Front Department (UFD), an intelligence agency under the Korean Worker’s Party (KWP) of the DPRK.
  • Changes imminent at South African spy agency. The administration of President Jacob Zuma intends to move to restructure South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the country’s primary domestic spy organization. In July, a former member of South Africa’s ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence warned that a steadily declining culture of accountability in the country’s spy services is threatening the country’s constitutional order.

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Lithuania also hosted CIA black sites, says ABC News

Dick Marty

Dick Marty

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
After Poland and Romania, the former Soviet republic of Lithuania has been identified by US information outlet ABC News as another European nation that secretly hosted CIA prisons after 9/11. ABC News reporter Matthew Cole says former CIA officials told him that the Lithuanian government provided the CIA with a building located in suburban Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, with the understanding that it would be used as a so-called black site for secretly detaining high-value al-Qaeda suspects. The CIA reportedly used the building to detain up to eight suspects for over a year each, until December of 2005, when public rumors about the existence of the prison forced the CIA to abandon it. Read more of this post

Comment: Blackwater’s role in CIA ops runs deep

Blackwater/Xe HQ

Blackwater/Xe

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
North Carolina-based military and intelligence contractor Xe had a major role in the CIA’s rumored post-9/11 assassination program and is active today in the Agency’s Predator drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The New York Times and The Washington Post cited “government officials and current and former [Xe] employees” in revealing that the CIA worked briefly with Xe –formerly known as Blackwater– in the context of a top-secret program to locate and murder senior al-Qaeda leaders. According to The Washington Post, Blackwater’s role in the operation was far from consultative, and included “operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders [and awards worth] millions of dollars for training and weaponry”.  The New York Times alleges that Blackwater’s central role in the operation was “a major reason” in CIA director Leon Panetta’s decision last June to inform Congress about the program, which CIA had kept hidden from Congressional oversight for seven years. Read more of this post

FBI investigates attorneys for trying to identify CIA torturers

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Washington Post and The New York Times are reporting three military attorneys at Guantánamo Bay have been questioned by the FBI for allegedly showing pictures of CIA operatives to prisoners accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks. In some cases, the pictures were taken surreptitiously outside the operatives’ homes. The lawyers were apparently trying to identify agents who may have been involved in torturing prisoners at US jails overseas. But US military officials say the lawyers could have broken laws shielding the identity of classified intelligence. The FBI investigation is reportedly headed by John Dion, head of the US Justice Department’s counterespionage section. Dion has worked on several high-profile national security cases, including the prosecution of Aldrich H. Ames, the CIA double agent who spied for the USSR. Read more of this post