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Home Front: Politix

Romney's Links to Burisma

2020-02-08

[American Thinker] - It wasn’t 2012 Presidential loser Mitt Romney’s faith that caused him to vote to impeach President Trump, whom he once begged to rescue him from political oblivion. While Romney, who undoubtedly entertained visions of succeeding a President Trump after his vote helped remove from office, says it was his faith that caused him to believe Trump really did abuse his power to pressure the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on the Bidens, more likely it was because that Romney wanted to put an end to an administration that might expose his link to the Bidens and Burisma. ...Little notice has been paid to the fact that Joseph Cofer Black, a former CIA operative, served as Romney’s special adviser in his 2012 campaign for President. Losing campaign - incidentally? Is there such a thing as "ex-CIA"? ...Black would wind up serving on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma at the same time that Hunter, who had no special knowledge of Ukraine or the energy business, was being paid ungodly sums to curry influence with the Obama-Biden administration. ...There is no doubt that Burisma as was stockpiling people on its board who could provide it with cover from prying investigations, like the son of a vice president and a special adviser to a GOP presidential candidate. The nature of Hunter’s job is known -- his father, Vice President Joe Biden, would get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired, taking the heat off Burisma to protect his son. What Black’s role was, or why he was on the board other than providing potential access is unclear. Burisma as CIA money laundering operation would explain some things. Neh, I'm becoming as bad as Besoeker - who sees CIA under every bed.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

NIE final draft: Iran Is a Lair of Al Qaeda

2007-07-17

One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure. Comes as a surprise, huh? That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The estimate, which represents the opinion of America's intelligence agencies, is now finished, and unclassified conclusions will be shared today with the public. The classified document includes four main sections, examining how Al Qaeda in recent years has increased its capacity to stage another attack on American soil; how the organization has replenished the ranks of its top leaders; nations where Al Qaeda operates, and the status of its training camps and physical infrastructure. The judgment that Iran has hosted Al Qaeda's senior leadership council is likely to draw some criticism from those outside the government The judgment that Iran has hosted Al Qaeda's senior leadership council is likely to draw some criticism from those outside the government who doubt Iran plays a significant role in bolstering Sunni jihadist terrorism. And from lots inside the government, mostly those who know least about the subject. Iran's Shiite Muslims are considered infidels by the Salafi sect of Sunnis that comprise Al Qaeda. I think there's a distinct ideological line between al-Qaeda, which is fairly pragmatic, and the takfiri organizations like al-Tawhid. While there is little disagreement that a branch of Al Qaeda's leadership operates in Iran, the intelligence community diverges on the extent to which the hosting of the senior leaders represents a policy of the regime in Tehran or the rogue actions of Iran's Quds Force, the terrorist support units that report directly to Iran's supreme leader. I guess it all depends on who you think is in charge in Iran. My opinion is that it's the IRGC and the government, such as it is, is the face the actual regime presents to the world. In the estimate's chapter on Al Qaeda's replenished senior leadership, three American intelligence sources said, there is a discussion of the eastern Iran-based Shura Majlis, a kind of consensus-building organization of top Al Qaeda figures that meets regularly to make policy and plan attacks. The New York Sun first reported in October that one of the Shura Majlis for Al Qaeda meets in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan, one of the areas the Pakistani army this week re-engaged after a yearlong cease-fire. Both Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, participate in those meetings. The other Shura Majlis is believed to meet in eastern Iran in the network established after Al Qaeda was driven from Afghanistan in 2001. I'm not at all sure which of the two is the reserve command post. My tentative opinion is that it's Iran, if only because Qaeda controls Bajaur and I don't think they control any of Iran. Following that battle, a military planner trained in the Egyptian special forces, Saif al-Adel, fled to Iran. Mr. Zawahri then arranged with the then commander of Iran's Quds Force, Ahmad Vahidi, for safe harbor for senior leaders. Iran also sheltered Hekmatyar until the Taliban were tossed from Afghanistan. The three main Al Qaeda leaders in Iran include Mr. Adel; the organization's minister of propaganda, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, and the man who some analysts believe is the heir apparent to Mr. bin Laden — one of his sons, Saad bin Laden. The locations of the senior leaders include a military base near Tehran called Lavizan; a northern suburb of Tehran, Chalous; an important holy city, Mashod, and a border town near Afghanistan, Zabul, the draft intelligence estimate says. In 2003, Iran offered a swap of the senior leaders in exchange for members of an Iranian opposition group on America's list of foreign terrorist organizations, the People's Mujahadin. That deal was scuttled after signal intercepts proved, according to American intelligence officials, that Mr. Adel was in contact with an Al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia. In the aftermath of the failed deal, Al Qaeda's Iran branch has worked closely in helping to establish the group in Iraq. The late founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had multiple meetings with Mr. Adel after 2001. In the past year, the multinational Iraq command force has intercepted at least 10 couriers with instructions from the Iran-based Shura Majlis. In addition, two senior leaders of Al Qaeda captured in 2006 have shared details of the Shura Majlis in Iran. "We know that there were two Al Qaeda centers of gravity. After the Taliban fell, one went to Pakistan, the other fled to Iran," Roger Cressey, a former deputy to a counterterrorism tsar, Richard Clarke, said in an interview yesterday. "The question for several years has been: What type of operational capability did each of these centers have?" A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Iran expert, Vali Nasr, said he did not know that the Shura Majlis had reconstituted in eastern Iran, but he did say his Iranian contacts had confirmed recent NATO intelligence that Iran had begun shipping arms to Al Qaeda's old Afghan hosts, the Taliban in Afghanistan. Mr. Nasr, however, said Iran's recent entente with Al Qaeda could be simply a matter of statecraft. "Iran and Al Qaeda do not have to like one another," he said. "They can hate each other, they can kill each other, their ultimate goals may be against one another, but for the short term Iran can unleash Al Qaeda on the United States." Mr. Cressey said the Iranian regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is one of tolerance as opposed to command and control. "I think the Iranians are giving these guys enough latitude to operate to give them another chit in the game of U.S.-Iranian relations," he said. It is just impossible to believe that what the Quds Force does with Al Qaeda does not represent a decision of the government An intelligence official sympathetic to the view that it is a matter of Iranian policy to cooperate with Al Qaeda disputed the CIA and State Department view that the Quds Force is operating as a rogue force. "It is just impossible to believe that what the Quds Force does with Al Qaeda does not represent a decision of the government," the official, who asked not to be identified, said. "It's a bit like saying the directorate of operations for the CIA is not really carrying out U.S. policy." Some intelligence reporting suggests, the source said, that the current chief of the Quds Force, General Qassem Sulamani, has met with Saad bin Laden, Mr. Adel, and Mr. Abu Ghaith. The link between Iran and Al Qaeda is not new, in some cases. The bipartisan September 11 commission report, for example, concluded: "There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of Al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers." According to the commission, a senior Al Qaeda coordinator, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said eight of the September 11 hijackers went through Iran on their way to and from Afghanistan. In 2005, both Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and the then ambassador at large for counterterrorism, Cofer Black, disclosed that America believes that senior Al Qaeda leaders reside in Iran.

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Home Front: WoT

Records Show Tenet Briefed Rice on Al Qaeda Threat

2006-10-03

From the NYT just before an election, so put your special reading glasses on. JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 2 — A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday. The account by Sean McCormack came hours after Ms. Rice, the secretary of state, told reporters aboard her airplane that she did not recall the specific meeting on July 10, 2001, noting that she had met repeatedly with Mr. Tenet that summer about terrorist threats. Ms. Rice, the national security adviser at the time, said it was “incomprehensible” she ignored dire terrorist threats two months before the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. McCormack also said records show that the Sept. 11 commission was informed about the meeting, a fact that former intelligence officials and members of the commission confirmed on Monday. When details of the meeting emerged last week in a new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, Bush administration officials questioned Mr. Woodward’s reporting. Now, after several days, both current and former Bush administration officials have confirmed parts of Mr. Woodward’s account. Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an impending Al Qaeda attack that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff. According to two former intelligence officials, Mr. Tenet told those assembled at the White House about the growing body of intelligence the Central Intelligence Agency had collected pointing to an impending Al Qaeda attack. But both current and former officials took issue with Mr. Woodward’s account that Mr. Tenet and his aides left the meeting in frustration, feeling as if Ms. Rice had ignored them. Mr. Tenet told members of the Sept. 11 commission about the July 10 meeting when they interviewed him in early 2004, but committee members said the former C.I.A. director never indicated he had left the White House with the impression that he had been ignored. “Tenet never told us that he was brushed off,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the commission. “We certainly would have followed that up.” Ben-Veniste is one of the more honorable Democrats around. If he's backing Condi up, this is no story at all despite the NYT spin. Mr. McCormack said the records showed that, far from ignoring Mr. Tenet’s warnings, Ms. Rice acted on the intelligence and requested that Mr. Tenet make the same presentation to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Atttorney General John Ashcroft. But Mr. Ashcroft said by telephone on Monday evening that he never received a briefing that summer from Mr. Tenet. “Frankly, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get that kind of briefing,” he said. “I’m surprised he didn’t think it was important enough to come by and tell me.” Once again, kids: no one, no one, covered himself/herself with glory in the pursuit of al-Qaeda, not in the Clinton administration, not in the Bush administration, from the early 1990s all the way to 9 am on 9/11. It's important to learn how and why we screwed up, just as we had to learn from Pearl Harbor, but the issue isn't where and how much blame to assign. It is, much more simply, what are we doing now to wreck al-Qaeda?

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Afghanistan

Bin Laden How Close Have We Come?

2006-03-09

RIGHT AFTER 9/11, IT WAS Gary Berntsen's job to get Osama bin Laden. Picture a real-life Jack Bauer. Strong. Focused. Committed. A guy who probably knows how to kill you with his car keys. More than 23 years as an officer in the clandestine service of the CIA. In his new book, "Jawbreaker," he says he stopped dozens of bombings and assassinations. He'd learned about al Qaeda when investigating the East African embassy bombings in 1998. In 2000, he was sent to Afghanistan to try to capture a key bin Laden lieutenant and to find out what their plans were. He awoke the morning of Sept. 11 in South America, where he was a station chief, and soon was called home to meet with Cofer Black, the legendary head of the Counter-Terrorism Center. Black sent him to Afghanistan to head the hunt for bin Laden, saying, "if you are not killing the enemy in 48 hours, I will pull you out." Berntsen explained that we first tried to get the Taliban to turn bin Laden over. When they didn't, we knew we had to destroy them first. After the fall of Kabul, our best shot at bin Laden came in mid-November at Tora Bora, "the very mountainous, steep, cold, isolated place along the Afghan-Pak border." Amazingly, there were only a few hundred special ops spread out across an entire country, led by Berntsen, who was lugging a Rubbermaid container with $11 million in cash to make deals in the most hostile part of the world. "To win the major cities, 110 CIA officers and 350 special forces worked alongside 12,000 Northern Alliance to defeat between 50 and 60,000 members of the Taliban and 5 to 7,000 members of al Qaeda. So, we were heavily outnumbered." Berntsen told me that Cent-Com wanted to avoid a larger commitment because of the lesson of the Soviet quagmire. At Tora Bora, Berntsen had an eight-man team, four CIA, four military from Delta Force. "These eight men went down into Nangarhar Province, which is several million people in complete chaos, company-size elements of Chechens and Uzbeks and Al Qaeda and Taliban moving around. I was sweating bullets when I send them down there because Special Forces didn't go down with them... "They linked up with a friendly warlord who we made contact with. And then, with that warlord, they drove down to Tora Bora to get to the foot of the mountains." Four of them found bin Laden, and our best opportunity since 9/11 to kill him. "They were able to visually spot his camp at Milawa... And from that... mountaintop, they are able to call in air strikes for 56 hours. There were hundreds of them there... We are able to hear bin Laden. After we took a radio off of a dead fighter, we could hear him. We were very close." That's when Berntsen called for a Blue 82, a 15,000-pound bomb, the largest explosive in our inventory shy of a nuclear weapon. It has to be dropped off the back of a C-130 because it's too heavy to be suspended from an aircraft. Berntsen's team was on the ground for 11 days of shelling, with the CIA running the show. Then Delta Force took over for the last five days. He says that, at Tora Bora, his request for Army Rangers was denied. "We we wrote a message back to Washington, it goes back to CIA headquarters, that said, 'We need 600 to 800 Rangers. We need a battalion. We need to employ them in the following way: We need to put them between where bin Laden is at this moment and the border of Pakistan. We don't want him to escape.' " But on Dec. 15 or 16, he did escape, Berntsen says, into Pakistan. About this account, Gen. Tommy Franks has said: "Within 72 hours of the time we were receiving reporting on where Osama bin Laden was in Tora Bora, I received similar reporting every place from Baluchistan to a lake up to the northwest of Kandahar. "The fact... is that, at the end of the day, it would be the Afghans who would make the choice, who would make the decision about where they go in their country. And so we don't know. I don't know whether Osama bin Laden was in Tora Bora at that time." Responds Berntsen: "Well, he disputes the fact that bin Laden was there. No one is disputing the fact that I wrote the message... And one day it will be declassified. And the sooner they declassify it, the better."

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Home Front: Politix

More on the CIA counterterrorism chief being removed

2006-02-13

The CIA's top counterterrorism officer was relieved of his position yesterday after months of turmoil atop the agency's clandestine service, according to three knowledgeable officials. Robert Grenier, who spent most of his career undercover overseas, took charge of the Counterterrorism Center about a year ago after a series of senior jobs at the center of the Bush administration's national security agenda. When al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Grenier was station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan. Among the agency's most experienced officers in southwest Asia, Grenier helped plan the covert campaign that preceded the U.S. military ouster of al Qaeda and its Taliban allies from Afghanistan. By the summer of 2002, with President Bush heading toward war in Iraq, then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet recalled Grenier to headquarters and promoted him to chief of a newly created Iraq Issues Group. His staff ballooned as the administration planned and launched the invasion in March 2003. Grenier's predecessor at the Counterterrorism Center, who remains undercover, moved on to become chief of the National Clandestine Service, the successor to the CIA's directorate of operations. Sources said the two men differ sharply in style. Grenier, 51, is said by associates to be a polished and smooth-talking man with museum-quality mementos of his service overseas. His boss at the clandestine service, the nation's senior human intelligence officer, was said to regard him as insufficiently forceful in the battle with al Qaeda. "The word on Bob was that he was a good officer, but not the one for the job and not quite as aggressive as he might have been," one official said. Colleagues in the clandestine service, sources said, had been aware of the poor working relationship between the two men for some time and said Grenier's predecessor had been trying to force him out for months. Grenier's resignation was first reported on the Los Angeles Times Web site, which said he had sent an e-mail to colleagues acknowledging he had been asked to leave. "The director of NCS," one official said, "decided there was somebody better, perhaps to better match his management vision, so [Grenier] is moving on." The official said there was no specific operational problem. Another official said the failed attempt last month on the life of Ayman Zawahiri, al Qaeda's number two leader, had not played a role in pushing Grenier out. Reached at home late last night, Grenier declined to comment. The CIA's Counterterrorism Center, like the agency itself, has been shoved from its preeminent position in a turbulent reorganization of the intelligence community. Immediately after Sept. 11, the center's chief was tough-talking Cofer Black, who told Bush it was time to "take the gloves off" against terrorism and promised "heads on spikes." Some of the center's responsibilities have since shifted to a new interagency counterpart that reports to Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte. There were rumors last September, when Robert Richer, the number two in the clandestine service, abruptly resigned, that Grenier was considering leaving with him. But the CIA denied the rumors at the time and said Grenier was very happy in his job. Several candidates are under consideration for Grenier's job, according to one knowledgeable official. Grenier, another official said, will be offered a job elsewhere in the CIA. Grenier's departure comes at a time when the agency is bleeding top talent, robbing the CIA of institutional memory and damaging morale among case officers and analysts. Since Porter J. Goss became director in September 2004, well over a dozen senior officials -- several of whom were promoted under Goss -- have resigned, have retired early or have requested reassignment. Grenier was the third person to be head of counterterrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks. Like Grenier, most of those leaving the agency had spent their career in the clandestine service and had years of experience in the Middle East and, more specifically, with al Qaeda. Charlie Siddel, the station chief in Amman, Jordan, took early retirement late last year when he was recalled to headquarters. In the fall, the head of the European division, whose undercover role included overseeing the hunt for al Qaeda on the continent, also left. Last month, John Russack, the program manager for information-sharing in the office of the director of national intelligence, was forced out after less than a year on the job. Russack, who had run the Energy Department's intelligence shop before moving to the DNI's office, apparently left after personality clashes with other top officials. In the early days of war with al Qaeda, Grenier emphasized the need to convince Afghans that the United States had no desire for permanent bases in Afghanistan and wished only to help drive Arab outsiders from the country. Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda's Saudi-born leader, had built a state within a state, recruiting and training operatives from around the Arab and Islamic worlds.

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Home Front: Politix

Understanding al-Libi

2006-01-04

SENATOR CARL LEVIN recently declassified a DIA document from February 2002 that appears to cast doubt on the claims of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. Al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda camp commander and a member of bin Laden's inner circle, had maintained, until early 2004, that Iraq had assisted al Qaeda in its chemical and biological weapons efforts. As a result of the document Levin released (and other information circulating) the conventional view which has developed is that the administration knew that al-Libi was lying about Iraq, al Qaeda, and WMD but chose to set aside this knowledge because it conflicted with their preferred narrative concerning pre-war intelligence on Iraq. As to why al-Libi said what he did, conventional wisdom has settled on the storyline that al-Libi told interrogators what they wanted to hear because he was tortured. Such a narrative is both convenient and attractive. But it only tells half the truth. To begin with, the portions of the DIA document from February 2002 that Senator Levin had declassified reads as follows: This is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh in which he claims Iraq assisted al-Qaida's CBRN [Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear] efforts. However, he lacks specific details on the Iraqis involved, the CBRN materials associated with the assistance, and the location where training occurred. It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest. So the document that Levin regards as having definitively established al-Libi as a liar also states that he may in fact have known that Iraq assisted al Qaeda in its unconventional weapons experts, but little else. But there are other bits of information to consider, which paint a fuller picture. For instance, according to the June 21, 2004 issue of Newsweek: With al-Libi, too, the initial approach was to read him his rights like any arrestee, one former member of the FBI team told NEWSWEEK . . . Al-Libi's capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government's internal debates over interrogation methods. FBI officials brought their plea to retain control over al-Libi's interrogation up to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency's hawkish counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. And according to Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council, at some point al-Libi's statements became far more specific. More than vaguely claiming that Iraq had assisted al Qaeda on unconventional weapons, al-Libi recounted that: . . . Bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased Al Qaida leader Muhammad Atef, did not believe that Al Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq. The support that describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two Al Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdullah Al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdullah Al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful. And according to Phase I of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on pre-war Iraq intelligence (which was endorsed by all of the Democrats serving on the committee including Senator Levin): Conclusion 103. The information provided by the Central Intelligence Agency for the terrorism portion of Secretary Powell's speech was carefully vetted by both terrorism and regional analysts. Conclusion 104. None of the portrayals of the intelligence reporting included in Secretary Powell's speech differed in any significant way from earlier assessments published by the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA Director Tenet likewise repeated al-Libi's claims without caveat during his February 11, 2003 testimony to Senate Select Intelligence Committee, stating that "Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It has also provided training in poisons and gases to two al Qaeda associates. One of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful." All of this would seem to suggest that the U.S. intelligence community's understanding of al-Libi and his claims changed and evolved considerably in the year between February 2002 when the partially declassified DIA document was written, and February 2003 when al-Libi's statements became part of Secretary Powell's presentation to the United Nations. This would seem to square with the fact that, according to Secretary Powell's chief of staff Larry Wilkerson, no dissent was ever received with regard to the section of his presentation dealing with al-Libi. OF COURSE there were reasons to believe that al Libi might be providing credible information: It appears he had done so before. Indeed, as the Washington Post reported in August 2004, "under questioning, al-Libi provided the CIA with intelligence about an alleged plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Yemen with a truck bomb and pointed officials in the direction of Abu Zubaida, a top al Qaeda leader known to have been involved in the Sept. 11 plot." From what is known about the chronology of both the capture of Abu Zubaydah and the thwarting of one of many plots against the U.S. embassy in Yemen, it is entirely reasonable to surmise that al-Libi was providing viable, actionable intelligence that resulted in the foiling of an al Qaeda plot and the capture of one of its most senior leaders in the same time frame in which he recounted information concerning Iraqi assistance to al Qaeda. Moreover, as discussed at length on pages 329 to 333 of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report, al-Libi's claims appear to have fit within the context of what the September 2002 intelligence document Iraqi Support for Terrorism described as "The general pattern emerges is of al-Qa'ida's enduring interest in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) expertise from Iraq." So, when exactly was it determined that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was not telling the truth with respect to his claims of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda? It's hard to say. The July 2004 Newsweek article that first broke the news of al-Libi's recanting (an act that the 9/11 Commission report attributes to no later than February 2004) quoted a U.S. official as saying that al-Libi had "subsequently recounted a different story" and noted that "It's not clear which version is correct. We are still sorting this out." The August 2004 Washington Post article featured a similar caveat, this one being that "the senior intelligence official cautioned that al-Libi's later contention that Iraq provided no help or training to al Qaeda could not be verified and that the CIA did not know whether he was telling the truth." Yet none of these statements have surfaced in the most recent reporting on al-Libi, suggesting that the intelligence community now regards his denials as credible. There is now an interesting question to be asked as to what prompted this shift, given that the intelligence community was unable to come to a conclusion concerning the veracity of al-Libi's statements between February and August of 2004. Has some new information come to light, or is al-Libi's recanting now being accepted as credible because "everyone knows" that Iraq had no connection with al Qaeda? Recently, the New York Times reported on December 9 that al-Libi stated that he fabricated his more detailed claims made while in Egyptian custody in order to "escape harsh treatment," but the same article also quoted a government official as stating that al-Libi's claims about being coerced into making his statements "had not been corroborated." While certainly interesting, this information provides little insight into the questions of how the US intelligence community was able to verify al-Libi's later contentions if they were not even able to verify that he was coerced to begin with or why al-Libi waited until early 2004, long after he had been released from Egyptian custody, to retract statements that were made in early to mid-2002. In any event, one of the problems with understanding al-Libi is that much of the information about him has become available only as the result of press leaks. The relevant sections on him in Phase I of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report and much the DIA analysis cited by Senator Levin are both classified, leaving the public with little authoritative context within which to place his claims. Perhaps both the administration and its critics should press for the full declassification of his statements concerning Iraqi ties to al Qaeda so that the public can see what he said, when he said it, and what criteria were used for determining the truth or falsity of his statements. Perhaps Senator Levin will be willing to address these issues in the four other intelligence reports that the New York Times reports that he is now attempting to declassify, rather than simply cherry-picking portions of intelligence reports which he believes will assist his political arguments. Dan Darling is counter-terrorism consultant for the Manhattan Institute Center for Policing Terrorism.

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Home Front: WoT

More CIA leaks on rendition

2005-12-07

Original title: "if you want good interrogation send suspects to Jordan, if you want them dead, send them to Egypt or Syria: Ex-CIA official" LONDON — CIA agents have broken ranks to reveal the ‘cruel and inhuman’ interrogation techniques they are ordered to use at secret prisons around the world, including freezing and near-drowning. Amid a growing row in the US over torture, a list of “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by CIA agents in secret prisons — including near-drowning, freezing, sleep deprivation, shaking and slapping — has been leaked. In at least one case, a prisoner has died. The techniques have been authorised for use at CIA ‘black sites’ abroad, at which top terror suspects are held. Last week the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch said, “ghost detainees” were held at two military bases, in Poland and Romania. Similar sites in half a dozen other countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand and the Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia, leased from Britain, are now said to have been closed. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was US secretary of state, said last week that he knew of more than 70 “questionable deaths” of detainees under US supervision up to the end of 2002, when he left office. That figure, he added, was now around 90. These incidents are in addition to the increasingly well-documented practice of “rendition”: flying suspects to Middle Eastern countries where torture and deaths in custody are routine. “If you want a good interrogation, you send them to Jordan. If you want them dead, you send them to Egypt or Syria,” one former CIA agent is reported in the media as saying. America's covert forces are operating in a climate of impunity, described by Cofer Black, then CIA counter-terrorism chief, who told a congressional committee in 2002: “After 9/11, the gloves were off.” At one point, according to ‘Newsweek’, the Bush administration formally told the CIA it could not be prosecuted for any technique short of inflicting the kind of pain that accompanies organ failure or death.

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Home Front: Politix

No discipline for Tenet, CIA screw-ups

2005-10-06

Contrary to recommendations from his own internal watchdog, CIA Director Porter Goss will not order disciplinary reviews for a former director, George Tenet, and other officials criticized for their performance before the Sept. 11 attacks. Goss said in a statement Wednesday that the report from the CIA's inspector general, John Helgerson, did not suggest "that any one person or group of people could have prevented 9/11." "After great consideration of this report and its conclusions, I will not convene an accountability board to judge the performances of any individual CIA officers," Goss said. Half of those named in the report have retired from the CIA. "Those who are still with us are amongst the finest we have," Goss said. Lawmakers investigating the attacks asked the inspector generals of the CIA and other agencies to review whether any officials should be held personally accountable for failures before the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001. After a two-year review, Helgerson's report recommended that Goss convene formal panels to investigate specific actions by Tenet and other current and former officials. The panels, known as accountability review boards, could suggest disciplines. In his previous job as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Goss helped lead the congressional inquiry into the attacks and was among those who requested Helgerson's investigation. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, said he has asked Goss and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to appear before his committee to discuss the decision on the review boards. In a statement, Roberts, R-Kan., said he was "concerned to learn of the director's decision to forgo this step in the process." Some intelligence veterans say that disciplinary reviews would drain energy from the focus on current threats and create significant ill will for Goss as he tries to lead a work force battered by a series of reports about Sept. 11 and the botched prewar intelligence on Iraq. Current and former officials have also noted there are few options available to punish anyone who has left the CIA, other than letters of reprimand or a ban on future contracts with the agency. Along with Tenet, others singled out for some of the harshest criticism include the former clandestine service chief, Jim Pavitt, and the former counterterrorism center head, Cofer Black, according to individuals familiar with the report. They who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the report it remains classified. Through an associate, Tenet declined comment. Efforts to reach Black were unsuccessful. Pavitt said the agency needs to keep focusing on its mission. "This removes a burden and will allow these extraordinary people to do the extraordinary work that is critical to national defense," he said. In a series of Sept. 11 reviews, the CIA has been faulted for being risk averse, failing to share crucial information with other agencies and not executing a thorough plan to go after al Qaeda. Yet the Sept. 11 commission also said no agency did more to attack the terrorist group than did the CIA. Goss indicated he will make little — if any — of Helgerson's report public, saying now is not the time to reveal how intelligence is collected and analyzed. But California Rep. Jane Harman, the House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, said "Goss must persuade the public that he has dealt fairly with his agency's past mistakes" The families of some Sept. 11 victims want to see the report — and punishments. "We need transparency, and we certainly need accountability," said Kristen Breitweiser, one of the most outspoken advocates among Sept. 11 families. In his public statement, Goss said Helgerson's report "unveiled no mysteries." He said that all 20 of the systemic problems that the report identified are being addressed by internal reforms or changes mandated by President Bush. Before the attacks, Goss said, resources were inadequate and hiring was at historic low. Some officers who excelled in certain areas were asked to take tough assignments. "Unfortunately, time and resources were not on their side," Goss said. In a statement, Negroponte supported Goss's decision against forming the disciplinary boards.

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Terror Networks & Islam

Predator footage reveals failed chances to kill Binny - in 1999

2005-09-04

PREVIOUSLY unseen footage of Osama Bin Laden taken by a CIA spy drone reveals how close the Americans came to killing the Al-Qaeda leader two years before the September 11 attacks. The pictures were filmed by a Predator unmanned aircraft and show Bin Laden, in white robes, with a small group of followers at a training camp near Khost in eastern Afghanistan at the end of 1999. The drone was one of the first to be used in Afghanistan by the CIA, but because of bureaucratic wrangles it was unarmed. The pictures, thought to be the first spy plane footage of Bin Laden to be published, have been obtained from American sources by Al-Jazeera, the Arabic language television station. “We had no doubt over his identity. Bin Laden can clearly be seen standing out from the rest of the group next to the buildings,” said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer who headed Alec Station, the agency’s unit which tracked Bin Laden during the 1990s. He added: “Nobody at the top of the CIA wanted to take the decision to arm the Predator. It meant that even if we could find him (Bin Laden) we were not allowed to kill him.” The pictures are part of a mass of evidence now emerging of the missed opportunities to kill or capture Bin Laden and his associates before they launched the terror attacks on America in 2001. They include at least three further occasions in Afghanistan between 1998 and 2000 when the CIA had Bin Laden in its sights but was prevented from acting. There were divisions between the agency and the White House over who would have the authority to fire and the legality of killing the Al-Qaeda leader. On one occasion a satellite photographed the Al-Qaeda leader on a hunting trip, but the White House ordered the CIA not to launch a missile attack after finding out that princes from a friendly Arab country were in his party. On another occasion a raid by local tribesmen on Bin Laden’s base in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, was called off after American officials could not agree on whether it should go ahead. The third episode, also in Kandahar, involved a human spotter tracking him for five days, but the decision was taken not to attack because of fears over civilian casualties. The missed opportunities are documented in Blinking Red, an Al-Jazeera series beginning this week to mark the fourth anniversary of September 11. It describes how Bill Clinton’s administration turned down an offer from the Sudanese government to help to capture Bin Laden when he was living in Khartoum in the early to mid-1990s. It also shows how the Americans “lost” two of the September 11 hijackers despite having them under surveillance. The two men later entered America. “The Bush administration has still not come clean with the American people about 9/11. Our investigation, which has taken a year to complete, has raised many outstanding questions that urgently need to be answered, not least over the missed opportunities to take out senior leaders of the organisation,” said Al-Jazeera. The nearest the CIA came to killing Bin Laden was on the hunting trip in February 1999, just a few months before the Predator incident. The site was a camp in the desert south of Kandahar where Bin Laden had gone with wealthy visitors from the United Arab Emirates. Afghan agents reported the trip to a CIA station. Tracking teams were immediately dispatched and by February 9 they had located the isolated camp, close to a large airstrip. Richard Clarke, Clinton’s senior counter-terrorism adviser, has written in his memoirs: “When word came through that we had a contemporaneous sighting from our informants, the counter-terrorism security group met immediately by secure video conference.” An attack on the camp using cruise missiles was the only option the Americans could employ at such short notice. The previous year a similar strike using dozens of missiles had been launched on the Khalden training camp in the east of the country, but there were few casualties and the work of the camp was hardly disrupted. This time, with a smaller, more clearly defined target, the intelligence experts believed they would have more luck. The attack was planned for February 11, but according to Scheuer the White House stalled. Officials wanted more information about Bin Laden’s movements. In addition it was now clear that the hunting party consisted of minor princes from the United Arab Emirates, an American ally in the Gulf. As the White House dithered, the hunting party moved on. “All that was left was a pile of burning garbage in the desert,” said Scheuer this weekend. He claimed that the group had left after Clarke called a senior figure in the Emirates royal family. “It’s hardly surprising that they pulled out so quickly and that we lost our chance to kill Bin Laden,” said Scheuer. The Al-Jazeera series also reveals how the January 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur, at which the September 11 attacks were planned, came to light after the CIA tracked the telephones of Khalid al-Midhar, later to become one of the hijackers. Most of the senior planners of the attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, were at the meeting, which was also photographed by intelligence agents. Shortly afterwards Al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, another of the future hijackers who was also at the Malaysian meeting, flew to San Diego using their real names and passports. They were so casual that Al-Hazmi’s name appears in the San Diego residential phone directory for the period when they were in the area. The ease with which the two men were able to operate in America came partly because the CIA did not show its evidence to the FBI — responsible for internal security — until June 2001, 18 months after the planning meeting and well after the two had entered the country. The failures revealed in the Al-Jazeera documentary were echoed last week by further revelations about the so-called Able Danger military intelligence unit. Two members of this unit have come forward in recent weeks to say that Mohammed Atta, leader of the September 11 hijackers, was known as a terrorist suspect at least a year before the attacks. Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Shaffer and Captain Scott Philpott, former members of the unit, said that Atta and three of the other hijackers had been identified. They say that they testified to the September 11 commission but their testimony was not taken seriously. The Al-Jazeera series, together with Scheuer’s disclosures, add to growing pressure on the American authorities over their performance in the run-up to September 11. In an unpublished report to Congress last week John Helgerson, the US government’s inspector-general, delivered a scathing attack on George Tenet, CIA director at the time of September 11, and a score of other agency personnel for their failure to develop a strategy against Al-Qaeda. The report recommends a public reprimand against Tenet, James Pavitt, former deputy director of operations, and Cofer Black, former head of the counter-terrorism centre.

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Home Front: Politix

Internal review blasts CIA for pre-9/11 actions

2005-08-26

A long-awaited C.I.A. inspector general's report on the agency's performance before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks includes detailed criticism of more than a dozen former and current agency officials, aiming its sharpest language at George J. Tenet, the former director, according to a former intelligence officer who was briefed on the findings and another government official who has seen the report. Mr. Tenet is censured for failing to develop and carry out a strategic plan to take on Al Qaeda in the years before 2001, even after he wrote in a 1998 memo to intelligence agencies that "we are at war" with it, they said, speaking about the highly classified report on condition of anonymity. The report was delivered to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees on Tuesday by Porter J. Goss, the current C.I.A. director. Its preparation and previous drafts have provoked strong emotions at the beleaguered agency, which has borne the brunt of public criticism in a series of major studies of intelligence failures. The inspector general, John L. Helgerson, intends to send Congress additional materials, including a compilation of responses from Mr. Tenet and about two dozen other officials, the officials said. The report describes systemic problems at the agency before 2001, the officials said. In addition to criticizing Mr. Tenet; James L. Pavitt, the former deputy director of operations; and J. Cofer Black, the former director of the agency's Counterterrorist Center, it offers praise for some specific actions taken by them and other officials, they said. The findings place Mr. Goss in a delicate position. As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in the years before the attacks, he influenced intelligence policies and monitored intelligence agencies. As a leader of the joint Congressional inquiry into the attacks, he joined in requesting the inspector general's inquiry nearly three years ago. Now, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he will have to decide whether to take disciplinary action against any of those criticized, risking a further blow to the morale of an agency still charged with protecting the country against future terrorist attacks. The report recommends that Mr. Goss convene "accountability boards" to recommend personnel actions against those faulted in the report, who are identified by title rather than by name. Officials said the only action possible against Mr. Tenet and other officials who have retired would probably be to send them a letter of reprimand. In a "message to the workforce" sent by e-mail after he delivered the report to the Senate and House intelligence committees, Mr. Goss said that during the preparation of the report, "much has been done at C.I.A. and throughout the intelligence community to improve and reform the way we do business." He said he thought "the major changes to our agency are behind us." He said, "The bottom line is I want you to continue to do what you do best - provide our country with close-in access to the plans and intentions of its enemies and provide decision makers with the information they need to make the tough decisions." The agency declined to release the message, but its text was provided by a former intelligence official. Paul Gimigliano, a spokesman for the agency, declined to comment on the report or Mr. Goss's plans. Mr. Tenet, who stepped down in July 2004 after seven years as director of central intelligence, has responded vigorously to the challenge to his record. In addition to writing a lengthy response, he asked former Senator Warren B. Rudman, who served as chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1997 to 2000 and was co-chairman of a major commission on terrorism, to review the report. Neither Mr. Tenet nor Mr. Rudman would comment, and neither Mr. Pavitt nor Mr. Black could be reached for comment on Thursday. But a former intelligence official close to Mr. Tenet said Mr. Helgerson's team had failed to interview policy makers and intelligence officers outside the agency or to note that the agency was more focused on Al Qaeda than any other arm of government was before 2001. But the official who has seen the report said it appeared to be "thorough and professional." He said inspector general investigations usually were not authorized to interview people outside the agency. Eleanor Hill, who served as staff director for the joint Congressional inquiry into Sept. 11, said the report had been requested to provide "accountability" for the failures that permitted the attacks. "The families of the victims had repeatedly asked for some kind of accountability," Ms. Hill said. The Congressional inquiry did not have time to do "the kind of painstaking work necessary to assess individual responsibility," she said. While agency morale is important, she said "the quality of its performance is even more important, given the nature of the threats the country faces." One earlier draft of the inspector general's report criticized the management of the Counterterrorist Center and the Directorate of Operations for focusing on Al Qaeda's leadership, rather than looking for ways to attack the terrorist network at lower levels, according to a former senior agency official who read the draft. The former official said that by focusing on going after Osama bin Laden, the agency missed opportunities to recruit low-level agents on the margins of Al Qaeda who might have eventually provided access to its inner workings. He also said the report took top officials to task for allowing thousands of pages of Arabic intercepts to go untranslated.

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Home Front: WoT

CIA Panel: 9/11 Failures= Heads Should Roll

2005-08-26

Caught via Capt Ed The CIA's independent watchdog has recommended disciplinary reviews for current and former officials who were involved in failed intelligence efforts before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, The Associated Press has learned. CIA Director Porter Goss now must decide whether the disciplinary proceedings go forward. oh please oh please! The proceedings, formally called an accountability board, were recommended by the CIA inspector general, John Helgerson. It remains unclear which people are identified for the accountability boards in the highly classified report spanning hundreds of pages. The report was delivered to Congress Tuesday night. Following a two-year review into what went wrong before the suicide hijackings, people familiar with the report say Helgerson harshly criticizes a number of the agency's most senior officials. Among them are former CIA Director George Tenet, former clandestine service chief Jim Pavitt and former counterterrorism center head Cofer Black. The former officials are likely candidates for proceedings before an accountability board. The boards could take a number of actions, including letters of reprimand or dismissal. They could also clear them of wrongdoing. not likely unless it's a total whitewash Those who discussed the report with the AP all spoke on condition of anonymity because it remains highly classified and has been distributed only to a small circle in Washington. Pat Leahy must've seen a copy (D-Leaking) Tenet and Pavitt declined to comment. Black could not be reached Thursday. Goss was among those who requested the inspector general's review as part of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. At the time, Goss was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. A CIA officer in the 1960s, Goss must now decide whether the current and former agency personnel should be considered for sanctions. Those who know Goss well question whether the director, who took over the agency last September, will commission the disciplinary reviews. Despite public outcries for accountability, many in the intelligence community believe Goss would be loath to try to discipline popular former senior officials and cause unrest within the agency. Boo Friggin Hoo - Accountability first He may not want to go after less senior people still in the CIA's employ. Intelligence veterans say these CIA employees are the government's mostly highly trained in counterterrorism and before the Sept. 11 attacks, devoted their time to trying to stop al-Qaida. The hearings would force them to defend their careers rather than working against extremist groups. In addition, the numerous investigations after Sept. 11 determined that an intelligence overhaul was essential to attack Muslim extremism. Some Congress members — including California Rep. Jane Harman (D-Mediahog), the Intelligence Committee's senior Democrat — are pushing for the CIA to produce a declassified version of the report so the public can debate these and other issues. Some family members of 9/11 victims have also called for the report's immediate release. "The findings in this report must be shared with all members of Congress and with the American public to ensure that the problems identified are addressed and corrected, thus moving to restore faith in this agency," a group called Sept. 11 Advocates said in a statement Thursday. The final version comes after much internal debate at the CIA and new national intelligence director's office about whether to simply scrap the document because it looks backward and is so harsh, said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Beth Marple, spokeswoman for National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, said, "As expected, there has been discussion between Director Negroponte and Director Goss about this report. But there were absolutely no efforts to kill it." The CIA declined to comment on the substance of the report. Accountability boards are normally made up of top CIA officials. In the case of the most serious issues, it would not be unusual for the agency's No. 3, the executive director, to lead the proceedings. People familiar with the inspector general's process said the document largely covers ground already plowed in the 9/11 commission's report and a House-Senate inquiry that issued its own report on the attacks in December 2002. Those 37 Congress members requested the inspector general's review to consider issues of accountability. Among items that received significant attention in the past: the CIA's failure to put two known operatives, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, on government watch lists and to let the FBI know that the future hijackers had entered the United States. The new report, however, comes at the events from a different perspective, focusing more narrowly on the agency's performance let's see how far back the findings go...... bet they only start on W's watch, as blackmail, that's what J. Edgar Hoover would do

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Terror Networks & Islam

Euros disquieted over recent terrorist activities

2005-08-03

The preliminary finding by Italian investigators that those who took part in the attempted bomb attacks on London on July 21 were probably unconnected to any larger terrorism network raises a concern for intelligence and security services world-wide: there is a new breed of Islamic terrorism that has no link to old al-Qaeda structures. According to western security officials, the topic of home-grown, radicalised Muslim extremists shifted near the top of counter-terrorism agendas more than a year ago during regular bilateral discussion between the US and the UK’s homeland security services after a series of arrests of domestic terror suspects in both countries. The concern was heightened by US intelligence, which says the senior leadership group surrounding Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, remains isolated, unable to direct or to commission specific attacks on western targets. According to US intelligence officials, several al-Qaeda affiliates have had operations delayed because of a failure to receive instructions from the network’s senior leadership. That, they believe, illustrates Mr bin Laden’s increasing role as a propagandist rather than as an operational leader. Cofer Black, who recently stepped down as the State Department’s top counter-terrorism official, told Congress last year that US-led efforts to cut off al-Qaeda’s senior leadership had produced a second tier of leadership, less sophisticated and less well-trained, degrading the group’s capabilities. Not all officials agree. Retired Admiral James Loy, former number two at the US department of homeland security and senior counsellor at the Washington-based Cohen Group, believes the new leadership is potentially as dangerous, since it remains largely unknown to intelligence officials and is widely dispersed. “I liken that to the drug wars of the 1980s when there were five or six cartels in Colombia and we took them down,” said Adm Loy. “Unfortunately, [the result] was that instead of five in-command families, all these lieutenants came up. So instead of five in-control families, there are 50. Unfortunately, that’s what is happening now, and that’s a scary proposition.” Of equal concern, say experts and officials, is the belief that Mr bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may be using a recent campaign of audio and video tapes in order to radicalise western Muslims resident in targeted countries. These locals, disillusioned by US and British policy in Iraq, could be further influenced by recent admonishments by the al-Qaeda leaders that “the most pressing duty after faith” is to fight as part of a global jihad, officials argue. “Osama bin Laden has relied on Muslim resentment towards US policies in his call for a defensive jihad to oppose an American assault on the Islamic faith and culture,” vice-admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, told Congress this year. “He contends that all faithful Muslims are obliged to fight, or support the jihad financially if not physically capable of fighting.” Federal Bureau of Investigation officials have said that while overseas al-Qaeda members remain their biggest concern, last year’s Madrid bombings heightened attention being paid to the potential effect al-Qaeda propaganda may have on “radical American converts”. “The potential recruitment of radicalised American Muslim converts continues to be a concern and poses an increasing challenge for the FBI since recruitment is subtle and, many times, self-initiated,” Robert Mueller, FBI director, said in an unclassified report to Congress. US authorities have already charged a handful of local Muslims with terrorism-related charges, including Ali al-Timimi, an American-born imam sentenced last month to life in prison for recruiting Muslims in his northern Virginia community for Taliban training camps in Pakistan. Ernest James Ujaama, an American-born Seattle resident, was sentenced last year to two years in prison for attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon. UK authorities last year arrested eight Britons of Pakistani decent in a raid that uncovered hundreds of pounds of fertiliser that police suspected was to be used to build a bomb. Some experts think al-Qaeda’s Pakistan-based leadership still controls terrorist operations. The July 7 London bombings, they say, had hallmarks of the old leadership’s operations. “Bin Laden’s role is really that of a venture capitalist,” said Dominic Armstrong, director of research and intelligence for Aegis Defence Services, a London-based private security group. “If he likes the idea, he can provide funding, training and expertise.”

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