CIA made doctors torture suspected terrorists after 9/11, taskforce finds

Doctors were asked to torture detainees for intelligence gathering, and unethical practices continue, review concludes

An al-Qaida detainee at Guantanamo Bay in 2002: the DoD has taken steps to address concerns over practices at the prison in recent years. Photograph: Shane T Mccoy/PA

Doctors and psychologists working for the US military violated the ethical codes of their profession under instruction from the defence department and the CIA to become involved in the torture and degrading treatment of suspected terrorists, an investigation has concluded.

The report of the Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centres concludes that after 9/11, health professionals working with the military and intelligence services “designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees”.

Medical professionals were in effect told that their ethical mantra “first do no harm” did not apply, because they were not treating people who were ill.

The report lays blame primarily on the defence department (DoD) and the CIA, which required their healthcare staff to put aside any scruples in the interests of intelligence gathering and security practices that caused severe harm to detainees, from waterboarding to sleep deprivation and force-feeding.

The two-year review by the 19-member taskforce, Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror, supported by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and the Open Society Foundations, says that the DoD termed those involved in interrogation “safety officers” rather than doctors. Doctors and nurses were required to participate in the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike, against the rules of the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association. Doctors and psychologists working for the DoD were required to breach patient confidentiality and share what they knew of the prisoner’s physical and psychological condition with interrogators and were used as interrogators themselves. They also failed to comply with recommendations from the army surgeon general on reporting abuse of detainees.

The CIA’s office of medical services played a critical role in advising the justice department that “enhanced interrogation” methods, such as extended sleep deprivation and waterboarding, which are recognised as forms of torture, were medically acceptable. CIA medical personnel were present when waterboarding was taking place, the taskforce says.

Although the DoD has taken steps to address concerns over practices at Guantánamo Bay in recent years, and the CIA has said it no longer has suspects in detention, the taskforce says that these “changed roles for health professionals and anaemic ethical standards” remain.

“The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve,” said Dr Gerald Thomson, professor of medicine emeritus at Columbia University and member of the taskforce.

He added: “It’s clear that in the name of national security the military trumped that covenant, and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice. We have a responsibility to make sure this never happens again.”The taskforce says that unethical practices by medical personnel, required by the military, continue today. The DoD “continues to follow policies that undermine standards of professional conduct” for interrogation, hunger strikes, and reporting abuse. Protocols have been issued requiring doctors and nurses to participate in the force-feeding of detainees, including forced extensive bodily restraints for up to two hours twice a day.

Doctors are still required to give interrogators access to medical and psychological information about detainees which they can use to exert pressure on them. Detainees are not permitted to receive treatment for the distress caused by their torture.

“Putting on a uniform does not and should not abrogate the fundamental principles of medical professionalism,” said IMAP president David Rothman. “‘Do no harm’ and ‘put patient interest first’ must apply to all physicians regardless of where they practise.”The taskforce wants a full investigation into the involvement of the medical profession in detention centres. It is also calling for publication of the Senate intelligence committee’s inquiry into CIA practices and wants rules to ensure doctors and psychiatrists working for the military are allowed to abide by the ethical obligations of their profession; they should be prohibited from taking part in interrogation, sharing information from detainees’ medical records with interrogators, or participating in force-feeding, and they should be required to report abuse of detainees.

Sarah Boseley, health editor
The Guardian, Monday 4 November 2013

Find this story at 4 November 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

What is the Torture Report?

The Torture Report, an initiative of the ACLU’s National Security Project, aims to give the full account of the Bush administration’s torture program, from its improvised origins to the systematized, lawyer-rationalized maltreatment of hundreds of prisoners in U.S. custody around the world.

How is the Report being written?

Published serially online in a novel, responsive format, The Torture Report will bring together everything we now know from government documents, official investigations, press reports, photographs, witness statements, testimonials, and several vivid and meticulously-researched books into a single narrative – one that is updated dynamically and subject to critical review and improvement as it unfolds.

The principal author of the Report is Larry Siems, who directs the Freedom to Write and International Programs at PEN American Center and leads PEN’s ongoing efforts to defend writers facing persecution around the world and to protect freedom of expression in the United States. In addition to his human rights work, Siems is a poet and a nonfiction writer who has written and reported on undocumented workers, immigrant politics and human rights abuses along the U.S., and whose poems have appeared in leading literary journals.

We have also invited a group of expert contributors to offer comments and observations as new material appears. These contributors include Matthew Alexander, David Frakt, Glenn Greenwald, Joanne Mariner, Deborah Popowski, John Sifton, and Marcy Wheeler, as well as attorneys from the ACLU; their annotations are viewable in line in the text. We also invite you, the reader, to contribute additional information and comments at the end of the chapter. As new sections are added to the Report, chapters already online will be edited, expanded, or amended to address or incorporate the most valuable suggestions and latest information.

How do I navigate the site?

The Torture Report site encompasses several related web pages. At its core is the Report itself, to which new sections will be added regularly.

The Diary page, which will greet you each time you visit the site and which is updated frequently, will guide you to the latest additions to the Report and to new information or revelations that will be integrated into the Report in the future.

The Documents page makes available much of the primary-source material through which the narrative is revealed, incorporating a searchable archive of official the government documents the ACLU has gathered through litigation under the Freedom of Information Act.

Why do we need The Torture Report?

There is an urgent need for The Torture Report.

Assembling a comprehensive, up-to-the-minute, accessible account of the Bush administration’s torture program is vital to advancing public awareness of what happened, how it happened, and who should be held responsible for violations of U.S. and international law.

The recent appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate specific abuses in CIA custody is not likely to lead to a full accounting: that investigation was narrowly focused at the outset and reportedly grows narrower by the day. Congress has yet to initiate a full, serious investigation of prisoner abuse and other detention violations. There is little political will to press for accountability and little likelihood that any official reviews now underway will produce the kind of authoritative public record that is needed.

Several excellent reports and books have exposed significant elements of the program, but they either don’t attempt to tell the whole story or no longer reflect the full scope of what is known. The direct documentary evidence of abuse is now voluminous – too voluminous for most people to explore and make sense of on their own.

The Torture Report will provide both a readable, up-to-the-minute narrative account of what the evidence reveals and the tools for you to examine the mounting record of abuse yourself.

Find this story at 2012

© ACLU

Interrogation Inc.: A Window Into C.I.A.’s Embrace of Secret Jails

WASHINGTON — In March 2003, two C.I.A. officials surprised Kyle D. Foggo, then the chief of the agency’s main European supply base, with an unusual request. They wanted his help building secret prisons to hold some of the world’s most threatening terrorists.

Mr. Foggo, nicknamed Dusty, was known inside the agency as a cigar-waving, bourbon-drinking operator, someone who could get a cargo plane flying anywhere in the world or quickly obtain weapons, food, money — whatever the C.I.A. needed. His unit in Frankfurt, Germany, was strained by the spy agency’s operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Mr. Foggo agreed to the assignment.

“It was too sensitive to be handled by headquarters,” he said in an interview. “I was proud to help my nation.”

With that, Mr. Foggo went on to oversee construction of three detention centers, each built to house about a half-dozen detainees, according to former intelligence officials and others briefed on the matter. One jail was a renovated building on a busy street in Bucharest, Romania, the officials disclosed. Another was a steel-beam structure at a remote site in Morocco that was apparently never used. The third, another remodeling project, was outside another former Eastern bloc city. They were designed to appear identical, so prisoners would be disoriented and not know where they were if they were shuttled back and forth. They were kept in isolated cells.

The existence of the network of prisons to detain and interrogate senior operatives of Al Qaeda has long been known, but details about them have been a closely guarded secret. In recent interviews, though, several former intelligence officials have provided a fuller account of how they were built, where they were located and life inside them.

Mr. Foggo acknowledged a role, which has never been previously reported. He pleaded guilty last year to a fraud charge involving a contractor that equipped the C.I.A. jails and provided other supplies to the agency, and he is now serving a three-year sentence in a Kentucky prison.

The C.I.A. prisons would become one of the Bush administration’s most extraordinary counterterrorism programs, but setting them up was fairly mundane, according to the intelligence officials.

Mr. Foggo relied on C.I.A. finance officers, engineers and contract workers to build the jails. As they neared completion, he turned to a small company linked to Brent R. Wilkes, an old friend and a San Diego military contractor.

The business provided toilets, plumbing equipment, stereos, video games, bedding, night vision goggles, earplugs and wrap-around sunglasses. Some products were bought at Target and Wal-Mart, among other vendors, and flown overseas. Nothing exotic was required for the infamous waterboards — they were built on the spot from locally available materials, the officials said.

Mr. Foggo, 55, would not discuss classified details about the jails. He was not charged with wrongdoing in connection with the secret prisons, but instead accused of steering other C.I.A. business to Mr. Wilkes’ companies in exchange for expensive vacations and other favors. Before leaving the C.I.A. in 2006, he had become its third-highest official, and his plea was an embarrassment for the agency.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the intelligence world’s embrace of dark-of-night snatch-and-grabs, hidden prisons and interrogation tactics that critics condemned as torture has stained the C.I.A.’s reputation and led to legal challenges, investigations and internal divisions that may take years to resolve. The Justice Department is now considering opening a criminal investigation, with much of the attention focused on the agency’s network of secret prisons, which have become known as the “black sites.”

From Fringes to Spotlight

The demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had transformed Mr. Foggo from a fringe player into the C.I.A.’s indispensable man. Before the 9/11 attacks, the Frankfurt base was a relatively sleepy resupply center, running one or two flights a month to outlying stations. Within days of the attacks, Mr. Foggo had a budget of $7 million, which quickly tripled.

He managed dozens of employees, directing nearly daily flights of cargo planes loaded with pallets of supplies, including saddles, bridles and horse feed for the mounted tribal forces that the spy agency recruited. Within weeks, he emptied the C.I.A.’s stockpile of AK-47s and ammunition at a Midwest depot.

He was a logical choice for the prison project: aggressive, resourceful, patriotic, ready to dispense a favor; some inside the C.I.A. jokingly compared him to Milo Minderbinder, the fictional character who rose from mess hall officer to the black-market magnate of Joseph Heller’s World War II novel “Catch-22.”

Early in the fight against Al Qaeda, agency officials relied heavily on American allies to help detain people suspected of terrorism in makeshift facilities in countries like Thailand. But by the time two C.I.A. officials met with Mr. Foggo in 2003, that arrangement was under threat, according to people briefed on the situation. In Thailand, for example, local officials were said to be growing uneasy about a black site outside Bangkok code-named Cat’s Eye. (The agency would eventually change the code name for the Thai prison, fearing it would appear racially insensitive.) The C.I.A. wanted its own, more permanent detention centers.

Eventually, the agency’s network would encompass at least eight detention centers, including one in the Middle East, one each in Iraq and Afghanistan and a maximum-security long-term site at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that was dubbed Strawberry Fields, officials said. (It was named after a Beatles song after C.I.A. officials joked that the detainees would be held there, as the lyric put it, “forever.”)

The C.I.A. has never officially disclosed the exact number of prisoners it once held, but top officials have put the figure at fewer than 100.

At the detention centers Mr. Foggo helped build, several former intelligence officials said, the jails were small, and though they were built to house about a half-dozen detainees they rarely held more than four.

The cells were constructed with special features to prevent injury to the prisoners during interrogations: nonslip floors and flexible, plywood-covered walls to soften the impact of being slammed into the wall.

The detainees, held in cells far enough apart to prevent communication with one another, were kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. For their one hour of daily exercise, they were taken out of their cells by C.I.A. security officers wearing black ski masks to hide their identities and to intimidate the detainees, according to the intelligence officials.

Just like prisons in the United States, the jailers imposed a reward and punishment system: well-behaved detainees received books, DVDs and other forms of entertainment, which were taken away if they misbehaved, the officials said.

C.I.A. analysts served 90-day tours at the prison sites to assist the interrogations. But by the time the new prisons were built in mid-2003 or later, the harshest C.I.A. interrogation practices — including waterboarding — had been discontinued.

Winning a Promotion

Mr. Foggo’s success in Frankfurt, including his work on the prisons, won him a promotion back in Washington. In November 2004, he was named the C.I.A.’s executive director, in effect its day-to-day administrative chief.

The appointment raised some eyebrows at the agency. “It was like taking a senior NCO and telling him he now runs the regiment,” said A. B. Krongard, the C.I.A.’s executive director from 2001 to 2004. “It popped people’s eyes.”

Mr. Foggo soon became embroiled in agency infighting. The C.I.A. was reeling from criticism that it had exaggerated Iraq’s weapons programs. Mr. Foggo came to Washington as part of a new team that almost immediately began firing top C.I.A. officials, causing anger among veteran clandestine officers. Mr. Foggo’s fast rise and blunt approach unsettled some headquarters officials, according to Brant G. Bassett, a former agency officer and friend who served with Mr. Foggo.

“Dusty went in there with a blowtorch,” Mr. Bassett said. “Some people were overjoyed, but there were a few others who said, we’ve got to take this guy down.”

In 2005, before he came under investigation, Mr. Foggo and other officials, including John Rizzo, the agency’s top lawyer, paid a rare visit to some of the prison sites, assuring C.I.A. employees that their activities were legal, according to former intelligence officials. Mr. Foggo also met with representatives of Eastern European security services that had helped with the prisons. He expressed gratitude and offered assistance — a gesture the officials politely declined.

In February 2007, Mr. Foggo and Mr. Wilkes were indicted. Prosecutors believed that the C.I.A. had paid an inflated price to Archer Logistics, a business connected to Mr. Wilkes that had a $1.7 million C.I.A. supply contract. In return, the prosecutors claimed, Mr. Wilkes had taken Mr. Foggo on expensive vacations, paid for his meals at expensive restaurants and promised him a lucrative job when he retired.

“I was taking a trip with my best friend,” Mr. Foggo said in his defense. “It looked bad, but we had been taking trips together since we were 17 years old.”

Mr. Foggo said he had turned to Mr. Wilkes’ companies to bypass the cumbersome C.I.A. bureaucracy, not to provide a sweetheart deal to his oldest friend. “I needed something done by someone I trusted in private industry,” Mr. Foggo said.

Downfall in Court

Mr. Wilkes maintains his innocence, but he was eventually convicted in a bribery scandal involving former Representative Randall Cunningham of California. Mr. Foggo pleaded guilty and is serving a sentence on the fraud count, but he still maintains that he was unfairly prosecuted.

His lawyer, Mark J. MacDougall, said he believed that Mr. Foggo’s legal problems stemmed in part from controversies over his stint as executive director. “Nobody ever accused Dusty Foggo of putting a dime in his pocket, failing to do his job, or compromising national security,” Mr. MacDougall said. “Dusty may have made some mistakes, but this case was driven by professional animosity at C.I.A. and personal ambition.”

When Mr. Foggo’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to obtain access to agency files about his role in the prison program, prosecutors complained that he was trying to disclose a secret program. Mr. Foggo claimed that he was reluctant to divulge his role in classified programs and pleaded guilty, in part, to avoid revealing his secrets.

In an Aug. 1, 2007, letter, a C.I.A. lawyer informed Mr. Foggo’s lawyers that they could not review any classified files related to the prisons. The agency’s letter concluded, “In light of the president’s statements regarding the extraordinary value and sensitivity of the C.I.A. terrorist detention and interrogation program, the C.I.A. denies your request in its entirety.”

August 13, 2009
By DAVID JOHNSTON and MARK MAZZETTI

Find this story at 13 August 2009

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

NOMINATION OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES CLAPPER, JR., USAF, RET., TO BE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

[Senate Hearing 111-857]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]

S. Hrg. 111-857

NOMINATION OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL
JAMES CLAPPER, JR., USAF, RET., TO BE
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

=======================================================================

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

OF THE

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

__________

TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2010

__________

Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
senate

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
63-996 WASHINGTON : 2011
———————————————————————–
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center, U.S. Government Printing Office. Phone 202�09512�091800, or 866�09512�091800 (toll-free). E-mail, gpo@custhelp.com.

SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

[Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 2d Sess.]

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri, Vice Chairman

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
Virginia OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine
RON WYDEN, Oregon SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
EVAN BAYH, Indiana RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
BILL NELSON, Florida
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
HARRY REID, Nevada, Ex Officio
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky, Ex Officio
CARL LEVIN, Michigan, Ex Officio
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Ex Officio
———-
David Grannis, Staff Director
Louis B. Tucker, Minority Staff Director
Kathleen P. McGhee, Chief Clerk

CONTENTS

———-

JULY 20, 2010

OPENING STATEMENTS

Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, Chairman, a U.S. Senator from California. 1
Bond, Hon. Christopher S., Vice Chairman, a U.S. Senator from
Missouri………………………………………………. 3
Mikulski, Hon. Barbara A., a U.S. Senator from Maryland………. 6

WITNESS

Lieutenant General James R. Clapper,Jr., USAF, Ret., Director of
National Intelligence-Designate………………………….. 7
Prepared statement……………………………………. 8

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Prepared statement of Senator Russell D. Feingold……………. 33
Questionnaire for Completion by Presidential Nominees………… 52
Article titled “The Role of Defense in Shaping U.S. Intelligence
Reform” by James R. Clapper, Jr…………………………. 67
Prehearing Questions and Responses…………………………. 79
Letter from Robert I. Cusick, Office of Government Ethics, Dated
June 15, 2010, to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Transmitting Public
Financial Disclosure Report……………………………… 168
Letter from Susan S. Gibson, Dated June 7, 2010, to Robert I.
Cusik…………………………………………………. 177
Letter from James R. Clapper, Jr., Dated June 7, 2010, to Susan
S. Gibson……………………………………………… 178
Posthearing Questions and Responses………………………… 179
Article titled “Reorganiztion of DIA and Defense Intelligence
Activities” by James R. Clapper, Jr……………………… 202
Article titled “The Newly Revived National Imagery and Mapping
Agency: Geospatial Imagery & Intelligence in 2002 and Beyond”
by James R. Clapper, Jr…………………………………. 210
Article titled “Desert War Was Crucible for Intelligence
Systems” by James R. Clapper, Jr………………………… 215
Article titled “Defense Intelligence Reorganization and
Challenges” by James R. Clapper, Jr……………………… 219
Article titled “Challenging Joint Military Intelligence” by
James R. Clapper, Jr……………………………………. 227
Article titled “Critical Security Dominates Information Warfare
Moves” by James R. Clapper, Jr. and Eben H. Trevino, Jr……. 235

NOMINATION OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES CLAPPER, JR., USAF, RET., TO BE
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

———-

TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2010

U.S. Senate,
Select Committee on Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:43 p.m, in Room
SDG-50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Honorable Dianne
Feinstein (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Committee Members Present: Senators Feinstein, Wyden,
Mikulski, Feingold, Nelson of Florida, Whitehouse, Levin, Bond,
Hatch, Snowe, Chambliss, Burr, Coburn, and Risch.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, CHAIRMAN, A U.S.
SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA

Chairman Feinstein. The hearing will come to order. This
room is on the cool side, probably the coolest place in
Washington today. But I’d like to welcome everyone to this
hearing. We meet today in open session to consider President
Obama’s nominee to be the nation’s fourth Director of National
Intelligence, General James Clapper. So welcome, General
Clapper.
The position of the DNI, as we call him, the Director of
National Intelligence, is the senior most intelligence position
in the government. The DNI is by statute, the head of the 16
different intelligence offices and agencies that make up the
intelligence community, the principal advisor to the President
on intelligence matters, and the official in charge of
developing the intelligence budget.
As has been made clear over the first five years of the
existence of the position, the true extent of the director’s
authority and the exact nature of the job he is supposed to do
are still a matter of some debate. As the articles yesterday
and today in The Washington Post have made clear, the DNI faces
major management challenges caused by the enormous growth
throughout those intelligence agencies and other parts of the
government’s national security complex since 9/11.
The articles raised several issues such as the high
infrastructure expansion of buildings and data systems.
Yesterday’s article specifically names–and I won’t read them
out, but one, two, three, four, five, six–seven, huge new
buildings, all of which, as was pointed out, will obviously
have to accommodate individuals and all kinds of support
services and positions.
The article also describes a contractor number that now
reaches approximately 28 percent to 30 percent of the entire
intelligence workforce and carries out inherently governmental
functions, contrary to policies of the Office of Management and
Budget. The authors count 1,271 government organizations and
1,931 private companies that work on programs related to
counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence.
Under the past two DNIs and CIA directors, the number of
contractors has been coming down slightly. And I’m pleased that
they are no longer being used to conduct interrogation.
Nonetheless, the use of contractors needs to continue to
decrease substantially, and I intend to keep pushing on this
point until contractors are not used for any inherently
governmental purpose.
Our original fiscal year 2010 intelligence authorization
bill contained a requirement that would have reduced the number
of contractors across the community by 10 percent from 2009 to
2010. But because of the delay in passing the bill, this cut
has not gone into effect.
Like the Post’s articles, this committee has found, as
evidenced by our report on the Christmas Day plot, that
intelligence growth has not always led to improved performance.
Growth in the size and number of agencies, offices, task forces
and centers has also challenged the ability of former Directors
of National Intelligence to truly manage the community.
As a sponsor of the first legislation calling for the
creation of the position, I have long believed that the DNI
needs to be a strong leader and have real authority. Clearly
there is need for a strong, central figure or the balkanization
of these 16 agencies will continue.
However, this cannot be just another layer of bureaucracy.
The DNI must be both a leader as well as a coordinator of this
increasingly sprawling intelligence community. But the DNI must
also be, at times, more than that. He must be able to carry out
Presidential direction and shift priorities based on national
security concerns and emerging needs.
In actual practice, the DNI is constrained from directing
15 of the 16 elements of the community because they reside in
various federal departments. And the Intelligence Reform and
Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 states that, in carrying out
his responsibilities–and this is the rub–the DNI may not
abrogate the statutory responsibilities of the Secretaries.
This is often interpreted in real life to prevent centralized
direction. The 16th agency, the CIA, is not housed within a
department, but it, too, has demonstrated its ability to thwart
the DNI’s directives it dislikes by importuning the White
House.
We understand from former officials in the DNI’s office
that both problems have greatly frustrated past DNIs’ ability
to lead. Every day of every week, month by month, the DNI must
assure coordination between intelligence agencies to eliminate
duplication and improve information sharing. And, when
necessary, he must put an end to programs that are not working
and avoid redundancy and overlap. I increasingly believe that
this is becoming a major issue.
The 2010 Intelligence authorization bill reported out,
again unanimously, in revised form last week, which the White
House has approved and the House intelligence committee
supports, contains 10 provisions that would strengthen or add
management flexibilities for the DNI. Eight of those 10 were
requested by this or prior administrations. I urge the House to
pass this bill.
The primary mission of the DNI is to make sure that the
intelligence community produces information that enables
policymakers to make informed decisions. This mission includes
ensuring that the Department of Defense and military commanders
have the information they need to carry out military operations
and force protection. Yet it also covers the full range of
national security, foreign policy and homeland security
information needs.
I want to make sure that General Clapper, if confirmed,
will wear the mantle of the Director of National Intelligence,
not just the hat he wears today as Director of Defense
intelligence, and that he will have the necessary broad,
strategic focus and support that this position requires.
So I will be interested in continuing to discuss with our
nominee the proper role of the DNI, what the mission should be
and how strong the authority should be to carry out that
mission.
Not in question is General Clapper’s vast experience or
dedication to public service. He has served his country for
more than 40 years in a variety of capacities, 32 of those 40
years in active duty in the United States Air Force, retiring
in 1995 as a lieutenant general. He has led two of the larger
intelligence agencies, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the
National Imagery and Mapping Agency, since renamed the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA. And he is currently the
Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a position he has
held since 2007, meaning that he is one of the few national
security officials to serve under both the Bush and Obama
administrations.
In short, this nominee has as much experience in
intelligence as any serving or retired official. So, General
Clapper, I want to be clear that we do not question your
service, your knowledge or your capability. We only ask that
you clearly indicate your vision and commitment to head the
intelligence community this afternoon and work to give it
direction and prevent sprawl, overlap and duplication.
Before I turn to our distinguished Vice Chairman, I
understand, General, that you have family and friends with you
today. If you’d like to introduce them at this time–well, I
think I’ll change this and ask the ranking member to go ahead,
if that’s agreeable, then ask you to introduce your family, and
then I know Senator Mikulski would like to say a few words, I
suspect, on your behalf. I call on the Vice Chairman.
Mr. Vice Chairman.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, VICE CHAIRMAN, A
U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSOURI

Vice Chairman Bond. Thank you, Madam Chair, and as usual, I
agree with your opening statements, and I join you in welcoming
General Clapper to the committee for consideration of his
nomination to serve as the Director of National Intelligence.
The outgoing Director of National Intelligence, Admiral
Dennis Blair, deserves our thanks for his many years of service
to the nation, including his work as the previous DNI. Admiral
Blair faced a number of unfortunate challenges during his
tenure, as other administration officials increasingly assumed
greater control over intelligence community activities. The
next DNI must have the political clout, the willpower to ensure
that our intelligence agencies are able to get their vital work
done without being micromanaged by the Department of Justice or
the National Security Council.
It is my hope that the next DNI will assert this needed
leadership over the intelligence community. Something the
George W. Bush administration got right in this area was
placing key people in the jobs who were responsible to the
Congress. For example, there was no question that John
Negroponte, and then, most notably, Admiral Mike McConnell,
were the President’s principal intelligence advisors, as they
should be under United States law. At that time, the public did
not even know the names of intelligence staffers on the
National Security Council. Today, the paradigm has been
reversed. We have a staffer on the National Security Council,
who most people in the intelligence community believe acts as
the DNI.
He calls the shots and even goes on national television to
pitch the administration’s viewpoint. A June 6 Washington Post
article was spot on in describing his role in today’s
intelligence. This is not good for the country and is contrary
to Congress’ intent for the IC. If the President would like him
to act as his principal intelligence advisor and head of the
intelligence community, then I’ll be happy to co-host his
confirmation hearing with the Chair. But if not, then this
template needs to change.
Turning to you, General Clapper, as the Chair has already
mentioned, you’ve served our nation well. You have a long
background in very demanding leadership roles in the military
and the intelligence community, and I think we all thank you
for an impressive 46 years of service to our nation in the
field of, primarily, intelligence. But you know that I have
concerns about whether you will be able to do what Director
Blair could not.
You’ve talked about leaving federal service for some time,
yet you are now seeking one of the hardest jobs in Washington,
one fraught with maximum tensions. Frankly, today I ask you to
tell us why? Our nation is at a critical point. We’re six years
into this experience of intelligence reform, and I’m afraid we
have a long way to go. The recent Washington Post top secret
series highlights what I and others on the committee have been
saying for a long time. The intelligence community is lacking
effective oversight. And today, I hope we can focus on whether
you, General Clapper, will have the horsepower needed in the
White House to use the DNI as the position for reform and
management it needs to be.
The DNI, in the next round, will need to be a fire in the
gut guy who is willing to break paradigms and trends against
business as usual. He needs to be someone who is not
reluctantly accepting the job, but is willing to take on the
old guard and change broken ways of going about intelligence.
We don’t need our top spy chief to be a figurehead who cedes
authority to the Justice Department. Instead, we need a DNI who
can oversee our nation’s terror-fighting policy.
We need a DNI who will push the envelope on his authorities
and advance the institution’s ability to lead our intelligence
agencies. Just as important, we need someone who can throw some
elbows and take back control of our intelligence agency from
DOJ, White House bureaucrats and even the DOD. Also, he must
establish a clear chain of command between the CIA and the DNI.
While the 2004 intelligence reform bill was certainly a
step forward in our efforts to reform the intelligence
community, it fell well short of what I hoped Congress would
achieve–namely, as I’ve said many times and said to you, the
DNI was given a load of responsibility without the authority or
all the tools needed truly to lead our intelligence agencies.
The arm wrestling that took place between DNI Blair and the
CIA director over who would appoint the DNI’s representatives
overseas was a clear sign to me that we do not yet have the
right balance, but we have to get it right if we hope to meet
the national security challenges ahead.
Now, previously you’ve been inconsistent in whether the DNI
should be granted additional authorities to lead our
intelligence agencies. While some have rationalized this
wavering as an example of the old adage, “Where you sit is
where you stand”–in other words, you protect the turf of
whatever institution you lead–I don’t take much comfort in
that explanation. That’s not the hallmark of the sort of leader
that we need at the head of the intelligence community.
You reference in your prepared opening statement that a
number of Members have raised concerns about your affiliation
with the Department of Defense. Well, I think that is a valid
concern. When the President called the Chair and me to inform
us of your nomination, his first selling point was that you
were strongly supported by the Defense Secretary and the Senate
Armed Services Committee.
I have to tell you, General, that’s not the best way to put
you forward to this committee as the next leader of the
intelligence community. We’re happy that the Defense Department
and Armed Services Committee love you, but frankly, that’s not
what we’re looking for.
Now, I am a big supporter of the Defense Department. And as
I said, my son was in Iraq and three of my staff on the
committee voluntarily took leaves of absence over the past two
years to serve in harm’s way in uniform in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and we appreciate their service like all of the
members of the armed services.
But at the strategic level, an overemphasis on DOD within
the intelligence community can be counterproductive. We’ve seen
this problem with the State Department, and it’s struggled to
regain the lead from the Pentagon in smart power activities.
This is one reason the memo from your office to the Senate
Armed Services Committee a few weeks ago, which criticized 13
specific provisions in this committee’s authorization bill, was
not well received here. You said you felt obligated to afford
the Armed Services Committee the opportunity to hear your
criticisms of the bill. We would have appreciated that same
courtesy being extended to this committee, first and foremost,
since you are dual-hatted as under our structure.
It is our bill; you are the DNI, Director of National
Intelligence. The memo is something that I believe you should
have addressed to us upfront, and on the record at the end of
your opening statement today I would hope you might reference
it.
We have to get the relationship between the IC and its
overseers right. Congressional oversight is instrumental in
advancing the DNI’s leadership of the intelligence community.
Through such oversight Congress can ensure that not only the
DNI understands the expectations of his position but that other
agencies recognize the DNI’s leadership.
General, too much of your previous contact with this
committee has been too reluctant and reactive. We have to have
a DNI who works proactively to meet his obligations under the
law, to keep the Senate Intelligence Committee fully and
currently informed. And that requires a good and open working
relationship.
Today is your opportunity to instill in this committee the
confidence that you’re up to the task of leading the
intelligence community while complying with your statutory
obligations to work with this committee. And I wish you the
very best, sir.
Madam Chair, we’ve had far too many DNI confirmation
hearings in our time together on the SSCI. I believe this high
turnover rate is a symptom of the inadequate authorities that
the IRTPA invested in the DNI. If we are unable to address
those legislative shortcomings in the remaining time in this
Congress, then I hope this is something you and the next
ranking Republican will begin to address next year in the new
Congress.
And I thank you, Madam Chair and General.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Chairman.
Senator Mikulski, it’s my understanding you have a few
comments you’d like to offer.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, A U.S. SENATOR
FROM MARYLAND

Senator Mikulski. Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to be
very brief, because I know we want to get quickly to the
hearing.
I’m one of the people that’s worked hands-on with Mr.
Clapper. And I would like to just say to the committee, first
of all, like you, I know we’ve been through four DNI
confirmations, four DNIs. And if there is a failure in or
questions about the authority and the functionality of the DNI,
then it’s incumbent on Congress to look at the legislation, but
not necessarily fault the DNI nominee for the failures of the
legislative framework.
But let me just say this about Mr. Clapper: One of the
things–look, you all know me as straight-talking, plain-
talking, kind of no-nonsense. And one of the things in working
with Mr. Clapper as head of the NGA was, again, his candor, his
straightforwardness, his willingness to tell it like it is–not
the way the top brass wanted to hear it–I thought was
refreshing and enabled us to work very well.
I think that in his job he will be able to speak truth to
power–which God knows we need it–and he will speak truth
about power, which we also need. And I would hope that as we
say, oh, gee, we don’t know if we want a military guy chairing
or heading the DNI, Mr. Clapper left the military service in
1995. He’s been a civilian. He doesn’t come with the whole
extensive, often military staff that people bring with them
when they take a civilian job. And I think in my mind he’s
probably the best qualified to do this job, because he’s not
only been a night hawk standing sentry over the United States
of America, but he’s actually run an intelligence agency and
he’s actually had to run a big bureaucracy. And he’s had to run
with sometimes very inadequate leadership at the top.
So we ought to give him a chance and I think we ought to
hear what he has to say today. I acknowledge the validity of
the questions the Chair and the ranking member have raised, but
I think we would do well to approve General Clapper.
Vice Chairman Bond. Madam Chair, if I may thank my friend
from Maryland for helping me get my voice back and wish her a
very happy birthday.
Chairman Feinstein. Happy birthday, Senator. We did this in
caucus and gave her a rousing verse.
Senator Mikulski. I thank you for your gallantry, but
sometimes state secrets ought to be kept state secrets.
[Laughter.]
Vice Chairman Bond. I didn’t mention any years or anything.
Just the date.
Senator Mikulski. Well done.
Chairman Feinstein. Clapper, if you would like to introduce
your family, please, we’d like to welcome them and then proceed
with your comments.

STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES CLAPPER, JR., USAF, RET.,
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE-
DESIGNATE

General Clapper. I’d like to introduce my family and
friends who are with me today. First, my wife of 45 years, Sue,
who herself is a former NSA employee, my daughter Jennifer and
her husband Jay. She is a principal of an elementary school in
Fairfax County and Jay is a high school teacher; my brother
Mike from Illinois, and my sister, Chris, who just moved to
North Carolina; and a close friend of ours who is with us
today.
Chairman Feinstein. We welcome you all.
General Clapper. Chairman Feinstein, Vice Chairman Bond and
distinguished members of the committee, it is indeed a
privilege and an honor for me to appear before you today as
President Obama’s nominee to serve as the fourth Director of
National Intelligence. Additionally, I want to thank Senator
Mikulski for your introduction. It was very thoughtful and
touching to me personally.
Being nominated for this position for me was an unexpected
turn of events. I’m in my third tour back in the government. My
plan was to walk out of the Pentagon about a millisecond after
Secretary Gates. I had no plan or inkling to take on another
position. But as in the past, I’ve always been a duty guy at
heart, and so when approached by Secretary Gates, followed by
the President of the United States of America, both of whom I
have the highest respect for, I could not say no. I’m honored
that President Obama has expressed confidence in my abilities
and experience by this nomination.
I’ve submitted a longer statement for the record, subject
to your concurrence. If I can deliver one message to you here
today, it is this: I’ve served over 46 years in the
intelligence profession in many capacities–in peace, in
crisis, in combat, in uniform, as a civilian, in and out of
government and in academe. I’ve tried hard to serve in each
such capacity with the best interests of our great nation first
and foremost. Should I be confirmed as Director of National
Intelligence, I can assure you that will continue to be my
central motivation.
We have the largest, most capable intelligence enterprise
on the planet. It is a solemn sacred trust to the DNI to make
that enterprise work for the sake of this nation and its
people. Intelligence is a team endeavor and the DNI is in the
unique and distinctive position to harness and synchronize the
diverse capabilities of the entire community and make it run as
a coherent enterprise.
I want to repeat something here today publicly that I’ve
said to many of you privately. I do believe strongly in the
need for congressional oversight, and if confirmed, I would
continue to forge an even closer partnership with the oversight
committee.
It’s the highest distinction in my professional career to
have been nominated for this extremely critical position,
particularly in this difficult time throughout the world.
This concludes my formal statement. I’d be prepared to
respond to your questions, or Madam Chairman, if you’d like, I
can respond now to your commentary as well as that of the
Ranking Member.
[The prepared statement of General Clapper follows:]
Prepared Statement of Lieutenant General James R. Clapper, Jr.,
Director of National Intelligence-Designate

Madam Chairman, Vice Chairman Bond, and distinguished Members of
the Committee, it is a privilege to appear before you today as the
President’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence: I am truly
honored that the President has confidence in my ability to lead our
Intelligence Community. My deepest appreciation goes out to him for the
nomination, and. my sincere thanks to all of you, the overseers of our
nation’s intelligence services, for the opportunity to address you and
answer your questions here today.
When President Obama asked me to lead this organization he said he
wanted someone who could build the Intelligence Community into an
integrated team that produces quality, timely, and accurate
intelligence; be his principal intelligence advisor; be the leader of
our Intelligence Community; and be someone who would tell policymakers
what they needed to know, even if it wasn’t what they wanted to hear.
Lastly, he needed someone who knew how to get things done in a
bipartisan, professional manner.
While humbled by the nomination, I reflect upon my 46 years of
experience in the intelligence business and find confidence in my
ability to serve diligently and competently in the position of Director
of National Intelligence, should I be confirmed.
I have heard expressions of concern about my independence; as a
long-time denizen of the Department of Defense, and whether I might be
too beholden to it, and, thus, skew things in favor of the military. I
have been out of uniform for almost 15 years, over six of which were
completely out of the government. The former Secretary of Defense ended
my tenure as Director of NGA three months earlier than originally
planned, because I was regarded as too “independent.” I am a “truth
to power” guy, and try always to be straight up about anything I’m
asked.
Having said that, I feel my experience in the military–starting
with my two tours of duty during the Southeast Asia conflict–provided
a wealth of experience in intelligence which has been expanded and
honed by the things I’ve done since retiring from military service in
1995. Thus, I have been a practitioner in virtually every aspect of
intelligence.
Over the course of my career, I served as a Commander in combat, as
well as a Wing Commander and Commander of a Scientific and Technical
Intelligence Center. I have also served as a Director of Intelligence
(J-2) for three war-fighting commands and led two intelligence
agencies. I learned every aspect of intelligence collection, analysis,
operations, planning and programming, and application and in all other
disciplines–HUMINT, GEOINT, MASINT, Foreign Material, Counter-
intelligence, and other more arcane forms of technical intelligence. I
have been widely exposed to the workings of the entire U.S.
Intelligence Community around the globe.
I have also worked as a contractor for four companies, with
intelligence as my primary focus. This gave me great insight into the
roles as well as the strengths and limits of contractors, how the
government looks from the outside, and what drives a commercial entity
as it competes for, wins, and fulfills contracts.
I served on many government boards, commissions and panels over my
career. Specifically, I served as Vice Chairman of a Congressionally
mandated Commission chaired by former Governor of Virginia, Jim
Gilmore, for almost three years. Based on this experience I learned a
great deal on how issues are perceived at the State and local levels,
and helped formulate recommendations, which, in part, presaged the
subsequent formation of the Department of Homeland Security.
As the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, I helped
exercise civilian control over the military, served as Program
Executive for the Military Intelligence Program, and developed and
promulgated standards and policy across the entire range of the
intelligence, counter-intelligence, and security dimensions of the
Department of Defense.
Apart from all this functional experience, I have lived the history
of the Intelligence Community for that same time span. I think the
amalgam of this experience–the breadth, depth, and scope–equips me to
deal with the demands of the DNI–a position which demands extensive
knowledge of the entirety of the US intelligence enterprise.
I think, too often, people assume that the Intelligence Community
is equally adept at divining both secrets (which are theoretically
knowable) and mysteries (which are generally unknowable) . . . but we
are not. Normally, the best that Intelligence can do is to reduce
uncertainty for decision-makers–whether in the White House, the
Congress, the Embassy, or the fox hole–but rarely can intelligence
eliminate such uncertainty.
But in order to provide the best intelligence support to our
nation, our leaders and decision-makers, the DNI can and must foster
the collaboration and cooperation of the Intelligence Community.
Intelligence is a team effort. Given the complexity and diversity of
the Intelligence Community–we must view it as an enterprise of
complementary capabilities that must be synchronized. To be specific,
the DNI will need to serve the President and work with all members of
the community and the Congress as well as with many others, to be
successful in fulfilling the President’s vision.
Madam Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, if confirmed, I pledge not only
to follow the law, but to go a step further and endeavor, as best as I
am able, to build upon and increase the trust between Congress and DNI.
That’s not to say we’ll always see things the same way. And that’s not
to say you won’t question us and hold us accountable where
appropriate–I expect nothing less. But our objective ought to be the
same: to give the Intelligence Community all that it needs to succeed,
consistent with our laws and values. If confirmed, I believe I can do
that. I have had very positive discussions with CIA, FBI, and other
leaders across the Intelligence Community, and I am quite encouraged by
their commitment to making this team work should I be confirmed.
Additionally, keeping this Committee “fully and currently”
informed is not an option. It is the law, and it is our solemn
obligation. I was a young Air Force officer at NSA in the seventies,
and watched the Church-Pike hearings, which led to, among other things,
the establishment of the intelligence oversight committees in both
Houses of Congress. I am a strong believer in the need for an informed
Congress. I say this not only as an intelligence-career professional,
but as a citizen. I have interacted with the intelligence oversight
committees since the mid-eighties in several capacities. If confirmed,
I would seek to forge a close partnership with the oversight
committees.
Moreover, I would observe that the Congress will be hugely
influential in ensuring the DNI succeeds. The Congressional DNI
partnership is crucial in all respects, and this is one of the most
important–keeping Congress fully and currently informed of
intelligence activities and receiving your feedback, support, and
oversight. Indeed, it is my conviction that, partly through the
Congress, the DNI has a great deal of authority already; the challenge
is how that authority is asserted. I believe my experience in the
community would serve me, and the position, well.
Finally, the men and women of the Intelligence Community are
courageous, smart and patriotic; if confirmed, it would be my honor to
lead them in support of our nation’s security. Thank you and I look
forward to your questions.

Chairman Feinstein. Well, that is up to you, General. If
you would like to, proceed; otherwise we can take that up in
questions. It’s up to you.
General Clapper. Well, we have Members here waiting to ask
questions, so I would suggest we go ahead with that, and then
perhaps I’ll get to these points, or if not later, I will get
to them subsequently.
Chairman Feinstein. All right. We will begin with 10-minute
rounds, and we will proceed in order of seniority and we will
alternate sides. I hope that’s acceptable.
General Clapper, as I mentioned in my opening statement, I
believe that the DNI must be able to be a strong leader as well
as a coordinator. In the Oxford Handbook of National Security
Intelligence from February 2010, you wrote, “I no longer
believe as strongly as I once did in greater centralization of
intelligence activity or authority, and I realize that the
individual needs of each department for tailored intelligence
outweighs the benefits of more centralized management and
control.”
Secondly, in answer to the committee’s initial
questionnaire, you wrote that the responsibilities of the DNI
entail “supervision and oversight,” which to me seems weaker
than “direction and control.”
Here’s the question: If you were confirmed as DNI, in what
way specifically will you be the leader of the IC as opposed to
simply a coordinator of the 16 agencies that make up its parts?
And can you give specific examples of where you see more
forceful leadership is necessary?
General Clapper. Well, Madam Chairman, I think first that
with all of the discussion about the lack of authority or the
perceived weaknesses of the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, I believe it already does have considerable
authority, either explicit in the law, the IRTPA, or implicit,
that can be exerted. It’s my belief that the issue, perhaps, in
the past has been the art form by which that authority has been
asserted.
And it would be my intent to push the envelope, to use your
phrase, on where those authorities can be broadened. And I
refer specifically to programming and financial management,
since that’s the common denominator in this town, as one area
where, having been a program manager twice in the national
intelligence program as well as the program executive for the
military intelligence program, I think I know how those systems
work and how that can be leveraged.
When I speak of centralization, I don’t think that
everything has to be managed and run from the immediate
confines of the office of the Director of National
Intelligence. I think Director of National Intelligence
authorities can be extended by deputizing or delegating, if you
will, to various parts of the community things that can be done
on the DNI’s behalf but which do not have to be done within the
confines of the DNI staff. So I would want to clarify that.
I would not have agreed to take this position on if I were
going to be a titular figurehead or a hood ornament. I believe
that the position of Director of National Intelligence is
necessary, and, whether it’s the construct we have now or the
Director of Central Intelligence in the old construct, there
needs to be a clear, defined, identifiable leader of the
intelligence community to exert direction and control over the
entirety of that community, given its diversity and its
heterogeneity, if you will, the 16 components that you
mentioned.
Chairman Feinstein. Given our present budget problems, this
growth of the entire community, which has doubled in budget
size since 9/11, is unlikely to continue. We’ve all had
occasion to discuss this with recent heads of individual
departments. It’s my belief that everybody is well aware of
that. In fact, the budget may actually end up being decreased
in coming years.
So here’s the question: Has this growth, in your view, as
you’ve participated at least at DIA and other areas, been
managed correctly? Are there areas where you believe work
remains to be done to consolidate and better manage prior
growth?
General Clapper. Madam Chairman, I think, with particularly
the publication of the two articles in the Dana Priest series,
that it would seem to me that some history might be a useful
perspective. And I go back to when I served as Director of DIA
in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War where we were under
a congressional mandate to–the entire intelligence community
was–under a mandate to reduce the community by on the order of
20 percent. And put another way, that meant that one out of
every five employees that we then had on the rolls had to be
removed from those rolls.
The process started before I left active duty in 1995 and
continued through the 1990s. I left the government, was away
for six years, came back to then NIMA, later NGA, took over
there two days after 9/11. And that downward profile was then
in progress. And we were constricting facilities, fewer people,
then 9/11 occurred. We put the brakes on, screech, and then we
had to rejuvenate and re-expand the intelligence community.
And of course, the obvious way to do that, to do it
quickly, was through contractors. That certainly happened in my
case when I was director of NGA for five years in the immediate
aftermath of 9/11.
And so I think the questions that are raised in the article
that you point out about the profligate growth of contractors
and attendant facilities and all this sort of thing is, in my
view, part of a historical pattern here, a pendulum that is
going to swing back and we are going to be faced, I think, with
a somewhat analogous situation as we faced after the fall of
the Wall when the charge was to reap the peace dividend and
reduce the size of the intelligence community.
With the gusher, to use Secretary Gates’s very apt term, of
funding that has accrued particularly from supplemental or
overseas contingency operations funding, which, of course, is
one year at a time, it is very difficult to hire government
employees one year at a time. So the obvious outlet for that
has been the growth of contractors.
Now, if you go back even further in history, at least in my
mind, you think back to World War II where we had the arsenal
of democracy, which turned out ships and planes and trucks and
jeeps in unending numbers and that’s actually how we won the
war. In a sense, we’re doing somewhat the same thing
analogously today; it’s just a different war. It’s much more of
an information-driven war, where intelligence, instead of being
as it was in my day, my first tour in Vietnam in 1965, where
intelligence was a historical irritant, it now drives
everything.
So it’s not surprising, in my view, that intelligence is so
prominent and that we have so many contractors doing so many
things. I think the article today is in some ways testimony to
the ingenuity, innovation and capability of our contractor
base. That’s not to say that it’s all efficient; it isn’t.
There’s more work that needs to be done there. I think this is
a great area to work with the oversight committees.
What is lacking here are some standards. Should there be
limits on the amount of revenue that would accrue to
contractors? Should there be limits on the number of full-time
equivalent contractors who are embedded in the intelligence
community? And I think those are issues that I would propose we
work together on if I’m confirmed as the DNI. And I would
start, frankly, with the Office of the DNI, which in my
sensing, at least, I think has got a lot of contractors and we
ought to look hard at whether that’s appropriate or not.
With respect to the buildings that have accrued, most of
the buildings that–and NGA is a case in point, a $2.1 billion
facility that will go in at Springfield, Virginia, at the
former engineering proving ground at Fort Belvoir. I was very
instrumental in that and that, of course, came about because of
the BRAC, the base relocation and consolidation round that
occurred in 2005.
So the NGA facility, the consolidation of the central
adjudication facilities at Fort Meade, the consolidation and
then the co-location of the counterintelligence facilities at
Quantico, at DISA, going to the Defense Information Support
Agency at Fort Meade, all came about because of the BRAC
rounds.
In the case of NGA, what the business case was, we got out
of leased facilities which over time cost more than a
government-owned facility, not to mention the quality of life
working conditions that will demonstrably improve for NGA.
Chairman Feinstein. One last quick question. It’s my
understanding that a contractor costs virtually double what a
government employee does and has cost that. We have set as a
mark 10 percent reduction a year. I don’t know that that’s
quite achievable. I know the CIA has tried to do 5 percent.
What is your view on this as to what would be a practical
and achievable number to aim for the reduction of contractors,
assuming they’re 28 percent to 30 percent of the entire
workforce today?
General Clapper. Well, ma’am, I think that we need to try
to come up with some organizing principles about where the
contractors are appropriate and where they are not, since there
are wide variances in terms of the percentages and prevalence
of contractors in various parts of the community. In the case
of the military services, with the exception of perhaps right
now of the Army, which I think is understandable, it’s a fairly
low percentage of contractors that are working in intelligence.
In the case of the intelligence agencies, the percentage is
higher and, of course, one agency in particular, the NRO, which
has classically, traditionally been heavily reliant on
contractors, not only for acquisition, but for operations.
So I think I’d want to try to come up with some organizing
principles, some standards that would determine–some formulas,
if you will, that would determine where contractors are
appropriate and where they are not rather than just keying on a
fixed percentage, which could, in some cases, be damaging or
not.
So I certainly agree with, again, it’s time for that
pendulum to swing back as it has historically. I’m just
reluctant to commit to a fixed percentage because I’d want to
see what the impact was in individual cases.
Chairman Feinstein. Well, we will ask you for that
assessment as soon as you’re confirmed.
Mr. Vice Chairman.
Vice Chairman Bond. Thank you, Madam Chair.
General, let me pose a hypothetical that has some base in
reality. Let’s pretend you are the DNI and you worked for years
with the oversight committees to produce an intelligence
authorization text. It’s safe to say the administration’s OMB
director writes to the committees saying the President will
sign the text, and let’s pretend that an Under Secretary of
Defense, Intelligence–in a sense, it would be your successor–
sends a discussion draft to the majority staff of the Armed
Services Committee alerting them to provisions in the text that
need modification because they conflict with longstanding
authorities of the Secretary of Defense.
Let’s also pretend that you did not clear this, the Under
Secretary did not clear it with you, the DNI, or the
intelligence oversight committees.
How would you view this action of your dual-hatted Under
Secretary of Defense, Intelligence? And how would you view his
meddling in this operation? And how do you think you as the DNI
would react to the USD/I doing this?
General Clapper. Well, I probably would have chastised him
for not having provided a copy of the staff paper that was
exchanged in response to requests from the House Armed Services
Committee staff. And in retrospect, it would have been better
had I seen to it that a copy of that went to the two respective
intelligence committees. That happened anyway at the speed of
light without my taking any action, but that would probably
have been the more appropriate course.
I have been for the last three years the Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence and I considered it my responsibility
and my obligation to defend and protect the Secretary’s
authorities and prerogatives to the maximum extent I could. If
I were confirmed as the DNI, I will be equally assiduous in
ensuring that the DNI’s prerogatives and authorities are
protected and advanced.
Vice Chairman Bond. Well, we would hope so. Now, in our
discussion–we had a good discussion last week–I believe you
said that the Senate Intelligence Committee should have
jurisdiction over the Military Intelligence Program budget,
which is currently under the jurisdiction of the Armed Services
Committee.
Would could you clarify that for me? Do I understand that
correctly?
General Clapper. Well, I’m probably risking getting in
trouble with the Senate Armed Services Committee, who
apparently likes me now, so—-
Vice Chairman Bond. You used up a chit or two there.
Senator Levin. I’d continue to worry if I were you, General
Clapper.
[Laughter.]
General Clapper. It would be better, frankly, and I guess I
don’t want to get into jurisdictional gun battles here between
and among committees, but from my viewpoint, having done this
in several incumbencies, it would be better if the oversight
were symmetrical. In the House, the House Intelligence
Committee does have jurisdiction over the Military Intelligence
Program, and it’s a different situation here in the Senate. And
I will leave that—-
Vice Chairman Bond. That’s very clear and I appreciate
that, and you have, as anyone around here knows, entered into
the most deadly minefield in Washington, D.C.
General Clapper [continuing]. Yes, sir.
Vice Chairman Bond. So step carefully, but we appreciate
you taking that step.
A very important question about habeas. A number of habeas
decisions have resulted in release of Guantanamo Bay detainees,
government-conceded in some cases; in others, the government
argued against the release and recently the government won a
case on appeal.
We know the recidivism rate for Gitmo detainees is now
above 20 percent. Do you agree with the public statement of the
national security staffer who said that a 20 percent recidivism
rate with terrorists isn’t that bad?
General Clapper. He was comparing it, I believe, to what
the recidivism rate is here in the United States. I think in
this case a recidivism rate of zero would be a lot better. That
would be a great concern. I think it is incumbent on the
intelligence community institutionally to make the soundest,
most persuasive, authoritative and accurate case possible when
these cases are addressed, when decisions are being made to
send people back to host countries.
A particular case in point in Yemen, as we discussed in
February at a closed hearing when Steve Kappes and I appeared
before you, that’s something you have to watch very carefully
in Yemen because their ability to monitor and then rehabilitate
anyone is problematic at best. And these decisions were made,
as we also discussed, sir, this is an interagency thing, a
process in which intelligence is an important but not the only
input to that decision.
Vice Chairman Bond. Would you agree that the committee
should be given the intelligence assessments on Guantanamo Bay
detainees which we have not fully received yet?
General Clapper. As far as I’m concerned, yes, sir, you
should have that information.
Vice Chairman Bond. I have some concerns, and I would like
your views on having the DNI sit in a policymaking role for the
purposes of voting on the disposition of Guantanamo detainees.
Is that over the line of intelligence gathering and getting
into a policy area?
General Clapper. I don’t know the exact mechanics of how
those meetings work, but I would say as a general rule I don’t
believe intelligence should be in a “policymaking” role. I
think intelligence should support policy. It should provide the
range of options for policymakers, but I do not believe
intelligence–other than for intelligence policy, but not
broader policy–should be involved.
Vice Chairman Bond. But I assume you would not hesitate if
the intelligence agencies’ conclusions point to a different
direction than the ultimate policy decision, that you would
share your honest assessments with the oversight committee in
our confidential deliberations.
General Clapper. Yes, sir, I would.
Vice Chairman Bond. All right. One of the questions we have
is whether there should be a statutory framework for handling
terrorists’ habeas corpus challenges, a redefinition under the
new circumstances of the law of the war, because we are in a
different kind of battle than we have been. Do you think we
need a new law on habeas with terrorists who don’t belong to
any nation’s army?
General Clapper. Sir, that’s one I think I would need to
take under advisement. It’s kind of a legal issue, a little out
of my domain. Off the top of my head, I’m not sure I can answer
that.
Vice Chairman Bond. If you’re confirmed, we would ask that
you work with your legal counsel and with us to see if
something is appropriate, if you would have any
recommendations.
In your meeting with me last week you said that the
Department of Justice, in my words, meddling in our
intelligence agencies was not an acute problem. I respectfully
disagree.
The DOJ prevented IC agencies from complying with their
statutory responsibility to share intelligence with the
committee on the Times Square attack, and the DOJ did not defer
to the IC in decisions about whether to Mirandize terrorists. I
think those are acute.
If you are confirmed, what input do you expect to have over
the decision whether or not to Mirandize a terror suspect?
General Clapper. Well, we hope to be consulted and in the
decisionmaking process if such a situation arose.
Vice Chairman Bond. Have you ever had an opportunity to
discuss these issues with the Attorney General?
General Clapper. I have not.
Vice Chairman Bond. What do you think ought to take
precedence–making sure defendants’ statements can be used in
court, or obtaining needed intelligence to thwart future
attacks?
General Clapper. Well, obviously my interest, or the
interests of intelligence institutionally, is in gaining
information. How the detainee is treated legally, that’s
another decision that I don’t make, but my interest is in
procuring the information.
There is some commonality here between a straight
intelligence interrogation, say done by the military or agency,
versus interrogations done by the FBI, in that in both cases
the interrogator is trying to achieve or develop rapport with
the detainee or the person being interrogated. That is a major
factor for the FBI, for example, when they are interrogating,
even in preparation for Mirandizing somebody. So again, I think
the interest of intelligence is in gaining the information.
Vice Chairman Bond. Do you believe there are legitimate
reasons for Department of Justice instructing entities within
the DOJ or elsewhere in the intelligence community not to share
intelligence information otherwise under the jurisdiction of
this oversight committee?
General Clapper. Sir, I’m not sure I understand the
question. I’m sorry.
Vice Chairman Bond. Are there situations, do you see any
situations in which the Department of Justice can or should say
to an intelligence entity, or even to the FBI, don’t share that
intelligence with the intelligence committee?
General Clapper. I can’t think of a situation like that, or
something I wouldn’t be very supportive if that were the case.
Vice Chairman Bond. I can’t either. Thank you very much.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman.
Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Clapper, it is well known that the world of
counterterrorism and homeland security is a sprawling
enterprise. Yet yesterday the Washington Post made what I
believe is a jaw-dropping assertion, and I would like to get
your comment on it. It is a really extraordinary assertion of
fact, and they said here, “No one knows how much money it
costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist
within it, or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”
Now they made this as an assertion of fact. Do you agree
with that?
General Clapper. Well, no, sir, I really don’t. The
statement implies that this is completely out of control, and I
believe that it is under control because in the end the common
denominator for all this is the money that is appropriated,
whether it’s intelligence or for other purposes. The money is
appropriated with fairly specific strings attached. There are
allocations on a program-by-program basis. I know I’ve been the
recipient of that.
And in the end the intelligence community can do many
things, but printing more money is not one of those things we
can do. So that does serve, I think, as a means of control over
the allegedly profligate intelligence activities.
Senator Wyden. Let’s take the various judgments made in
that assertion. Is it clear how many people are employed?
General Clapper. We can certainly count up the number of
government employees that we have, absolutely. Counting
contractors is a little bit more difficult.
I was a contractor for six years, after I left, in the
interval after I left active duty.
And when you have–I would sign off, depending on which
company I was working for, I might charge to four or five
different contracts. So you have different parts of people, if
you will, so it gets to be a little more difficult to actually
count up, on a head count, on a day-by-day basis, exactly how
many contractors may be doing work, all or in part, for a
contract in intelligence.
Senator Wyden. I have to cover a lot of ground here. So the
answer to that is, it’s not clear how many people are employed.
Is it clear how many agencies do the same work?
General Clapper. Well, again, this is a determination that
Dana Priest made, that agencies—-
Senator Wyden. I’m asking for your—-
General Clapper [continuing]. I don’t believe that, sir. I
don’t believe, as a general commentary. There are cases, as
there have been in the history of intelligence, where there has
been a conscious decision to have some duplication. One man’s
duplication is another man’s competitive analysis. So there is
a certain amount of that that does go on, which I do think is a
healthy check and balance.
That’s not to say, sir, and I would not assert that this is
completely efficient and that there isn’t waste. There is. And,
you know, the community does work to try to eliminate that.
Senator Wyden [continuing]. Let me ask you about another
important area to me, and that’s the relationship between the
director and the Central Intelligence Agency.
And let me use a hypothetical–a short one–to get your
assessment of how you’d deal with it. Supposing a particular
foreign government has solid intelligence on al Qaeda but has
refused to share it with the United States. You’ve dealt with
the government before, and in your professional judgment, the
best way to get the cooperation is to fly there, confront them
directly, insist that they share the information.
And let’s suppose, just for purposes of this hypothetical,
the CIA disagrees with your judgment: They would say, “No,
Clapper, that’s not the way to do it. The best way to get the
foreign government’s cooperation is to be patient and wait six
months before asking for the information.” What would you do,
so that we can get some sense of how you would see your job
interacting with the CIA?
General Clapper. If I felt, for whatever reason, that the
only way to secure that information would be for me personally
to engage with that foreign government, I would do so. I would
certainly, though, consult and discuss that with the director
of the CIA.
Senator Wyden. But ultimately do you believe that you would
have the authority to overrule the CIA director?
General Clapper. I do.
Senator Wyden. The third area I want to ask you about, Mr.
Clapper, involves the contractor issue. We’ve talked about it
in a variety of ways.
One of the areas that I have been most concerned about is
that I think that this is a real magnet for conflicts of
interest. Often you’ve got a situation where one of the biggest
potential sources of conflicts is when you have expertise on a
particular topic residing mostly in the contractor base rather
than the government workforce, and you get into a situation
where the contractors are being asked to evaluate the merits of
programs that they’re getting paid to run.
I’d like your judgment as to whether you think this is a
serious problem, and if so, what would you do about it?
General Clapper. It is a problem, sir, that you have to be
on guard for.
When I served as director of NGA for almost five years,
half the labor force at the time, of NGA, was contractors. And
you do have to safeguard against–you have to have a mechanism
for watch-dogging that to prevent this conflict of interest,
where you have contractors who can gain an unfair advantage, in
terms of competing for more work and this sort of thing. So you
must be on the look-out for it. I don’t think it is a
widespread thing, but it does happen and you must have the
management mechanisms in place to ensure that doesn’t happen.
And to me, that’s the crux here on contractors and their
management, is the maintenance of a cadre of government
employees who do have the expertise to assess and evaluate the
performance of the contractor. And when you’re in a situation
where the contractor has a monopoly of knowledge and you don’t
have a check and balance in your own government workforce,
you’ve got a problem.
Senator Wyden. I think you’re going to find that it is a
more widespread problem than you see today. But I appreciate
the fact that you’ve indicated that you understand that there
are conflicts there, and you want to be watchful for it.
The last area I want to get into is the question of
declassification abuse. And it just seems to me that so often
the classification process, which is supposed to protect
national security, really ends up being designed to protect
political security, and you and I have talked about this on the
phone.
And I would just like to get your assessment about how you
would weigh the protection of sources and methods with the
public’s right to know. Because as far as I can tell, there
really isn’t a well-understood process for dealing with this.
And in the absence of well-understood process the political
security chromosome kicks in–and everything is just classified
as out of reach of the public and the public’s right to know is
flouted.
So how would you go about trying to strike that balance?
General Clapper. Well, first, I agree with you, sir, that
we do overclassify. My observations are that this is more due
to just the default–it’s the easy thing to do–rather than
some nefarious motivation to, you know, hide or protect things
for political reasons. That does happen too, but I think it’s
more of an administrative default or automaticity to it.
And in the end it is the protection of sources and methods
that always underlie the ostensible debate about whether to
declassify or not. Having been involved in this, I will tell
you my general philosophy is that we can be a lot more liberal,
I think, about declassifying, and we should be.
There is an executive order that we are in the process–we,
the community–are in the process of gearing up on how to
respond to this, because this is going to be a more
systematized process, and a lot more discipline to it, which is
going to also require some resources to pay attention to to
attend to the responsibilities we have for declassification.
Senator Wyden. Would you be the person–and this is what
I’m driving at–who we can hold accountable? Because I think in
the past there has been this sense, on classification issues,
it’s the President’s responsibility. Then you try to run down
who at the White House is in charge.
I want to know that there is somebody who’s going to
actually be responsible. I appreciate your assessment that—-
General Clapper. If it is for intelligence. Now,
classification—-
Senator Wyden [continuing]. On intelligence issues.
General Clapper [continuing]. Yeah, exactly, because it’s
broader than just intelligence. But certainly if it’s
intelligence, yes, I believe ultimately the DNI, if I’m
confirmed, is the guy in charge.
Senator Wyden. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator Wyden.
Senator Hatch.
Senator Hatch. Well, thank you, Madam Chairman.
General Clapper, I want to thank you for your long years of
service to this country. You have really an impressive
experience in the intelligence world, experience that I think
you can draw on to help you in this job, and I think there’s no
question that we’re grateful that you’re willing to serve
again.
Now, I appreciated your courtesy call last week. When I
asked my first question, why you could possibly want this job,
you responded, two points: First, you said I was not the first
to ask that; and second, you said you were taking the job out
of a sense of duty. So I personally appreciate it.
Another thing I believe you told me in our meeting was that
you had no intention of shaking up the DNI structure, that you
intended to make it work as it is. Recognizing the weak
authorities and large responsibility of your office, you told
me that the DNI can enhance its authority if it has the support
of the oversight committee, and you’re certainly right about
that.
And to have our support, you’re going to have to spend a
lot of time here sharing with us your problems and propose
solutions. Chairman Feinstein initiated a series of meetings
with your predecessor, and I was always grateful for that
participation. I know Vice Chairman Bond would agree with me
that one of the reasons we managed to pass the FISA Amendments
Act–a politically prickly piece of legislation–was because of
the long hours that then-DNI McConnell had dedicated to the
passage of it. Now, you’re only the fourth DNI, but there are
lessons that I know that you have learned from your
predecessors, and I appreciate it.
Now, reform and transformation has as much to do with new
ways of thinking as it does with new boxes in an organization
chart. Congress is good at legislating new boxes, but it’s much
harder to legislate cultural change within organizations.
We’ve seen that new ways of thinking about threats,
capabilities, doctrine and training are hard to adapt in well-
established bureaucratic cultures. You need leadership at the
IC to do this, and that of course means you. Do you believe
that organizational culture is important in the IC? And how do
you define intelligence culture? And along with that, do you
believe that cultural change is important? And how would you
address that?
General Clapper. Great question, sir. If I may sir, clarify
something that I may not have made myself clear on before—-
[Pause.]
Chairman Feinstein. There we go.
General Clapper [continuing]. First of all, Senator Hatch,
I probably should clarify, if I didn’t make clear when I said
that no intent to shake up the DNI, that actually I do have
that intent.
What I meant to say or to clarify that remark is that I
don’t–I am in the mode of making the model we have work rather
than going through the trauma of yet another reorganization,
whether it’s to some other structure. And I believe that the
model that we have, with all its flaws and the legal
ambiguities in the IRTPA can be made to work. And that’s
certainly my intent, and I wouldn’t have taken this on at my
age and station in life if I didn’t think that were the case.
Senator Hatch. Well, that’s the way I took it, anyway.
General Clapper. A very important point–and Senator Bond
alluded to this in his opening remarks; I’d like to get back to
that–is that–and I have said this to the President, and we
spoke again about it this morning–is the fact that the manner
in which the DNI relates to the oversight committees, the
manner in which the DNI relates to the President are very
important. And both the optic and the substance of those
relationships can do a great deal to compensate for the
ambiguities of the law and the perceived weaknesses of the
position.
That’s why I’m so intent on forging a partnership
relationship with the oversight committees, because you play a
huge role. You play a huge role in compensating for those
ambiguities. And so it would be incumbent upon me as the DNI,
if I’m confirmed, or anyone else who serves in that capacity to
ensure there is that constructive partnership relationship with
the oversight committees. So I do want to make that point
clear.
The President again assured me–and I asked him
specifically–about his support for the position as the leader
of the intelligence community. And he affirmed that when we
spoke this morning on the phone.
Cultural change, I have some experience with that,
particularly at NGA. I was brought on specifically to implement
the mandates that the NIMA commission, a commission which did
great work, mandated by the Congress, on reorienting and
refocusing and bringing the vision to life of what the original
founding fathers and mothers of NIMA had in mind.
And so I learned a great deal the hard way about how to
forge cultural change in a large bureaucratic institution in
intelligence, which is the case with NGA. And I’m very proud of
the way NGA has evolved and how it has turned out as an agency.
And I think it’s moving to the new campus here in another year
or so will further bring that cultural change about.
There is, indeed, a unique culture in the intelligence
community, and there are in fact subcultures very much built
around the tradecraft that each of the so-called “stovepipes”
foster.
And that term is often used pejoratively, whether it’s the
SIGINT stovepipe or the GEOINT stovepipe or the HUMIN
stovepipe. Well, that’s also the source of the tradecraft which
allows us to conduct those very important endeavors. The trick,
of course, is to bring them together and to synchronize them,
mesh them, and to bring together the complementary attributes
that each one of those skill sets bring to bear.
So there is an important dimension. And you’re quite right.
It’s one thing to enact laws, draw wiring diagrams, but the
cultural aspects, I think, are quite important. And that’s
where I think leadership is huge, and that’s something that you
cannot legislate.
Senator Hatch. Well, that’s great. Have you read the July
2004 report by this committee cataloging and analyzing the Iraq
WMD intelligence prior to 2002? Did you have a chance to read
that?
General Clapper. Yes, sir. I’m very familiar with that, and
I’m also very familiar with the WMD National Intelligence
Estimate. My fingerprints were on it. I was then a member of
the National Intelligence Board, so I’m very familiar with what
were the flaws in that NIE. I believe there have been
substantial process improvements to preclude, hopefully, such
an event from occurring again.
But I will tell you that was an indelible experience for me
in how we did the country a great disservice with that National
Intelligence Estimate.
Senator Hatch. What do you believe explains the failure of
the intelligence community in assessing the presence of WMD in
Iraq in 2002? And do you believe the lessons from these
failures have been learned inside the intelligence community?
And if you do, why do you believe that?
General Clapper. Well, sir, I think that had a profound
impact on the intelligence community at large. I think we have
learned from that. The whole process used with the NIEs today
is quite different. These were actually improvements that
started under George Tenet’s time when he was still the DCI,
and they’ve continued to this day.
And so I think one of the first things we do, which we
didn’t do with that NIE, was that the standard practice when
you meet to approve an NIE is to first assess the sources that
were used in the NIE, which was not done in the case of the
infamous 2002 WMD report.
The use of red-teaming; the use of outside readers, with
their input included in the NIE; the use of other options; what
if we’re wrong; confidence levels; the degree of collection
capability gaps or not–all of those features are now a
standard part of national intelligence estimates drawn
primarily from the egregious experience that we had with that
particular NIE.
And I thought the report you did laid out exactly what went
wrong. I can attest, since I was there, it was not because of
politicization or any political pressure. It was because of
ineptness.
Senator Hatch. Well, thank you.
And now, General Clapper, the administration and the
previous one made great efforts to explicitly state that our
response to global terrorism was not against Islam. In my
opinion, the fact that the vast majority of adherents to Islam
are nonviolent would certainly underscore that point.
Now, do you believe that ideas and ideology have a role in
motivating violent extremist terrorism? And, if so, do you
believe that we have adequately analyzed the ideological
component? And one last thought, do you believe that closing
down Guantanamo would undermine terrorist ideology in any way.
And if so, why?
General Clapper. Well—-
Senator Hatch. That’s a lot of questions, I know.
General Clapper [continuing]. On the first issue of the
ideological dimension here, I think that’s a very important
one. My experience there most recently was my involvement in
the aftermath of the Fort Hood shootings. And the question that
has certainly been a challenge, a huge challenge, for the
Department of Defense is the discernment of self-
radicalization, when people take on an ideology, internalize it
and use that for radical purposes.
And I will tell you, sir, in my view, we have a challenge
there in how to discern that, how to explain that to others,
particularly a 19- or 20-year-old soldier, sailor, airman or
Marine. How do you discern if before your very eyes someone is
self-radicalizing, and then what do you do about it.
I think with respect to the second question on a closure of
Gitmo, I think that will–when we get to that point, I think
that probably would help the image of the United States, if in
fact we’re able to close it.
Senator Hatch. Okay. I think my time is up.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator Hatch.
Senator Mikulski.
Senator Mikulski. Madam Chairwoman, first of all, I want
you to know, I’ve really enjoyed listening to the questions
raised by you and the Ranking and the other members. Once
again, we’re learning from each other.
Senator Feinstein, I would just like to suggest to you,
with the presence of Senator Levin–presuming you’re in charge
in November, but whoever is–that the first area of reform has
to be with Congress. My concern is that DNI, whoever he is–and
I hope it’s General Clapper–appears before so many committees
and so many subcommittees–I think by my count, it’s over 88
different committees and subcommittees between the House and
the Senate–that the oversight–that’s one thing.
And the other, that we really press for the reform of the
9/11 Commission that we establish the Intelligence
Appropriations Subcommittee. I think Mr. Clapper makes a great
point, that it does come in appropriations. I have it in the
FBI; Inouye has DOD. It’s not the subject of this conversation
here, but I think we need to just get together among ourselves
and discuss how reform starts with us, meaning the Senate and
the House.
Chairman Feinstein. If I might respond, with respect to the
Appropriations Committee, the three of us that serve on it–
yourself, Senator, Senator Bond and myself–we have all
supported that. The problem is, we’re only three out of a
couple dozen members, and it’s those couple dozen members that
need to be convinced.
Senator Mikulski. Well, I think they will be.
But, picking up, General Clapper, Dana Priest has done her
series, and I believe that once again she’s done a great
service to the nation. It was Ms. Priest who brought to the
public’s attention the terrible stuff going on at Walter Reed.
Secretary Gates and the President responded, and we dealt with
it. I’m not saying there is a scandal within the intelligence
community, but it has grown.
And my question to you, if confirmed, will you look at the
series in the Post and others that have raised similar ones,
for a review of the allegations, flashing yellow lights, about
the growth and duplication, et cetera, and make recommendations
to the executive and legislative branch for reform?
General Clapper. Yes, ma’am.
Senator Mikulski. Well, and thank you, because I think it
would give us an important guidepost.
The second is, I’d like to go to the issue of
cybersecurity. As you know, you and I have worked on signals
intelligence, but cybersecurity is a–we’re part of a task
force chaired by Senator Whitehouse, Senator Snowe, and myself.
And we’ve looked at four issues–governance, technology,
technology development, maintaining our qualitative edge in
that area, workforce, and the beginning of civil liberties and
privacy.
Governance has befuddled us. Governance has befuddled us.
We know how to maintain our technological qualitative edge.
We’re making progress on how to have an adequate workforce. But
what we see is overlapped turf warfare, turf confusion. And I
wonder, as DNI, what role do you have, and what role will you
assume in really straightening out this governance issue?
Congress has the propensity to create czars. We’ve got
czars and we’ve got czars by proxy. You know, a czar–we have a
White House now on cyber, a very talented and dedicated man. We
have you as the DNI; you’re a czar by proxy. But we don’t give
those czars or czars by proxy any power or authority. Now, we
get into cybersecurity, and I think the governance structure is
mush. There’s no way for clarity, there’s no answer to who’s in
charge, and there’s no method for deconflicting disagreements
or turf warfare. Do you have a comment on what I just said.
General Clapper. Well, first, I think I’ll start with, the
commentary about NSA–I know an organization near and dear to
your heart. NSA must serve, I believe, as the nation’s center
of excellence from a technical standpoint on cyber matters. I
think the challenge has been how to parlay that capability, the
tremendous technical competence that exists at NSA, in serving
the broader issue here of support, particularly to supporting
the civilian infrastructure.
The Department of Defense’s response has been to establish
Cyber Command by dual-hatting the Director of NSA, General
Keith Alexander, as the commander. So in a warfighting context
in the Department of Defense, that’s how we organize to do
that.
I think we need something to fill that void on the
civilian–if you will–the civil side. Now, there’s some 35
pieces of–there are legislative proposals, as I understand it,
throughout the Congress right now. I think the administration
is trying to figure out what would be the best order of march
or combination.
I think, though, the bill that Senator Bond and Senator
Hatch have sponsored, without speaking specifically, but it
certainly gets to what I would consider some sound organizing
principles and having somebody in charge, having a budget
aggregation that—-
Senator Mikulski. But what will your role be in this, as
DNI?
General Clapper [continuing]. Well, I think the role of the
DNI is to ensure that the intelligence support for cyber
protection is provided and that it is visible to the governance
structure, whatever that turns out to be. I do not believe it
is the DNI’s province to decide what that governance structure
should be, but rather to ensure that it gets sufficient and
adequate and timely intelligence support.
Senator Mikulski. But what advisory role do you play to the
President? There’s Howard Schmidt, a great guy. We’ve met with
him and so on, but he has no power. So we have what has been
stood up with the United States military–excellent. I think we
all recognize that. But when it gets to the Department of
Homeland Security, when it gets to the FBI, when it gets to the
civilian agencies, and also it gets–what gateways do the
private sector have to go to who to solve their problems or to
protect them, it really gets foggy.
General Clapper. Well, one solution, I believe, is in the
legislation that has been proposed by Senators Bond and Hatch
on this committee.
Senator Mikulski. I’m not asking for your comment on
legislative recommendations. I’m asking what is the role of the
DNI to help formulate, finally, within the next couple of
months, the answer to the question, who is in charge? What is
your role? Who do you think makes that decision? I presume
you’re going to say the President.
General Clapper. Well, I guess—-
Senator Mikulski. How is the President going to get to
that? Is he going to be having, you know, coffee with Brennan?
Is it going to be you? Is it Howard Schmidt? Is it what?
General Clapper [continuing]. I do not believe it is the
DNI who would make the ultimate decision on the defense for
cyber–and particularly in the civil sector. I don’t believe
that is a determination or decision that should be made by the
DNI. I think I should play a role there.
Senator Mikulski. Again, what role do you think you should
play, with whom?
General Clapper. For the provision of adequate intelligence
support, what is the threat posed in the cyber domain, to this
nation. And I think that is the oversight responsibility of the
DNI, to ensure that that is adequate.
Senator Mikulski. I think maybe we’ve got a little–well,
then let’s go to the role of the DNI with the civilian
agencies, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. What
authority do you have in those domains?
General Clapper. Well—-
Senator Mikulski. And bringing them in more, now,
particularly the FBI, which has, I think, done a great job. In
fact, I think it’s all been great, because here it is 2010,
July 20th, and there’s not been an attack on the homeland.
General Clapper [continuing]. I think the FBI has done
great work, and I spent some time with them in the last week or
two. And I think the transformation that they are effecting to
become an effective part of the intelligence community has been
actually very–is very impressive. I think they have a rigorous
management process to ensure that this takes place at the
field.
They too have a cultural challenge that we spoke of earlier
in the preeminence of the law enforcement culture in the FBI,
which is still important, and how they bring along their
intelligence arm and their intelligence capabilities to match
that in terms of its prestige and stature within the FBI; that
is a work in progress, and they acknowledge that. But I think
they’ve made great headway.
And I think the conversations that I’ve had with Director
Mueller, who’s been marvelous and very supportive of making the
DNI function work. The FBI is one of the elephants in the
intelligence living room, if I can use that metaphor. It has a
huge responsibility and a huge contribution to make, and I
intend to work with the FBI closely if I’m confirmed.
Senator Mikulski. Very good.
Madam Chair, I think my time is up.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator Mikulski.
Senator Snowe.
Senator Snowe. Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome, General
Clapper.
You certainly bring an illustrious career and
qualifications to bear on this particular position, and it
certainly comes at a critical juncture, once again, for this
position and for this office that we continue to struggle with
in terms of its definition and the type of leadership that
should be brought to oversee the intelligence community.
And that’s what I’d like to explore with you this afternoon
first and foremost on an issue that I have been advocating,
actually, even since before we passed the legislation that
created the position for which you have been nominated and even
before the 9/11 commission report, and that was to have a
community-wide Inspector General. Because I think that one of
the issues that has evolved from all of this in creating this
vast department is being able to look across the spectrum
And one of the things that’s developed in all this and the
number of reports that have been issued by this committee, and
of course most recently, which was the scathing review of what
happened on the Christmas Day attempted attack and the systemic
breakdown both in terms of policy, follow-through, information-
sharing, technology, to name a few, across the agencies. And
clearly, it is something that I think underscores the serious
and fundamental problems that we continue to have, and
obviously we’ve got an unwieldy bureaucracy before us with this
department.
In addition, of course, with The Washington Post series
that was written by Dana Priest this week, I think it’s also a
manifestation of many of the problems that continue to exist.
And certainly we’ve had many definitions of the type of
leadership that has been brought to bear in this position,
whether it’s an integrator, a coordinator, a facilitator, and
whether or not we should have a strong acknowledged leader that
oversees all of these agencies who’s going to exert that
leadership.
And so I would like to explore with you today in terms of
whether or not you would support a community-wide Inspector
General. That is pending in the current legislation between the
House and Senate. It’s in conference at this point. I have
fought tooth and nail for it in the past because I happen to
think that it could initiate, conduct investigations and,
frankly, could produce the types of reports that were put
forward by The Washington Post this week in illustrating the
redundancies, the inefficiencies, and also producing, I think,
the type of information that is sorely lacking because you
cannot reach across the spectrum across all agencies in terms
of ascertaining what types of problems have emerged and how you
solve them. And that’s where this Inspector General could come
in and play a critical role.
That’s what I argued from the outset because I do believe
it will break down the barriers and stovepipes and the
parochial concerns and the turf wars that have evolved and
emerged. I mean, I think that that’s indisputable. And so I
believe that you would find this as a tremendous asset in
having someone that can conduct an overview and examine those
issues independently and to give you I think the vantage point
of seeing the forest through the trees, and many of the issues
that arose in this Washington Post series and other problems
that have emerged and certainly in the problems that have been
identified in the Christmas Day terror bomb plot that was
identified by this committee in its very extensive analysis
certainly could have been averted if we had somebody at hand
who was looking across the spectrum.
So I would like to have you respond to that, because I
noticed in your pre-hearing questions you said that you support
a strong and independent Inspector General and will ensure the
Inspector General has access to appropriate information and
cooperation from the Office of DNI personnel. But you limit it
by virtue of the wording of your statement to imply that the
access only would be accorded to the 1,500 or so personnel that
reside within that office, as opposed to all the other agencies
and most notably the Department of Defense that obviously has
the preponderance of the personnel and certainly the
overwhelming majority of the budget.
General Clapper. Well, Senator Snowe, first of all, I guess
at some risk, but I would refer to my military background in
having served as a commander and used IGs. I think they are a
crucial management tool for a commander or a director. The two
times I’ve served, almost nine years as director of two of the
agencies, DIA and NGA, I considered an IG crucial. So I feel
similarly about a community-wide IG.
My only caveat would be to ensure that I use the IG who–
they have limited resources as well–would do systemic issues
that apply across more than one agency, and using the agency
IGs or the department IGs, in the case of those that don’t have
large agencies, to focus on agency- or component-specific
issues. But I think there’s great merit in having a
communitywide Inspector General.
Senator Snowe. So, in the responses that you submitted to
the House Armed Services Committee in which you said that a
community-wide IG would overlay the authority for the IG for
the entire community over all matters within the DNI’s
responsibility and with similar authority of the DOD and the IG
of the Armed Services and certain DOD combat support agencies,
that, obviously, you were suggesting that it would duplicate
those efforts.
General Clapper. No. What I’m saying now is that I do think
there is merit in having an ODNI IG, a community-wide IG, who
can look across intelligence as an institution for systemic
weaknesses and problems and identify those.
All I would try to foster, though, is a complementary
relationship rather than a competitive one with either agency
IGs, particularly in the case of DOD, or the DOD IG, which also
has an intelligence component.
So I would just try to use–marshal–manage those resources
judiciously so they’re not stepping on one another, but I think
there is great value in having a community-wide Inspector
General to address community-wide issues.
Senator Snowe. Well, I appreciate that because I think that
that would be critical and a useful tool to ferret out a lot of
the inefficiencies, anticipate the problems before they
actually occur, and, obviously, redundancies and the waste.
Was there anything that surprised you in The Washington
Post series this week?
General Clapper. No, ma’am.
Senator Snowe. No? I mean, they saw the redundancy in
functions and so on. Do you think—-
General Clapper. I didn’t agree with some of that. I think
there was some breathlessness and shrillness to it that I don’t
subscribe to. I think she’s extrapolated from her anecdotal
experience in interviews with people.
I must say I’m very concerned about the security
implications of having–you know, it’s great research, but just
making it easy for adversaries to point out specifically the
locations of contractors who are working for the government,
and I wouldn’t be surprised, frankly, if that engenders more
security on the part of the contractors which, of course, the
cost will be passed on to the government.
Senator Snowe [continuing]. Well, are you going to evaluate
this, though, on that basis? I just think it is disturbing to
think in terms of the number of agencies and organizations of
more than 1,200, for example. I mean, nothing disturbs you in
that article from that standpoint?
General Clapper. Well, it depends on what does she mean by
an agency. It’s like in the Army. You know, an organization can
be a squad or a division. So, you know, I think she’s striven
for some bit of sensationalism here. That’s not to say that
there aren’t inefficiencies and there aren’t things we can
improve.
Threat finance is a case in point. She cites, I think, some
51 different organizations that are involved in threat finance.
That is a very important tool these days in counternarcotics,
counterterrorism, weapons of mass destruction because it is, in
the end, the common denominator of how money works and how
money supports these endeavors. If I’m confirmed, that’s one I
would want to take on with Leslie Ireland, the new Director of
Intelligence for the Department of Treasury, because it’s my
view that Treasury should be the lead element for threat
finance. So that’s one area I will take to heart.
But I think the earlier discussion is germane to the number
of contractors and what contractors are used for, and this
article certainly brings that to bear.
Senator Snowe. Well, I just hope that you won’t dismiss it
out of hand.
General Clapper. No.
Senator Snowe. Because I always think that it’s worthy
when, having other people who are doing this kind of work at
least to examine it very carefully, very thoroughly, obviously.
I mean, I think just given the mega bureaucracy that has been
developed, we certainly ought to be looking at it, and
certainly, this committee as well. So I hope that you are going
to give it that kind of consideration it deserves.
One other question. On the April paper, the response that
you gave to House Armed Services Committee and the information
paper, you mentioned these grants of unilateral authority,
referring to the Intelligence Authorization Bill, that it was
expanding the authority to the DNI are inappropriate,
especially for personnel and acquisition functions. You said
that some intelligence community efforts could be decentralized
and delegated to the component.
I’m just concerned, on one hand, that you would subscribe
to sort of embracing some of the cultural and territorial
battles that we’re trying to overcome. When you’re using words
such as “infringe” or “decentralize” to all of the other
agencies, to have them execute many of those functions, it
concerns me at a time in which I think that your position
should be doing more of the centralizing with respect to the
authorities.
So I’m just concerned about what type of culture that you
will inculcate as a leader, if you’re suggesting
decentralizing, infringing upon other agencies’ authority at a
time when, clearly, you should be moving in a different
direction to break down those territorial barriers.
General Clapper. I agree with that, but I do not think that
everything in the entire intelligence community has to be run
within the confines of the office of the Director of National
Intelligence. I do think there are many thing that can be
delegated to components in the intelligence community that can
be done on behalf of the DNI and with the visibility of the
DNI, but does not have to be directly executed by the DNI at
its headquarters staff, which I believe is too large.
Senator Snowe. Thank you.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator Snowe.
Senator Whitehouse, you’re next.
Senator Whitehouse. I yield to Chairman Levin.
Chairman Feinstein. Please go ahead.
Senator Levin. Madam Chairman, first, we thank Senator
Whitehouse for that courtesy, as always.
General, let me ask you first about information sharing. In
your answers to the committee’s prehearing questionnaire, you
state that you believe obstacles remain to adequate information
sharing. You said that the obstacle was cultural. Our
congressional investigations by a number of committees of
recent terrorist attacks reveal, for instance, the CIA will not
share its database of operational cables with the DOD’s Joint
Intelligence Task Force for Counterterrorism or with the NSA’s
counterterrorism analysts and watch center.
NSA itself feels it cannot allow non-NSA personnel to
access the main NSA signals intelligence databases on the
grounds that these personnel cannot be trusted to properly
handle U.S. persons’ information. Can you comment on that
question, on information sharing among agencies?
General Clapper. Well, sir, it continues to be a problem. I
think we’ve got a challenge, I guess. It’s better than it was.
It’s better than it was before 9/11, but it needs improvement.
I think NSA is, understandably, very conscientious about the
protection of potential data on U.S. persons. They’re very,
very sensitive to compliance with the FISA, as they should be.
So that does, that is one inhibitor to full and open and
collaborative sharing that we might like. That’s an area that I
intend to work, if I’m confirmed.
Senator Levin. You also said that you’ll achieve progress
in information sharing by the “disciplined application of
incentives, both rewards and consequences.” Why do we need
incentives? Why don’t we just need a directive from the
President by executive order, for instance, or otherwise? Why
do we need incentives, rewards and consequences?
General Clapper. Well, that’s one way of inducing change in
culture, is to provide rewards for those who collaborate and, I
suppose, penalties for those that don’t.
Senator Levin. Should they be needed?
General Clapper. And obviously, directives are effective,
too.
Senator Levin. Should they be needed? In this kind of
setting, where this has been going on so long, should—-
General Clapper. Yes, sir. That’s an area, if I’m
confirmed, I’ll certainly look at to see if there is a need for
further direction, or what other remedy there might be.
Senator Levin [continuing]. Now, you also indicated,
relative to a related subject which has been very much on our
minds here in the Congress, the need for a single repository of
terrorism data. Your statement in the prehearing questions is
the following. “An integrated repository of terrorism data
capable of ingesting terrorism-related information from outside
sources remains necessary to establish a foundation from which
a variety of sophisticated technology tools can be applied.” I
gather that does not exist now?
General Clapper. I think, sir, and I, at least, this is my
own observation watching from somewhat afar, the Christmas
bomber evolution. And I believe what is needed, and this is
from a technology standpoint, is a very robust search engine
that can range across a variety of data and data constructs in
order to help connect the dots. I think we still are spending
too much manpower to do manual things that can be done easily
by machines. And if confirmed, that’s an area I would intend to
pursue.
Senator Levin. Do you know if it’s true that NCTC analysts
have to search dozens of different intelligence databases
separately, that they cannot now submit one question that goes
out to all of them simultaneously? Is that true, do you know?
General Clapper. I don’t know the specifics, but that’s
certainly my impression, and that’s why I made the statement in
response to your previous question. I think what’s needed here
is a very robust, wide-ranging search engine or search engines
that can do that on behalf of analysts so they don’t have to do
that manually.
Senator Levin. I want to go to some structural issues now.
The Intelligence Report and Terrorism Prevention Act says that
the director of the CIA reports to the DNI. Is that your
understanding?
General Clapper. Yes, sir.
Senator Levin. Is that clear enough? Is that the reason for
some complications in this area?
General Clapper. Well, I think it’s–yes. That language is
clear, but there’s also language in there about, for example,
the governance of foreign relationships, which are the province
of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and they
are to be “overseen” by the DNI, and so that is an area of
ambiguity, I think.
Senator Levin. Is section 1018 of the Act, which says that
the President shall issue guidelines to ensure the effective
implementation and execution within the executive branch of the
authorities granted to the Director of National Intelligence,
and these are the key words, in a manner that respects and does
not abrogate the statutory responsibilities of the heads of
departments, have those guidelines now been–were they issued
by President Bush?
General Clapper. Well, yes, sir, they were essentially
promulgated in the revision to Executive Order 12333. And in
that, Secretary Gates and I and Admiral McConnell, at the time,
worked to attenuate some of the ambiguities created by the
famous section 1018. The specific case in point is the
involvement of the DNI in the hire and fire processes involved
with intelligence leaders who are embedded in the Department of
Defense.
Senator Levin. And are you satisfied with those guidelines?
General Clapper. I am at this point. Yes, sir. My view may
change, if I’m confirmed.
Senator Levin. Do you know in advance that your view is
going to change?
General Clapper. No, I don’t.
Senator Levin. But as of this time, you’re satisfied with
those guidelines?
General Clapper. Yes, sir, I am.
Senator Levin. Now, in answer to our committee’s prehearing
questionnaire regarding the DNI’s role with respect to the DIA,
NGA, NSA and NRO, you said that the DNI supervises their
performance, sets standards and formulates policies governing
these agencies and ensures that they fulfill their missions.
You noted multiple times that three of those agencies are
combat support agencies, which means that they provide critical
wartime support to the combatant commands.
And my question is the following: Do you believe that that
authority which you mention is a shared authority with those
agencies or is this exclusive in the DNI?
General Clapper. You mean the combat support agency?
Senator Levin. Those agencies, yes. Do you believe, for
instance, that they must ensure that they fulfill their
missions, that they supervise their performance? Is this a
shared responsibility or are you, if you’re confirmed,
exclusively responsible for those functions of supervision and
ensuring that they—-
General Clapper. I believe that is a shared responsibility.
I think obviously the Secretary of Defense has obligations and
responsibilities both in law and executive order to ensure that
the warfighting forces are provided adequate support,
particularly by the three agencies who are designated as combat
support agencies. Obviously the DNI has at least a paternal
responsibility to ensure that works as well.
Senator Levin. Was that word “fraternal”?
General Clapper. “Paternal.”
Senator Levin. Paternal, not fraternal.
General Clapper. Institutional obligation. I’ll amend what
I said.
Senator Levin. All right. Now, in your current position
have you taken a look at the Haqqani network? Have you
determined whether or not they have engaged in terrorist
activities that threaten U.S. security interests and, if so, do
you support them being added to the State Department’s list of
foreign terrorist organizations?
General Clapper. Sir, I’d rather not answer that off the
top of my head. I’ll take that under advisement and provide an
answer for the record.
Senator Levin. All right. Now, during the previous
administration, we got conflicting prewar intelligence
assessments from the intelligence community and the
administration said in public and what the intelligence
community was willing to assert in private. Do you believe that
the importance of Congress as a consumer of intelligence
products and advice is no less than that of senior officials of
the administration? Do you owe us? Do you owe us, if you’re
confirmed, all of the unvarnished facts surrounding an issue,
not just the facts that tend to support a particular policy
decision, and do you believe that Congress, as a consumer of
intelligence products, is entitled, again, to no less than that
of senior officials of an administration?
General Clapper. I believe that and not only that, but it’s
required in the law. The IRTPA stipulates that the DNI is to
attend to the proper intelligence support to the Congress.
Senator Levin. On an equal basis.
General Clapper. Yes, sir.
Senator Levin. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator Levin.
Senator Chambliss.
Senator Levin. Thank you.
Senator Chambliss. Thanks, Madam Chairman. And welcome,
General. As I told you in our telephone conversation after the
President nominated you, I’m not sure why you want to come back
before this committee again for this job because, as you stated
in your article you wrote recently, this is probably the
toughest job in the intelligence community, and your
willingness to serve, particularly with your background in the
intel community, says an awful lot about you, and we’re
fortunate to have you.
Obviously, though, General, there’s some problems out there
within the office of the DNI, within the community itself that
are going to have to be addressed. And these issues are very
serious. They’re not just matters of the size of the
bureaucracy and I’m not sure what all they are. But again, as
you and I talked, there are going to have to be some major
changes. We just can’t afford for another Christmas Day
situation or a New York Times bomber situation to occur because
we were fortunate there and it was not necessarily the great
work of the intelligence community that prevented a very
serious situation occurring within the United States.
You do bring a wealth of intelligence background to this
job, but so did the three predecessors to this job. You
probably have more experience than all of them. But still, you
have been involved. And these are friends of yours. They’re
individuals you have worked with, you’ve associated with and
somewhere along the line there have been some apparently
systemic failures that are going to have to be addressed to
individuals that you have worked with. So it’s not going to be
any easier for you than for any of your predecessors.
My question is, knowing that we can’t afford for another
situation like Christmas Day or the New York Times Square
situation or the Fort Hood situation to occur where we had an
awful lot of signs and where nobody connected the dots in spite
of the statute being very clear as to who is to connect those
dots, and that’s going to be under your jurisdiction, what
specific changes do you know now that you think need to be made
as we go forward to make the community better, to make the
office of the DNI stronger and to make the colleagues that
you’re going to be working with on a day-to-day basis more
responsive to you as the chief intelligence officer of the
United States?
General Clapper. Sir, first of all, thanks for your
introductory comment. I appreciate that. I think that I–or at
least I would hope I can bring to bear this experience I’ve had
over the last 46 years of having run a couple of the agencies,
having been a service intelligence chief, having spent two
years in combat getting shot at, what the value of intelligence
is, that understanding of the intelligence community
institutionally and culturally, that I can bring about a better
working arrangement.
I think, in my book at least, to be very candid, I think
our most successful DNI to this point was Admiral Mike
McConnell precisely for the same reason, because he had some
experience in the business. He had run an agency, NSA, and had
done other things in intelligence. And I think that does give
one an advantage, an understanding where the problems are,
where the skeletons are, if you will, and where the seams are
and how to work those issues.
I think that is in fact the value added, potentially, of
the DNI, is to get at those seams and to work those issues
where I perhaps don’t require a lot of time learning the ABCs
of intelligence. So I can’t at this point list you chapter and
verse. I certainly will want to get back–if I’m confirmed–get
back to the committee on specific things. I do have some things
in mind but some of the people affected don’t know what those
are and I certainly didn’t want to presume confirmation by
announcing those ahead of time. But certainly, if confirmed,
I’d want to consult with the committee on what I would have in
mind.
Senator Chambliss. And have you, as a part of your
communication and conversation with the President, prior to
your nomination and maybe subsequent there to, engaged him in
the fact that there are some changes that are going to need to
be made and you’re going to have to have the administration’s
support.
General Clapper. Yes, sir, and I had done that in writing
before I was nominated. Whether it was me or someone else as
DNI, at Secretary Gates’ suggestion, I wrote a letter to the
President and made that point clear.
Senator Chambliss. And you mentioned that letter to me and
that you had hoped that the White House would at least share
that with the Chairman and Vice Chairman. Do you know whether
that’s been done?
General Clapper. I don’t know, sir. I don’t know that
actually the request has been made to the White House.
Senator Chambliss. Okay. Well, General, I’ve known you for
a long time, seen you operate, and you are certainly well-
qualified for this job. It is going to be a tough job, but I
hope you know and understand that this committee’s here to help
you and we want to make sure from an oversight standpoint that
you’ve got the right kind of policy support and political
support from this side of Pennsylvania Avenue. And we know soon
that it will be there from the other side. So we look forward
to working closely with you.
General Clapper. Sir, I appreciate that. And that is
absolutely crucial. I don’t believe oversight necessarily has
to be or implies an adversarial relationship. And I would
need–if I’m confirmed, I would need the support of this
committee to bring about those changes that you just talked
about.
Senator Chambliss. Well, thanks for your willingness to
continue to serve. Madam Chairman, I don’t know whether we’ve
formally requested that, but I think certainly we should.
Vice Chairman Bond. I would join with Senator Chambliss if
we can make that request.
Chairman Feinstein. Fine. Certainly can. Thank you. Thank
you, Senator Chambliss.
Senator Feingold.
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Madam Chair. Congratulations
again, General Clapper, on your nomination to this critically
important position. I agree you are clearly well qualified for
this.
Madam Chair, I’d like to put a statement in the record.
[The prepared statement of Senator Feingold follows:]

Prepared Statement of Senator Russell Feingold

General Clapper’s nomination comes at a critical moment for the
Intelligence Community and for our national security. Reform–of the IC
and of congressional oversight–is long overdue. To save taxpayer
dollars, I have supported in this committee, and incorporated into my
own Control Spending Now bill, provisions requiring reporting on long-
range budget projections for the IC, the costs of acquisition systems,
cost overruns, and the risks and vulnerabilities of intelligence
systems. We must also ensure that the GAO has access to the IC and that
there is accountability for impediments to auditing.
At the same time, we cannot afford so much overlap and redundancy
when there are still parts of the world, as well as emerging threats,
about which we know very little. This is why the Senate has approved,
as part of the intelligence authorization bill, legislation I proposed
to establish an independent commission that will address these gaps by
recommending how to integrate and make best use of the clandestine
activities of the IC and the open collection and reporting of the State
Department.
Intelligence reform also requires reform of the oversight process.
That is why I have introduced a bipartisan resolution to implement the
recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to grant appropriations authority
to the Intelligence Committee, as well as a bipartisan effort to
declassify the top-line intelligence budget request, a requirement if
there is to be a separate intelligence appropriations bill as called
for by the 9/11 Commission. Finally, we must eliminate once and for all
the “Gang of Eight” briefings that leave the full committee in the
dark.

Since our meeting last week I hope you had a chance to
review the congressional notification requirements in the
National Security Act. Have you had a chance to do that?
General Clapper. I have, sir.
Senator Feingold. And do you agree that the so-called Gang
of Eight notification provision applies only to covert action
and not to other intelligence activities?
General Clapper. Sir, you’re quite right. Section 502 and
503 of the National Security Act of 1947 do only call out
covert action as requiring more limited notification. In the
opening statement, however, of Section 502, it does allude to
the protection of sources and methods, which I think in the
past has been used to expand the subject matter beyond covert
action, which would require a limited notification.
That all said, I will be a zealous advocate for full
notification and timely notification to the Congress.
Senator Feingold. I appreciate the statement and the spirit
of it. I just want to point out that when you refer to that
preliminary language, that language is in both sections, but
the additional language about the Gang of Eight notifications
in the section on covert action means, in my view, that limited
notifications were not intended for other intelligence
activities.
General Clapper. Yes, sir, but as I say that, that opening
verbiage has been interpreted to expand that and I’ll tell you
what my personal attitude is, but at the same time I don’t feel
it’s appropriate to preempt what the President might want to
decide. So I’ll tell you my attitude again is I will be a
zealous advocate for timely and complete notification.
Senator Feingold. And I appreciate that. I just want to say
for the record, I think that is an incorrect interpretation,
but obviously you’re not alone in your view that that can be
done. But I really feel strongly that’s incorrect.
Senator Feingold. While many of the operational details of
intelligence activities are justifiably classified, I believe
the American people are entitled to know how the intelligence
community, the Department of Justice and the FISA Court are
interpreting the law. Do you agree with that general principle?
General Clapper. Yes, sir, in general, I do.
Senator Feingold. And I have identified a number of areas
in which I think the American people would be surprised to
learn how the law has been interpreted in secret. As you
consider these types of requests for declassification, will you
keep this principle that you and I just agreed upon in mind?
General Clapper. Yes, sir, I will.
Senator Feingold. One of the issues that has arisen in the
context of your nomination is the Department of Defense’s
perception that provisions of the intelligence authorization
bill may be in tension with the secretary’s authorities, but I
want to focus for the moment on the reason these are in there
in the first place and why I’ve incorporated them into my own
bill, which I call my control spending now legislation. They
would improve accountability and help save taxpayer dollars.
General, at our meeting last week, you told me that not all
problems require statutory solutions. So how as DNI would you
go about fixing the cost overruns and other problems that this
legislation is designed to address?
General Clapper. Well, I would continue to support the
management mechanisms that have been established, specifically
an agreement on acquisition oversight signed by, I think, then-
Director McConnell and Secretary Gates. That said, of course,
acquisition is, in general, a huge challenge, whether it’s in
intelligence or elsewhere. And so I don’t have any magic silver
bullets here to offer up because if I did, I wouldn’t be here
to solve these significant acquisition problems.
It does require systematic program reviews. It requires, I
think, integrity on the part of program managers to ensure that
they are honestly reporting out their problems and identifying
issues early enough so that remedies can be afforded.
Senator Feingold. The intelligence authorization bill would
also establish an independent commission that would recommend
ways to integrate the intelligence community with the U.S.
government personnel, particularly State Department personnel
who openly collect information around the world. This reform
was first proposed by Senator Hagel and myself and I think it’s
critical if we’re going to anticipate threats and crises as
they emerge around the world.
Would you be open to a fresh look and a set of
recommendations on this issue from this commission?
General Clapper. I would.
Senator Feingold. In responding to yesterday’s Washington
Post story, Acting Director Gompert defended overlap and
redundancies in the intelligence community. But given finite
resources and budget constraints, to what extent should we be
prioritizing efforts to understand parts of the world and
emerging threats that no one is covering?
General Clapper. Well, you raise a good point, sir, and we
did discuss earlier that in some cases one man’s duplication is
another man’s competitive analysis. So in certain cases, I
think, as it was during the Cold War, when you have an enemy
that can really damage or mortally wound you, that’s merited.
I think in many cases what was labeled as duplication, a
deeper look may not turn out to be duplication; it just has the
appearance of that, but when you really look into what is being
done particularly on a command-by-command basis or intelligence
analytic element on a case-by-case basis, it’s not really
duplication.
I think the important point you raise, though, sir, has to
do with what about the areas that are not covered, and that has
been a classic plague for us. I know what the state of our
geospatial databases were on 9/11 in Afghanistan, and they were
awful, and it’s because at the time the priority that
Afghanistan enjoyed in terms of intelligence requirements.
So we can’t take our eyes off the incipient threats that
exist in places, an area that I know you’re very interested in,
for example, Africa, which is growing in concern to me,
personally.
Senator Feingold. Thank you, General. What is your view of
GAO access to the intelligence community?
General Clapper. Well, sir, the GAO–in several
incumbencies over my time the GAO has produced very useful
studies. I would cite as a specific recent case in point the
ISR road map that we’re required to maintain and the GAO has
critiqued us on that. I’ve been very deeply involved in
personnel security clearance reform. The GAO has held our feet
to the fire on ensuring compliance with IRTPA guidelines on
timeliness of clearances and of late has also insisted on the
quality metrics for ensuring appropriate clearances.
So I think the GAO serves a useful purpose for us.
Senator Feingold. I appreciate your attitude on that as
well. Meaningful intelligence reform is also going to require
some reform of the oversight process. Is it time for the Senate
to grant appropriations authority to this committee, as the 9/
11 commission recommended? For that to work, however, there has
to be an unclassified topline intelligence budget request that
would allow for a separate appropriations bill.
Would you support the declassification of the President’s
topline intelligence budget request?
General Clapper. I do support that. It has been done. In
fact, I also pushed through, and got Secretary Gates to
approve, revelation of the Military Intelligence Program
budget. I thought, frankly, we were being a bit disingenuous by
only releasing or revealing the National Intelligence Program,
which is only part of the story. And so Secretary Gates has
agreed that we could also publicize that, and I think the
American people are entitled to know the totality of the
investment we make each year in intelligence.
And sir, I was cautioned earlier by members about delving
into congressional jurisdiction issues. I prefer not to touch
that with a 10-foot pole other than to observe that it would be
nice if the oversight responsibilities were symmetrical in both
houses.
I’ve also been working and have had dialogue with actually
taking the National Intelligence Program out of the DOD budget
since the reason, the original reason for having it embedded in
the department’s budget was for classification purposes. Well,
if it’s going to be publicly revealed, that purpose goes away.
And it also serves the added advantage of reducing the topline
of the DOD budget, which is quite large, as you know, and
that’s a large amount of money that the department really has
no real jurisdiction over.
So we have been working and studying and socializing the
notion of pulling the MIP out of the department’s budget, which
I would think also would serve to strengthen the DNI’s hand in
managing the money in the intelligence community.
Senator Feingold. Thank you for all your answers, and good
luck.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator Feingold.
Senator Burr.
Senator Burr. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
General, welcome. We’re delighted to have you here, and I
think you’ll be the next DNI, hopefully sooner versus later–
and I say that for the Chair and the ranking member. I hope
we’ll move this as expeditiously as we can. And, as I’ve
publicly said, I think that you bring to this position a rich
experience that many have covered, as well as yourself, that
benefits one’s ability to be successful, and our intelligence
community needs that desperately right now.
I’ve got to say, as it relates to the members’ references
to The Washington Post article–or articles, plural–it pains
me, because I don’t believe that what happens within the
intelligence community is something that needs to be as public
as it sometimes is. It disturbs me as we promote Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles on TV, and we do it with the full knowledge of
knowing that we give away something every time we do it. I
think the American people understand that if you have
sufficient oversight in place, you trust the individuals that
you’ve chosen to put in those roles.
So I see this explosion of publicity about what happens
within our intelligence community really as a blow to us, the
oversight committee, and the inability for us to work
effectively with those within the community. So I hope you
understand, at least from myself, that I believe the committee
has to be robust in our oversight.
It’s not a reflection of the leadership of our committee, I
might say to the Chair and ranking member. I think it’s an
overall level of cooperation between the intelligence community
and the committee, and I hope that we will work as partners to
make sure that the trust of the public, but also the trust of
our colleagues, is entrusted in this committee, that we’re
doing our job and that we’ve got our eye on the right thing.
Now, you said earlier that the DNI needs to be a leader of
the intelligence community and provide direction and control.
Can you define direction and control for me in this context?
General Clapper. I think what’s intended in the term
“direction and control” is that the DNI, I think, is
ultimately responsible for the performance of the intelligence
community writ large, both the producers of intelligence and
the users of intelligence which are represented in those 16
components.
And I believe that under the, obviously, the auspices of
the President, who I believe intends to hold the DNI–whether
it’s me or somebody else–responsible for that performance, and
that that therefore empowers the DNI to direct the intelligence
chiefs as to what to do; what the focus should be; what the
emphasis should be, or, if that should change; if there needs
to be–if we need to establish ad hoc organizations to perform
a specific task; if we need to have studies done, whatever it
takes.
I believe that inherent in the DNI–at least the spirit and
intent of the IRTPA legislation–was that he would, he or she
would direct that and be responsible for it.
Senator Burr. Do you believe there will be times where the
DNI has to be a referee?
General Clapper. I think there could be times when–yes, I
do.
Senator Burr. This has already been covered, General, but
I’ve got to cover it just one more time. I believe that this
committee is to be notified quickly on any significant attempt
to attack, once an attack’s carried out, or there is a
significant threat that we have credible evidence of.
Do I have your commitment today that you will, in a timely
fashion, or a designee by you, brief this committee on that
information?
General Clapper. Absolutely, sir. Of course, it carries
with it the potential of it not being exactly accurate, because
my experience has been most critics are wrong. But I believe
that what you ask is entirely appropriate and reasonable.
Senator Burr. And General, do you have any problem if this
committee asks for a level of raw data to look at on pertinent
threats or attempts–at sharing that raw data with us?
General Clapper. I don’t have a problem with it
philosophically, sir. Just that I would want, as the DNI, if
I’m confirmed for that position, would want to ensure that at a
given time, to give you the most complete picture I can, which
is as accurate as possible. And oftentimes with raw–so-called
raw material, it’s erroneous or incomplete or misleading. So,
with that caveat, I don’t have a problem with it, but I just
want you to understand what you’re getting when you get that.
Senator Burr. I accept that caveat, and I think most
members would. I think that the raw data is absolutely
essential for us to do the oversight role that we’re charged
with. It’s certainly not needed on every occasion, but on those
that it might play a role, I hope you will, in fact, provide
it.
Now, you covered the history of the intelligence community,
especially as it related to the 1990s, and how that affected
our capabilities post-9/11. Would we have been able to meet the
intelligence community needs had we not had contractors we
could turn to, post-9/11?
General Clapper. No, sir.
Senator Burr. Do you believe that we’ll always use some
number of contractors within the intelligence community?
General Clapper. Yes, sir, I do.
Senator Burr. And I know this has been a focus of a lot of
members about downsizing the contractor footprint, and I’m fine
with that. But there’s a big difference between downsizing and
eliminating. And there’s a tremendous talent out there that,
thankfully, we were able to tap into.
I would hate to see us become so adverse to the use of
contractors that we would sacrifice potential. And I applaud
the effort to try to downsize the footprint of them, but hope
that we leave the flexibility to use them where it’s
appropriate.
General Clapper. Absolutely sir. I couldn’t agree with you
more.
And I worked as a contractor for six years myself, so I
think I have a good understanding of the contribution that they
have made and will continue to make. I think the issue is,
what’s the magnitude? And most importantly, regardless of the
numbers of companies, the number of contractor employees, is
how the government, and specifically the intelligence
community, how do we manage them; how do we ensure that we’re
getting our money’s worth?
Senator Burr. Lastly–and it’s covering ground already
discussed–you indicated that not all of the intelligence
community efforts need to be exclusively managed out of the
ODNI, that they can be decentralized and delegated where
appropriate.
Do you have any concerns that that might undercut the
authority of the DNI?
General Clapper. No, sir, I don’t. And I’ll give you a
specific case in point:
When I came into this job, early on–in fact, in May of
2007–and I prevailed upon both Secretary Gates and then-DNI
McConnell to dual-hat me as the Director of Defense
Intelligence, a position on the DNI staff, as a way of
facilitating communication and bridging dialogue between the
two staffs. And I think the record will show that we’ve worked
very well together.
I would propose to–Director Blair, to his great credit, I
thought, breathed life, great life into that concept–and I
would propose, if I’m confirmed, to do the same, and have the
same relationship with my successor, if I’m confirmed for
this–as USD/I, if I’m confirmed for DNI. And I think that same
approach can be used in other relationships, perhaps with the
Department of Homeland Security, just to cite an example off
the top of my head.
All I’m saying is, I don’t think that everything has to be
executed from within the confines of the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence, that there are things that can be
delegated and done on behalf of the DNI, as long as they are
visible to, and with the approval of, the DNI.
Senator Burr. General, I thank you for your candid answers.
In our telephone conversation, I said to you that your
tenure as DNI would determine whether the structure we set up
actually can work, will work, or whether we need to rethink
this. I believe that we’ve got the best chance of success with
your nomination, and I look forward to working with you.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
General Clapper. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you, Senator Burr.
And finally, Senator Whitehouse. Thank you for your
courtesy to your colleague, too.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Welcome, General Clapper. Near the bitter end.
I’d like to go back to cybersecurity and ask you about five
topic areas within it.
The first is the information that the public has about
cybersecurity. Are you comfortable that the public is
adequately aware of the scope and severity of the cybersecurity
threat that the country faces?
General Clapper. Candidly, no, sir. I don’t think there is
a general appreciation for the potential threat there.
I think there is widespread knowledge in the cyber
community, meaning the cyber industry, if you will. I think
there’s a less acute awareness, perhaps, out there in what I’ll
call the civil infrastructure. But I think the general public
is not aware of the potential threat, no.
Senator Whitehouse. The reason that I ask that is that it’s
difficult in a democracy to legislate in an area where the
public is not adequately aware of the threat.
So I hope that, as we go forward through the 35, 40, 45
pieces of legislation that are out there, that you will help us
bring to the attention, in a–you said we do over-classify, I
think we particularly over-classify here–that in areas where
it really doesn’t adversely affect national security, there’s a
real advantage to getting this information out to the public.
And I hope you’ll cooperate with us in trying to do so, so that
we’re dealing with a knowledgeable public as we face these
legislative questions.
General Clapper. I will, sir. And I believe that it is, in
fact, incumbent on the intelligence community to help provide
that education to the maximum extent possible without the undue
revelation of sources and methods.
Senator Whitehouse. The basic sort of protective hardware
that is out there right now could protect the vast majority of
cyber intrusions that take place. Do you agree that trying to
establish and monitor basically what I would call rules of the
road for participation in our information superhighway is an
area that could stand improvement?
General Clapper. If you mean, if I understand your
question, sir, sort of conventions or rules that, in order to
participate, this is what was required, and at sort of minimum
levels of security. Is that—-
Senator Whitehouse. Yes. For ordinary folks who are getting
on, to be aware that their laptop, for instance, is
compromised, and willing to do something about it, and that we
put a structure in place so that you can’t do the cyber
equivalent of driving down the road with your headlights out,
your tail lights out, your muffler hanging, at 90 miles an
hour.
General Clapper [continuing]. Well, I personally agree with
that. I think there’ll be a sales job, a marketing job required
to get people to buy into that.
Senator Whitehouse. And in terms of if you sort of step it
up to America’s business community, do you feel that the
private sector or the business community is adequately situated
with respect to their own independent self-defense against
cyber attack? Or does the networking of private business, say
by industrial sector, and the relationship with government need
to be improved so that our major businesses can protect their
critical infrastructure better?
General Clapper. Sir, I’m not technically fluent here, but
my general sensing is that, given the sophistication of some of
our major adversaries, nation-state adversaries, I’m not sure
that, given the rapidity with which new ways of accessing
computers, I’m not sure that they’re as current on that–those
sectors to which you refer are as current as they could or
should be.
Senator Whitehouse. And if we’re to the point where a
private business which provides critical American
infrastructure–a major bank, a major communications entity, an
electric utility, some other form of infrastructure upon which
American lives and property depend–were to be the subject of a
sustained and damaging cyber attack, are you confident that, at
the moment, we have adequate authorities for the government to
be able to step in and do what it needs to do in a clear way to
protect American lives and property?
General Clapper. Again, I’m not expert on this, but my
general sensing is, no, we’re not. I think the whole law on
this subject is a work in progress. It’s still an issue,
frankly, even in a warfighting context.
Should we have a declaratory policy or not on what we would
do? I would be concerned about the rapidity of response and–
which I think is the key, and I think if you speak with General
Alexander about that, who I do consider an authority, that he
would raise that same concern.
Senator Whitehouse. And lastly on this subject, are you
confident that the rules of engagement for our covert agencies
in addressing attacks and intrusions that take place on our
cyber infrastructure are adequate and fully robust for the
challenge that we face, or is that another area of work in
progress?
General Clapper. Yes, sir. It’s a work in progress, and I
think perhaps best left for detailed discussion in a closed
session.
Senator Whitehouse. I won’t go any further than that in
this session, but I did want to get your general perspective on
that.
I’ve only been in the Senate for three years. You are my
fourth Director of National Intelligence already. You gonna
stick around?
General Clapper. Yes, sir. I will. I wouldn’t take this on
without thinking about that.
And I do think my experience has been that it does take
time to bring these changes about. When I was asked to take
NIMA in the summer of 2001, I was specifically asked would I be
willing to stay for five years, and I agreed to do that. Didn’t
quite last that long; ran afoul of the previous Secretary of
Defense. But I believe that kind of commitment is required.
I also would be less than forthright if I said that I’m
going to sit here and guarantee that the intelligence community
is going to bat a thousand every time, because we’re not. And I
think I am reasonably confident I can make this better. I don’t
think I’m going to be able to cure world hunger for
intelligence, just to be realistic.
Senator Whitehouse. And I’m not going to hold you to this.
It’s not intended to be a question of that variety, to pin you
down; it’s intended to be a question to sort of illuminate the
areas that you’re most focused on.
Going into this job now, and knowing what you know now,
when it comes time for you to go–and let’s hope it’s five
years from now–what now would you think would be the most
important things that, at that later date, you would like to
look back on as having accomplished?
General Clapper. I think, for starters, that I kept the
nation safe. I think, obviously, this is somewhat a high-wire
act with no safety net. And I think that’s probably the thing
that will keep me up at night, is worrying about that. So, for
whatever my tenure is, if the intelligence community has at
least contributed to preserving the safety of the nation and
its people, then I think that would be the main thing I’d worry
about.
Senator Whitehouse. Well, I wish you well. You’ve got a
hell of a tough job in front of you, if you’re confirmed. And
any support that we can give you, obviously we’d like to do.
There are significant questions about what the role of the
DNI should be, what its authorities should be to complement
that role. Some of that is a chicken and egg question, that you
have to settle on one to resolve the other. And we really look
forward to working together with you to try to get this settled
for once and for all.
General Clapper. Thanks, Senator.
Senator Whitehouse. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse.
Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Good afternoon, and thank you, General, for your public
service.
The Congress created this position in order to try to exert
some control over the multiple intelligence units that were at
times going off in their own directions. And in the compromises
that we had to make in enacting this legislation that creates
the post that you seek, a great deal of control was still left
within the Department of Defense at the insistence of then-
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
How can you bring the Department of Defense intelligence
operations in under your orbit so that you can function
effectively?
General Clapper. Well, sir, I don’t anticipate a problem
there.
I think I know the Department of Defense pretty well, and
that is where roughly two-thirds of the manpower and the money
for the National Intelligence Program is embedded. And I would
argue or suggest, respectfully, that having run two of the
agencies in the Department of Defense and having served as a
service intel chief actually will help empower me to, you know,
sustain having I’ll call it a positive relationship with the
Department of Defense components. I’ve been there, and done
that, got the t-shirt, so I think I know how to take advantage
of that.
Senator Nelson. Well, the old adage, he who pays the piper
calls the tune, and a lot of that Defense intel activity does
not have to report directly to you on the appropriations. How
do you get into that when somebody wants to go off on their
own?
General Clapper. Well, I would intend to further
crystallize the relationship that Secretary Gates, and then-DNI
McConnell established in May of 2007 designating the Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence as the Director of
Defense Intelligence.
I have fostered, with the two DNIs I’ve served with in this
job, a close working relationship on synchronizing the two
programs–the National Intelligence Program and the MIP. In
fact, Director Blair and I, you know, twice, two rounds,
testified together on those two programs.
We’ve had an aggressive program effort, which has been
going on for a couple of cycles now, to further synchronize and
deconflict the two programs, and to coordinate between the NIP
and the MIP. And I would certainly want to continue that with
my successor in the USD/I job, if I am confirmed to be the
Director of National Intelligence.
I don’t think, frankly, although there’s much made of it
sometimes, I think it’s somewhat hyperbole about the strained
relationship between the DNI and the Department of Defense. I
just don’t think that that’s–I haven’t seen that. And I have
certainly endeavored, working with Secretary Gates, to actually
enhance and strengthen the role of the DNI. The DDI is one such
approach. And certainly Secretary Gates and I worked during the
revisions to the Executive Order 12333 to actually strengthen
the position of the DNI.
Senator Nelson. Why don’t you share, for the record, what
you shared with me privately about your forthcoming
relationship with the Director of the CIA?
General Clapper. I’ll provide that for the record. Yes,
sir.
Senator Nelson. Well, I mean, share it now.
General Clapper. Well—-
Senator Nelson. Basically, you saw the relationship was
strained. There was a little dust-up between the two in the
immediate past DNI. How do you intend to smooth that out?
General Clapper [continuing]. Well, just to continue, sir,
with my comments earlier, as you know, the intelligence
community is, as you know, composed of 16 components, 15 of
which are in someone else’s Cabinet department. And actually
the most strained relationship has been with the one component
that isn’t in someone’s Cabinet department, and that is the
Central Intelligence Agency.
That has been true regardless of who the incumbents were.
It has nothing to do, really, with the people involved. All of
them are good people. I have had some excellent discussions
with Director Panetta about this, and I think I’m very, very
encouraged and pleased by his support. He’s been extremely
gracious and supportive, and I think he wants to make this
arrangement work as much as you do.
Senator Nelson. Will you participate in the President’s
daily morning brief?
General Clapper. I will participate–I plan to participate,
yes, sir. I don’t plan to give it, necessarily, but I plan to
participate in it.
Senator Nelson. Will the Director of the CIA participate as
well?
General Clapper. He could, depending on the subject matter,
I suppose. But I wouldn’t–I certainly wouldn’t object to that.
Senator Nelson. Do you get the sense that that was a little
bit of contention since suddenly what had been historically the
role of the CIA Director was suddenly not the role once the DNI
was established?
General Clapper. That obviously has been a challenging
transition. It’s my belief and my observation from somewhat an
outside perspective that that is an arrangement that has
evolved for the better, since increasingly more input finds its
way into the PDB from other than the CIA.
The CIA will continue to provide the lion’s share of the
finished intelligence analysis that goes into the PDB. But
under the new structure and the new set-up, under the auspices
of the DNI, it is much more–it’s much broader and involves
more of the community. I recently reviewed some statistics that
bear that out.
Senator Nelson. Recently we’ve had some cases of homegrown
terrorists–the Colorado folks, the Times Square folks, the
Fort Hood person. Do you want to comment for the committee
about what you think ought to be done?
General Clapper. Well, I think, sir, this is a very–we did
speak about this earlier–a very serious problem. And I was
pretty deeply involved and intensely involved in the Fort Hood
aftermath, particularly with respect to the e-mails exchanged
between the radical cleric Aulaqi and Major Hasan.
And what it points out, in my view, is a serious challenge
that I don’t have the answer for, and that is the
identification of self-radicalization, which may or may not
lend itself to intelligence detection, if you will. And this
requires, you know, in the case of the Department of Defense,
some education on how to tell people, or instruct people, or
suggest to people how they discern or identify self-
radicalization that’s going on right in front of them with an
associate.
And to me it’s almost like detecting a tendency for suicide
ahead of time. It’s a very daunting challenge and we cannot
necessarily depend on intelligence mechanisms to detect that
self- radicalization.
Senator Nelson. On page 23 of your testimony, you consider
counterintelligence to be under-resourced. You want to share
with us why and also where you would increase the resources?
General Clapper. I think, given the profound threats posed
to this country both by nation-states and others who are trying
to collect information against us, and we have some very
aggressive foreign countries that are doing this, I’m not
convinced that–and this is more intuitive or judgmental or
impressionistic–that we have devoted sufficient resources to
counterintelligence in the Department of Defense, certainly,
which is a major player in counterintelligence, or with the FBI
or CIA which are the three poles, if you will, involved in
counterintelligence.
And this is something I intend to explore to see what we
can do to expand resource investment in counterintelligence.
This is particularly crucial in the case of cyber. We have the
same challenge in cyber for counterintelligence as we do more
conventionally.
Senator Nelson. Madam Chairman, are we going to do a
classified session at any point?
Chairman Feinstein. We can if there is a request. We will
not do it today, however.
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Feinstein. You’re very welcome. Thank you,
Senator.
General Clapper, let me just say I think you’ve done very
well. I think what comes through very clearly is your expertise
in the specifics of intelligence. I think that’s appreciated
and I think it’ll make your job a lot easier. I do have a
couple of questions, and I know the Vice Chairman has a couple
of questions. So I’d like to just continue this a little bit
longer, if I might.
Have you had a chance to take a look at the 13
recommendations we made on the Abdulmutallab situation?
General Clapper. Yes ma’am, I have, and I had an excellent
session with Mike Leiter last week on this very topic, so he
kind of went over that with me.
Chairman Feinstein. Okay, then the problem clearly is for
me, still, connecting the dots. Huge expenditures in computer
programs, often bought separately by various departments,
organizations, et cetera, can’t connect in certain critical but
very simple areas. I would like to suggest that that be high in
your portfolio and that you take a very careful look at it,
because I would think we are spending billions of dollars on
high technology which, candidly, doesn’t work nearly as well as
it should, particularly in this area, where an identification
can be really critical and one letter or one number should not
make a difference. Do you have a comment?
General Clapper. No, I agree with you. As I alluded to
earlier, I think, despite all the huge investments in IT that
we’ve made, that we still depend too much on the minds of
analysts to do things that we ought to be able to harness with
our IT to connect those dots.
Chairman Feinstein. Okay, the second is PREDATOR-REAPER
oversight. I think this is an area that we have been very
concerned about, and this committee is taking that oversight
very seriously and has been very active in seeing that this is
carefully done, that the intelligence is excellent. And I’m one
that believes that the CIA in particular has had a remarkable
record, with very good intelligence, and in some ways really
the best of what can be. I just hope that you will have this at
a high level for your own oversight.
General Clapper. Absolutely.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you.
The third is Afghanistan. I read a quote by Major General
Michael Flynn earlier in the year that said–and I’m
paraphrasing–that eight years into the war, the intelligence
community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy.
U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug
in response to high-level decisionmakers seeking knowledge.
Would you take a look at that and perhaps talk with him and see
where we are, if we are in fact lacking?
General Clapper. Well, I already have had extensive
dialogue with Mike Flynn when the article first came out. And a
careful read of it I think is–I think it’s a Pogo article. We
weighed the enemy, and it’s ourselves, because what the article
really talks to is the situation in Afghanistan, much of which
is, I think, under his control.
I think what occasioned the article was the change in our
strategy from a classic CT or counterterrorist mission to a
much, much broader counterinsurgency mission. And it’s true. We
did not have the intelligence mechanism there to make that
shift that quickly. I think what he’s really getting to is the
cultural, the human terrain–if I can use that phrase–
perspective and insight that’s required to understand the
village dynamics down to the very nitty-gritty level. And so
that’s what his complaint was about.
As I told him, if he felt that they had too many
intelligence analysts at the brigade combat, at the BCT level
and he needed more down at the battalion or company level, it’s
up to him to move them. We’re certainly not going to sit back
here in the confines of the beltway and orchestrate
intelligence in Afghanistan. He’s the senior intelligence
officer; that’s his responsibility, and we back here will
certainly support him.
Chairman Feinstein. Okay, and finally, contractor analysis.
Could you put that high on your agenda? I very much appreciate
what you said. And that was that it all depends on what, where,
the necessity, the type of thing. And I think we need to get
that under control, and we do not currently have it under
control. We need to know where, from an intelligence
perspective, contractors should serve a vital use, and where
they do not.
As you know, the cost is about 70 percent more than a
government employee, so it is a very expensive enterprise as
well.
General Clapper. Yes, it is. And of course, per our earlier
discussion, you know, the reason why we got to where we are and
the sudden re-expansion of the intelligence committee after 9/
11 and intelligence being an inherently manpower-intensive
activity, so the natural outlet for that was contractors, whom
we can hire one year at a time, which you can’t do with
government employees. And you can also get rid of them more
quickly, so the expansion or contraction.
So, for example, the Army right now has about 6,000
contractor Pashtu linguists. Well, I’m not sure we want to keep
them on as government employees when the need for Pashtu
linguists hopefully goes down in the future. So I think rather
than rote numbers or percentages, I think what we need to–and
I do intend to get into this, if I’m confirmed–what are the
ground rules, the organizing principles that govern where it’s
proper to use contractors and where it’s not.
Chairman Feinstein. Well, we will schedule a meeting in
your ascendancy to come in and brief us on that, so be
prepared. But I’d like just quickly to tell you what my
intention is.
I’m going to request that all members submit questions by
noon tomorrow and ask you to answer them as quickly as you can.
And as soon as we receive the answers, Members have a brief
opportunity to digest them, we will schedule a markup. If we
can do it in a week or ten days, that’s fine; hopefully we can.
Is that agreeable with you?
General Clapper. Yes, ma’am. I would hope that whatever
action is taken would be taken before the Senate adjourns in
August.
Chairman Feinstein. Well, we will certainly strive to do
that, and the questions become a vital part, first of all, of
us getting them, and secondly, your responding. But you’ve been
very prompt in your responses, and I’ve no reason to believe it
would be otherwise, so we will try to do our best to
accommodate that.
Let me just end by saying I think you’ve performed really
very well. And once again, your expertise in this area is very
much appreciated and I think will be very well used.
General Clapper. Thank you.
Chairman Feinstein. Mr. Vice Chairman.
Vice Chairman Bond. Madam Chair, thank you for making it
clear that we will have more questions for the record. I
frankly have some questions for the record. I’d like to have
your fuller explanation because they seem to be inconsistent
with previous positions and some are not clear. I do want to
have those.
Madam Chair, if it’s possible, Senator Nelson said that he
would like to have a closed hearing.
I think there are some things that you are interested in
that might be best covered in a classified hearing, and I have
a couple of areas of overlap between military and civilian that
I prefer not to discuss in an open session. So we will do that,
and I would join you saying that the nominee has certainly
stayed with it for a long time. We appreciate that.
Chairman Feinstein. He says he does not need one. But if
you do—-
Vice Chairman Bond. Well, we might be able to have some
classified questions at least then that we can submit for
response, because there’s just a couple of things that probably
I’d prefer not to discuss in an open session.
But let me go back. A general question you’ll be asked in
writing–and I think it’s good to have on record–will you
cooperate with both the Chair and the Vice Chair, as well as
with our staffs, by promptly responding to written and phone
inquiries, sharing information, being proactive in sharing it
with us?
General Clapper. Yes. Yes, sir.
Vice Chairman Bond. That’s something we talked about, and I
wanted to–we mentioned that. I wanted to make sure that the
staff knows that on both sides. And we will look forward to
your full answers, but I want to go back–I was going down a
road talking when I ran out of time on the first round.
Talking about Guantanamo detainees and their release, when
I communicated to the national security advisor that members of
this committee had been told that the CIA and the DIA did not
concur in sending a particular detainee back to Yemen, the
national security advisor told me that those agencies would be
reminded of the administration’s decision.
Now, as I think we discussed once before, the
administration’s decision is their decision, but if there is an
implication that the intelligence committee should not be told
honestly and frankly of advice that you give to the
policymakers–whether it’s accepted or not–that troubles me.
So will you commit to providing the committee the honest and
forthright recommendations and assessments that you make,
regardless of whether they are accepted ultimately by
policymakers?
General Clapper. Yes, sir, I would. Again, as we discussed
before, this is an interagency process. Intelligence is a very
important, but not the exclusive, determinant. And it would be
my view that intelligence should be as thorough and accurate as
possible on making such assessments. And I don’t see any
problem with, once we’ve spoken our piece and if that was
ignored, that’s the process. And I certainly have no trouble–I
wouldn’t have any trouble conveying that to the committee.
Vice Chairman Bond. Good, because in case you’re advised of
the position, we want the intelligence regardless of what the
position may come up with.
Let me go into another interesting area. You gave a
conference speech in 2008 to GEOINT, which my staff managed to
track down. And you said that at that point, “I hope the next
administration will give some thought, I mean the Congress as
well, to maybe another look at the National Security Act of
1947, maybe a Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency.”
But in the answers to the committee’s questionnaire you
said you had no plan to recommend to the President any dramatic
change, but rather look to improve it. There are some of us
that think the Goldwater-Nichols recommendation was similar to
what came out of the Project on National Security Reform that
General Jones, Susan Rice, Jim Steinberg participated in before
they joined the administration. The administration apparently
has not gone along with that. As your recommendation–did your
recommendation change as a result of the administration’s
position, or do you think we need to take another look at the
National Security Act of 1947?
General Clapper. I think–what has been discussed about it,
and I don’t exactly remember the GEOINT discussion. I think it
had to do with the discussion that was at the time. I remember
specifically former chairman of the JCS, Pete Pace, who was a
proponent for a Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency, which
could–you know, that might have merit.
I do think it’s a different proposition, as Secretary
Gates, I think correctly, points out, that Goldwater-Nichols in
its original form, of course, only applied to one department.
So perhaps the principles of Goldwater-Nichols could be applied
perhaps in an interagency context.
Vice Chairman Bond. Well basically, that’s what the DNI is;
it’s an interagency agency. And that’s maybe–well, we will
discuss that further. But are there any particular aspects of
Goldwater-Nichols you believe should apply to the interagency?
General Clapper. Well, one of the benefits of Goldwater-
Nichols–and I was around and was probably part of the legion
of people that wrote papers in the Pentagon against it at the
time in the early 1980s, but now of course it is the accepted
norm. And what it meant in the department was placing a very
high premium on jointness and on joint duty. And so that is one
of the principles that was taken on, particularly by Director
McConnell, which I certainly agree with.
And we are experiencing a lot of mobility in the
intelligence community so that people get out of their home
stovepipe and move to other parts of the community. So that’s a
principle of Goldwater-Nichols that I think applies in the
intelligence community and, for that matter, could apply in the
interagency.
Vice Chairman Bond. You suggest in answers to the committee
questionnaire that the area of greatest ambiguity in IRTPA is
the relationship with and authority of the DNI over the CIA.
What do you think is ambiguous in the law?
General Clapper. As I cited earlier, the IRTPA does
stipulate that the Director of CIA–Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency–is in charge of foreign intelligence
relationships. And of course, that’s what gave rise to the
dispute between DNI Blair and the Director of CIA. And I think
the law says that the DNI oversees those foreign relationships,
whatever that means. So I think that is an area of ambiguity.
Vice Chairman Bond. All right. Three changes that I think
might go a long way–I think you’ve addressed at least one of
them–would be giving the DNI milestone decision authority for
all intelligence programs funded 50 percent or more by NIP; two
would be changing the non-abrogation language in section 1018;
and the third is appropriating NIP funds directly to the DNI,
rather than through DOD and other departments.
What are your feelings on those three measures–1018,
milestone authority over—-
General Clapper. Well, I think there is an agreement now,
which took the form of a memorandum agreement that was signed
by Secretary Gates and Director McConnell that governs
milestone decision authority. And of course it is a shared
arrangement, depending on the predominance of the funding,
whether it’s in the department or in the NIP.
Non-abrogation, section 1018, was addressed in the revision
to Executive Order 12333. And there was some language appended
to that that basically amplified the process for potential
resolution of disputes, if in fact they had to go to the White
House.
So at this point, I’m not prepared–as a nominee,
certainly–to make any recommendations about amending section
1018.
On DOD funding, I have been a proponent for taking the NIP
out of the DOD. Now, that carries with it some baggage, if you
will, in terms of the staffing mechanisms and processing, but I
think the long-term impact of that would be to actually
strengthen the DNI’s authorities over the National Intelligence
Program.
Given the revelation of the top line appropriated number of
the National Intelligence Program, the original reason for
burying that number in the Department of Defense budget kind of
goes away. And I have similarly argued–and the Secretary has
approved–publicizing the Military Intelligence Program for the
sake of completeness, both for the Congress and the public to
know the totality of the investment in intelligence in this
country.
Vice Chairman Bond. Finally, you mentioned that you had
looked over the bill that Senator Hatch and I had on setting up
a national cyber center and a cyber defense alliance. Are there
any further thoughts that you have to share about that bill or
where we should be going on cyber?
General Clapper. Well, sir, there are, as you know, many–I
think there’s 34, 35 legislative proposals now in play which
address a whole range of cyber, cyber-related issues. So I
don’t want to preempt the administration on picking and
choosing which bill they like.
I do think, though, there are some appealing features in
the bill that you and Senator Hatch are sponsoring, which is
putting someone clearly in charge, having an identifiable
budget aggregation, co-location either physically or virtually,
I think. So those features–I have not read the bill itself but
I’ve read about it–I think are appealing.
Vice Chairman Bond. And the other thing, the importance
that–I think the thing that was different, the cyber defense
alliance would be a means for the private sector to come
together with government agencies and each other, protected
from FOIA and antitrust or other challenges, to discuss and
share information on the threats that were coming in. And if
you have any further information on that, I would appreciate
hearing it, either now or later.
General Clapper. Sir, I would recommend–if you haven’t
already–some dialogue with the Deputy Secretary Bill Lynne,
who has been very much in the lead for engaging with the
civilian sector, particularly the defense intelligence base, on
doing exactly this. And he’s done a lot of work, given this a
lot of thought. So I would commend a dialogue with him.
Vice Chairman Bond. All right. Well, thank you. And we’ve
talked with many, many different private sector elements who
are concerned that they don’t feel comfortable, don’t know
where to go, or how to get information and share it. And I
think they can be very, very perhaps helpful to each other and
to the government in identifying the threats that are coming
in.
Well, thank you very much, General. As I said, we’ll have
some questions for the record. And I think there may be some
classified questions for that, and we’ll wait to hear a
response. And thank you for the time that you’ve given us.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Chairman
and General Clapper. I think we’ve come to the end of the
afternoon.
Again, for all staff, if you can let your Members know,
please get the questions in by noon tomorrow. General Clapper
will address them as quickly as possible. We will then make a
decision whether we need a closed hearing. Perhaps these
questions can be asked in a classified fashion in writing. If
not, we will have a closed hearing, and we will try and move
this just as quickly as possible.
So, well done, General, and thank you everybody, and the
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:43 p.m., the Committee adjourned.]

Supplemental Material

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.001

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.002

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.003

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.004

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.005

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.006

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.007

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.008

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.009

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.010

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.011

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.012

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.013

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.014

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.015

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.016

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.017

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.018

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.019

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.020

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.021

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.022

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.023

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.024

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.025

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.026

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.027

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.028

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.029

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.030

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.031

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.032

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.033

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.034

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.035

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.036

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.037

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.038

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.039

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.040

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.041

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.042

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.043

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.044

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.045

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.046

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.047

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.048

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.049

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.050

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.051

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.052

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.053

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.054

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.055

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.056

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.057

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.058

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.059

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.060

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.061

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.062

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.063

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.064

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.065

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.066

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.067

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.068

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.069

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.070

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.071

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.072

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.073

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.074

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.075

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.076

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.077

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.078

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.079

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.080

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.081

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.082

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.083

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.084

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.085

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.086

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.087

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.088

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.089

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.090

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.091

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.092

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.093

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.094

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.095

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.096

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.097

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.098

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.099

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.100

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.101

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.102

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.103

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.104

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.105

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.106

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.107

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.108

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.109

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.110

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.111

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.112

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.113

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.114

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.115

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.116

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.117

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.118

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.119

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.120

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.121

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.122

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.123

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.124

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.125

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.126

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.127

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.128

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.129

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.130

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.131

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.132

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.133

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.134

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.135

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.136

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.137

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.138

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.139

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.140

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.141

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.142

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.143

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.144

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.145

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.146

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.147

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.148

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.149

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.150

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.151

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.152

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.153

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.154

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.155

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.156

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.157

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.158

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.159

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.160

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.161

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.162

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.163

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.164

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.165

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.166

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.167

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.168

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.169

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.170

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.171

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.172

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.173

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.174

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.175

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.176

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.177

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.178

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.179

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.180

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.181

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.182

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.183

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.184

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3996.185

Find this story at 20 July 2010



The lost Briton of Guantanamo: He’s been cleared – but had a devastating secret about MI6 and the Iraq invasion which means he can never be freed

Shaker Aamer, 44, has been a prisoner for more than 11 years
He has been cleared twice for freedom but still not released
The US says he can only leave Guantanamo for Saudi Arabia
Aamer says he witnessed torture that led to bogus intelligence for Iraq

Guantanamo prisoner: Shaker Aamer with two of his children

The last UK prisoner at America’s infamous terror jail camp at Guantanamo Bay is guarding a devastating secret: he witnessed the torture of another detainee in an Afghan interrogation unit which led to the crucial, bogus ‘intelligence’ that sparked Britain and America’s invasion of Iraq.

Shaker Aamer, 44, a father of five from Battersea, South London, has been a prisoner for more than 11 years even though he has never been charged – and has twice been cleared for freedom by the US.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that America wants to silence him permanently by saying he can only leave Guantanamo for Saudi Arabia, the country he left at the age of 17. But his lawyers say if he goes there he would be forbidden from speaking in public or seeing his British wife and children – and would end up in another jail.

Aamer’s case is so explosive the Commons is set to hold an emergency debate on his case on Wednesday. A Mail on Sunday investigation has revealed:
Aamer has told his lawyer how British MI6 officers were present when he was brutally assaulted and interrogated at Bagram air base in Afghanistan – where he was known as ‘Prisoner No  5’.
He said MI6 officers were also in attendance when similar treatment was meted out to Ibn Shaikh al-Libi – who was then ‘rendered’ to Egypt and tortured into claiming Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was training Al Qaeda terrorists how to use chemical weapons. That was the vital confession used by President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to justify war – and which persuaded Tony Blair that Saddam had to be toppled. If Aamer’s allegation that British officials witnessed Al-Libi’s ill-treatment is true, it would imply MI6 either knew about or was directly involved in his rendition to Egypt – one of the darkest episodes of the so-called ‘war on terror’.

Imprisoned: A US Army MP holds down the head of a detainee at Guantanamo so he is not identified
The Guantanamo detention facility is close to meltdown. Last week dozens of soldiers in riot gear stormed its minimum-security section, Camp 6. They fired on inmates with rubber bullets because mutineers had blocked the lenses of CCTV cameras with towels, sprayed guards with urine, and refused to allow their cells to be searched. The inmates involved are now all in solitary confinement.
A hunger strike started before the action has now spread through the entire jail. Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale said 63 of Guantanamo’s 166 prisoners are now refusing food, up from 45 on Tuesday.

Aamer joined the strike in early February and has already lost several stone. Fifteen men are being force- fed through tubes inserted into their stomachs via their nostrils and four have been hospitalised.

Aamer’s back story is similar to those of many of the other nine British citizens and eight British residents who ended up at Guantanamo. Like them, he was caught in the chaos which followed the fall of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Like them, he has paid a heavy price.

But there is a difference. All the others were released years ago, the first batch in March 2004.

Born in Medina, Saudi Arabia, Aamer studied in America and worked as a US Army translator during the first Gulf War. He moved to London where he continued translating and met and married Zin Siddique, a British Muslim woman.

They had already had four children and Zin was pregnant with their fifth when they went to Afghanistan – where Aamer worked for a charity – in the summer of 2001.

Prison life: Detainees at Camp Delta exercising. Shaker Aamer claims he has been abused by US soldiers during his detention at Guantanamo bay

Like other British Guantanamo detainees, he was captured by the Afghan Northern Alliance and handed over to the Americans – who were paying thousands of pounds in bounties for supposed Al Qaeda members.

After a short time at Bagram and Kandahar, he reached Guantanamo on February 14, 2002.

He has since become a high- profile figure – partly because of his fluent English – and he acts as a spokesman for the prisoners and led earlier protests and hunger strikes.

His lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, of human rights organisation Reprieve, says his actions as a figurehead cannot account for his failure to be released. Other such prisoners have been freed – including Ahmed Errachidi, a former chef in London. Errachidi was even dubbed ‘the General’ by his captors because of how he organised protests and resistance at the camp.

And the second of two tribunals which cleared Aamer was exhaustive. Established soon after Barack Obama became US President in 2009, its remit was to review all remaining Guantanamo cases. It involved not only extensive interviews between Aamer and officials from Washington, but input from all the US intelligence and security agencies as to whether he might be dangerous.

Mr Stafford Smith said their conclusion was unequivocal – he wasn’t a danger.

Yet neither Aamer nor his lawyers were told he had been cleared for release only to Saudi Arabia. Official disclosure of this critical fact emerged only six weeks ago when, after further talks with the Americans, Foreign Secretary William Hague wrote to Mr Stafford Smith.

Detainees wear orange jump suits at Guantanamo Bay in 2002, the year after Aamer was detained there. They cannot hear, see or smell anything

‘We remain committed to securing Mr Aamer’s release and return to the UK,’ he said. ‘However, it is our understanding Mr Aamer has only ever been cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia.’

Even before the current wave of hunger strikes and protests, Aamer’s situation was wretched. In the high-security wing known as Camp 5, inmates spend 23 hours a day in cells measuring 6 ft by 10 ft, containing nothing but a toilet with a small built-in sink, a metal shelf bed with a thin mattress, and a few possessions such as a Koran and toothbrush.

Their recreation takes place in isolation – in a small unroofed area in the middle of the block. There is no association between prisoners: the only way they can communicate is by yelling down the corridor.

Now, however, conditions are much worse, with 24-hour solitary confinement. When Aamer asks for anything – even a bottle of water – he becomes a victim of what is known as ‘the Forcible Cell Extraction team’.

The team of six soldiers shackle his feet and arms behind his back and then lift him ‘like a potato sack’ – so that he cannot cause any trouble. It is a process Aamer finds ‘excruciatingly painful’ because of a long-term back injury.

Prisoner: Shaker Aamer has been a prisoner at Guantanamo for more than 11 years even though he has twice been cleared for freedom by the US

Jane Ellison – the Aamer family’s Conservative MP in Battersea who has been instrumental in securing this week’s Commons debate – said the US insistence on sending him to Saudi Arabia was ‘completely illogical’.

She said: ‘It would be disastrous for his family if he were sent to Saudi Arabia. Obama may not have been able to close Guantanamo, but I don’t understand why he can’t at least solve one small part of a very big problem by letting Shaker return to Britain.

‘It just doesn’t stack up. My feeling is they won’t let him go because he knows too much and if he spoke out it would just be too embarrassing – for some people in America, and perhaps also in Britain.’

So what does Aamer know that other prisoners don’t? Mr Stafford Smith believes it is linked to what was happening in Bagram in January 2002, just before Al-Libi was taken away by CIA agents from military custody and sent to Egypt. Aamer’s lawyer’s notes record he arrived in Bagram on Christmas Eve, 2001, and from the beginning, ‘British intelligence officers were complicit in my torture’.

There were, he has said, always at least two UK agents based there, and they witnessed the abuse he suffered: ‘I was walled – meaning that someone grabbed my head and slammed it into a wall. Further, they beat my head. I was also beaten with an axe handle. I was threatened with other kinds of abuse. People were shouting that they would kill me or I would die.’

Aamer told Mr Stafford Smith: ‘I was a witness to the torture of Ibn Shaikh al-Libi in Bagram. His case seems to me to be particularly important, and my witnessing of it particularly relevant to my ongoing detention  .  .  .  He was there being abused at the same time I was.

‘He was there being abused when the British came there. Indeed, I was taken into the room in the Bagram detention facility where he was being held. There were a number of interrogators in the room.’
GRIM REGIME OF US TERROR JAIL – AND KAFKAESQUE TIMELINE THAT DOOMED SHAKER AAMER

The Guantanamo prison in Cuba today bears little resemblance to the collection of open cages – known as Camp X-Ray – where prisoners were held when it opened in 2002.

Both they and their successor, Camp Delta, a collection of prefabricated sheds with hard roofs, have long been disused.

Instead, prisoners are held in three large, concrete two-storey buildings – each ringed by concentric security fences, along Recreation Road, which leads along the Cuban coast to a beach.
Camp 5 and Camp 6 are for ‘ordinary’ prisoners, guarded by the US military.

The super-secret Camp 7 is run by the CIA and reserved for prisoners formerly held in its ‘black site’ jails in countries such as Poland and Thailand. They include some of the world’s most notorious terrorists – including Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who face military trial as the alleged architects of 9/11.

Most of the remaining 166 detainees are said to be much less dangerous.

According to a survey by US lawyers, more than three-quarters of them were not captured ‘on the battlefield’ by Americans – but sold for huge bounty payments by the Afghan Northern Alliance or Pakistani tribesmen.

1996 – US-educated Saudi translator Shaker Aamer settles in London, marries Briton Zin Siddique.

Summer 2001 – Aamer takes family to Kabul and works for Saudi charity.

September 11, 2001 – Al Qaeda terrorists attack America.

November 2001 – Taliban regime falls.

December 18, 2001 – Ibn Shaikh al-Libi captured, taken to Bagram.

December 24, 2001 – Aamer handed to US troops by Northern Alliance; taken to Bagram.
Early January 2002 – Aamer allegedly abused with UK officials present and witnesses abuse of Al-Libi.

Mid January 2002 – Al-Libi sent by CIA to Egypt for torture.

February 14, 2002 – Aamer flown to Guantanamo.

October 2002-February 2003 – Bogus claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda in WMD, based on Al-Libi’s tortured confessions, made by Bush and Powell.

2004–09 – All 17 other UK-based Guantanamo detainees freed – but Aamer kept at camp.
October 2006 – Al-Libi flown to Libya and jailed.

November 2008 – Obama pledges to close Guantanamo.

July 2009 – Al-Libi allegedly murdered in Libyan jail.

2007 and 2009 – Aamer cleared by US tribunals as safe to release but he is not freed.

February 2013 – Foreign Secretary reveals US will only allow Aamer’s transfer to Saudi Arabia, not UK.

April 2013 – Guantanamo close to meltdown with mass hunger strike and riot.

…

By David Rose

PUBLISHED: 00:04 GMT, 21 April 2013 | UPDATED: 10:24 GMT, 21 April 2013

Find this story at 21 April 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Arundhati Roy on Iraq War’s 10th: Bush May Be Gone, But “Psychosis” of U.S. Foreign Policy Prevails

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the global justice activist and author Arundhati Roy joins us to discuss the war’s legacy. Roy is the author of many books, including “The God of Small Things,” “Walking with the Comrades,” and “Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.” Roy argues the imperial mentality that enabled the United States to invade Iraq continues today unabated across the world. “We are being given lessons in morality [by world leaders] while tens of thousands are being killed, while whole countries are shattered, while whole civilizations are driven back decades, if not centuries,” Roy says. “And everything continues as normal.” [includes rush transcript]
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: March 19th marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. According to a new report by Brown University, a decade of war led to the deaths of roughly 134,000 Iraqi civilians and potentially contributed to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands more. According to the report, the Iraq War has cost the U.S. more than $2 trillion, including half-a-trillion dollars in benefits owed to veterans. The report says the war has devastated rather than helped Iraq, spurring militant violence, setting back women’s rights and hurting the healthcare system. Most of the more than $200 billion supposedly set aside for reconstruction in Iraq was actually used for security or lost amid rampant fraud and waste. Many in Iraq continue to suffer the consequences of the invasion. This is Basma Najem, whose husband was shot dead by U.S. forces in Basra in 2011.

BASMA NAJEM: [translated] We expected that we would live in a better situation when the occupation forces, the U.S. forces, came to Iraq. We expected that the situation would be improved. But contrary to our expectation, the situation deteriorated. And at the end, I lost my husband. I have no breadwinner in this world now, and I have six kids. I could not imagine my life would be changed like this. I do not know how it happened.

AMY GOODMAN: The consequences of the war are still visible here in the United States, as well. Military veterans continue to face extremely high levels of unemployment, traumatic brain injury, PTSD and homelessness. Almost a quarter of recent veterans come home injured either physically or emotionally, and an estimated 18 veterans commit suicide every day. This is Ed Colley, whose son, Army Private Stephen Colley, took his own life in 2007.

EDWARD COLLEY: We lost our son shortly after he returned from Iraq. He had asked for help, but he didn’t get the help that he needed. And clearly, he was trying to do what he could for himself and could think of no other cure, obviously, than to take his own life.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about this 10th anniversary, we’re joined by the award-winning writer and activist Arundhati Roy, one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq War. In a moment, she’ll join us from Chicago. But first let’s go back to 2003 to a speech she gave at Riverside Church here in New York.

ARUNDHATI ROY: When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported al-Qaeda. None of this opinion is based on evidence, because there isn’t any. All of it is based on insinuation or to suggestion and outright lies circulated by the U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the “free press,” that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests. Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multitiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.

Apart from the invented links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent—went to the extent of saying it would be suicidal for Iraq—for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries. Earlier, there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Granada, Panama. But this time it wasn’t just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was frenzy with a purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the doctrine of preemptive strike, also known as the United States can do whatever the hell it wants, and that’s official. The war against Iraq has been fought and won, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found, not even a little one.

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, speaking in October of 2003 at Riverside Church here in New York, seven months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Arundhati has written many books, including The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize. Her other books include Walking with the Comrades and Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, among others. She now joins us from Chicago.

Arundhati Roy, welcome to Democracy Now! As you watch yourself 10 years ago and reflect back 10 years ago to this week when the U.S. invaded Iraq, your thoughts today?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, Amy, before that, we remember how—I think it was 50 million people across the world who marched against the war in Iraq. It was perhaps the biggest display of public morality in the world—you know, I mean, before the war happened. Before the war happened, everybody knew that they were being fed lies. I remember saying, you know, it’s just the quality of the lies that is so insulting, because we are being—used to being lied to.

But, unfortunately, now, all these years later, we have to ask ourselves two questions. One is: Who benefited from this war? You know, we know who paid the price. I heard—I heard you talking about that, so I won’t get into that again. But who benefited from this war? Did the U.S. government? Did the U.S. people benefit? Did they get the oil contracts that they wanted, in the way that they wanted? The answer is no. And yet, today you hear Dick Cheney saying he would do it all over again in a second.

So, unfortunately, we are dealing with psychosis. We are dealing with a psychopathic situation. And all of us, including myself, we can’t do anything but keep being reasonable, keep saying what needs to be said. But that doesn’t seem to help the situation, because, of course, as we know, after Iraq, there’s been Libya, there’s Syria, and the rhetoric of, you know, democracy versus radical Islam. When you look at the countries that were attacked, none of them were Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalist countries. Those ones are supported, financed by the U.S., so there is a real collusion between radical Islam and capitalism. What is going on is really a different kind of battle.

And, you know, most people are led up a path which keeps them busy. And in a way, all of us are being kept busy, while the real business at the heart of it—I mean, apart from the people who suffered during the war. Let’s not forget the sanctions. Let’s not forget Madeleine Albright saying that a million children dying in Iraq because of the sanctions was a hard price but worth it. I mean, she was the victim, it seems, of the sanctions; you know, her softness was called upon, and she had to brazen herself to do it. And today, you have the Democrats bombing Pakistan, destroying that country, too. So, just in this last decade, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria—all these countries have been—have been shattered.

You know, we heard a lot about why—you know, the war in Afghanistan was fought for feminist reasons, and the Marines were really on this feminist mission. But today, all the women in all these countries have been driven back into medieval situations. Women who were liberated, women who were doctors and lawyers and poets and writers and—you know, pushed back into this Shia set against Sunnis. The U.S. is supporting al-Qaeda militias all over this region and pretending that it’s fighting Islam. So we are in a situation of—it is psychopathic.

And while anyone who resisted is being given moral lessons about armed struggle or violence or whatever it is, at the heart of this operation is an immorality and a violence and a—as I keep using this word—psychopathic violence, which even the people in the United States are now suffering for. You know, there is a connection, after all, between all these wars and people being thrown out of their homes in this country. And yet, of course we know who benefits from these wars. May not be the oil contracts, but certainly the weapons industry on which this economy depends for—you know, for a great part. So, all over, even between India and Pakistan now, people are advocating war. And the weapons industry is in with the corporations in India.

So, we are really being made fools of. You know, this is what is so insulting. We are being, you know, given lessons in morality while tens of thousands are being killed, while whole countries are shattered, while whole civilizations are driven back decades, if not centuries. And everything continues as normal. And you have—you have people, like criminals, really, like Cheney, saying, “I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again. I won’t think about it. I’ll do it again.” And so that’s the situation we are in now.

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati, a decade after the invasion of Iraq, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood by his decision to go to war, saying it saved Iraq from a fate worse than Syria’s at the moment.

TONY BLAIR: I think if we’d—if we’d backed off and we’d left him in power, you just imagine, with what is happening in Syria now, if you’d left Saddam in charge of Iraq, you would have had carnage on an even worse scale in Syria and with no end in sight. So, you know, this was the most difficult decision I ever took and the most balanced decision. But I still—personally, I still believe we were better to remove him than leave him.

AMY GOODMAN: That was British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former prime minister. Arundhati Roy, your response?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, you know, I don’t know. Maybe they need to be put into a padded cell and given some real news to read, you know? I mean, how can you say this, after creating a situation in Iraq where no—I mean, every day people are being blown up? There are—you know, mosques are being attacked. Thousands are being killed. People have been made to hate each other. In Iraq, women were amongst the most liberated women in the world, and they have been driven back into having to wear burqas and be safe, because of the situation. And this man is saying, “Oh, we did such a wonderful thing. We saved these people.” Now, isn’t that like—isn’t it insane? I mean, I don’t know how to respond to something like that, because it’s like somebody looking at somebody being slaughtered and saying, “Oh, he must be enjoying it. We are really helping him,” you know? So, how do you argue rationally against these people?

AMY GOODMAN: Can you—

ARUNDHATI ROY: We just have to think about what we need to do, you know? But we can’t have a conversation with them in this—at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see President Obama going in a different direction?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Of course not. I don’t see him going in a different direction at all. I mean, the real question to ask is: When was the last time the United States won a war? You know, it lost in Vietnam. It’s lost in Afghanistan. It’s lost in Iraq. And it will not be able to contain the situation. It is hemorrhaging. It is now—you know, of course you can continue with drone attacks, and you can continue these targeted killings, but on the ground, a situation is being created which no army—not America, not anybody—can control. And it’s just, you know, a combination of such foolishness, such a lack of understanding of culture in the world.

And Obama just goes on, you know, coming out with these smooth, mercurial sentences that are completely meaningless. I was—I remember when he was sworn in for the second time, and he came on stage with his daughters and his wife, and it was all really nice, and he said, you know, “Should my daughters have another dog, or should they not?” And a man who had lost his entire family in the drone attacks just a couple of weeks ago said, “What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to think of this exhibition of love and family values and good fatherhood and good husbandhood?” I mean, we’re not morons, you know? It’s about time that we stopped acting so reasonable. I just don’t feel reasonable about this anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back and talk about what’s happening in Kashmir, a place you’ve been focusing on recently, Arundhati. Arundhati Roy is the award-winning writer, renowned global justice activist. Among her books, The God of Small Things, her most recent book, Walking with the Comrades, and Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.

Display full version
Monday, March 18, 2013

Find this story at 18 March 2013

CIA director faces a quandary over clandestine service appointment

As John Brennan moved into the CIA director’s office this month, another high-level transition was taking place down the hall.

A week earlier, a woman had been placed in charge of the CIA’s clandestine service for the first time in the agency’s history. She is a veteran officer with broad support inside the agency. But she also helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture.

The woman, who remains undercover and cannot be named, was put in the top position on an acting basis when the previous chief retired last month. The question of whether to give her the job permanently poses an early quandary for Brennan, who is already struggling to distance the agency from the decade-old controversies.

Brennan endured a bruising confirmation battle in part over his own role as a senior CIA official when the agency began using water-boarding and other harsh interrogation methods. As director, he is faced with assembling the CIA’s response to a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee that documents abuses in the interrogation program and accuses the agency of misleading the White House and Congress over its effectiveness.

To help navigate the sensitive decision on the clandestine service chief, Brennan has taken the unusual step of assembling a group of three former CIA officials to evaluate the candidates. Brennan announced the move in a previously undisclosed notice sent to CIA employees last week, officials said.

“The director of the clandestine service has never been picked that way,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official.

The move has led to speculation that Brennan is seeking political cover for a decision made more difficult by the re-emergence of the interrogation controversy and the acting chief’s ties to that program.

She “is highly experienced, smart and capable,” and giving her the job permanently “would be a home run from a diversity standpoint,” the former senior U.S. intelligence official said. “But she was also heavily involved in the interrogation program at the beginning and for the first couple of years.”

The former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing internal agency matters, said that Brennan “is obviously hesitating” at making the chief permanent.

CIA officials disputed that characterization. “Given the importance of the position of the director of the National Clandestine Service, Director Brennan has asked a few highly respected former senior agency officers to review the candidates he’s considering for the job,” said Preston Golson, a CIA spokesman.

The group’s members were identified as former senior officials John McLaughlin, Stephen Kappes and Mary Margaret Graham.

Golson said Brennan will make the decision but added that “asking former senior agency officers to review the candidates will undoubtedly aid the selection process by making sure the director has the benefit of the additional perspectives from these highly experienced and respected intelligence officers.”

Other candidates to run the clandestine service include a former station chief in Pakistan and the director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center . Neither person can be named because they are undercover.

The service is the most storied part of the CIA. It sends spies overseas and carries out covert operations including running the agency’s ongoing drone campaign.

The service has also long been perceived as a male bastion that has blocked the career paths of women even while female officers have ascended to the top posts in other divisions, including the directors of analysis and science.

No woman has held the job of CIA director or led the clandestine service until now.

The acting chief, who according to public records is in her 50s, is part of a generation that over the past two decades has pushed through many obstacles confronting women. The CIA refused to comment on her background, but former colleagues said she mastered several languages and served multiple tours in Moscow and other cities overseas. She also held senior posts at CIA headquarters.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, she took on a senior assignment at the Counterterrorism Center, which put her in the chain of command on the interrogation and detention program, former officials said.

In a fateful decision, the CIA set up a video camera at its secret prison in Thailand shortly after it opened in the months after the attacks. The agency recorded more than 90 tapes of often-brutal interrogations, footage that became increasingly worrisome to officials as the legal basis for the program began to crumble.

When the head of the Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez, was promoted to head of the clandestine service in 2004, he took the female officer along as his chief of staff. According to former officials, the two repeatedly sought permission to have the tapes destroyed but were denied.

In 2005, instructions to get rid of the recordings went out anyway. Former officials said the order carried just two names: Rodriguez and his chief of staff.

The officer went on to hold top positions in London and New York before returning to Langley as deputy chief of the clandestine service. She became acting director on Feb. 28, when the previous head of the service, John Bennett, retired.

The Justice Department has twice investigated the tapes’ destruction and brought no charges against anyone at the CIA.

Former senior CIA officials said that outcome should clear any obstacles to the acting director getting the job permanently. But the seemingly dormant controversy over the interrogation program was revived by Brennan’s nomination and completion of a 6,000-page report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that accuses the agency of exaggerating the program’s results.

The acting director is mentioned in several passages of the report, according to officials familiar with its contents, although they declined to provide more details.

Amid calls for the public release of the report, Brennan faces having to devise a response that doesn’t alienate his workforce or the lawmakers who confirmed him for his job.

…

By Greg Miller and Julie Tate, Published: March 27

Find this story at 27 March 2013

© The Washington Post Company

Symbols of Bush-era Lawlessness Flourish Under Obama Guantanamo Bay prison plans expansion, while CIA official linked to torture cover-up gets promoted

During the George W. Bush years, two of the most controversial elements of what was then called the Global War on Terror were the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program and the creation of the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay. The RDI program included waterboarding and other forms of torture, as well as so-called black site prisons where detainees were held incommunicado after being abducted by the CIA, and sometimes tortured by members of the host country’s security forces.

Guantanamo Bay and the RDI program are both back in the news now, each for their own unsavory reasons, and their reemergence should be a reminder of how fully the Obama administration has embraced the logic underpinning the Bush regime’s response to 9/11. The Pentagon is now requesting nearly $200 million for Guantanamo Bay infrastructure upgrades, including $49 million for a new unit for “special” prisoners – likely the so-called high-value detainees currently housed at Camp 7, which include self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Pentagon’s reasoning is that neither the president nor Congress have any plans to close the prison anytime soon, so these repairs are necessary.

This massive capital request comes as detainees are engaged in an increasingly dire hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention and to signal their lack of hope for transfer or release. Instead of closing Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration stands poised to do the very opposite – pour more money into what is already the country’s most expensive prison.

Meanwhile, participation in the CIA’s controversial RDI program has resulted for at least one person not in prosecution or professional sanctions, but rather in a promotion. For the last several weeks, an unnamed woman has been acting director of the National Clandestine Service – the part of the CIA that runs spying and covert operations, including the CIA’s drone program – as first reported by the Washington Post. This is the first time a woman has held that position. But this particular woman was a major figure in the RDI program, once ran a black site prison, and has been linked to the destruction of interrogation tapes that almost certainly documented the CIA’s use of torture.

In 2005, the unnamed woman was chief of staff for Jose Rodriguez, then the acting director for the clandestine service. Rodriguez ordered the destruction of at least 92 tapes CIA agents made of the interrogations of two high-value detainees, Abu Zubayah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri – at least some of which included waterboarding, which is widely regarded as a form of torture. The New York Times reported that the woman “and Jose were the two main drivers for years for getting the tapes destroyed” – an anonymous quote they attributed to a “former senior CIA officer.” In his memoir, Rodriguez said that the woman drafted the cable allowing the destruction of the tapes after meeting with CIA lawyers.

…

by John Knefel
APRIL 02, 2013

Find this story at 2 April 2013

Copyright ©2013 Rolling Stone

James Steele: America’s mystery man in Iraq – video

A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic reveals how retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played a key role in training and overseeing US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centres in Iraq. Another special forces veteran, Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had been sent into Iraq to organise the Iraqi security services

• Watch a five-minute edited version of this film narrated by Dearbhla Molloy

• Revealed: Pentagon’s link to Iraqi torture centres

Find this story at 6 March 2013

Revealed: Pentagon’s link to Iraqi torture centres

Exclusive: General David Petraeus and ‘dirty wars’ veteran behind commando units implicated in detainee abuse

The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.

Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency, an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic shows.

After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the special police commando (SPC) membership was increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups such as the Badr brigades.

A second special adviser, retired Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding.

Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld.

The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.

Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus’s “eyes and ears out on the ground” in Iraq.

“They worked hand in hand,” said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. “I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there … the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture.”

Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. “Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee,” claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units.

“Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts.”

There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.

The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres run by the police commandos across Iraq. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years after he pleaded guilty to leaking the documents.

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the SPC-controlled detention centres. “I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.”

Gilles Peress, a photographer, came across Steele when he was on assignment for the New York Times, visiting one of the commando centres in the same library, in Samarra. “We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I’m looking around I see blood everywhere.”

The reporter Peter Maass was also there, working on the story with Peress. “And while this interview was going on with a Saudi jihadi with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting: ‘Allah, Allah, Allah!’ But it wasn’t kind of religious ecstasy or something like that, these were screams of pain and terror.”

The pattern in Iraq provides an eerie parallel to the well-documented human rights abuses committed by US-advised and funded paramilitary squads in Central America in the 1980s. Steele was head of a US team of special military advisers that trained units of El Salvador’s security forces in counterinsurgency. Petraeus visited El Salvador in 1986 while Steele was there and became a major advocate of counterinsurgency methods.

Steele has not responded to any questions from the Guardian and BBC Arabic about his role in El Salvador or Iraq. He has in the past denied any involvement in torture and said publicly he is “opposed to human rights abuses.” Coffman declined to comment.

An official speaking for Petraeus said: “During the course of his years in Iraq, General Petraeus did learn of allegations of Iraqi forces torturing detainees. In each incident, he shared information immediately with the US military chain of command, the US ambassador in Baghdad … and the relevant Iraqi leaders.”

The Guardian has learned that the SPC units’ involvement with torture entered the popular consciousness in Iraq when some of their victims were paraded in front of a TV audience on a programme called “Terrorism In The Hands of Justice.”

SPC detention centres bought video cameras, funded by the US military, which they used to film detainees for the show. When the show began to outrage the Iraqi public, Samari remembers being in the home of General Adnan Thabit – head of the special commandos – when a call came from Petraeus’s office demanding that they stop showing tortured men on TV.

“General Petraeus’s special translator, Sadi Othman, rang up to pass on a message from General Petraeus telling us not to show the prisoners on TV after they had been tortured,” said Samari. “Then 20 minutes later we got a call from the Iraqi ministry of interior telling us the same thing, that General Petraeus didn’t want the torture victims shown on TV.”

Othman, who now lives in New York, confirmed that he made the phone call on behalf of Petraeus to the head of the SPC to ask him to stop showing the tortured prisoners. “But General Petraeus does not agree with torture,” he added. “To suggest he does support torture is horseshit.”

Thabit is dismissive of the idea that the Americans he dealt with were unaware of what the commandos were doing. “Until I left, the Americans knew about everything I did; they knew what was going on in the interrogations and they knew the detainees. Even some of the intelligence about the detainees came to us from them – they are lying.”

Just before Petraeus and Steele left Iraq in September 2005, Jabr al-Solagh was appointed as the new minister of the interior. Under Solagh, who was closely associated with the violent Badr Brigades militia, allegations of torture and brutality by the commandos soared. It was also widely believed that the units had evolved into death squads.

The Guardian has learned that high-ranking Iraqis who worked with the US after the invasion warned Petraeus of the consequences of appointing Solagh but their pleas were ignored.

The long-term impact of funding and arming this paramilitary force was to unleash a deadly sectarian militia that terrorised the Sunni community and helped germinate a civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. At the height of that sectarian conflict, 3,000 bodies a month were strewn on the streets of Iraq.
CV: James Steele

Vietnam

Jim Steele’s first experience of war was in Vietnam, where from 1965 to 1975 US combat units were deployed against the communist North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong. 58,000 Americans were killed, dealing a blow to the nation’s self-esteem and leading to a change in military thinking for subsequent conflicts.

El Salvador

A 1979 military coup plunged the smallest country in Central America into civil war and drew in US training and funding on the side of the rightwing government. From 1984 to 1986 Steele – a “counterinsurgency specialist” – was head of the US MilGroup of US special forces advisers to frontline battalions of the Salvadorean military, which developed a fearsome international reputation for its death-squad activities. Prof Terry Karl, an expert at Stanford University on El Salvador’s civil war, said that Steele’s main aim was to shift the fight from so-called total war, which then meant the indiscriminate murder of thousands of civilians, to a more “discriminate” approach. One of his tasks was to put more emphasis on “human intelligence” and interrogation.

Nicaragua

…

Mona Mahmood, Maggie O’Kane, Chavala Madlena and Teresa Smith
The Guardian, Wednesday 6 March 2013 20.04 GMT

Find this story at 6 March 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Whistleblower John Kiriakou: For Embracing Torture, John Brennan a “Terrible Choice to Lead the CIA”

Days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, John Kiriakou — the first CIA official to be jailed for any reason relating to the torture program — denounces President Obama’s appointment of John Brennan to head the CIA. “I’ve known John Brennan since 1990,” Kiriakou says. “I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture.”

Find this story at 30 January 2013

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to talk about John Brennan right now, President Obama’s nominee to become the next chief of the CIA. The news agency Reuters is reporting that Brennan had detailed information on the agency’s torture program while serving there under President George W. Bush. Official records apparently show Brennan received regular internal CIA updates about the progress of torture techniques, including waterboarding. It’s unclear if Brennan raised any objections at the time he was made aware. Brennan’s confirmation hearing will be February 7th. In 2006, he gave an interview with Frontline on PBS where he said it was right for the Bush administration to, quote, “take off the gloves” after the 9/11 attacks.

JOHN BRENNAN: The war, or the campaign against terrorism, is going to be a long one, and that the opposition, whether it be al-Qaeda or whether it be Iraq, doesn’t play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules, and therefore, you know, the U.S., in some areas, has to take off the gloves. And I think that’s entirely appropriate. I think we do have to take off the gloves in some areas, but within bounds, and at the right time, in the right way, and for the right reason, and with full understanding of what the consequences of that might be.

AMY GOODMAN: That was John Brennan in 2006. When President Obama was first elected in his first term, he wanted to—John Brennan to be his director of Central Intelligence. There was such an outcry in the human rights community that John Brennan pulled his name out. Now, four years later, President Obama has officially nominated John Brennan once again to head the CIA. Our guest, John Kiriakou, is about to go to jail, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, worked for the CIA, there while John Brennan was there. Can you respond to what John Brennan knew, when he knew it, and the fact that President Obama wants him to be head of the CIA?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. Obviously I can’t read John Brennan’s mind, but I can tell you that at the time that the torture techniques were being implemented, John Brennan was President Bush’s director of the National Counterterrorist Center. He was also, a little earlier than that, the deputy executive director and then, I believe, executive director of the CIA. That’s the number three ranking position in the CIA. So, he would have had to have been intimately involved in—not necessarily in carrying out the torture techniques, but in the policy, the torture policy—either that or he had to be brain dead, because you can’t be in positions like that, director of the National Counterterrorist Center and executive director of the CIA, without knowing what the CIA’s torture policies are.

Now, I’m surprised, frankly, also, at the fact that there’s no outrage in the human rights community now that Mr. Brennan’s nomination has been made official. There was a great hue and cry in 2009 when he was initially floated for the position of CIA director. And I’m not sure why there’s a difference between four years ago and now. John Brennan certainly hasn’t changed.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, I want to read a comment made by the judge at your sentencing hearing. Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced you to 30 months in prison last Friday, saying, quote, “This case is not a case about a whistleblower. It’s a case about a man who betrayed a very solemn trust, and that is a trust to keep the integrity of his agency intact and specifically to protect the identity of co-workers. … I think 30 months is, frankly, way too light, because the message has to be sent to every covert agent that when you leave the agency you can’t just start all of a sudden revealing the names of the people with whom you worked,” the judge said. John Kiriakou, can you comment on that statement?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. When Judge Brinkema accepted the plea deal in October, she called 30 months fair and appropriate. I can only think that with a courtroom packed full of journalists last Friday, she decided to seize the moment and make a statement that would be carried in the papers. I don’t know what changed between October and January, other than the fact that she and the prosecution had had several ex parte communications. What that means is the prosecutors were able to meet with the judge, related to my case, without the defense, my attorneys, being present. So we have no idea what it was that the prosecution told the judge. We were not allowed to defend ourselves. Indeed, Judge Brinkema denied 75 motions that we made asking for declassification of information so that I could present a defense. In August of 2012, after our motions had been denied, my attorneys and I walked out of the courtroom, and my attorney said, “We have no defense. She won’t let us say anything. She won’t let us defend you.” And so, we were forced into plea negotiations. But again, I’m not sure why the judge changed her position between October and January; it was inexplicable to me.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what that’s like in the courtroom, when they invoke national security, that the prosecutor can come forward and speak privately with the judge without your defense attorneys being there.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, I had never heard of such a thing before. But in August, when we made our 75 motions, we thought that the judge would block off two days to hear the 75. In fact, there had been a conversation with the prosecution, and so she blocked off an hour to hear the 75 motions. So we knew we were in trouble. And then, at the very start of the hearing, the prosecutor got up and said that he was requesting a Rule 4 conversation. I didn’t know what this was. My attorneys objected and said, “If you don’t want the defendant to hear, at least allow us to hear so that we can represent his interests.” And the judge said, “No, this is a national security case. I’m allowed an ex parte communication with the prosecutors.” So the prosecutors went up to the bench. We could hear them whispering. They came back to their table, and the judge said, “All 75 motions are denied.” And that was the end of it. We got up, and we walked out of court. And my attorneys said, “We have to negotiate a plea.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jesselyn—

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It was extremely disheartening.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jesselyn Radack, I wanted to ask about the legal implications of this case and how it fits into the treatment of government whistleblowers under the Obama administration.

JESSELYN RADACK: Absolutely. To get to the point you just raised with John, I think the reason Judge Brinkema changed her opinion between October and last week is because the government submitted a secret statement that John was not allowed to see that played a large role in the sentencing hearing, but neither the public nor the defendant were allowed to see the statement, which is very Kafkaesque.

But in the grander scheme, the prosecution of John Kiriakou and the war on whistleblowers, using the heavy handed Espionage Act, by charging people who dare to tell the truth as being enemies of the state, sends a very chilling message. And Judge Brinkema herself acknowledged that a strong message had to be sent, that secrets must be kept. But apparently, that only applies to people who are trying to reveal government abuses and illegality, because all of the people in the White House and the CIA who revealed classified information and—of undercover identities to the makers of a Hollywood film, Zero Dark Thirty, have done so with impunity and with lavish praise. So—

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, can you say—can you say specifically what you’re talking about, Jesselyn Radack?

JESSELYN RADACK: Yes. Specifically, the White House and the CIA were very involved in the making of Zero Dark Thirty, which pretends to be some kind of neutral film that implies torture led to the capture of Osama bin Laden, which it absolutely did not. In that process, a high-level Defense Department official, Michael Vickers, revealed the identity of an undercover Special Operations Command officer, but was not held to account for that. And the CIA revealed numerous classified pieces of information, including sources and methods. So when—yeah?

AMY GOODMAN: Keep going.

JESSELYN RADACK: So when the United States talks about the sanctity of keeping secrets, and both the judge and multiple statements by United States officials discussed that, they are the biggest leakers of all. And they do so with impunity.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to talk about another whistleblower targeted by the Obama administration who has been former National Security Agency analyst. He’s Thomas Drake. He worked for the NSA for nearly seven years before blowing the whistle. Thomas Drake appeared on Democracy Now! last March.

THOMAS DRAKE: The critical thing that I discovered was not just the massive fraud, waste and abuse, but also the fact that NSA had chosen to ignore a 23-year legal regime, which had been established in 1978, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and which, at NSA, during the time that I was not only at NSA but also in the military flying on RC-135s overseas during the latter part of the Cold War, it was a contract, the one thing you did not do. It was the prime directive of NSA. It was the—the—First Amendment at NSA, which is, you do not spy on Americans—

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you find?

THOMAS DRAKE: —without a warrant. I found, much to my horror, that they had tossed out that legal regime, that it was the excuse of 9/11, which I was told was: Exigent conditions now prevailed, we essentially can do anything. We opened up Pandora’s box. We’re going to turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for the purpose of a—of dragnet, blanket electronic surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s former National Security Agency analyst Thomas Drake. Jesselyn Radack, he is one of your clients. What happened to him?

JESSELYN RADACK: Yes, I represented both Tom Drake and John Kiriakou. The government dropped all 10 felony counts against Tom Drake, and he pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor, the equivalent of a parking ticket. I find it appalling that the two men who revealed the biggest scandals of the Bush administration—namely warrantless wiretapping and torture—are the only two who have been criminally prosecuted for it, and not the people who secretly surveiled the communications of Americans, and not the people who were involved in the torture program, all of whom have been conferred immunity by either the president or by acts of Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: John Kiriakou, you’re now—we are now—the president is President Obama. Did you see a change between President Obama and his predecessor, President Bush? And also, when you were talking about John Brennan, do you think he should head the CIA? What message do think that sends? And what has changed in the last four years, when he withdrew his name for consideration?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: In 2010, when my book came out, I was giving a speech in Los Angeles, and a woman asked me a question about the difference between President Obama and President Bush. And I’ll never forget the question, because it was just so crazy. She said, “Can you explain the CIA’s position on the jihadization of American foreign policy under President Obama?” And I laughed, and I said, “Ma’am, with all due respect, President Obama’s foreign policy is an extension of President Bush’s foreign policy. If there’s any difference at all, President Obama is killing more people overseas than President Bush ever did.” So, no, I don’t think there’s any difference at all between the Bush foreign policy and the Obama foreign policy, which I think really is a shame for us, because there was a wonderful opportunity to take a different path and to reclaim our position as a moral leader in the world. So I’m disappointed in that.

With regard to John Brennan, I’ve known John Brennan since 1990. I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture. I think that President Obama’s appointment of John Brennan sends the wrong message to all Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: You worked with him, directly for him. Did Brennan receive regular internal CIA updates about the progress of torture techniques, including waterboarding, as Reuters is reporting?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I worked for him when he was a—an analytic manager. It was before he really hit the big time under George Tenet. But again, I think that it’s impossible for him to not have gotten these briefings, for him to not have been intimately involved in the policy, by virtue of his senior positions, some of the senior-most positions in the CIA. It’s just impossible that he didn’t know what was going on.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, you’ll shortly be going to prison. Do you know exactly when your prison sentence will begin? And how are you preparing for this? You’re the father of five children.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I’m the father of five. I don’t know exactly when this will be. It will be sometime in the next four to six weeks. I’ll have to report to a prison somewhere. I don’t know where. It’s, frankly, very hard to prepare. You have to do things like arrange a power of attorney, arrange child care. I mean, there are so many things to do, it’s just overwhelming. My wife, thank God, is very strong and very tough and very supportive. And we are treating this like temporary duty overseas. It was not unusual for me to go overseas for many months at a time, sometimes as long as two years at a time, two-and-a-half years. So we’re treating this like an overseas deployment. I can call my children virtually every day. If I’m close enough, they can come and visit me. And I’m just hoping for the best.

AMY GOODMAN: How old are your kids, John?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I have two sons from a first marriage who are 19 and 16, and then my wife and I have three children: an eight-year-old boy, a six-year-old girl and one-year-old boy.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do they understand?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Well, they know that I’ve been involved in a fight with the FBI for the last year. And I told them, “You know I’ve been fighting the FBI. And unfortunately, I lost. And so, because I lost, my punishment is I’m going to have to go away for a couple of years, and I’m going to try to teach bad guys how to get their high school diplomas. And when I’m all done with that, I’ll come home, and we’ll live as a family, and everything’s going to be OK again.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, quickly, before we conclude, what advice would you give to whistleblowers now, given what’s happened in your case?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I made mistakes in my case. I would say, first, go through the chain of command, which I didn’t do, I should have done. I would say, if you get no satisfaction through your chain of command, go to the congressional oversight committees. But do not remain silent. If you see waste, fraud, abuse or illegality, shout it from the rooftops, whether it’s internally or to Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: John, we’re going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for being with us. John Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer. He’s going to jail for two-and-a-half years.

Ex-CIA Agent, Whistleblower John Kiriakou Sentenced to Prison While Torturers He Exposed Walk Free

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou speaks out just days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, becoming the first CIA official to face jail time for any reason relating to the U.S. torture program. Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. Supporters say Kiriakou is being unfairly targeted for having been the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding. Kiriakou joins us to discuss his story from Washington, D.C., along with his attorney, Jesselyn Radack, director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project. “This … was not a case about leaking; this was a case about torture. And I believe I’m going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture,” Kiriakou says. “My oath was to the Constitution. … And to me, torture is unconstitutional.” [inlcudes rush transcriptNERMEEN SHAIKH: A retired CIA agent who blew the whistle on the agency’s Bush-era torture program has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. John Kiriakou becomes the first CIA official to be jailed for any reason relating to the torture program. Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. Under the plea deal, prosecutors dropped charges brought under the Espionage Act.

Find this story at 30 January 2013

In 2007, Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding when he spoke to ABC’s Brian Ross.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed and as September 11th has—you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I’ve changed my mind, and I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn’t be in the business of doing.

BRIAN ROSS: Why do you say that now?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Because we’re Americans, and we’re better than that.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou’s supporters say he has been unfairly targeted in the Obama administration’s crackdown on government whistleblowers. In a statement urging President Obama to commute Kiriakou’s sentence, a group of signatories including attorneys and former CIA officers said, quote, “[Kiriakou] is an anti-torture whistleblower who spoke out against torture because he believed it violated his oath to the Constitution. … Please, Mr. President, do not allow your legacy to be one where only the whistleblower goes to prison.”

Prosecutor Neil MacBride, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, defended the government’s handling of the case.

NEIL MacBRIDE: As the judge just said in court, today’s sentence should be a reminder to every individual who works for the government, who comes into the possession of closely held sensitive information regarding the national defense or the identity of a covert agent, that it is critical that that information remain secure and not spill out into the public domain or be shared with others who don’t have authorized access to it.

AMY GOODMAN: John Kiriakou joins us now from Washington, D.C. He spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and a case officer. In 2002, he led the team that found Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda. He’s father of five. In 2010, he published a memoir entitled The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.

And we’re joined by one of John Kirakou’s attorneys, Jesselyn Radack. She’s the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, a former ethics adviser to the United States Department of Justice.

We reached out to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, but they declined our request for an interview.

John Kiriakou, why are you going to jail? Explain the plea deal you made with the government.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Well, thanks, first of all, for having me and giving me the opportunity to explain.

I’m going to prison, ostensibly, for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I believe, and my supporters believe, that this, however, was not a case about leaking; this was a case about torture. And I believe I’m going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture. I’ve been a thorn in the CIA’s side since that interview in 2007, in which I said that waterboarding was torture and that it was official U.S. government policy. And I think, finally, the Justice Department caught up with me.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jesselyn Radack, let me just bring you into the conversation to explain what the Intelligence Identities Protection Act is. Your client, John Kiriakou—it’s been invoked in his case for the first time in 27 years?

JESSELYN RADACK: That’s correct. In fact, there have only been two convictions under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which was enacted to prevent cases like Philip Agee, not things like John Kiriakou. It was to prevent the revealing of covert identities for profit or to aid the enemy. In this case, John confirmed the name of a torturer to a journalist, which makes Neil MacBride’s statement all the more hypocritical, because the biggest leaker of classified information, including sources and methods and undercover identities, has been the U.S. government.

AMY GOODMAN: John Kiriakou, explain what it is that you were trying to expose. Explain what you were involved with. Talk about Abu Zubaydah, your involvement in the finding of him, and then the course you took, where your conscience took you.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. In 2002, I was the chief of counterterrorism operations for the CIA in Pakistan, and my job was to try to locate al-Qaeda fighters or al-Qaeda leaders and capture them, to turn them over to the Justice Department and have them face trial. That was the original—the original idea, not to have them sit in Cuba for the next decade.

But we caught Abu Zubaydah. He was shot three times by Pakistani police as he was trying to escape from his safe house. And I was the first person to have custody of him, to sit with him. We spoke to each other extensively, I mean, talked about everything from September 11th to poetry that he had been writing, to his family. And then he was moved on to a secret prison after that. Once I got back to headquarters, I heard that he had been subject to harsh techniques, then euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and I was asked by one of the leaders in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center if I wanted to be trained in the use of these techniques. I told him that I had a moral problem with them, and I did not want to be involved.

So, fast-forward to 2007. By then, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had reported that al-Qaeda prisoners had been tortured, and ABC News called and said that they had information that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah. I said that was absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah, and I had never tortured anybody. So, they asked me to go on their show and defend myself. I did that. And in the course of the interview, I said that not only was the CIA torturing prisoners, but that it was official U.S. government policy. This was not the result of some rogue CIA officer just beating up a prisoner every once in a while; this was official policy that went all the way up to the president of the United States.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And so, what happened after that, in 2007, once you gave this interview? Can you explain what happened to you and to your family?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. Within 24 hours, the CIA filed what’s called a crimes report against me with the Justice Department, saying that I had revealed classified information, which was the torture program, and asking for an investigation with an eye toward prosecuting me. The Justice Department decided at the time that I had not revealed classified information, that the information was already in the public domain. But immediately, within weeks, I was audited by the IRS. I’ve been audited by the IRS every single year since giving that interview in 2007.

But a more important bit of fallout from that interview was that every time I would write an op-ed, every time I would give a television interview or give a speech at a university, the CIA would file a crimes report against me, accusing me of leaking additional classified information. Each time, the Justice Department determined that I did not leak any classified information. In fact, I would get those op-eds and those speeches cleared by the CIA’s Publications Review Board in advance.

Then the CIA started harassing my wife, who at the time was a senior CIA officer, particularly over an op-ed I had written. They accused her of leaking classified information to me for the purpose of writing the op-ed. Well, I said I had gotten the information in the op-ed from two UPI reports and from a South American Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. And they would back off.

But this sort of became our life. We would be under FBI surveillance. She would be called into the CIA’s Office of Security. I would have trouble getting a security clearance when I went to Capitol Hill. It just became this pattern of harassment.

AMY GOODMAN: So, John, why didn’t you stop?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Because I think that—that torture is something that needs to be discussed. I said this in 2007. This is something that we should—about which we should be having a national debate. And frankly, I have a First Amendment right to free speech. And, you know, writing an op-ed is not against the law. Giving a speech about the Arab Spring or about torture is not against the law. And I felt that—that I didn’t want to be cowed. I didn’t want to be frightened into silence by the CIA.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, John Kiriakou, you said that in these instances that you’ve named, you were actually charged with espionage, is that right? Can you talk about the significance—

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: —of the Espionage Act?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, the government initially charged me with three counts of espionage. I’m—it sounds silly maybe, but I’m still personally offended by these espionage charges, which were dropped, of course. The espionage charge is used as a hammer by the administration to force people into silence. My espionage charge is related to a conversation that I had with a New York Times reporter. A New York Times reporter approached me and said that he was writing a story about a colleague of mine, and would I grant him an interview. I gave him the interview. I said this colleague was a great guy, the unsung hero of the Abu Zubaydah operation, terrific officer. And the reporter said, “Do you know how I can get in touch with him?” And I said, “No, I’ve been out of touch with him for a while, but I think I might have his business card.” So I gave the reporter the business card. Now, mind you, this is a CIA officer who had never, ever been undercover. His business card showed that he was involved as a CIA contractor, and it had his personal email on it and his cellphone number. I gave the reporter the business card and was charged with two counts of espionage. I later gave the same business card to another journalist who was doing an article and was charged with a third count of espionage.

AMY GOODMAN: What is it that you allege the CIA was doing for all of these years? Explain the torture program that you were trying to expose.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. There were—there were something like 10 different techniques that were used in the CIA’s torture program. They went from the benign, you know, where an officer would grab a prisoner by the lapels and give him a shake, all the way up to the really rough things that we’ve heard about, like waterboarding or, what I think is worse, sleep deprivation or the cold cell, where they’ll put a prisoner naked in a cell chilled to 50 or 55 degrees, and then every hour or two throw ice water on him. I actually think those last two are worse than waterboarding.

But, again, these are techniques that we have condemned other countries for throughout history. The Japanese did this during the Second World War. The Belgians did it in Africa earlier in the century. The Chinese and the Vietnamese did it. This is—these are techniques that we have always said were crimes against humanity. And then it was the—it was though after September 11th everything changed, and we somehow had license to do the same things we had been condemning. I thought that was wrong. You know, Director Petraeus—former Director Petraeus made a statement in October when I agreed to take a plea to make these other charges go away, and he said that my conviction shows that we have to take our oaths seriously. Well, I took my oath seriously. My oath was to the Constitution. On my first day in the CIA, I put my right hand up, and I swore to uphold the Constitution. And to me, torture is unconstitutional, and it’s something that we should not be in the business of doing.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, I want to play for you comments President Obama made four years ago, shortly before he took office, about whether CIA officials involved in torture should be prosecuted. He appeared on the ABC News’ This Week.

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. And part of my job is to make sure that—for example, at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So no 9/11 Commission with independent subpoena power?

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: You know, we have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that, moving forward, we are doing the right thing.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was President Obama speaking four years ago to ABC. John Kiriakou, your response to what the presient said?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I supported the president’s response. I remember that interview, and I thought, “OK, he’s right. There are wonderful, talented, hard-working men and women at the CIA who need to be protected.” But at the same time, it’s one thing to look forward; it’s another thing to look forward just for the torturers. It’s just not fair. It’s not fair to the American people. If we’re going to—if we’re going to make prosecutions or initiate prosecutions, those prosecutions can’t just be against the people who blew the whistle on the torture or who opposed the torture. You know, we haven’t—we haven’t even investigated the torturers, as Jesselyn said. We haven’t initiated any actions against the people who conceived of the torture and implemented the policy, or against the man who destroyed evidence of the torture, or against the attorneys who used specious legal arguments to justify the torture. If we’re going to move forward, let’s move forward, but you can’t target one person or two people who blew the whistle.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, you’ve also spoken about witnessing new Foreign Service officers being confirmed, Foreign Service officers who were previously with the CIA and participated in acts of torture. Could you explain what happened and explain its significance?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes. When I was a senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I was approached by a journalist who said that he had evidence that the CIA was misusing its cover agreement with the State Department to place people involved in the torture program under State Department cover so that their names could not be exposed in the press. And if those names were exposed in the press, the people giving the names would be subject to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. So, again, this was a violation of the CIA-State Department cover agreement. I sent a letter under Senator John Kerry—then-Senator John Kerry’s signature, asking the CIA for clarification. I got a response about six weeks later that was classified top-secret, so I was not permitted to see the response. I did not have a top-secret clearance at the time. And a colleague of mine told me that the letter essentially said, in very strongly worded language, to mind my own business.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break. When we come back, we want to ask you about President Obama’s nominee to become the next head of the CIA, John Brennan, because as you talk about the administration, we’re talking actually about administrations, from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. Our guest is about to go to jail. His name is John Kiriakou. He’s about to serve two-and-a-half years in jail. This will be one of his last interviews before he goes to prison. We’re joined also by Jesselyn Radack, who is one of his attorneys. Stay with us.]

 

 

CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou given more than two years in prison

Judge says former intelligence officer who exposed aspects of use of torture should have been jailed for longer

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou leaves a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced Friday to more than two years in prison, by a federal judge who rejected arguments that he was acting as a whistleblower when he leaked a covert officer’s name to a reporter. A plea deal required the judge to impose a sentence of two and a half years. US district judge Leonie Brinkema said she would have given Kiriakou much more time if she could.

Kiriakou’s supporters describe him as a whistleblower who exposed aspects of the CIA’s use of torture against detained terrorists. Prosecutors said Kiriakou was merely seeking to increase his fame and public stature by trading on his insider knowledge. The 48-year-old Arlington resident pleaded guilty last year to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. No one had been convicted under the law in 27 years.

Kiriakou was an intelligence officer with the CIA from 1990 until 2004. He served overseas and at headquarters in Langley. In 2002, Kiriakou played a key role in the agency’s capture of the al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan. Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded by government interrogators, revealed information that led to the arrest of “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla and exposed Khalid Sheikh Mohamed as the mastermind of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks.

Accounts conflict, however, over whether the waterboarding was helpful in gleaning intelligence from Zubaydah, who was also interrogated conventionally.

Kiriakou, who did not participate in the waterboarding, expressed ambivalence in news media interviews about waterboarding, but ultimately declared it was torture. His 2007 interviews about the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah were among the first by a CIA insider confirming reports that several detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded.

…

Associated Press in Alexandria, Virginia
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 January 2013 16.00 GMT

Find this story at 25 January 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

John Kiriakou and the Real Story Behind Obama’s Latest Leak Crackdown

How a discovery in a Gitmo detainee’s cell led to charges against ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou.

On Monday, the Justice Department charged former CIA officer and author John Kiriakou [1] with repeatedly “disclosing classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee in classified activities.” (Read the criminal complaint.)

Kiriakou began making the media rounds in late 2007, when he went on the record [2] about waterboarding techniques used in the War on Terror, particularly in connection to the torture of Abu Zubaydah in a secret prison in Thailand. (It was later revealed [3] that Kiriakou was not actually present for that interrogation, as he had previously implied.)

If you’ve been reading Mother Jones, a lot of the content in the criminal complaint against Kiriakou [4] will seem familiar. The main charges stem from a bizarre episode we reported on a [5] couple years ago: In 2008 or early 2009, attorneys for alleged 9/11 conspirators held at Guantanamo Bay obtained—and showed to their clients—photo lineups that included pictures of CIA officers and contractors. The source of the photos was John Sifton [5], a private investigator working for the American Civil Liberties Union’s John Adams Project, an outfit set up to provide civilian defense lawyers to the Gitmo defendants. In some cases, Sifton clandestinely photographed CIA officers who were thought to have been involved in the brutal interrogations of the 9/11 defendants.

The purpose of presenting the photo lineups to the detainees was to identify the alleged torturers in order to make the case that the detainees’ statements were coerced. As multiple sources told Mother Jones in 2010, the defense lawyers didn’t know which of the individuals in the photo lineups were believed to be CIA officers. The detainees, meanwhile, would have no way of knowing which of the people were CIA employees unless they recognized them from interrogations. The lineups were “double blind,” a fact confirmed in the criminal complaint.

But there was still the issue of how Sifton identified the people he thought were involved in the interrogations. That’s where Kiriakou comes in: He’s accused of providing the identities of several CIA officers to journalists, one of whom passed information on to a “defense investigator” whose activities match Sifton’s. (The complaint specifically mentions investigators “interviewing” the “defense investigator” and uses the phrase “learned from the defense investigator.”) Here’s the key paragraph of the criminal complaint:

No law or military commission order expressly prohibited defense counsel from providing their clients with the photographic spreads in question under these circumstances. However, the fact that a defense investigator had learned the classified information, including the information necessary to take and/or assemble these photographs, suggested that the information may have been either deliberately or inadvertently disclosed, without authorization, in a manner that ultimately resulted in the defense team’s possession of the classified information.

The CIA didn’t take long to find out about Sifton’s work. In the spring of 2009, some of the photos were discovered in the cell of Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi, an accused Al Qaeda financier and one of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s four co-defendants. The criminal complaint against Kiriakou also indicates that a defense filing in early 2009 contained classified information that the government hadn’t provided to the defense.

When the CIA found out about the photos, top intelligence officials were furious, believing the defense lawyers had potentially placed the lives of covert officers at risk. The CIA’s then-general counsel John Rizzo demanded an investigation [6]. He later described the incident [6] as “far more serious than Valerie Plame,” referring to the Bush-era leak of an operative’s covert status. Rizzo wasn’t alone in his concerns. “This is an agency that has reasons to be concerned as to whether or not somebody’s got their back,” another high-ranking former intelligence official told Mother Jones [7]. “It’s always operating out there on the edge, not unlawfully, but generally at the farthest reaches of executive prerogative.”

In response to the CIA’s complaints, the Justice Department launched a probe, but the agency and congressional Republicans were unhappy with the results of the first investigation, which looked likely to clear the Gitmo defense lawyers of wrongdoing. Then the Obama administration called in famed US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who handled the Plame investigation and prosecuted former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, to take over the probe.

Sifton and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

The charges are just the latest crackdown by the Obama administration on alleged leakers. This is the sixth time during the Obama administration that prosecutors have filed charges pertaining to the unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information to media outlets. (In the previous four decades, the US government has pursued such cases on only three occasions [8].) Under the Espionage Act, the Obama administration has gone after media sources including Stephen Kim [9], an arms expert accused of passing along classified information to a Fox News reporter; NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake (who was profiled in an exhaustive New Yorker story by Jane Mayer [10]), and alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning [11], among others.

…

By Nick Baumann and Asawin Suebsaeng | Mon Jan. 23, 2012 2:23 PM PST

Find this story at 23 January 2013

Copyright ©2013 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. All Rights Reserved.

Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak

WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate.

In his years as a C.I.A. operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy.

“Anything for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Kiriakou replied.

Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation.

Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Mr. Kiriakou’s recollection, “In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that right now we’re executing a search warrant at your house and seizing your electronic devices.”

On Jan. 25, Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as part of a plea deal in which he admitted violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by e-mailing the name of a covert C.I.A. officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. The law was passed in 1982, aimed at radical publications that deliberately sought to out undercover agents, exposing their secret work and endangering their lives.

In more than six decades of fraught interaction between the agency and the news media, John Kiriakou is the first current or former C.I.A. officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information to a reporter.

Mr. Kiriakou, 48, earned numerous commendations in nearly 15 years at the C.I.A., some of which were spent undercover overseas chasing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He led the team in 2002 that found Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist logistics specialist for Al Qaeda, and other militants whose capture in Pakistan was hailed as a notable victory after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He got mixed reviews at the agency, which he left in 2004 for a consulting job. Some praised his skills, first as an analyst and then as an overseas operative; others considered him a loose cannon.

Mr. Kiriakou first stumbled into the public limelight by speaking out about waterboarding on television in 2007, quickly becoming a source for national security journalists, including this reporter, who turned up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment last year as Journalist B. When he gave the covert officer’s name to the freelancer, he said, he was simply trying to help a writer find a potential source and had no intention or expectation that the name would ever become public. In fact, it did not surface publicly until long after Mr. Kiriakou was charged.

He is remorseful, up to a point. “I should never have provided the name,” he said on Friday in the latest of a series of interviews. “I regret doing it, and I never will do it again.”

At the same time, he argues, with the backing of some former agency colleagues, that the case — one of an unprecedented string of six prosecutions under President Obama for leaking information to the news media — was unfair and ill-advised as public policy.

His supporters are an unlikely collection of old friends, former spies, left-leaning critics of the government and conservative Christian opponents of torture. Oliver Stone sent a message of encouragement, as did several professors at Liberty University, where Mr. Kiriakou has taught. They view the case as an outrage against a man who risked his life to defend the country.

Whatever his loquaciousness with journalists, they say, he neither intended to damage national security nor did so. Some see a particular injustice in the impending imprisonment of Mr. Kiriakou, who in his first 2007 appearance on ABC News defended the agency’s resort to desperate measures but also said that he had come to believe that waterboarding was torture and should no longer be used in American interrogations.

Bruce Riedel, a retired veteran C.I.A. officer who led an Afghan war review for Mr. Obama and turned down an offer to be considered for C.I.A. director in 2009, said Mr. Kiriakou, who worked for him in the 1990s, was “an exceptionally good intelligence officer” who did not deserve to go to prison.

“To me, the irony of this whole thing is, very simply, that he’s going to be the only C.I.A. officer to go to jail over torture,” even though he publicly denounced torture, Mr. Riedel said. “It’s deeply ironic under the Democratic president who ended torture.”

John A. Rizzo, a senior C.I.A. lawyer for three decades, said that he did not believe Mr. Kiriakou set out to harm national security or endanger anyone, but that his violation was serious.

“I think he wanted to be a big shot,” Mr. Rizzo said. “I don’t think he was evil. But it’s not a trivial thing to reveal a name.”

The leak prosecutions have been lauded on Capitol Hill as a long-overdue response to a rash of dangerous disclosures and have been defended by both Mr. Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr. But their aides say neither man ordered the crackdown, and the cases appear to have resulted less from a conscious policy change than from the proliferation of e-mail, which makes it possible to trace the origin of some disclosures without pressuring journalists to identify confidential sources.

When Mr. Kiriakou pleaded guilty on Oct. 23 in federal court in Alexandria, Va., David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director, issued a statement praising the prosecution as “an important victory for our agency, for our intelligence community, and for our country.”

“Oaths do matter,” he went on, “and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.”

Less than three weeks later, e-mails tripped up Mr. Petraeus himself. He resigned after F.B.I. agents carrying out an unrelated investigation discovered, upon examining his private e-mail account, that he had had an extramarital affair.

Neil H. MacBride, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, hailed Mr. Kiriakou’s conviction in a statement: “The government has a vital interest in protecting the identities of those involved in covert operations. Leaks of highly sensitive, closely held and classified information compromise national security and can put individual lives in danger.”

The leak case is a devastating turn for Mr. Kiriakou, a father of five who considers himself a patriot, a proud Greek-American from Pennsylvania steel country whose grandfather, he recalls, “always talked as if F.D.R. personally admitted him to this country.” Discovering a passion for international affairs, he scrounged scholarships to go to George Washington University, where he was recruited by a professor, a former C.I.A. psychiatrist who spotted talent for the agency.

After he was charged last January, his wife, though accused of no wrongdoing, resigned under pressure from her C.I.A. job as a top Iran specialist. The family had to go on food stamps for several months before she got a new job outside the government. To make ends meet, they rented out their spacious house in Arlington, Va., and moved to a rented bungalow a third the size with their three young children (he has two older children from his first marriage).

Their financial woes were complicated by Mr. Kiriakou’s legal fees. He said he had paid his defense lawyers more than $100,000 and still owed them $500,000; the specter of additional, bankrupting legal fees, along with the risk of a far longer prison term that could separate him from his wife and children for a decade or more, prompted him to take the plea offer, he said.

Despite his distress about the charges and the havoc they have wrought for his family, he sometimes still speaks with reverence of the C.I.A. and its mission.

But the same qualities that worked well for him in his time as a risk-taking intelligence officer, trained to form a bond with potential recruits, may have been his undoing in his post-C.I.A. role as an intelligence expert sought out by reporters.

“Your job as a case officer is to recruit spies to steal secrets — plain and simple,” Mr. Kiriakou said. “You have to convince people you are their best friend. That wasn’t hard for me. I’d say half the people I recruited I could be lifelong friends with, even though some were communists, criminals and terrorists. I love people. I love getting to know them. I love hearing their stories and telling them stories.

“That’s all great if you’re a case officer,” he said. “It’s not so great, it turns out, if you’re a former case officer.”

Mixed Feelings

After Mr. Kiriakou first appeared on ABC, talking with Brian Ross in some detail about waterboarding, many Washington reporters sought him out. I was among them. He was the first C.I.A. officer to speak about the procedure, considered a notorious torture method since the Inquisition but declared legal by the Justice Department in secret opinions that were later withdrawn.

While he had spent hours with Abu Zubaydah after the capture, he had not been present when Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded, a fact he made clear to me and some other interviewers. But based on what he had heard and read at the agency, he told ABC and other news organizations that Abu Zubaydah had stopped resisting after just 30 or 35 seconds of the suffocating procedure and told interrogators all he knew.

That was grossly inaccurate — the prisoner was waterboarded some 83 times, it turned out. Mr. Kiriakou believes that he and other C.I.A. officers were deliberately misled by other agency officers who knew the truth.

Mr. Kiriakou, who has given The New York Times permission to describe previously confidential conversations, came across as friendly, courteous, disarmingly candid — and deeply ambivalent about what the C.I.A. called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

He spoke about his career: starting as an analyst on the Middle East at headquarters in Virginia; later being stationed in Bahrain; making the unusual switch to the “operations” side of the C.I.A.; and serving stints as a counterterrorism officer under cover, first in Greece and later in Pakistan (he speaks fluent Greek and Arabic).

When terrorists blew up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 American servicemen, the blast blew out his apartment windows in Bahrain 16 miles away across the water. Twice overseas, he had close calls with terrorists who were trying to kill Western officials.

He said he had been offered the chance to be trained in the harsh interrogation methods but turned it down. Even though he had concluded that waterboarding was indeed torture, he felt that the C.I.A.’s critics, inflamed by the new revelation that videotapes of the interrogations had been destroyed, were being unduly harsh in judging actions taken in the hectic months after Sept. 11 when more attacks seemed imminent.

“I think the second-guessing of 2002 decisions is unfair,” he said in our first conversation. “2002 was a different world than 2007. What I think is fair is having a national debate over whether we should be waterboarding.”

His feelings about waterboarding were so mixed that some 2007 news reports cast him as a critic of C.I.A. torture, while others portrayed him as a defender of the agency. Some human rights activists even suspected — wrongly, as it turned out — that the intelligence agency was orchestrating his public comments.

Mr. Kiriakou seemed shellshocked, and perhaps a little intoxicated, by the flood of publicity his remarks on ABC had received and the dozens of interview requests coming his way. We met for lunch a couple of times in Washington and spoke by phone occasionally. He recounted his experiences in Pakistan — the C.I.A. later allowed him to include much of that material in his 2009 memoir, “The Reluctant Spy” — and readily answered questions about agency lore or senior officials with whom he had worked.

But he occasionally demurred when the subject was too sensitive. I could use information he gave me “on background” — that is, without mentioning him. But we would have to agree explicitly on anything I attributed to him by name, standard ground rules for such relationships.

In 2008, when I began working on an article about the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, I asked him about an interrogator whose name I had heard: Deuce Martinez. He said that they had worked together to catch Abu Zubaydah, and that he would be a great source on Mr. Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He was able to dig up the business card Mr. Martinez had given him with contact information at Mitchell Jessen and Associates, the C.I.A. contractor that helped devise the interrogation program and Mr. Martinez’s new employer.

Mr. Martinez, an analyst by training, was retired and had never served under cover; that is, he had never posed as a diplomat or a businessman while overseas. He had placed his home address, his personal e-mail address, his job as an intelligence officer and other personal details on a public Web site for the use of students at his alma mater. Abu Zubaydah had been captured six years earlier, Mr. Mohammed five years earlier; their stories were far from secret.

Mr. Martinez never agreed to talk to me. But a few e-mail exchanges with Mr. Kiriakou as I hunted for his former colleague would eventually turn up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment; he was charged with revealing to me that Mr. Martinez had participated in the operation to catch Abu Zubaydah, a fact that the government said was classified.

Tensions Over Secrecy

Nothing about my exchanges with Mr. Kiriakou was unusual for a reporter covering intelligence agencies, though he was certainly on the candid end of the spectrum of former C.I.A. officers. Current officials are almost always less willing to speak than retirees. And former rank-and-file officers are usually more reluctant to speak than their bosses, who are more confident in walking up to — or occasionally crossing over — the borders protecting classified information.

Why do officials talk about ostensibly secret programs? Sometimes the motive is self-aggrandizement, or to promote a personal or political agenda. But many officials talk because they feel Americans have a right to know, within limits, what the government is doing with their money and in their name.

There is wide agreement in the government that too much information is classified, and even senior officials are sometimes uncertain about what is secret.

In Senate testimony last July, for example, Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director from 2006 to 2009, admitted that he was perplexed by the “dilemma” over what he was or was not permitted to say, in this case about the targeted killing of Qaeda operatives using drones — officially classified but reported in the news media every day and occasionally discussed by Mr. Obama.

“So much of that is in the public domain that right now this witness, with my experience, I am unclear what of my personal knowledge of this activity I can or cannot discuss publicly,” Mr. Hayden said. “That’s how muddled this has become.”

The trade-offs and tensions over government secrets in a democracy are nothing new. In 1971, when the Nixon administration went to court to try to stop The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam War, Max Frankel, then the Washington bureau chief for The Times, filed an affidavit on how officials and reporters exchange secrets.

“Without the use of ‘secrets’ that I shall attempt to explain in this affidavit, there could be no adequate diplomatic, military and political reporting of the kind our people take for granted, either abroad or in Washington, and there could be no mature system of communication between the government and the people,” Mr. Frankel wrote 42 years ago.

Before Mr. Obama took office, prosecutions for disclosing classified information to the news media had been rare. That was a comforting fact for national security reporters and their sources, but a lamentable one for intelligence officials who complained that leaks damaged intelligence operations, endangered American operatives and their informants and strained relations with allied spy services.

By most counts, there were only three cases until recently: against Daniel Ellsberg and a colleague for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971; against Samuel Loring Morison, a Navy intelligence analyst, for selling classified satellite photographs to Jane’s, the military publisher, in 1985; and against Lawrence Franklin, a Defense Department official, who was charged in 2005 with passing secrets to two officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, who shared some of them with reporters.

Thus Mr. Obama has presided over twice as many such cases as all his predecessors combined, though at least two of the six prosecutions since 2009 resulted from investigations begun under President George W. Bush. An outcry over a series of revelations last year — about American cyberattacks on Iran, a double agent who infiltrated the Qaeda branch in Yemen and procedures for targeted killings — prompted Mr. Holder to begin new leak investigations that have not yet produced any charges.

The resulting chill on officials’ willingness to talk is deplored by journalists and advocates of open government; without leaks, they note, Americans might never have learned about the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods or the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping. But for supporters of greater secrecy, the chill is precisely the goal.

Revealing a Name

From court documents and interviews, it is possible to piece together how the case against Mr. Kiriakou took shape. When he first spoke on ABC in 2007, the C.I.A. sent the Justice Department a “crimes report” — a routine step to alert law enforcement officials to an apparent unauthorized disclosure of classified information. At least half a dozen more referrals went to Justice as he continued to grant interviews covering similar ground.

Shortly after he became a minor media star, Mr. Kiriakou lost his job in business intelligence at Deloitte, the global consulting firm he joined after leaving the C.I.A. He had also begun working with Hollywood filmmakers — visiting Afghanistan, for instance, before advising the producers of “The Kite Runner” that its young male actors should probably be relocated outside the country for their own safety. He was working with a veteran journalist, Michael Ruby, on his memoir and battling the agency’s Publications Review Board, as many C.I.A. authors have, over what he was permitted to write about and what was off limits.

Mr. Rizzo, then a top C.I.A. lawyer, said he recalled some colleagues being upset that Mr. Kiriakou had begun speaking so openly about the interrogation program. “It was fairly brazen — a former agency officer talking on camera,” Mr. Rizzo said. “He started being quoted all over the place. He was commenting on everything.”

Of course, Mr. Kiriakou had plenty of company. More and more C.I.A. retirees were writing books, speaking to reporters or appearing on television. Mr. Rizzo himself became the subject of a Justice Department referral after he spoke to a Newsweek reporter in 2011 about drone strikes, and his own memoir, “The Company’s Man,” is scheduled for publication next year.

Mr. Rizzo said he did not believe that Mr. Kiriakou’s media appearances spurred a serious criminal investigation. “There really wasn’t a campaign against him,” he said.

Then, in 2009, officials were alarmed to discover that defense lawyers for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had obtained names and photographs of C.I.A. interrogators and other counterterrorism officers, including some who were still under cover. It turned out that the lawyers, working under the name of the John Adams Project, wanted to call the C.I.A. officers as witnesses in future military trials, perhaps to substantiate accounts of torture or harsh treatment.

But initial fears that Al Qaeda might somehow be able to stalk their previous captors drew widespread coverage. This time there was a crimes report, Mr. Rizzo said, that was taken very seriously, both at the C.I.A. and the Justice Department.

F.B.I. agents discovered that a human rights advocate hired by the John Adams Project, John Sifton, had compiled a dossier of photographs and names of the C.I.A. officers; that Mr. Sifton had exchanged e-mails with journalists, including Matthew A. Cole, a freelancer then working on a book about a C.I.A. rendition case in Italy that had gone awry; and that Mr. Cole had exchanged e-mails with Mr. Kiriakou. The F.B.I. used search warrants to obtain access to Mr. Kiriakou’s two personal e-mail accounts.

According to court documents, F.B.I. agents discovered that in August 2008, Mr. Cole — identified as Journalist A in the charging documents — had asked Mr. Kiriakou if he knew the name of a covert officer who had a supervisory role in the rendition program, which involved capturing terrorism suspects and delivering them to prisons in other countries.

Mr. Kiriakou at first said he did not recall the name, but followed up the next day with an e-mail passing on the name and adding, “It came to me last night,” the documents show. (Mr. Sifton, Mr. Cole and federal prosecutors all declined to comment.)

In recent interviews, Mr. Kiriakou said he believed that the covert officer, whom he had last seen in 2002, had retired; in fact, the officer was then working overseas. He had no idea that the name would be passed on to the Guantánamo defense lawyers and end up in a government file, as it did, he said.

When the F.B.I. agents invited Mr. Kiriakou to their Washington office a year ago “to help with a case,” he said, they repeatedly asked him whether he had knowingly disclosed the name of a covert officer. He replied that he had no recollection of having done so; he still insists that was the truth.

“If I’d known the guy was still under cover,” Mr. Kiriakou said, “I would never have mentioned him.”

The officer’s name did not become public in the four years after Mr. Kiriakou sent it to Mr. Cole. It appeared on a whistle-blowing Web site for the first time last October; the source was not clear.

Preparing for Prison

On a chilly recent afternoon, Mr. Kiriakou, in a Steelers jersey, drove his Honda S.U.V. to pick up his son Max, 8, and his daughter Kate, 6, from school, leaving the 14-month-old Charlie at home with a baby sitter.

He and his wife had struggled with how to explain to the children that he is going away, probably in mid-February. They settled on telling the children that “Daddy lost a big fight with the F.B.I.” and would have to live elsewhere for a while. Max cried at the news, Mr. Kiriakou said. He cried again after calculating that his birthday would fall on a weekday, so it would be impossible to make the trip to prison to share the celebration with his father.

The afternoon school pickup has become his routine since he has been out of work. A stint as an investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ended before he was charged; two hedge funds that had him on retainer to provide advice on international security issues dropped him when the charges were filed.

Only Liberty University, the conservative Christian institution founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. in Lynchburg, Va., where Mr. Kiriakou was hired by former C.I.A. officers on the faculty to teach intelligence courses, actually increased the work it offered him when he got in trouble.

“They say torture is un-Christian,” Mr. Kiriakou said, who notes wryly that his fervent supporters now include both the Liberty Christians and an array of left-wing activists.

Last summer, Mr. Kiriakou was teaching a practical course on surveillance and countersurveillance to a group of Liberty students in Washington and had them trail him on foot on the eastern edge of Georgetown, he said. After several passes, the students excitedly told him that they had detected several cars that were also following him — his usual F.B.I. minders, he figured.

When Mr. Kiriakou pleaded guilty in October to sharing the covert officer’s name, the government dropped several other charges, including the disclosure to The Times and a claim that he had lied to the C.I.A.’s Publications Review Board, though those violations remain in an official statement of facts accompanying the plea.

…

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 5, 2013

A summary that appeared with an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the former C.I.A. operative. He is John C. Kiriakou, not Kiriako.

January 5, 2013
By SCOTT SHANE

Find this story at 5 January 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Zero Dark Thirty director given ‘roadmap’ behind U.S. stealth mission to kill Osama bin Laden

Kathryn Bigelow given classified information by high ranking official
She was also briefed by CIA and military officials and Navy Seals
Campaign group said the White House has acted improperly

The director of an Oscar-nominated film about the killing of Osama bin Laden was given classified information about the operation by United States intelligence chiefs.

Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow and her screenwriting partner Mark Boal were provided with a complete ‘roadmap’ of how the raid was planned during a 45 minute meeting with Michael Vickers – the country’s highest ranking civilian intelligence official.

The filmmakers also received briefings from top CIA and military intelligence officers and Navy Seals who carried out Operation Neptune Spear – attacking bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in May 2011.

Secrecy: Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal were given classified information

The transcript of the interview, which took place three months after the terrorist leader’s death, has this week been published by the National Security Archive (NSA) at George Washington University in Washington.

Classified: Intelligence chief Michale Vickers gave information to the filmmakers during an interview

It follows a freedom of information request by campaign group Judicial Watch. Its president Tom Fitton had said the White House acted improperly by giving ‘politically-connected filmmakers extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information’

Following the raid, the White House and Pentagon held a series of contradictory briefings and the NSA argues that an authoritative account of the operation has never been published.

The group accused the Obama administration of sharing the ‘intimate details’ to help the filmmakers release a movie ‘perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost’ last year’s re-election campaign.

The NSA said much of the operation in Abbottabad is still ‘shrouded in secrecy’, with many details of the raid having never been released.

Chris Farrell, of Judicial Watch, told The Independent: ‘Either you admit you gave special excess to your pet film directors, or you make the information available to everyone.’

A statement on the Judicial Watch website said that the film pushed the Obama narrative, and added: ‘Barack Obama comes off as a hero character.

‘We see him morally preening on a news program and hear him described as ’thoughtful and analytical.’

Oscar nominated: Navy SEALs prepare to breach a locked door in bin Laden’s compound in Dark Zero Thirty

Raid: Pakistani security officials stand guard as workers demolish the compound in Abbottabad

‘Boal and Bigelow seemed to have gone out of their way (short of producing a two-hour campaign commercial) to project the Obama administration as ‘gutsy’ for ordering the raid.’

Hunted: Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in May 2011

An investigation into whether Mr Vickers broke any rules by briefing Ms Bigelow and Mr Boal has been launched by the Department of Defense.

Mr Boal and Ms Bigelow, who spent several years working on the film, have insisted that they went through the proper official channels in the intelligence community and did not have access to any classified information.

Zero Dark Thirty opened across the U.S. on January 11 and has been nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actress for Jessica Chastain and Best Original Screenplay. It was nominated for four Golden Globes, with Chastain winning Best Actress.

Mr Boal and Ms Bigelow have both won Oscars fro the Hurt Locker. Ms Bigelow has defended her latest film’s torture scene, saying criticism of the practices might be better directed towards government policymakers.

After bin Laden – who was hunted by the US since the 9/11 terrorist attacks – was killed, the Obama administration said his body was buried at sea off the USS Carl Vinson in accordance with Islamic tradition.

The raid was completed shortly after 1am local time when he was shot once in the chest and once in the head by a Navy Seal who announced, ‘For God and country Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo’, because Geronimo was the code-name given to the al-Qaeda leader.

…

By Alex Gore

PUBLISHED: 17:53 GMT, 19 January 2013 | UPDATED: 09:00 GMT, 20 January 2013

Find this story at 19 January 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

How did Bigelow access America’s secrets about torture and Bin Laden’s assassination for Zero Dark Thirty?

Oscar contender is triggering growing criticism from US senators that the movie supports ‘waterboarding’

It has received five Oscar nominations and created a buzz among movie fans around the world.

But Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, which recounts the operation that traced and killed Osama bin Laden, is at the centre of growing controversy over the unprecedented access to classified information granted to the director and her screenwriter colleague, while most of these details remain unavailable to the general pubic.

Documents collected, collated and published this week by the National Security Archive of George Washington University in Washington show that only a portion of information about Operation Neptune Spear, the codename for the CIA-led, decade-long hunt for Bin Laden, has so far been declassified.

In contrast, Ms Bigelow and her colleague Mark Boal received briefings from high-ranking CIA and military intelligence officers, Navy SEALs who took part in the operation and other officials. A CIA spokeswoman said at the time, the agency had decided to support the director because “it makes sense to get behind a winning horse. Mark and Kathryn’s movie is going to be the first and the biggest”.

The attacks of 9/11 on New York and Washington traumatised the US and led to various policy decisions whose ramifications are still being felt. The vow of then US President George Bush to capture the al-Qa’ida leader “dead or alive” led to the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan and a hunt for Bin Laden that concluded in May 2011 when US Special Forces raided a walled compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad where he had been hiding.

In the hours and days after the raid, White House and Pentagon officials briefed the media about aspects of the raid. Yet there were a number of contradictions contained within those briefings, and more than 18 months later many details remain unknown. Photographs of Bin Laden, for instance, supposedly taken after he was shot dead and when his body was buried at sea from aboard the USS Carl Vinson have not been made public, and the Obama administration has refused media requests under the Freedom of Information Act to release them.

Indeed, the National Security Archive said much of the operation was still “shrouded in secrecy”. It added: “The government’s recalcitrance over releasing information directly to the public about the 21 century’s most important intelligence search and military raid, and its decision instead to grant the film’s producers exclusive and unprecedented access to classified information about the operation, means that for the time being – for bad or good – Hollywood has become the public’s account of record for Operation Neptune Spear.”

Even before its release, Ms Bigelow’s film had already created controversy because of a scenes showing torture that the film suggests were essential to obtaining information that led the CIA to the garrison town of Abbottabad.

Such has been the furore that senior US senators Diane Feinstein and John McCain publicly complained the film was supporting the use of techniques such as “waterboarding”. Ms Bigelow has defended her film, recently telling the BBC: “It’s part of the story. To omit it would have been whitewashing history.”

Yet others say, the issue of the access given to the 61-year-old director is equally controversial. Chris Farrell, of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based non-profit organisation, said it had been involved in extensive litigation with the authorities to obtain withheld documents. He claimed the government was trying to have it both ways. “Either you admit you gave special access to your pet film director, or else you make the information available to everyone,” he said.

What has added to the perception that Ms Bigelow received special treatment are various moves by the authorities to halt other people releasing information about Operation Neptune Spear. The NSA said last November, seven US special forces soldiers involved in the Abbottabad operation were reprimanded for providing classified material to a video game manufacturer.

…

Andrew Buncombe
Friday, 18 January 2013

Find this story at 18 January 2013

© independent.co.uk

 

 

CIA-Kooperation mit Gaddafi; Foltern als Freundschaftsdienst

Ein detaillierter Report von Human Rights Watch belegt die Kooperation westlicher Geheimdienste mit dem Gaddafi-Regime. Im Gegenzug für andere Informationen übergaben die CIA und der britische MI6 mehrfach Gegner der Diktatur an Libyen. Folterung der Gefangenen wurde in Kauf genommen.

Das Dokument mit der Nummer WT/04-00031 vom 6. März 2004 kommt schnell zum Punkt. Gleich unterhalb der Einstufung als “Geheim – Herausgabe nur an Libyen” steht das Ziel der Operation, “die Planung der Festnahme und Überstellung von Abdullah al-Sadiq”. Gemeinsam mit seiner im vierten Monat schwangeren Frau, so das Memo, werde dieser in naher Zukunft von Malaysia aus über Bangkok nach London reisen. Dort sei geplant, “Kontrolle über das Paar zu erlangen und es in ein Flugzeug für die Reise in Ihr Land zu setzen”.

Das Schreiben wurde, darauf deuten jedenfalls Sprache und Stil des Memos hin, von einem Agenten des US-Geheimdienstes CIA formuliert. Adressat ist der libysche Geheimdienst in Tripolis, für dessen Kooperation sich der amerikanische Dienst sogleich höflich bedankt. “Wir wissen es zu schätzen, dass Sie unserem Dienst direkten Zugang zu al-Sadiq für Verhöre gestatten, sobald er in Ihren Händen ist”, so das Schreiben. Libyen müsse vor der Überführung lediglich formal zusichern, so die CIA, dass der Gefangenen menschenwürdig behandelt werde.

Das Dokument, das offen wie nie zuvor bekannt eine der umstrittenen “renditions” durch die CIA beschreibt, haben Mitarbeiter der Menschenrechtsorganisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) nach dem Fall des Gaddafi-Regimes im Büro des Ex-Geheimdienstchefs Mussa Kussa gefunden. Neben vielen anderen Memos belegt es ein für die USA und Großbritannien wenig schmeichelhaftes Freundschaftsverhältnis mit dem für seine Brutalität gefürchteten Geheimdienst Libyens. In dem Report “Delivered into Enemy Hands” wird diese Kooperation nun so detailliert wie noch nie beschrieben.

Das übliche Prinzip vom Geben und Nehmen

Was die HRW-Rechercheure herausgefunden haben, ist ein internationaler Skandal. Allein die gefundenen Dokumente belegen, dass die CIA um das Jahr 2004 herum 14 von ihr im Ausland festgesetzte Regimegegner an Libyen auslieferte und sich nur formal für die Einhaltung der Menschenrechte während der Haft dort interessierte. Wichtiger schien den Agenten und der CIA-Führung, dass die Libyer alle Ergebnisse von Verhören an die USA weitergaben und den Amerikanern immer wieder auch selbst Zugang zu den Gefangenen erlaubte.

Der Report führt zurück in die Zeit nach den verheerenden Terroranschlägen des 11. September in den USA und beleuchtet, wie die Amerikaner für Informationen über Aktivitäten von mutmaßlichen Terroristen vor fast nichts zurückschreckten. Das Gaddafi-Regime, dessen Geheimdienst beste Kontakte zu Terrorgruppen in verschiedenen Ländern unterhielt, schien da ein idealer Partner: Der Diktator diente sich dem Westen wieder als Partner an – er sagte sich von der Produktion von Massenvernichtungswaffen los.

Die Kooperation erfolgte laut den Dokumenten nach dem Prinzip des Gebens und Nehmens. Fast alle von den USA festgesetzten Personen waren Mitglieder einer islamistischen Widerstandsgruppe in Libyen, einige hatten auch am Krieg der Mudschahidin gegen die Russen in Afghanistan teilgenommen. Obwohl sich die Aktivitäten der Gruppe nicht gegen den Westen richteten, schnappte die CIA die Männer und lieferte die Feinde Gaddafis an dessen Regime aus. Im Gegenzug übergab Libyen offenbar Informationen über andere Terroristen.

Die CIA soll in mehreren Ländern geheime Gefängnisse betrieben haben

Das Prinzip, unter Kritikern der CIA auch als “Folter-Outsourcing” bekannt, war damals durchaus üblich. In mehreren Ländern soll die CIA geheime Gefängnisse betrieben haben, die formal unter der Hoheit der jeweiligen Regierungen standen und am Ende doch nur zur exzessiven Befragung von CIA-Häftlingen dienten. Vor seinem Abgang hatte George W. Bush versichert, dass diese sogenannten “ghost sites” geschlossen worden sein, doch bis heute ist nicht aufgeklärt, wo diese waren und was dort genau passierte.

Nach dem Fall des Gaddafi-Regimes fanden die Rechercheure viele der von der CIA übergebenen Gefangenen, einige von ihnen haben heute prominente Positionen in der neuen libyschen Führung. Detailliert berichten sie, wie sie in Libyen unter brutalen Methoden verhört wurden. US-Agenten seien manchmal bei den stundenlangen Befragungen anwesend gewesen. Im Fall von Abdullah al-Sadiq, heute besser bekannt als Abd al-Hakim Belhadsch, läuft bereits ein Gerichtsverfahren gegen Großbritannien, da die Briten bei seiner Festnahme geholfen haben sollen.

In den USA könnte durch den Report das mühsam geschlossene Kapitel der CIA-Folter unter Präsident George W. Bush erneut aufgeschlagen werden. Stimmen die Aussagen von zwei von HRW befragten ehemaligen Gefangenen, wurden sie vor ihrer Überstellung nach Libyen von dem US-Geheimdienst an geheimen Orten in Afghanistan massiv gefoltert. Sehr konkret beschreiben die beiden Männer die brutale Verhörmethode des “waterboarding”, bei dem der Gefangene auf ein Brett geschnallt wird und ihm so lange Wasser aufs Gesicht gegossen wird, bis er das Gefühl hat, zu ertrinken.

Auch Emissäre aus Europa sollen die Gefangenen verhört haben

Bisher haben die USA nur drei Fälle der berüchtigten Foltermethode eingestanden, die Betroffenen sitzen immer noch im Anti-Terror-Knast in Guantanamo Bay auf Kuba. Die neuen Aussagen scheinen aber nun zu belegen, dass das Folterprogramm der US-Regierung wesentlich umfangreicher war als bisher bekannt. Bis heute gibt es kein Gerichtsverfahren, das sich mit den Methoden des CIA beschäftigt. Erst kürzlich gab das Justizministerium bekannt, die Ermittlungen hätten keine Beweise ergeben. Die neuen Erkenntnisse jedoch könnten hier für Bewegung sorgen.

…

06. September 2012, 17:48 Uhr
Von Matthias Gebauer

Find this story at 6 September 2012

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Jack Straw accused of misleading MPs over torture of Libyan dissidents

Former foreign secretary named in legal documents concerning Gaddafi opponents held after MI6 tip-offs

The documents claim Jack Straw did not tell the truth when he told the Commons foreign affairs committee in 2005 that Britain was not involved in any rendition operations. Photograph: EPA

Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, and Sir Mark Allen, a former senior MI6 officer, have been cited as key defendants in court documents that describe in detail abuse meted out to Libyan dissidents and their families after being abducted and handed to Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police with the help of British intelligence.

The documents accuse Straw of misleading MPs about Britain’s role in the rendition of two leading dissidents – Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi – and say MI6 must have known they risked being tortured. They say British intelligence officers provided Libyan interrogators with questions to ask their captives and themselves flew to Tripoli to interview the detainees in jail.

They recount how Belhaj was chained, hooded, and beaten; his pregnant wife, Fatima Bouchar, punched and bound; how Saadi was repeatedly assaulted; his wife, Ait Baaziz, hooded and ill-treated; and their children traumatised, as they were abducted and jailed in Libya following tip-offs by MI6 and the CIA in 2004.

Belhaj and Saadi were leading members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which opposed Gaddafi. Belhaj became head of the Tripoli Brigade during last year’s revolution and is a leading Libyan political figure. They are suing Straw, Allen, MI6, MI5, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, and the attorney general, for damages for unlawful detention, conspiracy to injure, negligence, and abuse of public office. It is believed to be the first time such action has been taken against a former British foreign secretary.

The court documents, served by the law firm Leigh Day and the legal charity and human rights group, Reprieve, allege:

• MI6 alerted Libyan intelligence to the whereabouts of Belhaj and his family. They were held in Malaysia and Thailand and flown to Libya in a CIA plane.

• The CIA and MI6 co-operated in the rendition of Saadi and his family from Hong Kong to Libya via Thailand.

• Straw and his co-defendants knew that torture was endemic in Gaddafi’s Libya.

• British intelligence officers sent detailed questions to the Libyan authorities to be used in Belhaj and Saadi’s interrogations.

• Straw did not tell the truth when he told the Commons foreign affairs committee in 2005 that Britain was not involved in any rendition operations.

• Evidence by Sir John Scarlett, the head of MI6, to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) in 2006 that his agency did not assist in any rendition to countries other than the US or the detainee’s country of origin was incorrect and misleading. Bouchar is Moroccan, and Baaziz is Algerian, and neither had been to Libya before their abduction.

• Evidence by an MI5 witness to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission about the renditions was untrue and misleading.

• According to the US flight plan rendering Belhaj and his wife to Libya, the plane would refuel at the American base on the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia. If it had done so it would contradict assurances made to MPs by the former foreign secretary David Miliband. Referring to the coalition government’s plans for secret courts, Khadidja al-Saadi, who was 12 when she was abducted, said: “I tried writing to Ken Clarke [former justice secretary] about my case – I told him that having a secret court judge my kidnap was the kind of thing Gaddafi would have done.”

Her father said: “After my rendition I spent years in Gaddafi’s jails, and a secret ‘court’ sentenced me to death. Even now, after everything that happened, I hope and pray British justice will serve me better than this. My family has asked the government to apologise, and the government has refused.”

Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director, said: “The public have every right to know just how high the plot to kidnap these families went. Did it stop at Allen and Straw? Or did Tony Blair know what was going on in a torture chamber down the road while he hugged Gaddafi in a tent? You won’t find the answer in Straw’s book [Last Man Standing].”

If the justice and security “secret courts” bill, passes “we will never know”, Crider added.

The abductions took place after the Blair government embraced Gaddafi following the Libyan leader’s promise in 2003 to abandon nuclear weapons. Allen developed close relations with Gaddafi’s intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa, documents unearthed in Tripoli show.

Whitehall sources say that in their dealings with Gaddafi MI6 was carrying out “ministerially authorised government policy” and were given assurances by the Libyans that the detainees would not be tortured. The Guardian has asked Straw about the renditions. He has said he cannot comment because of a police investigation into the affair.
…

Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Wednesday 10 October 2012

Find this story at 10 October 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.