The Jonathan Pollard Spy Case: The CIA’s 1987 Damage Assessment Declassified

Washington, DC, December 14, 2012 – When Naval Investigative Service analyst Jonathan Pollard spied for Israel in 1984 and 1985, his Israeli handlers asked primarily for nuclear, military and technical information on the Arab states, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union – not on the United States – according to the newly-declassified CIA 1987 damage assessment of the Pollard case, published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

The damage assessment includes new details on the specific subjects and documents sought by Pollard’s Israeli handlers (pages 36-43), such as Syrian drones and central communications, Egyptian missile programs, and Soviet air defenses. The Israelis specifically asked for a signals intelligence manual that they needed to listen in on Soviet advisers in Syria. The document describes how Pollard’s handler, Joseph Yagur, told him to ignore a request, from Yagur’s boss, for U.S. “dirt” on senior Israeli officials and told Pollard that gathering such information would terminate the operation (page 38).

Under the heading “What the Israelis Did Not Ask For,” the assessment remarks (page 43) that they “never expressed interest in US military activities, plans, capabilities, or equipment.”

The assessment also notes that Pollard volunteered delivery of three daily intelligence summaries that had not been requested by his handlers, but which proved useful to them, and ultimately handed over roughly 1,500 such messages from the Middle East and North Africa Summary (MENAS), the Mediterranean Littoral Intelligence Summary (MELOS), and the Indian Ocean Littoral Intelligence Summary, in addition to the more than 800 compromised documents on other subjects that Pollard delivered to the Israelis in suitcases.

The damage assessment also features a detailed 21-page chronology of Pollard’s personal life and professional career, including his work for the Israelis, highlighting more than a dozen examples of unusual behavior by Pollard that the CIA suggests should have, in retrospect, alerted his supervisors that he was a security risk. Prominent on the list were false statements by Pollard during a 1980 assignment with Task Force 168, the naval intelligence element responsible for HUMINT collection. Pollard is now serving a life sentence in prison for espionage.

The CIA denied release of most of the Pollard damage assessment in 2006, claiming for example that pages 18 through 165 were classified in their entirety and not a line of those pages could be released. The Archive appealed the CIA’s decision to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, established by President Clinton in 1995 and continued by Presidents Bush and Obama. The ISCAP showed its value yet again as a check on systemic overclassification by ordering release of scores of pages from the Pollard damage assessment that were previously withheld by CIA, and published today for the first time.

Today’s posting, edited by Archive senior fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson, includes more than a dozen other declassified documents on the Pollard case, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency biographic sketch of Pollard’s initial Israeli handler, Col. Aviam Sella. Among many other books and articles, Richelson is the author of The U.S. Intelligence Community (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011, 6th edition), which the Washington Post called “the authoritative survey of the American cloak-and-dagger establishment.”

Jonathan Pollard: Fantasist and Spy
By Jeffrey T. Richelson

Nineteen-eighty-five became known as the “Year of the Spy” in the United States after a series of arrests and one defection revealed several serious penetrations of the U.S. intelligence and defense establishments by foreign intelligence services. On November 22, Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a long-time CIA employee, was taken into custody by the FBI and accused of spying for the People’s Republic of China. Two days later, former National Security Agency employee Ronald Pelton was arrested and charged with having provided the Soviet Union with details of five signals intelligence operations. Those arrests followed the apprehension, in May, of a former member of the U.S. Navy, John A. Walker, Jr., who had started turning over highly-secret documents to the KGB in 1968. And in September, before he could be arrested, former CIA officer Edward Lee Howard absconded to Moscow.1

But no arrest was more stunning than that of Jonathan J. Pollard, a thirty-one year old analyst for the Navy’s Anti-Terrorist Alert Center (ATAC). Pollard was detained on November 21, after a futile attempt to gain access to the Washington, D.C. embassy of Israel – to one of whose intelligence services, the Scientific Liaison Bureau (LAKAM), he had been delivering a vast assortment of documents. News of Pollard’s arrest was not the first time that the issue of Israeli intelligence activities directed against U.S. targets had been in the press. That subject had been the subject of press coverage several years earlier after the CIA’s study of the organization and operations of Israel’s intelligence and security services (Document 1) had become public, after it had been recovered from the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the November 4, 1979 takeover.2

The outlines of Pollard’s personal and professional life, as well as details of the nature of the material he turned over to Israel became the subject of both newspaper and magazine reports, books, and official, sometimes heavily redacted, internal documents (Document 3, Document 11) as well as declarations prepared for the court by both the government and defense in aid of sentencing (Document 6, Document 7, Document 8). Both official and media reports indicated that Pollard had first expressed his willingness to provide Israel with highly-classified documents during a late May 1984 meeting with Israeli Air Force officer Aviam Sella (Document 2a, Document 2b, Document 9). Until his arrest, Pollard delivered approximately 800 documents, many of which were classified top secret or codeword. In addition, he stole an estimated 1,500 current intelligence summary messages.3

The documents provided information on PLO headquarters in Tunisia; specific capabilities of Tunisian and Libyan air defense systems; Iraqi and Syrian chemical warfare productions capabilities (including detailed satellite imagery); Soviet arms shipments to Syria and other Arab states; naval forces, port facilities, and lines of communication of various Middle Eastern and North African countries; the MiG-29 fighter; and Pakistan’s nuclear program. Also included was a U.S. assessment of Israeli military capabilities.4

Pollard’s disclosures were alarming to U.S. officials for several reasons, some of which were noted in their official declarations (Document 6, Document 8). One, despite the fact that both the U.S. and Israeli considered each other legitimate intelligence targets, was Israel’s willingness to run a human penetration operation directed at the U.S. government. Another, was the damage to the intelligence sharing arrangement with Israel – since its acquisition of material from Pollard weakened the U.S. position vis-a-vis intelligence exchanges with Israel. In addition, there was no guarantee that such documents, revealing both sources and methods as well as assessments, would not find their way to the Soviet Union via a Soviet penetration of the Israeli intelligence or defense community – as had happened with a number of other allies. Further, since Israel was a target of U.S. intelligence collection – particularly technical collection – operations, the documents could be used by Israeli counterintelligence and security organizations to help Israel neutralize or degrade U.S. collection operations.

Of all the spy cases from 1985, the Pollard case has been the one that has had the longest life in terms of media coverage – in part because of efforts, both by private citizens and the Israeli government to have his life sentence commuted. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s 1993 appeal to President Bill Clinton resulted in a letter from defense secretary Les Aspin expressing his opposition and stressing three points: the requirement to maintain control over the disclosure of intelligence to foreign governments, the damage done by Pollard’s disclosures, and Pollard’s alleged inclusion of classified information in letters from prison. In 1998, in an attempt to facilitate his release, the Israeli government publically acknowledged (Document 13). Pollard’s role as an Israeli asset. And, former Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet reports that the subject was raised by the Israeli government in 2006, and he threatened to resign if Pollard was released. As recently as January 2011, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked President Barack Obama, without success, to free Pollard.5

Relevant to that debate and as well as the historical record are the specifics of the Pollard’s professional career, what he compromised, and the assessment of the damage from the compromised material. While some of that information has been disclosed, either officially or unofficially, much of the official record has been redacted from released documents. The recent release of a significantly less-redacted copy of the damage assessment performed by the DCI’s Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee (Document 11b) thus, even if it has no impact on views concerning Pollard’s fate, adds significantly to the historical record concerning his activities.

Among the specific items of note in the newly released assessment are an account of Pollard’s claim (p. I-18) upon his late arrival for an interview, that he spent the weekend rescuing his wife from the Irish Republican Army after they had kidnaped her. Pollard’s connection with a naval intelligence unit, Task Force-168, responsible for human intelligence activities is also among the topics discussed in the damage assessment. The committee’s report also provides new insight to exactly what information the Israelis wanted and why – as well as what information they did not want (pp. 38-46), including U.S. capabilities or plans. With regard to Syria, for example, Pollard was requested to provide documents concerning a suspected research and development facility, an electronics intelligence (ELINT) system, remotely piloted vehicles, a national command, control, and communications center in Damascus, Syrian military units with attached Soviet advisors, and medical intelligence on Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad. A common denominator for Israeli requests concerning Syria and other countries was the predominant focus on military intelligence relevant to Israeli security.

The study also describes (on p. 38) an incident involving LAKAM chief Rafi Eitan, in which he requested documents or information from Pollard on a variety of topics. According to Pollard, his case officer, standing behind Pollard, shook his head “no” in response to many of Eitan’s requests – including those for information on the PLO’s Force 17, CIA psychological studies or other intelligence containing ‘dirt’ on senior Israeli officials, as well as information identifying the “rats” in Israel (by which he apparently meant Israelis who provided information to the United States).

The study also reports (p. 60) on Israeli use of the NSA’s RASIN (Radio Signal Notation) manual, which was requested on at least two occasions, in assisting its monitoring of a communications link between the Soviet General Staff and the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus.

THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: Central Intelligence Agency, Foreign Intelligence and Security Services: Israel, March 1979. Secret.

Source: http://niqnaq.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/cia-1979-israel-foreign-intelligence-security-services.pdf

This 47-page study of the Israeli intelligence was part of an ongoing effort by the CIA’s Counterintelligence Staff to prepare surveys of foreign intelligence communities of interest. It covers the functions, organizations, administrative practices, and methods of operation of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and AMAN (Military Intelligence) as well as discussing the Foreign Ministry’s intelligence unit and the national police. Notably absent from the study is any mention of LAKAM, the unit which was responsible for running Jonathan Pollard.

Document 2a: Department of Defense, Report Number: 6 849 0139 79, March 12, 1979. Classification Redacted.

Document 2b: Defense Intelligence Agency, IR 6 849 0557 79, LTC. AVI SELLA, – BIO REPORT, October 18, 1979 . Classification Redacted.

Source: Freedom of Information Act Release.

These reports are part of the continuing collection of biographic information by Defense and military service intelligence units on foreign military leaders, including those below the level of general. Document 2b notes Sella’s current position, his physical description, family, and military career.

Document 3: [Deleted], Deputy Director of Security, Personnel Security and Investigations, Central Intelligence Agency, Memorandum for: The Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Subject: Jonathan Jay Pollard, January 2, 1986. Secret.

Source: Freedom of Information Act Release.

This memo provides details on Pollard’s activities during a June 1984 visit to the CIA, including his attendance at a briefing on anti-terrorism efforts and his access to documents.

Document 4: William Taft, Deputy Secretary of Defense, “Damage Assessment – Pollard Espionage Case,” February 13, 1986.

Source: Editor’s Collection.

This brief memo notes, in relation to the Pollard damage assessment, that any documents acknowledging the fact that the U.S. gathered intelligence against specific non-Soviet Bloc nations should be classified, at a minimum, CONFIDENTIAL – NOT RELEASBLE TO FOREIGN NATIONALS.

Document 5: [Deleted], Counterintelligence Branch, Special Activities Division, Central Intelligence Agency, Subject: Recent Meeting on Pollard Case, July 8, 1986. Secret.

Source: Freedom of Information Act Release.

This memo reports on a meeting which focused on the desire of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger to be able to communicate to the U.S. District Court his perception of the extent of damage resulting from Pollard’s espionage activities and provides details on support to be provided in production of the affidavit.

Document 6: Caspar Weinberger, Declaration of the Secretary of Defense, United States of America v. Jonathan Jay Pollard, 1986. Secret.

Source: Editor’s Collection

This heavily redacted declaration by Secretary of Defense Weinberger, prepared to influence the judge’s sentencing decision, discusses the damage to national security (including to intelligence sharing arrangement), and the significance of the disclosures (including harm to U.S. foreign policy, the compromise of sources and methods, and the risk to U.S. personnel).

Document 7: Robert A. Hibey and Gordon A. Coffee, “Defendant Jonathan J. Pollard’s Second Memorandum In Aid of Sentencing,” Criminal No. 86-0207, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, March 2, 1987. Classification Not Available.

Source: irmep.org/ila/pollard/04021987Pollard_Sentencing_memo2.pdf.

This classified memorandum, from Pollard’s defense team, discusses damage to the United States, Pollard’s access to classified documents and his decision to provide information to Israel, his limitations on the delivery of information, Israeli payments to Pollard, charges that he repeatedly disclosed classified information to others, and the possibility of parole.

Document 8: Supplemental Declaration of Caspar W. Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, United States of America v. Jonathan Jay Pollard, Criminal No. 86-0207, United States District Court of Columbia, March 4, 1987. Unclassified.

Source: www.irmep.org/ila/pollard/03041987weinberger.pdf.

This short declaration supplements Weinberger’s more extensive classified 1986 statement (Document 6) concerning Pollard’s activities, in response to Pollard’s second memorandum (Document 7) in aid of sentencing.

Document 9: Defense Intelligence Agency, “Biographic Sketch: Colonel Aviam Sella,” May 20, 1987. Secret.

Source: Freedom of Information Act Release.

This biographic sketch is one of many routinely prepared by DIA of foreign military officials. Prepared after Pollard’s arrest and U.S. protests of plans to promote Sella to commanding officer of the Tel Nov airbase, it discusses Sella’s significance, provides personal data, and reviews his career from the time he joined the Israeli Air Force in 1964.

Document 10: James P. Lynch, Director of Security, Central Intelligence Agency, To: Director, Public Affairs, Subject: U.S. News & World Report Story on Jonathan Pollard, May 21, 1987. Secret.

Source: Freedom of Information Act Release.

In this memo, the CIA’s director of security addresses an upcoming U.S. News & World Report story on Pollard. The format for its two pages specifies each “expected allegation” followed by “fact.” The final page discusses the suggested response to press inquiries.

Document 11 A-B: Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee, Director of Central Intelligence, The Jonathan Jay Pollard Espionage Case: A Damage Assessment, October 30, 1987. Top Secret/Codeword.

A: Released by CIA in 2006 in response to a Mandatory Declassification Review request.

B: Released in 2012 by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel in response to the Archive’s appeal of CIA’s 2006 withholding.

This assessment was one of two prepared in the aftermath of Pollard’s arrest (the other was prepared for the Department of Defense by several naval intelligence and security organizations). Two versions of the CIA document are included here to show the amount of material the agency excised in 2006, compared with what ISCAP released in 2012.

The main body of the study examines Pollard’s personal history and espionage career, Israeli intelligence priorities and requests, material provided by Pollard, as well as losses and vulnerabilities. Supplemental tabs provide a detailed chronology and a summary of security and counterintelligence lessons learned. Portions that were redacted in 2006 are enclosed in rectangles.

Document 12: Bruce Riedel, “Book Review: The Territory of Lies,” Studies in Intelligence, 33, 3 (Fall 1989). Unclassified.

Source: CIA Historical Review Program.

This review by a senior CIA intelligence analyst focuses on what Riedel describes as “the first in-depth assessment of this case in the public arena by an Israeli.” It notes that the book adds new details on LAKAM and that its “most important contribution” was “to refute the Israeli Government’s official position that the Pollard operation was a rogue mission.” Riedel also addresses the question of whether LAKAM would be replaced by another covert intelligence organization.

Document 13: Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Government Statement on Jonathan Pollard – 12 May 1998,” May 12, 1998, Unclassified.

Source: www.mfa.gov.il.

As part of an attempt to obtain Pollard’s release, this note on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website acknowledges Pollard’s role as an agent for the LAKAM.

Document 14: National Counterintelligence Executive, CI Reader: An American Revolution into the New Millennium, Volume 3, n.d., accessed December 11, 2012, Unclassified (Extract)

Source: www.ncix.gov/publications/ci_references/docs/CI_Reader_vol3.pdf

This extract concerning Jonathan Pollard is drawn from a multi-volume study performed for the National Counterintelligence Executive, a component of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It summarizes Pollard’s activities, the reaction of the Israeli government, the legal consequences for Pollard, and Pollard’s quest for clemency.

NOTES

[1] Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford, 1995), pp. 388-403.

[2] Scott Armstrong, “Israelis Have Spied on U.S. Secret Papers Show,” Washington Post, February 1, 1982.

[3] The most significant media account on Pollard is Wolf Blitzer, Territory of Lies: The Exclusive Story of Jonathan Jay Pollard: The American Who Spied On His Country For Israel And How He Was Betrayed (New York: Harper & Row, 1989). With regard to the count of stolen documents, see Director of Central Intelligence Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee, The Jonathan Jay Pollard Espionage Case: A Damage Assessment, October 30, 1987, p. 45.

[4] Richelson, A Century of Spies, pp. 401-402.

[5] Ibid., p. 403; George J. Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), p. 67; M.E. “Spike” Bowman, “The Drumbeats for Clemency for Jonathan Jay Pollard Reverberate Again,” Intelligencer, Winter/Spring 2011, pp. 7-10; Jonathan S. Tobin, “The Pollard Spy Case, 25 Years Later,” Commentary, March 2011, pp. 37-43.

Posted – December 14, 2012

Edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson

Find this story at 14 December 2012

Contents of this website Copyright 1995-2011 National Security Archive. All rights reserved.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard

De Amerikaanse voormalig spion Jonathan Pollard zit een levenslange gevangenisstraf uit. Als werknemer bij de VS Marine Inlichtingendienst stal hij honderdduizenden geheime documenten en verkocht die aan Israël. De man die hem ontmaskerde, schreef er een boek over.

Bradley Manning wordt verdacht van het lekken van geheime documenten van de Amerikaanse overheid. Deze documenten werden openbaar gemaakt voor Wikileaks. Nog voordat Manning een eerlijk proces heeft gekregen, zit hij al een ruim een jaar in eenzame opsluiting.

De omvang en gevoeligheid van de Wikileaks-documenten vallen echter in het niet in vergelijking met het aantal geheime stukken dat Jonathan Pollard begin jaren ’80 aan de Israëliërs heeft overhandigd. Pollard werkte voor de Naval Intelligence Service. Van juni 1984 tot zijn aanhouding in november 1985 wandelde hij bijna dagelijks het gebouw van de Naval Intelligence Command uit met een tas vol top secret documenten.

De Amerikaanse overheid schat dat hij ruim een miljoen stukken aan de Israëliërs heeft overhandigd. Een van de stukken was het tiendelige boekwerk Radio-Signal Notations (RASIN), een gedetailleerde beschrijving van het netwerk van de wereldwijde elektronische observatie door de Amerikanen.

Pollard onderzocht

Capturing Jonathan Pollard werd in 2006 door de Naval Institue Press gepubliceerd. Het boek is van de hand van Ronald Olive, destijds werkzaam voor de Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). Als medewerker van de NCIS kreeg Olive in 1985 de taak om te onderzoeken of Pollard geheime stukken lekte.

Het onderzoek volgde op een tip van een medewerker van de Anti-Terrorism Alert Center (ATAC) van de NIS, de afdeling waar Pollard werkte. Deze man zag Pollard het gebouw uitlopen met een stapel papier. De stapel was verpakt in bruin inpakpapier en tape met de code TS/SCI, Top Secret/Sentive Compartmented Information. TS/SCI is een nog zwaardere kwalificatie als top secret.

Pollard stapte met de stukken bij zijn vrouw Ann in de auto. Nog even dacht zijn collega dat Pollard naar een andere inlichtingendienst, zoals de DIA (Defense Intelligence Service) zou rijden om daar de documenten af te geven. Dit leek onwaarschijnlijk omdat Pollard eerder tegen hem had gezegd dat hij verkeerde documenten had besteld bij het ‘archief’ en dat hij deze nu moest terugbrengen en vernietigen. Pollard en Ann reden echter een geheel andere kant op.

Olive beschrijft vervolgens de ontmaskering van Jonathan en Ann. In Pollards werkruimte wordt een camera opgehangen die registreert hoe de spion een aktetas vol TS/SCI documenten propt en het gebouw verlaat. Pollard en zijn vrouw ruiken onraad en proberen de sporen van spionage te wissen. Ann moet een koffer vol super geheime documenten, die in hun huis liggen, vernietigen. Zij raakt in paniek en de koffer belandt bij de buren.

Gevoelige snaar

Het boek van Ronald Olive is nog even actueel als het eerste boek dat over deze spionagezaak is verschenen in 1989, Territory of Lies: The American Who Spied on His Country for Israel and How He Was Betrayed.

Begin dit jaar wordt een petitie, ondertekend door meer dan 10.000 Israëliërs, aan de Israëlische president Shimon Peres gezonden. Hierin roepen politici, kunstenaars en andere bekende en onbekende Israëliërs de president op om Pollard vrij te krijgen. Op 1 september 2010 berichtte de LA Times zelfs dat de vrijlating van Pollard de bevriezing van de bouw van Israëlische nederzettingen in de bezette gebieden zou verlengen.

Pollard raakt kennelijk een gevoelige snaar, zowel in Israël als in de Verenigde Staten. Schrijver Olive op zijn beurt bevindt zich in een gezelschap van allerlei mensen die er voor ijveren om de spion zijn gehele leven achter slot en grendel te houden, hoewel levenslang in de Verenigde Staten niet echt levenslang hoeft te zijn. Bij goed gedrag kunnen gevangenen na dertig jaar vrijkomen.

In 1987 werd Pollard veroordeeld tot levenslang na een schuldbekentenis en toezegging dat hij de Amerikaanse overheid zou helpen bij het in kaart brengen van de schade die hij door zijn spionage-activiteiten had veroorzaakt. Die schade werd door de toenmalige minister van Defensie Casper Weinberger vastgelegd in een memorandum van 46 pagina’s, welke nog steeds niet openbaar is gemaakt. Pollard’s vrouw kreeg vijf jaar gevangenisstraf voor het in bezit hebben van staatsgeheime documenten.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard is geen spannend fictie / non-fictie boek met een twist, zoals Spywars van Bagley. Olive beschrijft droog het leven van de spion vanaf het moment dat hij bij de CIA solliciteert, tot aan de dag van zijn veroordeling. Natuurlijk is de schrijver begaan met de geheimhouding van Amerikaanse strategische informatie en verbaast het niet dat hij bij het verschijnen van het boek in 2006 een pleidooi hield om Pollard niet vrij te laten.

Niet kieskeurig

Hoewel de volle omvang van het lekken van Pollard niet duidelijk wordt beschreven, blijkt dat Pollard niet bepaald kieskeurig was. De Israëliërs hadden hem lijsten meegegeven van wat zij graag wilden hebben, vooral informatie over het Midden-Oosten, maar ook over de Russen en operaties van de Amerikanen in het Middellandse Zee gebied.

Zodra Pollard echter stukken langs ziet komen die ook voor andere landen interessant zouden kunnen zijn, probeert hij ook daar te winkelen. Zo poogt hij geheime documenten aan de Chinezen, Australiërs, Pakistani en de Zuid-Afrikanen, maar ook aan buitenlandse correspondenten te slijten.

Het gegeven dat landen elkaars strategische informatie en geheimen proberen te stelen, is niet nieuw. Het bestaan van contra-spionage afdelingen toont aan dat geheime diensten daar zelf ook rekening mee houden. De Australiërs dachten dan ook dat Pollard onderdeel uitmaakte van een CIA-operatie. Hoewel ze dat eigenlijk niet konden geloven, vermeed hun medewerker Pollard en werd de zaak niet gemeld bij Amerikaanse instanties.

Als onderdeel van thrillers en spannende lectuur zijn de spionage praktijken van Pollard, zoals Olive die beschrijft, niet bijster interessant, want het leidt af van waar het werkelijk om draait. Daarentegen is het boek van grote waarde waar het gaat om de beschrijving van de persoon Pollard, de wijze waarop hij kon spioneren, zijn werkomgeving, de blunders die worden gemaakt – niet alleen het aannemen en overplaatsen van Pollard, maar ook de wijze waarop geheimen zo eenvoudig kunnen worden gelekt – eigenlijk de totale bureaucratie die de wereld van inlichtingendiensten in zijn greep heeft.

Hoewel deze persoonlijke en bureaucratische gegevens niet breed worden uitgemeten – Olive is zelf een voormalig inlichtingenman – verschaft het boek een veelheid aan informatie daarover. De schrijver lijkt die persoonlijke details specifiek aan Pollard te koppelen, alsof het niet voor andere medewerkers zou gelden.

Opschepper

Dit gaat ook op ook voor de gemaakte fouten van de bureaucratie rond de carrière van de spion. Zo lijkt Pollard van jongs af aan een voorliefde te hebben gehad om spion te worden, of in ieder geval iets geheims te willen doen in zijn leven. Tijdens zijn studie schept hij erover op dat hij voor de Mossad zou werken en had gediend in het Israëlische leger. Zijn vader zou ook voor de CIA werkzaam zijn.

Aan deze opschepperij verbindt Olive een psychologisch element. Het zou een soort compensatie zijn voor de slechte jeugd van Pollard die vaak zou zijn gepest. Ook zijn vrouw zou niet bij hem passen omdat die te aantrekkelijk is. Pollard moet dat compenseren door stoer te doen. Later, toen hij voor een inlichtingendienst werkte, voelde hij zich opnieuw het buitenbeentje. Zijn carrière verliep alles behalve vlekkeloos, regelmatig werd hij op een zijspoor gezet.

Olive schetst een beeld van een verwend kind, dat niet op juiste waarde werd ingeschat en stoer wilde doen. Was Pollard echter zoveel anders dan zijn voormalige collega analisten of medewerkers van de inlichtingendienst? Werken voor een inlichtingendienst vereist een zekere mate van voyeurisme, een gespleten persoonlijkheid. Buiten je werk om kun je niet vrijelijk praten over datgene waar je mee bezig bent.

Dat doet wat met je psyche, maar trekt ook een bepaald soort mensen aan. Het werk betreft namelijk niet het oplossen van misdrijven, maar het kijken in het hoofd van mogelijke verdachten. Het BVD-dossier van oud-provo Roel van Duin laat zien dat een dienst totaal kan ontsporen door zijn eigen manier van denken. Dat komt echter niet voort uit de dienst als abstracte bureaucratie, maar door toedoen van de mensen die er werken.

Roekeloos

Pollard gedroeg zich arrogant en opschepperig, misschien wel om zijn eigen onzekerheid te maskeren. Dergelijk gedrag wordt door de schrijver verbonden aan zijn spionage-activiteiten voor de Israëliërs. Pollard was echter niet getraind in het lekken van documenten en ging verre van zorgvuldig te werk. Hij deed het zo openlijk dat het verbazingwekkend is dat het zo lang duurde voordat hij tegen de lamp liep. Hij zei bijvoorbeeld tegen de Israëliërs dat zij alleen de TS/SCI documenten moesten kopiëren en dat ze de rest mochten houden.

In de loop van de anderhalf jaar dat hij documenten naar buiten smokkelde, werd hij steeds roekelozer. Dat hij gespot werd met een pak papier onder zijn arm terwijl hij bij zijn vrouw in de auto stapte, was eerder toeval dan dat het het resultaat was van grondig speurwerk van de NCIS.

Eenmaal binnenin het inlichtingenbedrijf zijn de mogelijkheden om te lekken onuitputtelijk. Als Pollard wel getraind was geweest en zorgvuldiger te werk was gegaan, dan had hij zijn praktijk eindeloos kunnen voorzetten. Welke andere ‘agenten’ doen dat wellicht nog steeds? Of welke andere medewerkers waren minder roekeloos en tevreden geweest met het lekken van enkele documenten?

Die medewerkers vormen gezamenlijk het systeem van de dienst. Pollard schepte graag op, maar de schrijver van Spy Wars, Bagley, klopte zich ook graag op de borst en, hoewel in mindere mate, Ronald Olive ook. Iets dat eigenlijk vreemd is, als het aantal blunders in ogenschouw wordt genomen nadat Pollard ontdekt was. Alleen omdat de Israëliërs Pollard de toegang tot de diplomatieke vestiging ontzegden, zorgde ervoor dat hij alsnog gearresteerd en levenslang kreeg in de VS. Hij was echter bijna ontsnapt.

Blunders

Het is daarom niet gek dat inlichtingendiensten een gebrek aan bescheidenheid vertonen. Vele aanslagen zijn voorkomen, wordt vaak beweerd, maar helaas kunnen de diensten geen details geven. Het klinkt als Pollard, op bezoek bij Olive, die breed uitmeet dat hij die en die kent op de Zuid-Afrikaanse ambassade en of hij die moet werven als spion. Olive was werkzaam voor de NCIS. Pollard bezocht hem voordat hij werd ontmaskerd. Zijn eigen gebrek aan actie in relatie tot de twijfels over Pollard toont aan dat geen enkel bureaucratisch systeem perfect is, ook niet dat van inlichtingendiensten.

Het is niet verbazingwekkend dat de carrière van Pollard bezaaid is met blunders. Hij werd dan wel afgewezen door de CIA, maar waagde vervolgens een gokje bij een andere dienst en had geluk. Hij werd bij de NIS aangenomen en kroop zo langzaamaan in de organisatie. De fouten die bij het aannamebeleid en bij de evaluaties van Pollard zijn gemaakt, worden door Olive gepresenteerd als op zichzelf staand, maar de hoeveelheid blunders en gebrekkige administratie lijken zo talrijk dat het geen toevalstreffers zijn.

Bij elke promotie of overplaatsing lijkt slechts een deel van zijn persoonsdossier hem te volgen. De NIS wist vanaf het begin niet dat Pollard eerder door de CIA werd afgewezen. Als zijn toegang tot geheime documenten wordt ingetrokken, wacht Pollard net zo lang tot bepaalde medewerkers zijn overgeplaatst of vertrokken. Hij wordt dan wel afgeschilderd als een verwend kind dat met geheimen speelt, regelmatig moet Olive echter toegeven dat Pollard een briljant analist is. Pas in de laatste maanden van zijn spionage-activiteiten, lijdt zijn werk onder de operatie om zoveel mogelijk documenten naar buiten te smokkelen.

Waarom Pollard de Amerikaanse overheid schade toebracht, wijdt Olive vooral aan zijn joodse afkomst. Niet dat de schrijver alle joodse Amerikanen verdenkt, maar een belangrijke reden voor het fanatiek lekken wordt verklaard aan de hand van Pollard’s wens om naar Israël te emigreren. Olive gaat echter voorbij aan het geld dat de spion aan zijn activiteiten verdiende. Aanvankelijk 1.500 dollar per maand, na een paar maanden 2.500 en twee volledig verzorgde reizen met zijn vrouw naar Europa en Israël en tot slot een Zwitserse bankrekening met jaarlijks een bonus van 30.000 dollar.

Los van de Zwitserse rekening schat de Amerikaanse overheid dat Pollard rond de 50.000 dollar aan zijn spionagewerk heeft overgehouden. Eigenlijk niet eens veel in vergelijking met de één miljoen documenten die hij leverde. De onderhandelingen over het geld maken echter duidelijk dat Pollard wel degelijk geïnteresseerd was om zoveel mogelijk te verdienen. De prijs werd gedrukt omdat de Israëliërs niet erg toeschietelijk waren en Pollard ze sowieso wilde helpen.

Afkomst

Zijn joodse afkomst zat hem in de weg, want waarschijnlijk had hij alleen al voor het tiendelige boekwerk Radio-Signal Notations (RASIN) 50.000 dollar kunnen krijgen. Uiteindelijk blijkt Pollard een gewoon mens die de verlokking van het geld niet kon weerstaan. Andere agenten zijn hem voorgegaan en hebben zijn voorbeeld gevolgd.

Het nadeel van zijn afkomst blijkt ook uit het feit dat hij zijn Israëlische runner een ‘cadeautje’ gaf. Aviem Sella had mee gevochten in de zesdaagse Yom Kippur oorlog en was een van de piloten die de Iraakse kernreactor in Osirak bombardeerde. Pollard gaf hem destijds satellietbeelden van die aanval. Sella wordt nog steeds gezocht voor Verenigde Staten voor spionage.

De operatie werd door een andere veteraan, Rafi of Rafael Eitan, geleid. Onder diens leiding spoorde de Mossad Adolf Eichmann op. Eitan en Sella werden rijkelijk beloond voor hun werk met Pollard, maar moesten hun promoties inleveren omdat de Amerikanen eind jaren ’80 furieus reageerden. Na de arrestatie van Pollard beweerden de Israëliërs dat ze helemaal niet zoveel documenten hadden gekregen van de spion en de onderhandelingen over teruggave uiterst stroef waren verlopen.

Uiteindelijk werd maar een fractie van de documenten teruggegeven aan de Amerikanen. De Israëliërs waren vooral bezig om na zijn veroordeling Pollard vrij te krijgen. Premier Nethanyahu sprak vorig jaar de Knesset toe over het lot van Pollard, terwijl de Israëlische ambassadeur in de VS hem juli 2011 bezocht in de gevangenis.

Tot nu toe lijken de Amerikanen niet van zins om hem vrij te laten. Na de veroordeling van Pollard kwam de campagne Free Pollard op gang. Zijn vrouw verdween uit beeld. Niet alleen Israëliërs nemen deel aan de campagne, maar ook Alan Dershowitz, professor aan de Harvard Law School en andere academici. In het laatste hoofdstuk More sinned against than sinning beschrijft Olive enkele andere spionnen die documenten verkochten aan buitenlandse mogendheden.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard was nog niet gepubliceerd toen de stroom Wikileaks-documenten op gang kwam. Die documenten laten echter zien dat een waterdicht systeem niet bestaat en dat mensen voor geld of om andere redenen geheime stukken lekken. De Wikileaks-documenten onderstrepen dat er sinds de jaren ’80 weinig is veranderd. Met als enige verschil de hardvochtige wijze waarop verdachte Manning in deze zaak wordt behandeld en de gebrekkige aandacht die hij krijgt van professoren en andere betrokkenen bij de Wikileaks-documenten.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice. Auteur Ronald J. Olive. Uitgeverij US Naval Institute Press (2006).

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Jailed US spy gave Israel information on Pakistan nuclear program

An American intelligence analyst, who was jailed in 1987 for spying for Israel, gave his spy handlers information on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, according to declassified documents. Former United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard is currently serving a life sentence for selling classified information to the Israeli government between 1985 and 1987. On December 14, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified its official damage assessment of Pollard’s espionage, who some counterintelligence officials believe was the most prolific mole that ever spied on the US government for a foreign country. This was the second time that the CIA declassified the document, titled The Jonathan Jay Pollard Espionage Case: A Damage Assessment, following an appeal by George Washington University’s National Security Archive. Even though this latest version of the declassified document is still heavily redacted, it contains some new information. One new revelation is that Pollard’s Israeli handlers specifically asked him to acquire intelligence collected by the US government on the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. In a section titled “Implications of Compromises: What Israel Gained from Pollard’s Espionage”, the CIA assessment states that Pollard focused on “Arab and Pakistani nuclear intelligence” and gave his Israeli handlers information on a secret Pakistani “plutonium reprocessing facility near Islamabad”. Further information in the declassified report about this subject is completely redacted. The question is, what kind of information on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program did Tel Aviv acquire from Pollard? According to A.Q. Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Islamabad was able to detonate a nuclear device “within a week’s notice” by as early as 1984. IntelNews has also reported that the US was aware of Pakistan’s plans to build the bomb in the 1970s and had been working along with other Western countries, including the United Kingdom, to prevent Pakistan’s covert attempts to purchase ‘gray area’ technologies for its nuclear weapons program. In 2009, Imtiaz Ahmad, former director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, spoke of a 1979 ISI operation called RISING SUN, which involved the alleged unmasking of Rafiq Munshi, a US-trained Pakistani nuclear scientist, who Ahmed says was a CIA agent. The operation also resulted in the exposure of several undercover CIA agents, posing as diplomats, stationed in the US embassy in Islamabad and the consulate in Karachi. Another question is whether Israel knew by 1987 that CIA operations against the Pakistani nuclear weapons program ended soon after Ronald Reagan was elected US President. His administration actively supported the Pakistani nuclear program in light of Pakistan’s adversarial relationship with the Soviet Union.

December 18, 2012 by Joseph Fitsanakis 2 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

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Subject: Security Message for U.S. Citizens: Crime in Wassenaar and Police Searches in Rotterdam

UNITED STATES EMBASSY THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS
Security Message for U.S. Citizens: Crime in Wassenaar and Police Searches in Rotterdam
November 27, 2012

The U.S. Mission to The Netherlands informs U.S. citizens of increased crime in Wassenaar and new police search procedures in Rotterdam.

Wassenaar

According to police officials, non-violent residential crime is up significantly throughout Wassenaar, compared with the previous two years.

Criminal activity can occur anywhere, however police have noted a particular increase in residential burglaries in the South Wassenaar area and vehicle break-ins in the central portion of Wassenaar. U.S. citizens and expatriate residences are not specifically targeted. Instead, the criminals seem to be targeting residences that appear to be empty or unoccupied. Car thieves are targeting expensive vehicles with airbags, GPS units, and other valuables.

Although the State Department rates residential crime throughout The Netherlands as low, the Embassy’s security team recommends that you periodically review security procedures at your residence and vehicle — locking doors and securing accessible windows, turning on exterior lights after dark, not keeping valuables in view in your car, parking your car in a well-lighted area, and being aware of your surroundings.

Rotterdam

We also call your attention to changes in police procedures in Rotterdam. The Mayor of Rotterdam has authorized police to search any person in public areas in the center of Rotterdam and in the suburbs of Carlois and Hoogvliet for possession of weapons or ammunition; vehicles, packages, and suitcases are also subject to police search. This policy began on November 5, and will remain effective until February 1, 2013 (for Carlois and Hoogvliet) and until April 1, 2013 (for Rotterdam). The Embassy’s security team encourages U.S. citizens, if stopped, to cooperate fully with law enforcement officers.

General security information

U.S. citizens in The Netherlands are reminded, in general, that if at any time you feel threatened or in danger, please call the Dutch authorities immediately by dialing 1-1-2 for emergency service response from Dutch police, rescue, and fire departments.

We strongly recommend that U.S. citizens traveling to or residing in The Netherlands enroll in the Department of State’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. Enrollment gives you the latest security updates, and makes it easier for the embassy or nearest consulate to contact you in an emergency. If you don’t have Internet access, enroll directly with the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate.

We also recommend you regularly monitor the Department’s website, where you can find current Travel Warnings, Travel Alerts, and the Worldwide Caution. You can also read the Country Specific Information for The Netherlands.

Contact the embassy or consulate for up-to-date information on travel restrictions. You can also call 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the United States and Canada or 1-202-501-4444 from other countries. These numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays). Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and download our free Smart Traveler iPhone App to have travel information at your fingertips

The U.S. Consulate General in Amsterdam is located at Museumplein 19, 1071 DJ, Amsterdam and is open from 8 AM to 4:30 PM. If you are a U.S. citizen in need of urgent assistance, the emergency number for the Consulate is (31) (0)70-310 2209.

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Justice minister to seek more control over intelligence agency

In light of the sensational revelations from double-agent Morten Storm, the justice minister wants PET to report to parliament about the use of civilian agents
Following the uproar created by the numerous revelations from former PET secret-agent Morten Storm, the justice minister, Morten Bødskov (Socialdemokraterne), is now calling for parliament to have more control over the domestic intelligence agency.

In an interview with Berlingske newspaper, Bødskov said that he is seeking increased powers for parliament’s Kontroludvalg, a committee established in 1964 to oversee PET.

The move comes in response to the many questions that have arisen about PET’s actions following Storm’s decision to contribute to a series of articles in Jyllands-Posten newspaper that chronicled his time as a PET double-agent [9]. Storm says he assisted PET in tracking al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki for the American intelligence agency, the CIA, which clearly had the intention of assassinating him. Storm also claims to have arranged a Western wife for al-Awlaki [10], who was sent to Yemen with tracking equipment placed in her luggage by PET without her knowledge. He also alleges that PET attempted to buy his silence [11] by offering him 25,000 tax-free kroner a month for the next five years if he promised to keep quiet about his role in the hunt for al-Awlaki.

After Storm’s claims made an international splash, numerous politicians and human rights organisations demanded investigations into PET [12].

Among those wanting answers was Enhedslisten’s Pernille Skipper, whose party had called Bødskov in for an “open meeting” scheduled for today.

“This case is so complex that anyone can see that we need some answers,” Skipper told Politiken newspaper last month. “There are two central elements we need to have answers to. One is whether PET has helped the CIA with a plan to kill somebody rather than have him put in front of a court. The other is now whether PET has also used an innocent person as live bait. That’s not just a violation of rules, it is completely morally reprehensible.”

Bødskov’s move would give Kontroludvalget insight into PET’s use of civilians as agents – something that elected officials have not historically had.

“It is important for the government to have some peace of mind around these questions in parliament,” Bødskov told Berlingske. “Therefore, as something completely new, we will see to it that parliament’s Kontroludvalg receives notifications on PET’s use of civilians as agents.”

…

November 22, 2012 – 05:55
Justin Cremer [8]

Find this story at 22 November 2012

Copyright © 2011 . All Rights Reserved. Website built by Alexander Worziger, Alexander Unedited

Senate moves to block Pentagon plans to increase number of spies overseas

The Senate has moved to block a Pentagon plan to send hundreds of additional spies overseas, citing cost concerns and management failures that have hampered the Defense Department’s existing espionage efforts.

A military spending bill approved by the Senate last week contains language barring the Pentagon from using funds to expand its espionage ranks until it has provided more details on what the program will cost and how the extra spies would be used.

The measure offers a harsh critique of the Pentagon’s espionage record, saying that the Defense Department “needs to demonstrate that it can improve the management of clandestine [human intelligence] before undertaking any further expansion.”

The action is a setback for the Pentagon’s main spy service, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has embarked on a five-year plan to assemble an espionage network overseas that is more closely modeled on the CIA and would rival that agency in size.

The plan is part of a broader effort to focus the DIA on broader threats — such as emerging al-Qaeda offshoots in Africa and Chinese military advances — after it spent the past decade concentrating on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The DIA has about 500 undercover operatives engaged in spying work overseas, but the plan calls for that total to climb to between 800 and 1,000 by 2018, officials said in an article published in The Washington Post on Dec. 2. The new operatives would be trained by the CIA and coordinate their assignments with CIA station chiefs overseas, but their main assignments would be determined by the Department of Defense.

Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, director of DIA, has touted the plan in a series of recent speeches, saying it represents “a major adjustment for national security.”

Pentagon officials stressed that DIA has not been given additional authorities or permission to expand its total payroll. Instead, officials said, the extra spy slots would come by cutting or converting other positions.

The Senate measure, which was included in the fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, signals deep skepticism on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon can execute the plan.

The provision blocks the DIA from going beyond the number of human intelligence officers the agency had in place last April. It requires the Pentagon to produce “an independent estimate of the costs” of the new clandestine service, as well as a blueprint for where and when the newly hired spies would be deployed.

…

By Greg Miller, Published: December 10

Find this story at 10 December 2012

© The Washington Post Company

Report finds harsh CIA interrogations ineffective

After a contentious closed-door vote, the Senate intelligence committee approved a long-awaited report Thursday concluding that harsh interrogation measures used by the CIA did not produce significant intelligence breakthroughs, officials said.

The 6,000-page document, which was not released to the public, was adopted by Democrats over the objections of most of the committee’s Republicans. The outcome reflects the level of partisan friction that continues to surround the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other severe interrogation techniques four years after they were banned.

The report is the most detailed independent examination to date of the agency’s efforts to “break” dozens of detainees through physical and psychological duress, a period of CIA history that has become a source of renewed controversy because of torture scenes in a forthcoming Hollywood film, “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Officials familiar with the report said it makes a detailed case that subjecting prisoners to “enhanced” interrogation techniques did not help the CIA find Osama bin Laden and often were counterproductive in the broader campaign against al-Qaeda.

The committee chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), declined to discuss specific findings but released a written statement describing decisions to allow the CIA to build a network of secret prisons and employ harsh interrogation measures as “terrible mistakes.”

“I also believe this report will settle the debate once and for all over whether our nation should ever employ coercive interrogation techniques,” Feinstein said.

That conclusion has been disputed by high-ranking officials from the George W. Bush administration, including former vice president Richard B. Cheney and former CIA director Michael V. Hayden. Both of them argued that the use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other measures provided critical clues that helped track down bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who was killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan in May 2011.

Largely because of those political battle lines, Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee refused to participate in the panel’s three-year investigation of the CIA interrogation program, and most opposed Thursday’s decision.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the committee’s ranking Republican, said in a statement that the report “contains a number of significant errors and omissions about the history and utility of CIA’s detention program.” He also noted that the review was done “without interviewing any of the people involved.”

The 9 to 6 vote indicates that at least one Republican backed the report, although committee officials declined to provide a breakdown.

Other GOP lawmakers voiced support for the report’s conclusions. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, issued a statement saying that the committee’s work shows that “cruel” treatment of prisoners “is not only wrong in principle and a stain on our country’s conscience, but also an ineffective and unreliable means of gathering intelligence.”

It could be months, if not years, before the public gets even a partial glimpse of the report or its 20 findings and conclusions. Feinstein said the committee will turn the voluminous document over to the Obama administration and the CIA to provide a chance for them to comment.

When that is completed, the committee will need to vote again on whether to release even a portion of the report, a move likely to face opposition from the CIA, which has fought to keep details of the interrogation program classified.

…

By Greg Miller, Published: December 14

Find this story at 14 December 2012

© The Washington Post Company

CIA ’tortured and sodomised’ terror suspect, human rights court rules

Landmark European court of human rights judgment says CIA tortured wrongly detained German citizen

The European court of human rights has ruled German citizen Khaled el-Masri was tortured by CIA agents, the first time the court has described treatment meted out by the CIA as torture. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/AP

CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday.

In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations.

Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA “rendition team” at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan.

It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture.

“The grand chamber of the European court of human rights unanimously found that Mr el-Masri was subjected to forced disappearance, unlawful detention, extraordinary rendition outside any judicial process, and inhuman and degrading treatment,” said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.

He described the judgment as “an authoritative condemnation of some of the most objectionable tactics employed in the post-9/11 war on terror”. It should be a wake-up call for the Obama administration and US courts, he told the Guardian. For them to continue to avoid serious scrutiny of CIA activities was “simply unacceptable”, he said.

Jamil Dakwar, of the American Civil Liberties Union, described the ruling as “a huge victory for justice and the rule of law”.

The use of CIA interrogation methods widely denounced as torture during the Bush administration’s “war on terror” also came under scrutiny in Congress on Thursday. The US Senate’s select committee on intelligence was expected to vote on whether to approve a mammoth review it has undertaken into the controversial practices that included waterboarding, stress positions, forced nudity, beatings and sleep and sensory deprivation.

The report, that runs to almost 6,000 pages based on a three-year review of more than 6m pieces of information, is believed to conclude that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” adopted by the CIA during the Bush years did not produce any major breakthroughs in intelligence, contrary to previous claims. The committee, which is dominated by the Democrats, is likely to vote to approve the report, though opposition from the Republican members may prevent the report ever seeing the light of day.

The Strasbourg court said it found Masri’s account of what happened to him “to be established beyond reasonable doubt” and that Macedonia had been “responsible for his torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the US authorities in the context of an extra-judicial ‘rendition'”.

In January 2004, Macedonian police took him to a hotel in Skopje, where he was kept locked in a room for 23 days and questioned in English, despite his limited proficiency in that language, about his alleged ties with terrorist organisations, the court said in its judgment. His requests to contact the German embassy were refused. At one point, when he said he intended to leave, he was threatened with being shot.

“Masri’s treatment at Skopje airport at the hands of the CIA rendition team – being severely beaten, sodomised, shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation – had been carried out in the presence of state officials of [Macedonia] and within its jurisdiction,” the court ruled.

It added: “Its government was consequently responsible for those acts performed by foreign officials. It had failed to submit any arguments explaining or justifying the degree of force used or the necessity of the invasive and potentially debasing measures. Those measures had been used with premeditation, the aim being to cause Mr Masri severe pain or suffering in order to obtain information. In the court’s view, such treatment had amounted to torture, in violation of Article 3 [of the European human rights convention].”

In Afghanistan, Masri was incarcerated for more than four months in a small, dirty, dark concrete cell in a brick factory near the capital, Kabul, where he was repeatedly interrogated and was beaten, kicked and threatened. His repeated requests to meet with a representative of the German government were ignored, said the court.

…

Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Thursday 13 December 2012 18.54 GMT

Find this story at 13 December 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

U.S. supplied vital information in early days of Canada’s navy spy probe

American intelligence officials supplied vital information in the early days of the investigation that climaxed with the arrest of an accused spy inside Canada’s top-secret naval signals centre, sources say.

The involvement of the United States in building the case against Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Delisle adds a key new detail to a story that Ottawa is anxious to keep under wraps.

The Canadian government has been tight-lipped on how it learned that there was a leak of confidential secrets to a foreign power – and the way it went about building a case against the sub-lieutenant.

Canadian officials have privately identified Russia as the recipient of secrets, and the Russian ambassador to this country said last February that Moscow has an agreement with the Canadian government to “keep quiet” about any connection between his nation and the spy case.

SLt. Delisle is in custody after being charged in January with passing state secrets to a foreign country. The sailor, who last worked at Trinity, a Halifax naval intelligence hub, faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

SLt. Delisle, 41, has not yet entered a plea; his next court appearance is in June.

The Globe and Mail reported in March that the fallout from the Delisle case has done significant damage to Ottawa’s treasured intelligence-sharing relationships with key allies such as the U.S. It’s also embarrassed the Department of National Defence, which is now looking to restore confidence in its ability to keep secrets.

A source familiar with the matter said Canada helped build its investigation of SLt. Delisle through contact with its biggest ally: “It’s not just one nugget of information that I would describe as a tipoff. [Rather]It’s an accumulation of information that leads to an investigation coming to a point where, okay, we have enough to go after this person.”

The extent of what the U.S told Canada is still unclear. “Sometimes we’re able to match – or in some cases co-ordinate – some of that intelligence and paint the picture that we need to make decisions,” the source said.

The source said Canada and the U.S. have a privileged relationship in sharing this type of information through security forces including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and the Communications Security Establishment Canada.

…

STEVEN CHASE

OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, May. 23 2012, 4:00 AM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, Oct. 10 2012, 10:48 AM EDT

Find this story at 23 May 2012

© Copyright 2012 The Globe and Mail Inc. All Rights Reserved.

A former spy on life in the CIA: It’s like Bond, with more boredom

Robert Baer is a former CIA case officer and the author of several books on the Middle East.

In the new James Bond thriller, “Skyfall,” the villain is a cyberterrorist named Raoul Silva, a disgruntled former British agent who’s trying to crash the digital universe. It’s a nice touch, creating a very real, very terrifying scenario that “could paralyze the nation,” as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned just last month.

And that is about the only aspect of the movie that is likely to be accurate.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m a fan of the Bond movies. I go to see them for the same reasons everyone else does: the gorgeous women, the most beautiful places on Earth and, of course, the roller-coaster ride of a plot. I delight in Bond’s complete defiance of gravity. His suits never wrinkle, his Aston Martin is never in the garage for repairs, the girls never say no.

But as a former spy, what I like most about the Bond movies is the way good always triumphs over evil. His cases end neatly, with the villain dispatched and the world safe for the good guys.

Real-life espionage is a lot less sexy — and a lot messier.

Sometimes, age-old wisdom notwithstanding, the enemy of our enemy turns out not to be our friend. Once, in the mid-1980s, I was handed the portfolio for Libya’s opposition leaders, many of whom were operating out of Khartoum, Sudan. At first, I had only a hazy idea of who Moammar Gaddafi’s opponents were. All I knew for sure was that the Reagan administration wanted Gaddafi to go.

Late one night, I woke up to the sound of the butts of assault rifles pounding my door. Two of my Libyan contacts were on the run from Gaddafi’s assassins and expected me to protect them. We talked most of the night — about Libya, history and Allah. By the time they could safely leave, I had come to understand that the people we’d picked to replace Gaddafi were militant Salafists determined to turn Libya into an Islamic republic. They didn’t succeed then, but you could argue that the people who attacked our diplomatic outpost in Benghazi in September were their linear descendents.

While occasionally I found myself in a Bond-like setting during my spying career, the story inevitably unfolded with a lot less panache.

One time, in pursuit of an elusive informant, the agency sent me to Monaco to troll the Casino de Monte-Carlo. The problems started before I even got on the plane. The CIA scoffed at the idea of buying me a tuxedo, and the dragon lady who did our accounting refused to give me a cent to put on the roulette table. Not surprisingly, as soon as I walked into the casino in my penny loafers, the security goons spotted me as an impostor and pulled me over for a polite interrogation. I never found our would-be informant, but I did come away with the certainty that I wasn’t James Bond.

Anyone who’s passed through Langley will tell you that a spy’s life is one of tedious endurance. It’s long hours of cubicle living, going through the same files everyone else in the office has gone through, hoping to catch a missed lead. Or it’s waiting by the phone hoping that the third secretary from the Ecuadorian Embassy will call you back. Or keeping your fingers crossed that your next three-year assignment isn’t in Chad. As CIA-operative-turned-novelist Charles McCarry said, spying is nothing more than an organized hunt for a windfall.That translates to waiting for that one “walk-in” who comes knocking on the agency’s door ready to hand over the crown jewels.

That’s not to say that, now and then, Bond moments don’t come along. The CIA operatives who located Osama bin Laden and self-proclaimed Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed can tell you all about them. And tragedies such as the recent attack in Benghazi are few and far between.

Still, usually the bad guys are humdrum, hiding in some impenetrable slum or village hanging on the side of a mountain. They’re the kind of places James Bond would only drop in on for a quick shootout. In fact, most spooks will never hear a shot fired in anger.

The real MI6 — Her Majesty’s Secret Service — isn’t all that different. British agents, too, spend their time sitting in offices rather than jumping out of airplanes or off speeding trains. And like CIA operatives, they’d all make better anthropologists than marksmen.

Much of a spy’s work these days is wading through data and breaking into computers. No doubt the geeks who threw the Stuxnet monkey wrench into the Iranian nuclear works didn’t move far from their computer screens for months. The most dangerous part of the day was probably going for Chinese takeout.

Another recent Hollywood release evokes this ethos much better than any Bond movie. “Argo,” the tale of the CIA’s rescue of six Americans during the Iran hostage crisis, is grittier and grimmer and captures the air of monotonous procedure punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

Yes, parts of the movie are over-the-top dramatized or pared down to the unrecognizable. But could there be a better casting than Bryan Cranston as a rumpled CIA boss in a shabby suit and cheap haircut, a fiercely pragmatic and good guy?

I managed to end up on the periphery of the hostage crisis and spent a couple of days at the American Embassy in Tehran only months before the takeover. As I watched the opening sequences of “Argo,” I did a double-take; the embassy interiors were exactly as I remembered them. So were the two rescued Americans I knew, Kathy and Joe Stafford.

…

By Robert Baer, Published: November 9

Find this story at 9 November 2012

© The Washington Post Company

Transform the Agency’s Whole Structure

Tim Weiner, a former New York Times reporter, is the author of “Legacy of Ashes: the History of the C.I.A.,” and “Enemies: a History of the F.B.I.”

The structure of the Central Intelligence Agency has remained essentially unchanged since the agency was created in 1947 to fight the cold war against the Soviet Union and its satellites. A 21st-century C.I.A. must be renovated to reflect present-day realities.
Generals should control paramilitaries. Analysts should be in the field, reporting to diplomats. An elite core should remain.

Before 9/11 the C.I.A.’s clandestine service never assassinated anybody itself (though at times it tried, as in the case of Fidel Castro). Since then drone airstrikes against suspected foreign terrorists have killed some 2,500 people, including civilians, without public discussion in Congress. Intelligence is the hard work of trying to know your enemy. It is not the dirty business of political murder. That is warfare, and war belongs to the Pentagon. The clandestine service’s paramilitary officers should work directly for the Department of Defense, deployed overseas, controlled by four-star combatant commanders and governed under military law. The president should acknowledge that they are a lethal weapon devoted to counterterrorism.

C.I.A. analysts should leave their desks in Virginia and move overseas. They need to get out of the prediction business, a losing proposition. They should work for the State Department’s highly regarded intelligence and research bureau, and they should serve in the nations they analyze. Then they will have a chance to see developing political pictures, to assay ground truths for themselves. That requires more C.I.A. officers with African, Arabic and Chinese languages, skills and backgrounds, reporting on conflicts requiring American intelligence more than American firepower.

…

Updated December 4, 2012, 4:51 PM

Find this story at 4 December 2012

© 2011 The New York Times Co.

Did Skype Give a Private Company Data on Teen WikiLeaks Supporter Without a Warrant?

Skype faces accusations that it handed user data to a private company without a warrant

Skype’s privacy credentials took a hit in July over a refusal to comment on whether it could eavesdrop on conversations. Now the Internet chat service is facing another privacy-related backlash—after allegedly handing over user data without a warrant to a private security firm investigating pro-WikiLeaks activists.

The explosive details were contained in a report by Dutch investigative journalist Brenno de Winter, published on NU.nl earlier this week. Citing an internal police file detailing an investigation called “Operation Talang,” Winter wrote that PayPal was attempting to track down activists affiliated with the hacker collective Anonymous. The hackers had attacked the PayPal website following the company’s controversial decision to block payments to WikiLeaks in December 2010.

As part of that investigation, PayPal apparently hired the private security company iSight to help find those responsible. Headquartered in Texas and with a European base in Amsterdam, iSight describes itself as a “global cyber intelligence firm” that “supports leading federal and commercial entities with targeted and unique insights necessary to manage cyber risks.” iSight’s Netherlands-based director of global research, Joep Gommers, followed an online trail in an effort to track down the hackers, ultimately leading to a number of Dutch citizens, among them a 16-year-old boy operating under a pseudonym. Gommers reportedly contacted Skype, also a client of iSight, and requested account data about the teenager. According to Winter’s report, “the police file notes that Skype handed over the suspect’s personal information, such as his user name, real name, e-mail addresses and the home address used for payment.” It adds that Skype disclosed the information voluntarily, “without a court order, as would usually be required.”

…

By Ryan Gallagher

Find this story at 9 November 2012

All contents © 2012 The Slate Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Skype rats out alleged WikiLeaks supporter without waiting for court warrant

Say goodbye to online service providers protecting the identities of their users. With just a bit of begging, a Texas-based intelligence firm succeeded in convincing Skype to send over sensitive account data pertaining to a teenage WikiLeaks fan.

Reports out of Amsterdam this week suggest that Microsoft-owned Skype didn’t wait for a court order or warrant with a judge’s signature before it handed over the personal info of a 16-year-old Dutch boy. The youngster was suspected of being involved in Operation Payback, an Anonymous-endorsed initiative that targeted the servers of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and others after those companies blocked WikiLeaks from receiving online payment backs in December 2010. When hacktivists responded to the blockade by overflowing the servers of those sites with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, PayPal asked Dallas, Texas’ iSIGHT Partners Inc., a self-described“global cyber intelligence firm,” to investigate.

It appears that iSIGHT didn’t have deals with just PayPal either. Skype is also a client of the online private eye, and they reached out to the chat company for assistance. Normally the court would enter the equation here and write out a warrant to try and track down that information, but the initial report by Brenno de Winter of Nu.nl reveals that investigators skipped that step.

According to English-language transcription of Winter’s account, “the police file notes that Skype handed over the suspect’s personal information, such as his user name, real name, e-mail addresses and the home address used for payment.” While that in it of itself isn’t all that unusual, Winter writes that Skype sent over that information voluntarily, “without a court order, as would usually be required.”

Joep Gommers, the senior director of global research from iSIGHT, defended the action to Winter, admitting, “On occasion, we share our research findings with relevant law enforcement parties as a public service, just as you would report what appeared to be a crime that you witnessed in your neighborhood.”

In emails obtained by Winter, Gommers bragged of his findings to Dutch authorities, writing after he first received assistance from Skype, “Hey, I will have login information soon – but not yet.”

Skype doesn’t stand by the move, though, and says any virtual handshake between one of their staffers and iSIGHT doesn’t fit with the company’s practices when it terms to protecting private user info.

“It is our policy not to provide customer data unless we are served with valid request from legal authorities, or when legally required to do so, or in the event of a threat to physical safety,” Skype said in a statement to Nu.nl. Commenting to Slate, a representative for the chat service noted that it has worked with iSIGHT in the past to “combat spam and malware,” but acknowledged “it appears that some information may have been inappropriately passed on to Dutch authorities without our knowledge.”

Now Skype says they are conducting an internal investigation to see why their privacy policies were ignored and the teenager’s info was sent to iSIGHT, but it might be too late for the company. Other hacktivists that already had a bone to pick with PayPal and other targets of Operation Payback now have their sights set on Gommers and the intelligence company.

In a post published to the AnonNews.org website, one user asks other hacktivists to help find out more about iSIGHT and what damage they may have already done as an intelligence firm willing to bend the rules for helping their high-profile customers.

“It has recently come to our attention that a security company known as isightpartners has been providing sensitive user information obtained from their customers to governments around the world to target activists linked to Anonymous,” one user writes. “We seek your assistance and demand answers to this activity. Who are isightpartners other customers they are using to target Anons? How long has isightpartners targeted Anonymous? These are questions we must answer. isightparters declared war on Anonymous so we must declare war on them.”

Meanwhile, others are unsure of what good the data will do for iSIGHT or PayPal since it could have been obtained illegally.

“You would imagine that subscriber data aren’t simply handed over. They have to be provided when the police has a valid demand or court order, but not in any other case,” Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, a professor of Law and Information Society in Leiden and a lawyer at Bird & Bird in The Hague, tells Winter. “You can also wonder whether police can use that information if it was acquired this way.”

…

Published: 12 November, 2012, 21:14
Edited: 12 November, 2012, 21:14

Find this story at 12 November 2012

© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005 – 2011. All rights reserved.

DIA sending hundreds more spies overseas

The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said.

The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units.

When the expansion is complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 “collectors” in positions around the world, an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years.

The total includes military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But U.S. officials said the growth will be driven over a five-year period by the deployment of a new generation of clandestine operatives. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense.

Among the Pentagon’s top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China.

“This is not a marginal adjustment for DIA,” the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, said at a recent conference, during which he outlined the changes but did not describe them in detail. “This is a major adjustment for national security.”

The sharp increase in DIA undercover operatives is part of a far-reaching trend: a convergence of the military and intelligence agencies that has blurred their once-distinct missions, capabilities and even their leadership ranks.

Through its drone program, the CIA now accounts for a majority of lethal U.S. operations outside the Afghan war zone. At the same time, the Pentagon’s plan to create what it calls the Defense Clandestine Service, or DCS, reflects the military’s latest and largest foray into secret intelligence work.

The DIA overhaul — combined with the growth of the CIA since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — will create a spy network of unprecedented size. The plan reflects the Obama administration’s affinity for espionage and covert action over conventional force. It also fits in with the administration’s efforts to codify its counterterrorism policies for a sustained conflict and assemble the pieces abroad necessary to carry it out.

Unlike the CIA, the Pentagon’s spy agency is not authorized to conduct covert operations that go beyond intelligence gathering, such as drone strikes, political sabotage or arming militants.

But the DIA has long played a major role in assessing and identifying targets for the U.S. military, which in recent years has assembled a constellation of drone bases stretching from Afghanistan to East Africa.

The expansion of the agency’s clandestine role is likely to heighten concerns that it will be accompanied by an escalation in lethal strikes and other operations outside public view. Because of differences in legal authorities, the military isn’t subject to the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA, leading to potential oversight gaps.

U.S. officials said that the DIA’s realignment won’t hamper congressional scrutiny. “We have to keep congressional staffs and members in the loop,” Flynn said in October, adding that he believes the changes will help the United States anticipate threats and avoid being drawn more directly into what he predicted will be an “era of persistent conflict.”

U.S. officials said the changes for the DIA were enabled by a rare syncing of personalities and interests among top officials at the Pentagon and CIA, many of whom switched from one organization to the other to take their current jobs.

“The stars have been aligning on this for a while,” said a former senior U.S. military official involved in planning the DIA transformation. Like most others interviewed for this article, the former official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

The DIA project has been spearheaded by Michael G. Vickers, the top intelligence official at the Pentagon and a veteran of the CIA.

Agreements on coordination were approved by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, a former CIA director, and retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who resigned abruptly as CIA chief last month over an extramarital affair.

The Pentagon announced the DCS plan in April but details have been kept secret. Former senior Defense Department officials said that the DIA now has about 500 “case officers,” the term for clandestine Pentagon and CIA operatives, and that the number is expected to reach between 800 and 1,000 by 2018.

Pentagon and DIA officials declined to discuss specifics. A senior U.S. defense official said the changes will affect thousands of DIA employees, as analysts, logistics specialists and others are reassigned to support additional spies.

The plan still faces some hurdles, including the challenge of creating “cover” arrangements for hundreds of additional spies. U.S. embassies typically have a set number of slots for intelligence operatives posing as diplomats, most of which are taken by the CIA.

The project has also encountered opposition from policymakers on Capitol Hill, who see the terms of the new arrangement as overly generous to the CIA.

The DIA operatives “for the most part are going to be working for CIA station chiefs,” needing their approval to enter a particular country and clearance on which informants they intend to recruit, said a senior congressional official briefed on the plan. “If CIA needs more people working for them, they should be footing the bill.”

Pentagon officials said that sending more DIA operatives overseas will shore up intelligence on subjects that the CIA is not able or willing to pursue. “We are in a position to contribute to defense priorities that frankly CIA is not,” the senior Defense Department official said.

The project was triggered by a classified study by the director of national intelligence last year that concluded that key Pentagon intelligence priorities were falling into gaps created by the DIA’s heavy focus on battlefield issues and CIA’s extensive workload. U.S. officials said the DIA needed to be repositioned as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan give way to what many expect will be a period of sporadic conflicts and simmering threats requiring close-in intelligence work.

“It’s the nature of the world we’re in,” said the senior defense official, who is involved in overseeing the changes at the DIA. “We just see a long-term era of change before things settle.”

The CIA is increasingly overstretched. Obama administration officials have said they expect the agency’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda to continue for at least a decade more, even as the agency faces pressure to stay abreast of issues including turmoil across the Middle East. Meanwhile, the CIA hasn’t met ambitious goals set by former president George W. Bush to expand its own clandestine service.

CIA officials including John D. Bennett, director of the National Clandestine Service, have backed the DIA’s plan. It “amplifies the ability of both CIA and DIA to achieve the best results,” said CIA spokesman Preston Golson.

Defense officials stressed that the DIA has not been given any new authorities or permission to expand its total payroll. Instead, the new spy slots will be created by cutting or converting other positions across the DIA workforce, which has doubled in the past decade — largely through absorption of other military intelligence entities — to about 16,500.

Vickers has given the DIA an infusion of about $100 million to kick-start the program, officials said, but the agency’s total budget is expected to remain stagnant or decline amid mounting financial pressures across the government.

The DIA’s overseas presence already includes hundreds of diplomatic posts — mainly defense attachés, who represent the military at U.S. embassies and openly gather information from foreign counterparts. Their roles won’t change, officials said. The attachés are part of the 1,600 target for the DIA, but such “overt” positions will represent a declining share amid the increase in undercover slots, officials said.

The senior Defense official said the DIA has begun filling the first of the new posts.

For decades, the DIA has employed undercover operatives to gather secrets on foreign militaries and other targets. But the Defense Humint Service, as it was previously known, was often regarded as an inferior sibling to its civilian counterpart.

Previous efforts by the Pentagon to expand its intelligence role — particularly during Donald H. Rumsfeld’s time as defense secretary — led to intense turf skirmishes with the CIA.

Those frictions have been reduced, officials said, largely because the CIA sees advantages to the new arrangement, including assurances that its station chiefs overseas will be kept apprised of DIA missions and have authority to reject any that might conflict with CIA efforts. The CIA will also be able to turn over hundreds of Pentagon-driven assignments to newly arrived DIA operatives.

“The CIA doesn’t want to be looking for surface-to-air missiles in Libya” when it’s also under pressure to assess the opposition in Syria, said a former high-ranking U.S. military intelligence officer who worked closely with both spy services. Even in cases where their assignments overlap, the DIA is likely to be more focused than the CIA on military aspects — what U.S. commanders in Africa might ask about al-Qaeda in Mali, for example, rather than the broader questions raised by the White House.

U.S. officials said DIA operatives, because of their military backgrounds, are often better equipped to recruit sources who can answer narrow military questions such as specifications of China’s fifth-generation fighter aircraft and its work on a nuclear aircraft carrier. “The CIA would like to give up that kind of work,” the former officer said.

The CIA has agreed to add new slots to its training classes at its facility in southern Virginia, known as the Farm, to make room for more military spies. The DIA has accounted for about 20 percent of each class in recent years, but that figure will grow.

The two agencies have also agreed to share resources overseas, including technical gear, logistics support, space in facilities and vehicles. The DIA has even adopted aspects of the CIA’s internal structure, creating a group called “Persia House,” for example, to pool resources on Iran.

The CIA’s influence extends across the DIA’s ranks. Flynn, who became director in July, is a three-star Army general who worked closely with the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. His deputy, David R. Shedd, spent the bulk of his career at the CIA, much of it overseas as a spy.

…

By Greg Miller,December 01, 2012

Find this story at 1 December 2012

© 2012 The Washington Post

Pentagon reportedly planning to double size of its worldwide spy network

More than 1,600 new Defense Department agents will collect intelligence and report findings to CIA, said to be overstretched

The news is likely to heighten concerns about the accountability of the US military amid concerns about the CIA’s drone programme. Photograph: US navy/Reuters

The US military plans to send hundreds more spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan that will more than double the size of its espionage network, it was reported Sunday.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon’s military intelligence unit, is aiming to recruit 1,600 intelligence “collectors” – up from the several hundred overseas agents it has employed in recent years, sources told The Washington Post.

Combined with the enormous growth in the CIA since 9/11 attacks, the recruitment drive will create an unprecedented spy network. “The stars have been aligning on this for a while,” an anonymous former senior US military official involved in planning the DIA transformation told the Post.

The news is likely to heighten concerns about the accountability of the US military’s clandestine programmes amid mounting concerns about the CIA-controlled drone programme.

The United Nations said last month that it intends to investigate civilian deaths from drone strikes. The US has refused to even acknowledge the existence of a drone programme in Pakistan. The US military is not subject to the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA, creating yet more potential controversies.

With the US pulling out of Afghanistan and operations in Iraq winding down, government officials are looking to change the focus of the DIA away from battlefield intelligence and to concentrate on gathering intelligence on issues including Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons trades in North Korea and Iran, and the military build up in China.

“It’s the nature of the world we’re in,” said the senior defense official, who is involved in overseeing the changes at the DIA. “We just see a long-term era of change before things settle.”

The DIA’s new recruits would include military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But US officials told the Post that the growth will be driven a new generation of spies who will take their orders from the Department of Defense.

The DIA is increasingly recruiting civilians to fill out its ranks as it looks to place agents as academics and business executives in militarily sensitive positions overseas.

Officials said the sheer number of agents that the DIA is looking to recruit presents its own challenge as the agency may struggle to find enough overseas vacancies for its clandestine agents. “There are some definite challenges from a cover perspective,” a senior defense official said.

…

Dominic Rushe in New York
The Guardian, Sunday 2 December 2012 17.03 GMT

Find this story at 2 December 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Cyber Corps program trains spies for the digital age At the University of Tulsa school, students learn to write computer viruses, hack digital networks and mine data from broken cellphones. Many graduates head to the CIA or NSA.

TULSA, Okla. — Jim Thavisay is secretly stalking one of his classmates. And one of them is spying on him.

“I have an idea who it is, but I’m not 100% sure yet,” said Thavisay, a 25-year-old former casino blackjack dealer.

Stalking is part of the curriculum in the Cyber Corps, an unusual two-year program at the University of Tulsa that teaches students how to spy in cyberspace, the latest frontier in espionage.

Students learn not only how to rifle through trash, sneak a tracking device on cars and plant false information on Facebook. They also are taught to write computer viruses, hack digital networks, crack passwords, plant listening devices and mine data from broken cellphones and flash drives.

It may sound like a Jason Bourne movie, but the little-known program has funneled most of its graduates to the CIA and the Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which conducts America’s digital spying. Other graduates have taken positions with the FBI, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security.

The need for stronger cyber-defense — and offense — was highlighted when Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned in an Oct. 11 speech that a “a cyber-terrorist attack could paralyze the nation,” and that America needs experts to tackle the growing threat.

“An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals,” Panetta said. “They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”

Panetta said the Pentagon spends more than $3 billion annually for cyber-security. “Our most important investment is in skilled cyber-warriors needed to conduct operations in cyberspace,” he said.

That’s music to the ears of Sujeet Shenoi, a naturalized citizen from India who founded the cyber program in 1998. He says 85% of the 260 graduates since 2003 have gone to the NSA, which students call “the fraternity,” or the CIA, which they call “the sorority.”

Shenoi subjects his students to both classroom theory and practical field work. Each student is assigned to a Tulsa police crime lab on campus and uses digital skills to help uncover evidence — most commonly child pornography images — from seized devices. Several students have posed as children online to lure predators. In 2003, students helped solve a triple homicide by cracking an email account linking the perpetrator to his victims.

“I throw them into the deep end,” Shenoi said. “And they become fearless.”

The Secret Service has also tapped the Cyber Corps. Working from a facility on campus, students help agents remove evidence from damaged cellphones, GPS units and other devices.

“Working alongside U.S. Secret Service agents, Tulsa Cyber Corps students have developed techniques for extracting evidence from burned or shattered cellphones,” Hugh Dunleavy, who heads the Secret Service criminal division, said in a written statement. More than 5,000 devices have been examined at the facility, he added.

In 2007, California’s secretary of state, Debra Bowen, hired the University of California to test the security of three electronic voting systems used in the state, and Shenoi and several students joined one of the “red” teams assigned to try to hack the voting machines. They succeeded. One of the students, who now works at the NSA, showed that someone could use an off-the-shelf device with Bluetooth connectivity to change all the votes in a given machine, Shenoi said.

“All our results were provided to the companies so they could fix the machines to the extent possible,” Shenoi said.

In May, the NSA named Tulsa as one of four national centers of academic excellence in cyber-operations. The others were Northeastern University in Boston, Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and Dakota State University in Madison, S.D.

“Tulsa students show up to NSA with a lot of highly relevant hands-on experience,” said Neal Ziring, a senior NSA official who visited the school recently to consult about the curriculum and to interview students for jobs and internships. “There are very few schools that are like Tulsa in terms of having participation with law enforcement, with industry, with government.”

Shenoi’s students have ranged in age from 17 to 63. Many are retired from the military, or otherwise starting second careers. They are usually working toward degrees in computer science, engineering, law or business. About two-thirds get a cyber-operations certification on their diplomas, or what Shenoi calls a “cyber-ninja” designation “because they have to be super techie.”

To be accepted into the corps, applicants must be U.S. citizens with the ability to obtain a security clearance of “top secret” or higher. But not all of them spend their careers in government.

One former student, Philip McAllister, worked after graduation at the Naval Research Laboratory, which does scientific research and development for the Navy and Marines. He later moved to San Francisco and worked at several startup companies before he joined Instagram, which developed a photo-sharing mobile application, early this year. Facebook purchased Instagram, which had only 13 employees, for $1 billion three months later.

“Sujeet gets incredibly talented people,” said Richard “Dickie” George, who retired last year after a three-decade career at the NSA.

…

November 22, 2012|By Ken Dilanian, Washington Bureau

Find this story at 22 November 2012

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

Copyright 2012 Los Angeles Times

The school that trains cyber spies: U.S. university training students in online espionage for jobs in the NSA and CIA

University of Tulsa’s Cyber Corps programme is training students to write viruses, hack networks, crack passwords and mine data
The little known course has been named as one of four ‘centres of excellence’ and places 85 per cent of graduates with the NSA or CIA

Not your average student: The University of Tulsa is training students in the fundamentals of cyber-espionage, with many taking jobs in the CIA

A university is offering a two-year course in cyber-espionage, with recruits going on to jobs with the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Secret Service.

Students at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, are learning how to write computer viruses, hack networks, crack passwords and mine data from a range of digital devices.

The little-known Cyber Corps programme already places 85 per cent of its graduates with the NSA – known to students as ’the fraternity – or the CIA – which they call ’the sorority’.

Sujeet Shenoi, an Indian immigrant to the U.S., founded the programme at Tulsa’s Institute for Information Security in 1998 and continues to lead the teaching, the LA Times reported.

Students are taught with a mixture of classroom theory and practical field work, he said, with each assigned to a police crime lab on campus to apply their skills to help recover evidence from digital devices.

‘I throw them into the deep end,’ Mr Shenoi told the LA Times. ‘And they become fearless.’

Much of their work involves gathering evidence against paedophiles, with several students having posed as children on the internet to lure predators into stings.

But his students in 2003 also helped solve a triple murder case by cracking an email account that linked the killer with his victims and, working alongside the Secret Service, they have developed new techniques for extracting data from damged smartphones, GPS devices and other digital devices.

The NSA in May named Tulsa as one of four centres of academic excellence in cyber operations, alongside Northeastern University in Boston, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota.

Neal Ziring, a senior NSA official who visited the school recently, told LA Times: ‘Tulsa students show up to NSA with a lot of highly relevant hands-on experience.

‘There are very few schools that are like Tulsa in terms of having participation with law enforcement, with industry, with government.’

Centre of excellence: Tulsa was in May named by the NSA alongside four other schools as important centres for training cyber-security operatives
WIRETAPPING THE INTERNET

New eavesdropping technology could allow government agencies to ‘silently record’ conversations on internet chat services like Skype in real time.

Until now, so called voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services have been difficult for police to tap into, because of the way they send information over the web.

The services convert analogue audio signals into digital data packets, which are then sent in a way that is costly and complex for third parties to intercept.

But now a California businessman has obtained a patent for a ‘legal intercept’ technology he says ‘would allow governments to “silently record” VoIP communications’.

Dennis Chang, president of VoIP-PAL, an chat service similar to Skype, claims his system would allow authorities to identify and monitor suspects merely by accessing their username and subscriber data.

Applicants to Tulsa’s programme, who have ranged in age from 17 to 63, must be U.S. citizens eligible for security clearance of ’top secret’ or higher.

Many are military veterans or others looking to start second careers, usually people who are working towards degrees in computer science, engineering, law or business.

…

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 09:41 GMT, 26 November 2012 | UPDATED: 14:15 GMT, 26 November 2012

Find this story at 26 November 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

LSD trial man Frank Olson ‘killed’ by CIA, sons say

Frank Olson’s sons claim their father was killed by the CIA

Did the CIA spread LSD?

The sons of a CIA scientist who unwittingly took LSD and fell to his death in 1953 have sued the government, saying the CIA killed their father.

Eric and Nils Olson claim their father, Frank Olson, was pushed out of a 13th-floor hotel window, days after he was given LSD in a mind-control experiment.

They claim the bio-weapons expert had doubts after seeing interrogations with biological tools he had helped develop.

The intelligence agency has always maintained Olson jumped to his death.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington DC on Wednesday.
Extreme interrogation

The Olson family received a compensation package from the government during reforms of the intelligence agency in the 1970s, after the CIA acknowledged that Olson had been given LSD nine days before his death.

The agency said at the time that Olson died after leaping from a Manhattan hotel window, but his family believes he was killed by the CIA to keep secret information about disturbing operations he had uncovered.

In 1953 Olson travelled to Europe and saw biological and chemical weapons research facilities there.

The lawsuit alleges that Olson witnessed extreme interrogations there, some resulting in deaths, in which the CIA had used biological agents he helped develop.

Olson had been a bioweapons expert based at a military biological weapons research centre in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

29 November 2012 Last updated at 18:01 GMT

Find this story at 29 November 2012

BBC © 2012 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

THE OLSON FILE: A secret that could destroy the CIA

Dr. Frank Olson’s life was a mystery, full of dubious experiments for the CIA, and unexplained trips to Porton Down. His death, in 1953, was stranger still. Was it suicide? A failed exercise in brainwashing? Or murder? And what did he know that made his death so convenient? Next week, a grand jury may finally hear the truth about the Cold War’s darkest Secret.
Published in Night and Day magazine, the Sunday supplement to The London Mail on Aug 23, 1998.

Reprinted June 12, 1999 in Dagens Nyheter, largest newspaper in Sweden. Used here with permission of the authors.

In the early hours of 28 November 1953, Armand Pastore, the night manager of the Statler Hotel, New York, was startled to hear a crash of breaking glass and then a sickening thump on the pavement outside his hotel. He rushed out to find a middle-aged man lying semi-conscious on the ground.

Pastore looked up to see light shining from a shattered window of a room on the hotel‚s thirteenth floor. He knelt down alongside the man, cradled his head in his arms and leaned closer as the man made an effort to speak, then died. He had obviously jumped out of the window, just another suicide in a city where the plunge from skyscraper to pavement was a shocking but not unusual event.

Suicide was certainly the finding at the inquest—Dr Frank Olson, a United States Army scientist, for reasons no one could fathom, had taken his own life. And that was what the record showed for the next twenty-two years.

Then in 1975 the Rockefeller Commission, set up by President Ford to examine the extent of the CIA‚s illegal domestic operations, revealed that an unnamed army scientist had died after CIA experts, experimenting with mind-bending drugs, had secretly slipped him a dose of potent LSD. During the ensuing uproar, the scientist was identified as Frank Olson.

The US government moved immediately to show how sorry it was for what had happened. Congress passed a private humanitarian relief bill which authorised a payment of $750,000 to the widow, Mrs Olson, and her three children. Mrs Olson and her son Eric were invited to the White House where President Ford publicly apologised to them. And the then CIA director, William Colby, held a lunch for Mrs Olson and Eric in his office at the CIA, apologised and gave them the CIA file on the case.

According to the file, Olson had suffered a “chemically-induced psychotic flashback” a week after he had been slipped the dose of LSD. So a CIA doctor, Richard Lashbrook, had been deputed to look after Olson until he was normal again. Lashbrook had been sharing the hotel room with Olson and was asleep in a bed next to him when, he said, he was awoken by the sound of breaking glass and realised that Olson had crashed through the window.

Eric, who is now 54,was never very convinced by this version of events but kept quiet so as not to distress his mother. Then when she died in 1994 he decided to test the official story of his father’s death. Experts told him that in order to achieve the momentum needed to vault over a central heating radiator under the window, burst through the closed blinds and smash through the hotel’s heavy glass panes, Olson would have had to struck the window travelling at more than 30km per hour. A trained athlete takes about fifty metres to accelerate to that speed. But the hotel room was only 5.5 metres long.

Next there was Dr. Lashbrook‚s strange behaviour when the hotel manager Pastore arrived in the room to tell him that his colleague was dead on the pavement below. Lashbrook went to the telephone, rang a number and simply said, “Olson’s gone”. Then he hung up and retired to the bathroom where he sat on the lavatory with his head in his hands.

Eric Olson, a Maryland clinical psychologist, began to spend every spare moment trying to get at the true story of what had happened to his father. Today he is convinced he is on the brink of doing so. But the story is so strange, so reminiscent of the TV series “The X-Files,” that despite compelling evidence, it is uncertain that anyone will believe it.

THE TERMS of the $750,000 government settlement for Olson‚s death prevented his family from pursuing the matter in the civil courts. But if Eric Olson could convince the authorities that his father’s death was a criminal matter, then he might eventually get at the truth. Four years ago he had his first breakthrough when he won a court order to exhume his father’s body.

“When he was buried the coffin had been sealed. They said he had been so badly mutilated in the fall that it wouldn’t be right for the family to see him. But when we opened the casket a lifetime later, I knew Daddy at once. He had been embalmed and his face was unmarked and untroubled. He hadn‚t been hurt the way they said he had.”

A new autopsy confirmed Eric Olson’s impression and entirely contradicted the findings of the first inquest. Carried out by a team led by James Starrs, Professor of Law and Forensic Science at The National Law Centre, George Washington University, it could find no sign of the cuts and abrasions that the first autopsy said had been caused by crashing through the window glass.

On the other hand, there was a haematoma, unrecorded at the first post mortem examination, on the left hand side of Olson’s skull. This had been caused by a heavy blow, James Starrs decided, probably from a hammer, before the fall from the window. Starrs and his team concluded that the evidence from their examination was “rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide.”

Although the team did not say so—because it could be only supposition—someone had struck Olson on the head with a hammer, smashed open the window, probably with the same hammer, and had then thrown Olson out. But the new autopsy findings were certainly enough for a New York public prosecutor, Stephen Saracco, to win the right for a grand jury to begin hearing the evidence he had uncovered. If the jury, too, found the evidence of murder compelling, then Saracco requested that it should hand down indictments for murder and conspiracy to murder.

Saracco, an ambitious, aggressive lawyer with no fear about taking on the American establishment, says that the men he wants named in the indictments will include some of America’s most respected CIA veterans and, if the grand jury agrees to his request to widen his investigations, former officers of the British Secret Intelligence and Security Services as well.

Already there are indications that the international intelligence community is running scared. The CIA and the Department of Justice have resisted Saracco ’s attempts to subpoena Dr. Lashbrook, who now lives in California, to question him, among other things, about Olson’s last hours, the telephone call that Lashbrook made immediately after Olson’s death and the work that Lashbrook and Olson had been engaged in together.

Early in July, after months of negotiation, the two government departments gave in and agreed that the grand jury should hear Saracco’s team examine Lashbrook at Venture County Courthouse during the week beginning 24 August. Saracco has already offered Lashbrook immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony. He was too late, however, to do the same for William Colby, the CIA chief who apologised for Olson’s death.

On 27 April 1996, after Saracco won the right to a grand jury hearing, Colby who realised that he would be forced to give evidence, vanished from his country retreat about forty miles south of Washington. It looked as if he had left in a hurry: the lights and the radio were still on, his computer was still running, and a half finished glass of wine was on the table. The next day his empty canoe was found swamped on a sand bar. Five days later divers found a body identified as Colby’s. He had apparently been the victim of a boating accident.

If so, it would appear that Maryland waters are particularly unkind to retired members of the CIA. In 1978 another CIA officer, John Paisley, also vaanished there in another boating accident. A week after Paisley‚s abandoned boat was located, a body with a gunshot wound to the head was found. But the condition of the body meant that precise identification was impossible—making the area a conspiracy blackspot.

Suppose the grand jury does in the end find that the evidence that Olson was murdered and that the perpetrators were other CIA officers, there will still remain a major barrier to an eventual conviction–what was the motive? What was so sensitive to the CIA that it would kill one of its own? To find an answer we have to go back to the fifties when the two great ideologies of the 20th century, communism and capitalism, were locked in a battle to the death and no act no matter how morally shocking was ruled out in the struggle for victory.

THE NUCLEAR stand-off of the Cold War had sent both sides back to their drawing boards. If it were impossible to employ nuclear weapons without assuring mutual total destruction, what other weapons could the boffins come up with—given virtually unlimited funds and no moral restraints—that would win any future war? Two possibilities attracted attention. The first was bacteriological warfare.

Bacteriological warfare is remarkably cheap; it has been described as “the poor man‚s nuclear bomb.” A deadly virus sufficient to wipe out every living person over an area of one square mile would cost only about $50. In the 1950s both sides in the Cold War set up research establishments to develop biological weapons, methods of delivering them, and methods of protecting against them. Dr. Frank Olson worked in this area.

Trained as a biochemist, he had been employed since 1943 in the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland, was associated with a CIA secret research unit known at the time as MK-ULTRA, and came to Britain frequently between 1950-53 to work at the British Microbiological Research Establishment (MRE) at Porton Down. Olson was part of a team which was developing aerosol delivery systems for biological weapons that included staphylococcus enterotoxin, Venezuelan equine encephalo- myelitis, and anthrax. Olson seems to have concentrated on counter- biological warfare, trying to find vaccines and special clothing that would protect against attack.

Deadly effective though it may be, biological warfare has drawbacks. There is always the risk that it may get out of control and attack not only the enemy but those who decided to employ it in the first place. Like nuclear warfare, biological warfare could wipe out civilisation as we know it. So Olson and some of his colleagues became intrigued by another type of weapon altogether, one which attacked not the body but the mind.

Those scientists in the Western intelligence community who supported the idea of developing brain-washing programmes had two gurus—Dr Douglas Ewan Cameron, a Glasgow-born psychiatrist, and Dr. Sydney “The Gimp” Gottlieb, the CIA‚s top expert on brainwashing. Cameron won his post-graduate diploma in psychiatric medicine at the University of London before joining the staff at John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, in 1926. He became convinced that the mentally ill posed a grave threat to Anglo-American civilisation and should be forcibly sterilised.

During the Second World War he was a member of the Military Mobilization Committee of the American Psychiatric Association and was appalled to learn that of the fifteen million men inducted into the US armed forces, two million had to be rejected on neuropsychiatric grounds, a proportion far higher than in any other nation. He set about finding remedies including electroshock (60,000 ECTs in a single year), lobotomies and other forms of psychosurgery, sensory deprivation and mind-altering drugs–all used on patients who had little or no say in their treatment. Conscientious objectors, many of them Quakers, were defined by Cameron as mentally-ill and sometimes forced to accept treatment.

When the end of the war revealed that the Nazis had been carrying out similar experiments—23 German doctors were convicted at Nuremberg—the Western intelligence community suddenly became very interested in Cameron’s work. This interest grew to an obsession after the Stalin show trials with the robotic, apparently artificially-induced confessions made by the accused. Then the behaviour of American POWs held in Chinese camps during the Korean War and their subsequent denunciation of the American way of life, futher convinced the CIA that the communists were already well advanced in mind control techniques. In intelligence circles there were rumours of a Soviet plot to place brain-washed zombies in the White House and other citadels of Western power.

The American response was MK-ULTRA. Its director, Dr. Gottleib, sought help from his Scottish hero, Cameron, and set him up with cover organisations to distance the CIA from some of the more abbhorent aspects of MK-ULTRA‚s work. So Cameron founded the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, ran a proprietary company called Psychological Assessment Associates, and contributed papers to learned journals on “Psychic Driving”, “The Restructuring of the Personality” and “Suggestion and Extra-Sensory Perception.”

The short term goals were to counter any communist plot to insert brain-washed assassins into the West. However, according to authors Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennett, biographers of Nelson Rockefeller—one-time chairman of a committee overseeing the MK-ULTRA operation—the scientists also wanted to find drugs or techniques by which “a man could be surreptitiously drugged through the medium of an alcoholic cocktail at a social party . . . and the subject induced to perform the act of attempted assassination of an official in a government in which he was well-established socially and politically.”

A far-fetched ides, perhaps, but one whose currency was not limited to the CIA. A few years later, the surreptitious administration of a mind-altering drug in a drink at a party was suggested as a possible solution to a strange double death in Sidney, Australia. On the morning of January 1, 1963, Dr. Gilbert Bogel, and his lover, Mrs. Margaret Chandler, were found dead on a river bank after a riotous party given by staff of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. Bogle, a brilliant scientist, had told friends that he was about to go to the US to work on scientific research of great military importance. The deaths were never solved, but Sydney detectives became convinced that Bogle and his colleagues had been experimenting with LSD and the effect it produced on their thought-processes—the invitation to the New Year’s party required each guest to bring a painting done under the influenced of the drug—and their either by accident or by design someone had slipped the couple what turned out to be an overdose.

Repeated requests to the BBI under the Freedom of Information Act asking for details of the work that Boigle would have been doing in the US have met with refusal on the grounds of national security. But the speculation is irresistible that it might have involved experiments in mind control similar to those that Olson had worked on.

The long-term aim of these experiments with mind-altering drugs is thought by those who have studied the MK-ULTRA programme to have been to ensure the dominance of Anglo-American civilisation in the “war of all against all—the key to evolutionary success.” Brain-washing would be used not only to defeat the enemy but to ensure compliance and loyalty of one’s own population.

Where did Dr. Olson fit into all this? A Harley Street psychiatrist, Dr. William Sargant, now dead, was sent by the British goverment in the early 1950s to evaluate MK-ULTRA. On his return he told a colleague and friend, former BBC television producer, Gordon Thomas, that what Cameron and Gottlieb were up to was as bad as anything going on in the Soviet gulags.

Thomas, whose books include a 1988 study of the CIA’s forays into mind-control, Journey into Madness: Medical Torture and the Mind Controllers, says “Sargant told me that he had urged the British government to distance this country from it. He said it was blacker than black.” According to Thomas, Sargant told him that Frank Olson had come to Britain between 1950-53 to work on attachment at Porton Down and had also made frequent visits to “an intelligence facility” in Sussex. This is confirmed by entries in the special passport that Olson used.

The stamps on the passport, which declare that the bearer was on “official business for the Department of the Army” indicate a pattern of travel that took Olson between various British military airfields, France, Occupied Germany, Scandanavia and the United States between May 1950 and August 1953. Prosecuting attorney Saracco believes that something happened on one of these trips that holds the key to Olson’s death. Since the matter is still before a grand jury Saracco cannot talk about it but Gordon Thomas has his own idea of what it was. “The CIA was using German SS prisoners and Norwegian Quislings [collaborators] taken from jails and detention centres as guinea pigs to test Cameron’s theories about mind control. The agency preferred to conduct such clinical trials outside the United States because sometimes they were terminal—the human guinea pig ended up dead. Olson was accustomed to seeing lethal experiments done on animals but when human beings were used in this way it was too much for him. I believe that he wanted out.”

Mike Miniccino, an American businessman and historical researcher who has spent 25 years studying the MK-ULTRA programme and developing a database on its activities says that if Olson expressed doubts about MK-ULTRA and its work then he would have done so to William Sargant, the Harley Street psychiatrist, who had evaluated MK-ULTRA‚s work and who had been a close colleague of Olson’s.

And although—as we already know—Sargant wanted the British government to distance itself from the CIA’s work with MK-ULTRA, Miniccino says he nevertheless was committed to the principle of mind control and became the link between the British Secret Intelligence Service and MK-ULTRA. Miniccino adds, “So if Frank Olson expressed serious doubts about the MK-ULTRA project to Sargant, then he signed his own death warrant.”

What Miniccino is implying and what public prosecutor Saracco wants to prove is that the MK-ULTRA mind control project—with its clinical trials on unsuspecting human beings—was such a sensitive issue with the western intelligence community that it would go to any lengths to prevent an insider like Olson, from blowing the whistle.

Is this, then, what happened? Did Olson tell the British psychiatrist/SIS agent Sargant that he wanted out of the mind-control project, and that his conscience might compel him to reveal publicly what the intelligence services had been doing? Did Sargant then pass this on to SIS, who in turn told the CIA? Was a decision then taken to make certain that Olson never talked by destroying his memory with drugs and, when this failed, by murdering him and making it look like a suicide?

Apart from the evidence set out earlier, there is another compelling fact that supports this theory. Until Mrs Olson died in 1993, a regular visitor at her house was Olson’s former boss in Special Operations, Vincent Ruwet. Ruwet would spent long-daytime hours with Mrs Olson. The two would drink together at her house (Mrs. Olson became an alcoholic) while Ruwet listened to the problems she faced in bringing up her three fatherless children. Everyone considered him to be a sympathetic family friend. But newly-discovered documents reveal that Vincent Ruwet had been assigned by the CIA to “keep track of the wife.”. If Olson was a threat because of what he knew, and knowledge can be passed on, then the CIA would have to spy on all those who had been close to him in case he had told them the truth about MK-ULTRA? THE CIA has always maintained as a matter of historical record that it has never murdered an American citizen on American soil. If, as a result of Eric Olson’s persistence in trying to uncover what really happened to his father, and the investigating skills of public prosecutor Saracco, this turns out to be a lie, it could well be the beginning of the end of the agency.

Eric Olson says, “The Cold War is over and there are now ongoing national debates about the future of the CIA and about unethical medical testing on humans. My father’s case covers both. The use of hallucinogens, hypnosis, electroshock and other procedures in an attempt to control the way people behave was the CIA‚s equivalent of the Manhattan [atom bomb] Project. MK-ULTRA was secret, shocking and incredibly dangerous. They couldn‚t afford to take the risk of letting my father continue to be involved or, considering all he knew, allowing him to quit. So he was terminated instead. My father’s murder crossed a line in the sand which the U.S. government has always publicly respected. The guilty ones will not be allowed to get away with it.” Or as Fox Mulder would say, “The truth is out there.”

by Kevin Dowling and Phillip Knightley

Find this story at Frank Olson Legacy

CIA sued over 1950s ‘murder’ of government scientist plied with LSD

Frank Olsen’s family claim CIA threw him from a hotel window and covered up his death after he witnessed torture by agency operatives in Europe

CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The agency is being sued by the family of scientist Frank Olson, who died in 1953. Photograph: Dennis Brack/EPA/Corbis

The family of a US government scientist who fell to his death from a New York hotel window six decades ago have launched a lawsuit for damages against the CIA, alleging the agency was involved in his murder and a subsequent cover-up.

In one of the most notorious cases in the organisation’s history, bioweapons expert Frank Olson died in 1953, nine days after he was given LSD by agency officials without his knowledge.

In the lawsuit, filed in the US district court in Washington on Wednesday, Olson’s sons Eric and Nils claim their father was murdered after he witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA killed suspects using the biological agents he had developed.

The CIA has long denied any foul play, though it was forced to admit in 1975, more than 20 years after the death, that the scientist had been given LSD in a spiked glass of Cointreau. The agency, which originally told the family the death was a result of job-induced stress, has since maintained that it was a drug-induced suicide.

But in a statement on Wednesday, Eric Olson said: “The evidence shows that our father was killed in their custody. They have lied to us ever since, withholding documents and information, and changing their story when convenient.

“We were just little boys and they took away our lives – the CIA didn’t kill only our father, they killed our entire family again and again and again.”

The lawsuit alleges that even when the drug details emerged, the CIA embarked on a “multi-decade cover-up that continues to this day.”

Olson began work at the special operations division (SOP) of the army’s biological laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland in 1950. The CIA worked with the SOP researching biological agents and chemical weapons. In 1952 and 1953, he was focused on bioweapons that could be transmitted through the air, according to the lawsuit.

In the year of his death, Olson visited Porton Down, the UK’s biological and chemical warfare research centre in Wiltshire, as well as bases in Paris, Norway, and West Germany. During these trips, according to the family’s lawsuit, he “witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA committed murder using biological agents that Dr Olson had developed”.

The lawsuit gives no details of the deaths or where they occurred.

The family said Olson was disturbed by what he had seen and told his wife, Alice, he wanted to quit.

On 19 November 1953 he was taken to a secret meeting Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, where he was given the drink laced with LSD. On 24 November, according to the lawsuit, he told a colleague he wanted to resign.

But instead, on Thanksgiving weekend, he travelled to New York for a psychiatric evaluation and checked into the Statler Hotel. In the early hours of 28 November, he crashed through the window of the 13th-floor room he was sharing with a CIA doctor and plunged to his death in the street below.

The family lawsuit alleges that, immediately following his death, a person in Olson’s room made a phone call. The hotel operator overheard one party say “Well, he’s gone.” The person on the other end responded simply “That’s too bad.”

The role of LSD in the death only emerged in 1975 during a series of post-Watergate era disclosures about CIA abuses, which revealed programmes on brainwashing, mind control and other human experiments during the early days of the cold war. The Olson case became a symbol for reckless CIA behaviour and government secrecy.

Soon after the revelations, Gerald Ford apologised to the family for an experiment gone wrong, the CIA promised a “complete file” of documents into his death and they were awarded a financial settlement.

But his sons, who have spent much of their adult lives searching for answers in the case, say their questions have been met with cover-ups and lies ever since. Eric Olson said the CIA had refused to provide documents to the family as recently as last year.

Over the years, the Olson family has uncovered evidence they believe supports their theory. Olson’s body was exhumed in 1993 and a forensic scientist, James Starrs, concluded that he had probably been struck on the head and then thrown out of the window. Later, the New York district attorney conducted an investigation into his death which was inconclusive.

…

Karen McVeigh in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 November 2012 01.02 GMT

Find this story at 29 November 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Quantico psychiatrist: Bradley Manning’s pretrial confinement worse than death row

Protesters take action out in the cold rain at Bradley Manning’s November 27th hearing that addressed his unlawful pretrial punishment.

Ft. Meade, MD – Yesterday at Bradley Manning’s Article 13 hearing, professional military psychiatrist Captain Kevin Moore testified that Bradley Manning’s pretrial confinement conditions at Quantico military brig were worse than that of any other long-term pretrial prisoner he’d observed. He added that Bradley’s restrictive conditions, including being held in a 6×8 foot cell, having access to only 20 minutes of sunshine and exercise per day, and being deprived of basic items such as clothing and toilet paper for periods of time, were most comparable to yet still more severe than conditions of prisoners he’d observed on death row.

Bradley Manning’s case garnered considerable media buzz early in 2010 when it came to light that the UN and Amnesty International had initiated investigations into possibly illegal conditions of pretrial confinement at Quantico. Wednesday in court, two high-ranking military psychiatrists, Captain William Hoctor and Captain Moore, testified that the extent to which their recommendations were ignored by the Quantico Marine staff was unlike anything they had experienced elsewhere over a combined 30+ years of experience at various bases. Cpt. Hoctor went so far as to say that even at Guantanamo Bay his recommendations were implemented much faster than at Quantico. At Quantico, it would often take up to two weeks for the staff to implement his recommendations to change a prisoner’s status, in contrast with the few days it would take elsewhere. In PFC Manning’s case, the recommendations of both Cpt. Hoctor and Captain Moore to allow PFC Manning more exercise and downgrade him from Prevention-of-Injury (POI) status based on improved mental state was ignored over the course of many months.

Captain Hoctor said he became the angriest he’d been a long time when Quantico base commander Colonel Daniel Choike stated in a meeting that “Nothing’s going to change. He won’t be able to hurt himself. He’s not going to be able to get away, and our way of ensuring this is that he will remain on this status indefinitely.” During testimony on Tuesday, Col. Choike confirmed his position during that exchange. In reference to this statement, Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee member Jeff Paterson responded, “I think a reasonable person can see why PFC Manning was frustrated with these conditions. No matter what he did or how exemplary his behavior, the Col. had no intention of respecting his overall well-being and legal rights as a pretrial prisoner.”

While base commanders Col. Choike and Col. Robert Oltman testified that they believed brig staff acted in interest of PFC Manning’s safety, they both stated that the longest they had seen any other prisoner held at Quantico was 2 months. Additionally, they had both informed commanding officers that the Quantico brig was unsuitable for holding a prisoner longer than 90 days.

During his testimony, Psychiatrist Captain Moore indicated that he’d been trained in military interrogation, and that adverse mental side effects were to be expected in any prisoner held in such constrictive conditions for a long period of time. POI, the psychiatrists clarified, was typically a short-term status. In closing questions, defense attorney David Coombs asked Cpt. Hoctor how, in his professional psychiatric opinion, he would characterize an authority who chose to ignore or discount possible adverse effects when choosing a highly restrictive status such as POI for a long period of time. After a thoughtful look, Cpt. Hoctor replied the word he would choose is “callous.”

By Emma Cape. November 29th, 2012.

Find this story at 29 November 2012

WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning gives evidence for first time

 

Manning takes stand at pre-trial hearing and speaks at length about his treatment by the military following his arrest in 2010

Bradley Manning steps out of a security vehicle as he is escorted into the courthouse in Fort Meade, Maryland. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

After 917 days in military captivity, the world finally heard on Thursday from Bradley Manning, the army soldier accused of being the source of the largest leak of government secrets in US history.

In a dramatic opening half-hour of testimony on the third day of the pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade military base in Maryland, Manning spoke at length for the first time about the period after his arrest in May 2010.

Manning detailed the trauma he experienced at the hands of the US military while he was incarcerated for having allegedly handed hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.

His defence lawyer, David Coombs, drew a life-sized representation on the courtroom floor of the 6ft by 8ft cell in which Manning was held at the Quantico base in Virginia after he was brought to the US.

Manning seemed initially nervous but relaxed into his subject. He described a breakdown he had in Kuwait in the days after his arrest. “I was in a pretty stressed situation,” Manning said. “I had no idea what was going on with anything. I was getting very little information.

“I began to really deteriorate. I was anxious all the time about not knowing anything, days blend into night, night into days. Everything became more insular.”

Manning described how his guards stopped taking him out of his cell, preventing any interaction with other detainees. “I didn’t have a good understanding of the reasons. Someone tried to explain to me but I was a mess. I was starting to fall apart.”

He claimed that two or three times a day his guards would give him a “shakedown”. This involved taking him out the cell, then tearing apart everything he had in the cell.

Coombs asked Manning whether he had any recollection of an incident on 30 June 2010, when he had lost control of himself to the extent that doctors had to intervene. “He was screaming, babbling, banging his head against the cell,” said Coombs.

Manning replied: “I knew I had just fallen apart, everything is foggy and hazy at that point.”

The soldier said he thought he would die in Kuwait. “I remember thinking I’m going to die. I thought I was going to die in a cage,” he told the hearing.

A few weeks later, on 29 July, Manning was transferred from Kuwait to Quantico marine base in Virginia. “I had no idea where I was going,” said Manning, who thought he might be taken to Germany. “I was very scared, I had no idea.”

On board the plane, he was placed in full restraint. “The captain went over the intercom, ‘We’ll be arriving in Germany’,” he said. After an hour and a half on the ground, Manning was put back on the plane. Only when the crew announced they were going to Baltimore did Manning discover he was being returned to the US.

That made him feel better, he said. “I didn’t think I would set foot on American soil for a long time.”

Coombs told how conditions in Quantico were tough, however. He drew a life-size representation of the cell on the floor of the court, and asked Manning to step into it, to recreate his conditions. Manning told how he could see a reflection of a skylight through a small gap in the cell door if he angled his head in a particular direction.

Earlier, before Manning took the stand, the military judge accepted the terms under which he would enter a guilty plea to seven charges for disseminating classified documents.

Colonel Denise Lind approved the language of the offences to which Manning would admit. She said those carry a total maximum prison term of 16 years.

…

Ed Pilkington at Fort Meade, Maryland
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 November 2012 21.12 GMT

Find this story at 29 November 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Intelligence officials edited talking points on Libya attack; Intelligence officers, with CIA input, removed the terms ‘attack, ‘Al Qaeda’ and ’terrorism’ from the Benghazi talking points used by Susan Rice, an official says.

WASHINGTON — Authorities with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the CIA, decided to remove the terms “attack,” “Al Qaeda” and “terrorism” from unclassified guidance provided to the Obama administration several days after militants attacked the U.S. mission in Benghazi, a senior official said Tuesday.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, relied on the so-called talking points when she appeared on several Sunday TV talk shows five days after the Sept. 11 attacks in eastern Libya. She asserted that the violence, which killed four Americans, erupted out of a protest over a film made in the U.S. that mocked Islam.

Critics accused Rice and other administration officials of twisting the intelligence for political reasons when it later emerged that the CIA had concluded that the lethal assault involved militants, some of whom had links to Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate. The White House has argued that Rice was relying on information provided by the CIA and other agencies and didn’t deviate from it.

U.S. intelligence officials supported the administration claims Tuesday, contending that language in the talking points was changed by intelligence officers to protect information that was classified at the time.

“Early drafts of the talking points included several analytic judgments that were debated and adjusted during the internal intelligence community coordination process,” said the senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue involved classified material. “The adjustments were focused on producing talking points that provided the best information available at the time, protected sensitive details and reflected the evolving nature of rapidly incoming intelligence.”

Officials at the CIA and at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by James R. Clapper, “were all communicating on an email chain, which is normal in our coordination process,” the official said. “Suggestions were being made and implemented in a collaborative manner.”

The CIA drafted the initial talking points, and they were not “edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack,” said a second U.S. official familiar with how the material was edited.

David H. Petraeus, the former CIA director, told the House and Senate intelligence committees in closed hearings Friday that he believed almost immediately that the Benghazi assault was an organized terrorist attack, according to lawmakers who attended the hearings. But he said the CIA initially withheld reports that extremists with links to Al Qaeda were involved to avoid tipping off the terrorists.

Petraeus also said some early classified reports supported the possibility that some attackers were motivated by violent protests in Cairo earlier that day over the anti-Islam video.

When the CIA drafted language that Rice could use for her TV appearances, it circulated the language to officials at Clapper’s office, which has a supervisory role in the intelligence community. In the editing process, the word “attack” was changed to “demonstration,” and the phrase “with ties to Al Qaeda” was removed, officials said. The word “terrorism” also was removed.

If intelligence professionals were responsible for the changes, it might dispel charges from some Republicans that political operatives at the White House had manipulated the narrative to downplay the possibility of an Al Qaeda attack when the Obama administration was campaigning on its successes in degrading the terrorist group.

One of the most vocal critics, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said he was “somewhat surprised and frustrated” Tuesday after CBS broke the news.

…

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

By Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

12:26 AM PST, November 21, 2012

Find this story at 21 November 2012

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Petraeus affair: Agent Shirtless, FBI man who sparked inquiry, is named

Frederick W Humphries II unmasked as investigator who was banned from case because of relationship with Jill Kelley

Jill Kelley complained to FBI agent Frederick Humphries about threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, who had an affair with David Petraeus. Photograph: Chris O’Meara/AP

The FBI agent who set in motion the investigation that brought down David Petraeus as CIA director, but was ordered to stay away from the case because of his alleged infatuation with a woman who prompted the inquiry, has been identified as a veteran terrorism investigator, Frederick W Humphries II.

The New York Times revealed the agent’s name and reported that his colleagues described him as having “conservative political views and a reputation for aggressiveness”.

Before his name was made public, Humphries had been dubbed Agent Shirtless after it was revealed that he once sent a topless picture of himself to Jill Kelley. Kelley’s subsequent complaint to Humphries about harassing emails from Petraeus’s mistress, Paula Broadwell, set in motion the investigation that forced the CIA director from office.

Humphries, a former military intelligence officer in the US army, is himself under internal investigation. The FBI ordered him to stay away from the Petraeus case, which did not fall within his expertise, because of his close ties to Kelley. Last month Humphries revealed the Petraeus probe to members of Congress because he said he was concerned about a cover-up. But the move could be seen as political with the potential to embarrass the president ahead of last week’s election.

“Fred is a passionate kind of guy,” a former colleague told the New York Times. “He’s kind of an obsessive type. If he locked his teeth on to something he’d be a bulldog.”

Lawrence Berger, general counsel for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, spoke to Humphries and then told the New York Times that he sent a shirtless picture of himself to Kelley in jest and that it was not sexual. “That picture was sent years before Ms Kelley contacted him about this, and it was sent as part of a larger context of what I would call social relations in which the families would exchange numerous photos of each other,” Berger said.

Humphries shot dead a soldier at MacDill air force base, home of the US military’s central command where he became friends with Kelley, in 2010. The FBI agent, who was off duty at the time, killed an army veteran, Ronald Bullock, who confronted him with a knife while trying to flee the base after a confrontation with security officials. Humphries was cleared in a subsequent investigation that found he “operated within the scope of the FBI’s deadly force policy”.

Humphries has been involved in a number of terrorism investigations including one involving Abu Hamza al-Masri who was extradited from Britain to the US in October on charges of involvement with al-Qaida and planning to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon.

…

Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 November 2012 03.00 GMT

Find this story at 15 November 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

David Petraeus denies classified leaks ahead of Benghazi testimony

 

Former CIA director insists no information was passed to Paula Broadwell as closed-door congressional hearing begins

David Petraeus resigned his post as CIA director after the FBI uncovered his extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Former CIA director David Petraeus has denied passing classified documents to his lover, Paula Broadwell, as the FBI investigation focuses on how the general’s biographer came to have restricted material on a personal computer and in her house.

Petraeus also told CNN that his resignation was solely the result of the affair and was not linked, as some Republicans have hinted, to the CIA’s role during the Benghazi attack in which the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans, including two CIA security men, were killed.

The CIA said it had opened an “exploratory” investigation into the conduct of Petraeus. “At the CIA we are constantly reviewing our performance. If there are lessons to be learned from this case, we’ll use them to improve,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement. “But we’re not getting ahead of ourselves; an investigation is exploratory and doesn’t presuppose any particular outcome.”

Petraeus has agreed to give evidence on Friday to congressional intelligence committees looking into the security failures around Stevens’ death, including allegations that the state department turned down appeals from US officials in Libya for more protection, and accusations that the CIA and other agencies failed to heed warning signs of an attack.

The closed-door hearings opened with appearances by Petraeus’s replacement, acting CIA director Michael Morell, and the national intelligence director, James Clapper.

CNN did not directly quote Petraeus. It said he had had a conversation with one of its reporters, Kyra Phillips, who has previously interviewed him. She said that although Petraeus was no longer formally required to testify to congressional intelligence committees about the Benghazi attack once he resigned as CIA director, he was keen to do so.

“He said this has nothing to do with Benghazi, and he wants to testify,” she said on CNN.

Petraeus’s affair prompted the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, to order a review of ethics training for military officers. The FBI is scrutinising classified material discovered in Broadwell’s house and on her computer. But Phillips said Petraeus denied giving secret documents to her.

The Pentagon withdrew Broadwell’s security clearance as a lieutenant colonel in the military intelligence reserve as the focus of the FBI investigation shifted to how she came to have classified documents. Her security clearance gave her access to “secret” and “top secret” material. However, it would not necessarily have permitted her to keep hold of it.

Concerns that Petraeus may have spoken to Broadwell about secret information were raised after it was revealed that in a speech at the University of Denver last month, Broadwell said the Benghazi attack on 11 September was prompted by the CIA holding militiamen prisoner there. The CIA has denied the claim.

The intelligence committees of both houses of Congress are keen to speak to Petraeus about what the CIA told the White House in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi attack as well as whether it had picked up warnings of an imminent assault and security failings.

…

Chris McGreal
The Guardian, Friday 16 November 2012

Find this story at 16 November 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Declassified: FBI Reveals How It Kept Tabs on Stalin’s Daughter After She Moved to Wisconsin

An undated photo shows Soviet dictator Josef Stalin with his daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva. Alliluyeva, who changed her name to Lana Peters. (AP Photo/Courtesy Icarus Films)

(TheBlaze/AP) — Newly declassified documents show the FBI kept close tabs on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s only daughter after her high profile defection to the United States in 1967, gathering details from informants about how her arrival was affecting international relations.

The documents were released Monday to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act following Lana Peters’ death last year at age 85 in a Wisconsin nursing home. Her defection to the West during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author. And her move was a public relations coup for the U.S.

One April 28, 1967, memo details a conversation with a confidential source who said the defection would have a “profound effect” for anyone else thinking of trying to leave the Soviet Union. The source claimed to have discussed the defection with a Czechoslovak journalist covering the United Nations and a member of the Czechoslovakia “Mission staff.”

“Our source opined that the United States Government exhibited a high degree of maturity, dignity and understanding during this period,” according to the memo, prominently marked “SECRET” at the top and bottom. “It cannot help but have a profound effect upon anyone who is considering a similar solution to an unsatisfactory life in a Soviet bloc country.”

Svetlana Alliluyeva, only daughter of late Russian dictator Josef Stalin, steps off a plane at Kennedy International Airport in New York on April 21, 1967 after defecting from the Soviet Union. Upon her arrival she said, “I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia.” (AP Photo)

When she defected, Peters was known as Svetlana Alliluyeva, but she went by Lana Peters following her 1970 marriage to William Wesley Peters, an apprentice of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Peters said her defection was partly motivated by the Soviet authorities’ poor treatment of her late husband, Brijesh Singh, a prominent figure in the Indian Communist Party.

“I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia,” she reportedly said upon arriving in the States.

Another memo dated June 2, 1967, describes a conversation an unnamed FBI source had with Mikhail Trepykhalin, identified as the second secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The source said Trepykhalin told him the Soviets were “very unhappy over her defection” and asked whether the U.S. would use it “for propaganda purposes.” Trepykhalin “was afraid forces in the U.S. would use her to destroy relationships between the USSR and this country,” the source told the FBI.

(Photo: AP)

An unnamed informant in another secret memo from that month said Soviet authorities were not disturbed by the defection because it would “further discredit Stalin’s name and family.”

Stalin, a dictator held responsible for sending millions of his countrymen to their deaths in labor camps, led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced him three years later as a brutal despot.

And even though Peters denounced communism and her father’s policies, Stalin’s legacy haunted her in the United States.

“People say, `Stalin’s daughter, Stalin’s daughter,’ meaning I’m supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans,” she said in a 2007 interview for a documentary about her life. “Or they say, `No, she came here. She is an American citizen.’ That means I’m with a bomb against the others. No, I’m neither one. I’m somewhere in between.”

Another FBI source, reporting on a 1968 May Day celebration in Moscow, said “the general feeling” is that she defected “because she was attracted by the material wealth in the United States.”

(Photo: AP)

George Kennan, a key figure in the Cold War and a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, advised the FBI that he and Alliluyeva were concerned Soviet agents would try to contact her, a December 1967 memo reveals. The memo notes that no security arrangements were made for Peters and no other documents in the file indicate that the KGB ever tracked her down.

Many of the 233 pages released to the AP were heavily redacted, with the FBI citing exemptions allowed under the law for concerns related to foreign policy, revealing confidential sources and releasing medical or other information that is a “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

Lana Peters is photographed on a rural road outside of Richland Center, Wis., in 2010. (Photo: AP)

An additional 94 pages were found in her file but not released because the FBI said they contain information involving other government agencies. Those pages remain under government review.

More than half of the pages released to AP were copies of newspaper articles and other media coverage of her defection.

…

Here is 1967 video of Peters speaking about her struggle with communism, and how, when she looked around her, the results weren’t as promised “theoretically.” She also denounced her father’s murderous actions, but said the regime and the “ideology” as a whole should be blamed:

Posted on November 19, 2012 at 11:24pm by Erica Ritz

Find this story at 19 November 2012

All information © 2012 TheBlaze LLC

FBI Releases Stalin’s Daughter Files

Josef Stalin’s only daughter, who went by the name of Lana Peters after marrying an American in 1970, died in a Wisconsin nursing home in 2011.

MADISON, Wisconsin — Newly declassified documents show the FBI kept close tabs on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s only daughter after her high-profile defection to the United States in 1967, gathering details from informants about how her arrival was affecting international relations.

The documents were released Monday to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act following Lana Peters’ death last year at age 85 in a Wisconsin nursing home. Her defection during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling Communists and made her a best-selling author. Her move was also a public relations coup for the U.S.

When she defected, Peters was known as Svetlana Alliluyeva, but she went by Lana Peters following her 1970 marriage to William Wesley Peters, an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright. Peters said her defection was partly motivated by the Soviet authorities’ poor treatment of her late husband, Brijesh Singh, a prominent figure in the Indian Communist Party.

George Kennan, a key figure in the Cold War and a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, advised the FBI that he and Alliluyeva were concerned Soviet agents would try to contact her, a December 1967 memo reveals. The memo notes that no security arrangements were made for Peters, and no other documents in the file indicate that the KGB ever tracked her down.

One memo dated June 2, 1967, describes a conversation an unnamed FBI source had with Mikhail Trepykhalin, identified as the second secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The source said Trepykhalin told him the Soviets were “very unhappy over her defection” and asked whether the U.S. would use it “for propaganda purposes.” Trepykhalin “was afraid forces in the U.S. would use her to destroy relationships between the U.S.S.R. and this country,” the source told the FBI.

An unnamed informant in another secret memo from that month said Soviet authorities were not disturbed by the defection because it would “further discredit Stalin’s name and family.”

Stalin, who was held responsible for sending millions of his countrymen to their deaths in labor camps, led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced him three years later as a brutal despot.

Even though Peters denounced communism and her father’s policies, Stalin’s legacy haunted her in the United States.

“People say, ‘Stalin’s daughter, Stalin’s daughter,’ meaning I’m supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans,” she said in a 2007 interview for a documentary about her life. “Or they say, ‘No, she came here. She is an American citizen.’ That means I’m with a bomb against the others. No, I’m neither one. I’m somewhere in between.”

Many of the 233 pages released to the AP were heavily redacted, with the FBI citing exemptions allowed under the law for concerns related to foreign policy, revealing confidential sources and releasing medical or other information that is a “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

An additional 94 pages were found in her file but not released because the FBI said they contain information involving other government agencies. Those pages remain under government review.

More than half of the pages released to AP were copies of newspaper articles and other media coverage of her defection.

…

FBI Releases Stalin’s Daughter Files
21 November 2012
The Associated Press

Find this story at 21 November 2012

© Copyright 2012. The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

Benghazi consulate that came under attack by Al Qaeda militants was being used for CIA operations

Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in a six-hour, commando-style attack on the US Mission on September 11
CIA Director David Petraeus did not attend the ceremony when the coffins arrived back in US to conceal the CIA operation in eastern Libya
Al Qaeda in North Africa and Islamist militia Ansar al-Sharia were implicated
Timeline of CIA involvement blows open the dramatic sequence of events, revealing that of 30 American officials there, 23 were with the CIA
CIA team had been operating out of a building known as ’the annex’, less than half a mile away from the consulate in central Benghazi
Timeline reveals heroic rescue effort by CIA team and the terrifying firefight they encountered

The CIA was operating a covert mission in the U.S. consulate in Libya when it came under attack by al Qaeda-linked militants on September 11, intelligent chiefs have admitted.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the six-hour, commando-style attack on the US Mission in the Libyan city, for which al-Qaeda and Islamist militia Ansar al-Sharia have been blamed.

The CIA made the revelation as it laid bare the heroic rescue by a handful of its agents in which they fought off wave after wave of mortar and rocket attacks with just their handguns as they sought to infiltrate the compound and shepherd its American staff to safety.

A timeline, released by the agency, has blown open the dramatic sequence of events, revealing for the first time that of the 30 American officials evacuated from the country following the deadly attack, just seven worked for the State Department.

Burning issue: Mr Stevens and three other Americans were killed in a six-hour, commando-style attack on the US Mission in Benghazi on September 11, for which Al Qaeda in North Africa and Islamist militia Ansar al-Sharia were implicated

The rest were part of a crack team of intelligence and security experts on a secret mission aimed at counterterrorism and securing heavy weapons held by the embattled regime.

They had been operating out of a building known as ’the annex’, around a mile away from the consulate in central Benghazi.

Intelligence officials told how when the annex received a call about the assault, about a half dozen members of a CIA security team tried to get heavy weapons and other assistance from the Libyans.

But with time running out, the team went ahead with the rescue attempt armed only with their standard-issue small arms.

Killed: Ambassador Christopher Stevens (left) died of smoke inhalation, while agent Sean Smith (right) died in a desperate battle with insurgents

Heroic: Former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty (left) and Tyrone Woods (right) were killed in a mortar attack

A fierce firefight ensued and the team managed to get into the consulate and shepherd its occupants back to the annex under constant attack from machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades.

‘The security officers in particular were genuine heroes,’ an official said. ‘They quickly tried to rally additional local support and heavier weapons, and when that could not be accomplished within minutes, they still moved in and put their own lives on the line to save their comrades.

‘At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could.’

The CIA revelations come after Barack Obama’s administration came under sharp attack over its handling of the incident amid claims Washington told officers on the ground to ‘stand down’ before the rescue took place.

Heroic: CIA agents engaged in a fierce firefight with heavily-armed insurgents at the consulate before shepherding its occupants to safety under constant attack from machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades

‘There was no second-guessing those decisions being made on the ground, by people at every U.S. organization that could play a role in assisting those in danger,’ the official added. ‘There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support.’

In the first days after the attack, various administration officials linked the Benghazi incident to the simultaneous protests around the Muslim world over an American-made film that ridiculed Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Only later did they publicly attribute it to militants, possibly linked to al-Qaeda, and acknowledged it was distinct from the film protests.

The changing explanations have led to suspicions that the administration didn’t want to acknowledge a terror attack on U.S. personnel so close to the Nov. 6 election, a charge Obama has strongly denied.

Inferno: Armed attackers dumped cans of diesel fuel and set ablaze the consulate’s exterior

Siege: The compound came under heavy mortar and gunfire during the attack, which lasted several hours

According to the timeline, around 9:40 p.m. Benghazi time, officials at the CIA’s relatively fortified and well-defended base in Benghazi got a call from State Department officials at the U.S. diplomatic mission about a mile away that the less-fortified public mission complex had come under attack from a group of militants.

Other official sources said that the initial wave of attacks on the diplomatic mission involved setting fires using diesel fuel.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS: HOW THE RESCUE OPERATION UNFOLDED

9.40pm – CIA officials in ‘The Annex’ get a distress call from the consulate saying they are under attack.

10.05pm – Armed only with handguns, team of about six CIA security officers leave their base for the public diplomatic mission compound.

10.30pm – With bullets whistling overhead, the CIA team move into the compound after unsuccessfully trying to get heavy weapons and help from local Libyan allies.

11.10pm – A Defense Department drone, which had been on an unrelated mission some distance away, arrived in Benghazi to help officials on the ground gather information.

11.30pm – U.S. personnel who had been working or staying at the mission all accounted for, except for Ambassador Stevens.

11.40pm – Driving back to the secure base, the evacuees come under further fire.

12am – The installation itself comes under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.

12am – A CIA security team based in Tripoli, which included two U.S. military officers, lands at Benghazi airport and begins plotting how to locate the missing ambassador.

1am – The patchy attacks on the base begin to die down after 90 minutes of fierce fighting.

4am – The reinforcements from Tripoli take a convoy of vehicles to the CIA base to prepare for evacuation.

4.30am – a fresh round of mortar attacks is launched on the base, killing two U.S. security officers.

5.30 – A heavily armed Libyan military unit arrive at the CIA base to help evacuate the compound of U.S. personnel to the Benghazi airport.

From 6am – Roughly 30 Americans, as well as the bodies of Stevens and the other three Americans killed during the attacks, were loaded on planes and flown out of the city, several U.S. officials said.

The dense smoke created by the fuel both made it hard for people at the compound to breathe and to organise a response to the attack.

About 25 minutes after the initial report came into the CIA base, a team of about six agency security officers left their base for the public diplomatic mission compound.

Over the succeeding 25 minutes, the CIA team approached the compound, and tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to get local Libyan allies to bring them a supply of heavier weapons, and eventually moved into the burning diplomatic compound, the intelligence official said.

At around 11:10 p.m., a Defense Department drone, which had been on an unrelated mission some distance away, arrived in Benghazi to help officials on the ground gather information.

By 11:30, U.S. personnel who had been working or staying at the mission had been rounded up except for Ambassador Stevens, who was missing, the intelligence official said.

When they tried to drive out of the diplomatic compound to return to the CIA base, however, the convoy carrying U.S. evacuees came under fire.

Once they got back to the CIA base, that installation itself came under fire from what the intelligence official described as small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.

These patchy attacks went on for roughly 90 minutes, the intelligence official said.

Around the same time, a CIA security team based in Tripoli, which included two U.S. military officers, landed at Benghazi airport. Upon its arrival, however, the team spent some time trying both to arrange local transport and to locate the missing Ambassador Stevens.

After some time trying to solve these problems, the security team that had flown in from Tripoli eventually arranged for an armed local escort and extra transportation, but decided not to go the hospital where they believed Stevens had been taken.

In part this was because they had reason to believe Stevens was likely dead, and because security at the hospital was believed, at best, to be ‘uncertain,’ the intelligence official said.

…

By Matt Blake

PUBLISHED: 12:11 GMT, 2 November 2012 | UPDATED: 17:16 GMT, 2 November 2012

Find this story at 2 November 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Newly released MI5 files include early Cold War diaries

Files from the Security Service (MI5) released to The National Archives today include the personal post-war diaries of Guy Liddell, then Deputy Director General of MI5.

Liddell’s diaries cover the period 1945 to 1953 and provide a fascinating new insight into the early Cold War era. Daily entries record Liddell’s impressions of key moments including the discovery in 1949 that the Soviet Union had tested its first atomic bomb, the uncovering of the spy Klaus Fuchs and the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.

During the Second World War, Liddell had been head of counter-espionage, and his wartime diaries were released to The National Archives in 2002 (KV 4/185-196).

This 29th release of Security Service records contains 77 files and brings the total number of Security Service records in the KV series at The National Archives to 5,003.

Liddell’s diaries are available to view online and will be free to download for one month. Professor Christopher Andrew, author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, has recorded a podcast about the new files.
Highlights

Other highlights from this release, available to view at Kew, include:
A ten-volume file on one of Britain’s leading Communist journalists, Sam Lesser, which covers his career from his time as a volunteer with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War to becoming the Daily Worker’s foreign correspondent and foreign editor at the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s (KV 2/3741-KV 2/3750)
Austro-German Prince Hubertus Lowenstein came to Britain after Hitler took power in Germany. An active, if eccentric, anti-Nazi he was anxious to build a Germany free from National Socialism and his personal ambition was said to be no less than the German throne (KV 2/3716)
Catholic priest Henry Borynski served in a largely Polish parish in Bradford in the early 1950s before his sudden and unexplained disappearance in 1953. There was initial speculation that he had been ‘kidnapped by Red Agents and taken behind the Iron Curtain’ but the case remains unsolved (KV 2/3722-KV 2/3724)

Find this story at 26 October 2012

Declassified spymaster’s diary reveals UK-US espionage tensions with ‘gangster’ Hoover

LONDON — Overstaffed, overconfident and all too often over here.

That’s how a top British spymaster saw his American counterparts at the FBI and CIA, according to newly declassified diaries from the years after World War II.

Friction between British spies and their American colleagues is a recurring theme in journals kept by Guy Liddell, the postwar deputy director of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5.

The diaries, published for the first time Friday by Britain’s National Archives, show Liddell was frustrated by FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover — “a cross between a political gangster and a prima donna” — and skeptical of the brand-new U.S. espionage service, the CIA.

“In the course of time … they may produce something of value,” Liddell wrote of the CIA in September 1947 after a meeting with its deputy director, Edwin Kennedy Wright.

“There is a great deal of ‘dissemination, evaluation and coordination,’ but of course the thing that really matters is whether they have anything that is worth disseminating, evaluating, or coordinating,” Liddell said.

Liddell also noted that Wright had told British intelligence officials that “in an American organization 500 people were employed to do what 50 people would do over here.”

Archives historian Stephen Twigge said the transatlantic relationship was marked by “a certain friction towards what the British might think of as the Johnny-come-latelies in the CIA.”

Britain and the U.S. were staunch wartime and Cold War allies, but the intelligence-sharing relationship was sometimes troubled. It reached a low ebb after the conviction in 1950 of Klaus Fuchs, a German-British nuclear scientist charged with passing atomic weapons secrets to the Soviet Union.

Hoover, outraged by the security lapse and angered that Britain would not let the Americans interview Fuchs in prison, threatened to cut off intelligence cooperation.

Liddell accused Hoover of “unscrupulous” behavior.

“Hoover, finding himself in something of a jam, is obviously taking British security for a ride … Hoover’s next move was to go before some other committee and say that the British made a muck of the Fuchs case,” he wrote.

Liddell called the American attitude “wholly wrong, stupid and unreasonable.”

“It merely shows how utterly incapable they are of seeing anybody’s point of view except their own, and that they are quite ready to cut off their noses to spite their faces!”

Twigge, however, said the Americans had a point — “half the British secret service turns out to have been penetrated by Soviet intelligence.”

The diaries cover a dark period for British intelligence, during which several senior agents were exposed as Soviet spies. Liddell was tainted by his friendship with Guy Burgess, one of the “Cambridge Spies” secretly working for the Russians.

The diaries show that Liddell doubted Burgess’ guilt. “My own view was that Guy Burgess was not the sort of person who would deliberately pass confidential information to unauthorized parties,” he wrote in 1950.

Liddell was shaken by the disappearance of Burgess and Donald Maclean, who defected to Moscow in 1951, and was himself questioned as a possible double agent. He retired from MI5 in 1953 and died of heart failure in 1958.

“As time has gone on it’s pretty apparent he wasn’t a Soviet agent,” Twigge said. “Just unlucky in his friends.”

A previous installment of Liddell’s diaries, covering World War II, was declassified in 2002.

The new volumes reveal the life of a postwar spymaster to be extremely varied. Liddell attended the Nuremberg trials of senior Nazis, where he saw figures including Hermann Goering — “one of the few who had much spunk left in him” — and Rudolf Hess, who “appeared to be entirely indifferent to the proceedings.”

Another entry recorded a briefing about a UFO sighting, of which Liddell was skeptical.

…

By Associated Press, Published: October 25

Find this story at 25 October 2012

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© The Washington Post Company

The Rendition Project

The Rendition Project is funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and accredited under the Global Uncertainties programme. It examines the ways in which the Bush administration developed a global system of detention sites, linked by the covert transfer of detainees across state borders. The system has, at its core, three interrelated practices which violate international law and human rights norms.

First, the secret detention of terror suspects, where the US and its allies have held people in undisclosed locations around the world. Not all detainees held in the ‘War on Terror’ have been held in secret, but those that have were denied access by third parties (such as lawyers, family members, or the International Committee of the Red Cross), with their fate and whereabouts, and even the very fact of their detention, remaining unacknowledged by the detaining authorities.

Second, the rendition of terror suspects between detention facilities in different parts of the world, where rendition refers to the extra-legal transfer of suspects across state borders. Although rendition has been used by the US in the past to bring suspects before the rule of law (so-called ‘rendition to justice’), in the ‘War on Terror’ these detainee transfers were designed specifically to keep suspects outside of the rule of law.

Third, the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of suspects during detention and transfer, including the use by US and allied forces of practices that amount to torture.

During the Bush administration, the secret detention of terror suspects took place within a network of US-run facilities, overseen by the Pentagon and CIA. Supplementing these were a series of pre-existing detention sites, centred in North Africa and the Middle East, which are run by foreign security forces known to regularly use torture, but to which the CIA had direct access. This form of ‘proxy detention’ can facilitate more extreme treatment of detainees, as the plausible deniability of US involvement in torture is easier to maintain.

Aims of the Project

The Rendition Project aims to analyse the emergence, development and operation of the global system of rendition and secret detention in the years since 9/11. In doing so, it aims to bring together as much of the publicly-available information as possible on the detainees who have been held in secret, the detention sites in which they have been held, and the methods and timings of their transfers.

With this data in place, we will seek to identify specific ‘key moments’ that have shaped the operation of rendition and secret detention, both regionally and in a global context. We are particularly interested in the contest between the executive, the judiciary, and the human rights community (comprising human rights lawyers, human rights NGOs, and some academics), over whether and how domestic and international law applies to those detainees held within the system. A key aim of the project is therefore to identify how rendition and secret detention have evolved within the context of this struggle to defend basic human rights.

The Rendition Project also examines the ways in which this system has evolved over time, including during the Obama administration. While President Obama has ordered the closure of CIA-run secret prisons (the so-called ‘black sites’), and revoked authorisation for use by US agents of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, many thousands of detainees in the ‘War on Terror’ continue to be held beyond the bounds of US and international law. Moreover, continued rendition and proxy detention have not been ruled out by the US Government, and may still form a central plank of counterterrorism policy.

Find this story at 2012

Delivered Into Enemy Hands

US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya

This report is based on interviews conducted in Libya with 14 former detainees, most of whom belonged to an armed Islamist group that had worked to overthrow Gaddafi for 20 years. Many members of the group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), joined the NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi rebels in the 2011 conflict. Some of those who were rendered and allegedly tortured in US custody now hold key leadership and political positions in the country.

Download the full report (PDF, 8.62 MB)
Appendix I: Tripoli Documents (PDF, 4.98 MB)
Appendix II: Shoroeiya Drawings (PDF, 411.61 KB)

 

© Copyright 2012, Human Rights Watch

US: Torture and Rendition to Gaddafi’s Libya

New Accounts of Waterboarding, Other Water Torture, Abuses in Secret Prisons

A file folder found after the fall of Tripoli in a building belonging to the Libyan external security services containing faxes and memos between the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Libyan Intelligence Service.

Not only did the US deliver Gaddafi to his enemies on a silver platter but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first. The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened.
Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor

(Washington) – The United States government during the Bush administration tortured opponents of Muammar Gaddafi, then transferred them to mistreatment in Libya, according to accounts by former detainees and recently uncovered CIA and UK Secret Service documents, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. One former detainee alleged he was waterboarded and another described a similar form of water torture, contradicting claims by Bush administration officials that only three men in US custody had been waterboarded.

The 154-page report, “Delivered into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya,” is based on interviews conducted in Libya with 14 former detainees, most of whom belonged to an armed Islamist group that had worked to overthrow Gaddafi for 20 years. Many members of the group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), joined the NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi rebels in the 2011 conflict. Some of those who were rendered and allegedly tortured in US custody now hold key leadership and political positions in the country.

“Not only did the US deliver Gaddafi his enemies on a silver platter but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first,” said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened.”

The report is also based on documents – some of which are being made public for the first time – that Human Rights Watch found abandoned, on September 3, 2011, in the offices of former Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa after Tripoli fell to rebel forces.

The interviews and documents establish that, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US, with aid from the United Kingdom (UK) and countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, arrested and held without charge a number of LIFG members living outside Libya, and eventually rendered them to the Libyan government.

The report also describes serious abuses that five of the former LIFG members said they experienced at two US-run detention facilities in Afghanistan, most likely operated by the CIA. They include new allegations of waterboarding and other water torture. The details are consistent with the few other first-hand accounts about the same US-run facilities.

Other abuses reported by these former detainees include being chained to walls naked –sometimes while diapered – in pitch black, windowless cells, for weeks or months; restrained in painful stress positions for long periods, forced into cramped spaces; beaten and slammed into walls; kept indoors for nearly five months without the ability to bathe; and denied sleep by continuous, very loud Western music.

“I spent three months getting interrogated heavily during the first period and they gave me a different type of torture every day. Sometimes they used water, sometimes not.… Sometimes they stripped me naked and sometimes they left me clothed,” said Khalid al-Sharif, who asserted he was held for two years in two different US-run detention centers believed to be operated by the CIA in Afghanistan. Al-Sharif is now head of the Libyan National Guard. One of his responsibilities is providing security for facilities holding Libya’s high-value detainees.

The Libyan detainee accounts in the Human Rights Watch report had previously gone largely undocumented because most of those returned to Libya were locked up in Libyan prisons until last year, when Libya’s civil unrest led to their release. And the US government has been unwilling to make public the details about its secret CIA detention facilities. The accounts of former detainees, the CIA documents found in Libya, and some declassified US government memos have shed new light on US detention practices under the Bush administration but also highlighted the vast amount of information that still remains secret.

Despite overwhelming evidence of numerous and systematic abuses of detainees in US custody since the September 11 attacks, the US has yet to hold a single senior official accountable. Only a few low-ranking enlisted military personnel have been punished.

On August 30, 2012, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the only criminal investigation the Department of Justice had undertaken into alleged abuses in CIA custody, headed by special prosecutor John Durham, would be closed without anyone being criminally charged. Holder had already narrowed the scope of Durham’s investigation on June 30, 2011, limiting it from the original investigation into the 101 people believed to have been in CIA custody to the cases of only two individuals.

In both cases, the detainees had died, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. The inquiry was also limited in that it looked only into abuses that went beyond what the Bush administration had authorized. It could not cover acts of torture, such as waterboarding, and other ill-treatment that Bush administration lawyers had approved, even if the acts violated domestic and international law.

“The stories of the Libyans held by the US and then sent to Libya make clear that detainee abuse, including mistreatment not necessarily specifically authorized by Bush administration officials, was far-reaching,” Pitter said. “The closure of the Durham investigation, without any charges, sends a message that abuse like that suffered by the Libyan detainees will continue to be tolerated.”

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has spent three years researching the CIA’s detention and interrogation program and is nearing completion of a report. Human Rights Watch called on the SSCI to promptly release its report upon completion with as few redactions as possible, and to recommend that an independent, non-partisan commission investigate all aspects of US policy relating to detainee treatment.

“The US government continues to demand, and rightly so, that countries from Libya to Syria to Bahrain hold accountable officials responsible for serious human rights abuses, including torture,” Pitter said. “Those calls would carry a lot more weight if it wasn’t simultaneously shielding former US officials who authorized torture from any form of accountability.”

Since the fall of the Gaddafi government, US diplomats and members of Congress have met with some of the former CIA prisoners now in Libya, and the US has supported efforts by the Libyan government and civil society to overcome the legacy of their country’s authoritarian past. Human Rights Watch urged the US government to acknowledge its own past role in abuses and in helping Gaddafi round up his exiled opponents, to provide redress to the victims, and to prosecute those responsible for their alleged torture in US custody.

One previously reported case for which Human Rights Watch uncovered some new information is that of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. The Bush administration had helped to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion by relying on statements that al-Libi made during his abuse and mistreatment in CIA custody. The CIA has acknowledged that these statements were unreliable. Years later, the US rendered al-Libi to Libya, where he died in prison in May 2009. Accounts from al-Libi’s fellow detainees in Afghanistan and Libya, information from his family, and photos seen by Human Rights Watch apparently taken of him the day he died, provide insight into his treatment and death, which Libyan authorities claim was a suicide.

Scores of the documents that Human Rights Watch uncovered in Libya also show a high level of cooperation between the Gaddafi government in Libya and US and the UK in the renditions discussed in the report.

The US played the most extensive role in the renditions back to Libya. But other countries, notably the UK, were also involved, even though these governments knew and recognized that torture was common during Gaddafi’s rule. Countries linked to the accounts about renditions include: Afghanistan, Chad, China and Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Sudan, Thailand, and the UK. Interviewees alleged that personnel in some of these countries also abused them prior to transferring them back to Libya.

International law binding on the US and other countries prohibits torture and other ill-treatment in all circumstances, and forbids transferring people to countries in which they face a serious risk of torture or persecution.

“The involvement of many countries in the abuse of Gaddafi’s enemies suggests that the tentacles of the US detention and interrogation program reached far beyond what was previously known,” Pitter said. “The US and other governments that assisted in detainee abuse should offer a full accounting of their role.”

*A previous version of this press release incorrectly stated that the SSCI had completed its report. The report is nearing completion.

© 2011 Tim Grucza

Find this story at 6 September 2012

© Copyright 2012, Human Rights Watch

UK supreme court says rendition of Pakistani man was unlawful

Yunus Rahmatullah has been imprisoned since he was handed by the SAS to US forces in 2004, but has never been charged

Undated Reprieve handout photo of Yunus Rahmatullah. Photograph: Reprieve/PA

Human rights campaigners have called for a full criminal investigation into the rendition of a Pakistani man by UK and US forces to Afghanistan, following a supreme court judgment describing his subsequent detention at the notorious US prison at Bagram as unlawful. Yunus Rahmatullah has been imprisoned ever since he was handed over by the SAS to American forces in Iraq in 2004, and has never been charged.

Lawyers for the man argued before the UK’s highest court that the government should apply pressure on the US to release him. The court of appeal had previously issued a writ of habeas corpus – an ancient law that demands a prisoner is released from unlawful detention – requiring the UK to seek Rahmatullah’s return or at least demonstrate why it could not. However, the US authorities refused to cooperate, arguing that they would discuss Rahmatullah’s situation with the Pakistani government.

Lawyers for William Hague and Philip Hammond, the foreign and defence secretaries, had argued that they had no power “to direct the US” to release him and that it would be inappropriate for the courts to instruct them to ask the US authorities to return Rahmatullah.

Rejecting this argument, a panel of seven supreme court judges ruled that the UK did not need to have actual custody to exercise control over his release. The UK’s most senior judges also declared that there was clear evidence that Rahmatullah’s rendition and detention was a breach of international human rights law, despite “memorandums of understanding” Britain had agreed with the US over treatment of detainees.

Lord Kerr said: “The, presumably forcible, transfer of Mr Rahmatullah from Iraq to Afghanistan is, at least prima facie, a breach of article 49 [of the fourth Geneva Convention]. On that account alone, his continued detention post-transfer is unlawful.”

Kerr also said that he would have “little hesitation in dismissing” arguments from former US assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith asserting that al-Qaida operatives found in occupied Iraq were excluded from protection under the Geneva Conventions during armed conflict.

However, the court was split 5-2 in a decision to reject arguments by Rahmatullah’s lawyers that there was more that the UK government could do following the American’s refusal to respond to the habeas corpus writ. Rahmatullah was represented by legal charity Reprieve and solicitors Leigh Day, who argued that the UK should have made more effort to demand his release.

In a dissenting judgment, Lady Hale and Lord Carnwath said: “Where liberty is at stake, it is not the court’s job to speculate as to the political sensitivities which may be in play.”

Reprieve’s director, Clive Stafford Smith, said: “This powerful supreme court decision has huge ramifications. Clearly there will now have to be a full criminal investigation. But if the US has ‘dishonoured’ its commitment to the UK in this case for the first time in 150 years, and continues to violate law as basic as the Geneva conventions, this also throws other extradition agreements with the UK into doubt.”

Reprieve’s legal director, Kat Craig, added: “The UK government has nowhere left to turn. The highest court in the country has expressed serious concerns that grave war crimes may have been committed as a result of which a police investigation must be initiated without delay.”

Yunus Rahmatullah and Amanatullah Ali, both Pakistani men, are suspected of having travelled to Iraq to fight for al-Qaida. MI6 is understood to have tracked them as they travelled across Iran and into Iraq early in 2004. After they settled into a house in southern Baghdad a decision was taken to raid the building.

…

Maya Wolfe-Robinson and Ian Cobain
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 October 2012 14.59 GMT

Find this story at 31 October 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

American Heart Association publishes study claiming Tasers can be cause of death

CINCINNATI – An article just published by the American Heart Association’s premier journal, “Circulation,” presents the first ever scientific, peer-reviewed evidence that Tasers can cause cardiac arrest and death.

The article, written by Electrophysiologist Dr. Douglas Zipes of Indiana University, is already generating a buzz among cardiologists in the Cincinnati area, according to Dr. Terri Stewart-Dehner, a cardiologist at Christ Hospital.

“Anyone in cardiology has heard of Dr. Zipes. He is very well respected,” said Dr. Stewart-Dehner.

Stewart-Dehner said any article published in “Circulation” has great significance and will be taken very seriously by cardiologists around the world.

“Peer reviewed is a big deal,” said Stewart-Dehner. “It means the article goes through a committee just for consideration into the journal. Then cardiologists review the validity of the research; it means it’s a reputable article.”

The conclusions of Dr. Zipes’ article, which looks at eight cases involving the TASER X26 ECD states: “ECD stimulation can cause cardiac electric capture and provoke cardiac arrest resulting from ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation. After prolonged ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation without resuscitation, asystole develops.”

To view the abstract of the article, click here or go to http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/recent.

Speaking on behalf of the American Heart Association, Dr. Michael Sayre with Ohio State Emergency Medicine, said, “Dr. Zipes’ work is very well respected. It’s a credible report. It’s a reminder to police officers and others who are using these tools that they need to know how to do CPR and know how to use an AED.”

Dr. Zipes has been discounted by the manufacturer of the Taser, Taser International, because he has been paid to testify against the weapon, but Dr. Zipes says the fact that his research has withstood the rigorous process of review by other well-respected cardiologists and was published in this prestigious journal proves his case.

“It is absolutely unequivocal based on my understanding of how electricity works on the heart, based on good animal data and based on numerous clinical situations that the Taser unquestionably can produce sudden cardiac arrest and death,” said Dr. Zipes.

Dr. Zipes says he wrote the article, not to condemn the weapon, but to properly warn police officers of its potential to kill so that they can make good policies and decisions as to the proper use of the weapon, and so that they will be attentive to the possible need for medical care following a Taser stun.

The Taser, used by law enforcement agencies across the Tri-State and by some 16,000 law enforcement agencies around the world, was marketed as non-lethal. Since 2001, more than 500 people have died following Taser stuns according to Amnesty International, which said in February that stricter guidelines for its use were “imperative.”

In only a few dozen of those cases have medical examiners ruled the Taser contributed to the death.

It was nearly nine months ago 18-year-old Everette Howard of North College Hill died after police used a Taser on him on the University of Cincinnati’s campus.

The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office has still not released a “cause of death,” but the preliminary autopsy results seemed to rule out everything but the Taser. The office is now waiting for results from a heart specialist brought in to review slides of Howard’s heart.

The late Coroner Anant Bhati told 9 News in an exclusive interview before he died in February that he had “great respect” for Dr. Zipes and that he too believed the Taser could cause cardiac arrest. He said he just wasn’t ready to say that it caused Everette Howard’s death until a heart specialist weighed in on the investigation.

Dr. Bhati also agreed with Dr. Zipes that the weapon should come under government supervision and be tested for its electrical output regularly.

Taser International has said that because the Taser uses compressed Nitrogen instead of gun powder to fire its darts, it is not regulated and testing of the weapon is not legally required.

The company also says the Taser fires two darts, which enter a subject’s skin and send electricity into the body in order to incapacitate the subject so that officers can get a subject into custody without a physical fight.

Research shows the Taser has saved lives and reduced injuries among officers.

Taser International has changed its safety warnings over the years.

An I-Team report in October showed that Taser International’s website stated in its summary conclusion on cardiac safety, “There is no reliable published data that proves Taser ECDs (Tasers) negatively affect the heart.”

With the publication of Dr. Zipes’ article, Dr. Stewart-Dehner says it can be argued that statement is no longer the case.

The new statement on Taser International’s website quotes a May Department of Justice study on deaths following Taser stuns. It states, “While exposure

to Conducted Energy Devices (CEDs) is not risk free, there is no conclusive medical evidence that indicates a high risk of serious injury or death from the direct effects of CED’s (Tasers).”

Here is Taser International’s complete response to Dr. Zipes’ article:

While our medical advisors haven’t had a chance to review the details, it is noteworthy that the sole author, Dr. Douglas Zipes, has earned more than $500,000 in fees at $1,200 per hour as a plaintiff’s expert witness against TASER and police. Clearly Dr. Zipes has a strong financial bias based on his career as an expert witness, which might help explain why he disagrees with the findings of independent medical examiners with no pecuniary interest in these cases as well as the U.S. Department of Justice’s independent study that concluded, “There is currently no medical evidence that CEDs pose a significant risk for induced cardiac dysrhythmia in humans when deployed reasonably” and “The risks of cardiac arrhythmias or death remain low and make CEDs more favorable than other weapons.”

Steve Tuttle

Vice President of Communications

Posted: 04/30/2012
By: Julie O’Neill, joneill@wcpo.com

Find this story at 30 April 2012

USA: Stricter limits urged as deaths following police Taser use reach 500

Tighter rules are needed to limit the use of Tasers by police across the USA.

“
Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the USA, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used.
”
Susan Lee, Americas Programme Director at Amnesty International
Wed, 15/02/2012

The deaths of 500 people following police use of Tasers underscores the need for tighter rules limiting the use of such weapons in law enforcement, Amnesty International said.

According to data collected by Amnesty International, at least 500 people in the USA have died since 2001 after being shocked with Tasers either during their arrest or while in jail.

On 13 February, Johnnie Kamahi Warren was the latest to die after a police officer in Dothan, Alabama deployed a Taser on him at least twice. The 43-year-old, who was unarmed and allegedly intoxicated, reportedly stopped breathing shortly after being shocked and was pronounced dead in hospital less than two hours later.

“Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the USA, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used,” said Susan Lee, Americas Programme Director at Amnesty International.

“This is unacceptable, and stricter guidelines for their use are now imperative.”

Strict national guidelines on police use of Tasers and similar stun weapons – also known as Conducted Energy Devices (CEDs) – would effectively replace thousands of individual policies now followed by state and local agencies.

Police forces across the USA currently permit a wide use of the weapons, often in situations that do not warrant such a high level of force.

Law enforcement agencies defend the use of Tasers, saying they save lives and can be used to subdue dangerous or uncooperative suspects.

But Amnesty International believes the weapons should only be used as an alternative in situations where police would otherwise consider using firearms.

In a 2008 report, USA: Stun Weapons in law Enforcement, Amnesty International examined data on hundreds of deaths following Taser use, including autopsy reports in 98 cases and studies on the safety of such devices.

Among the cases reviewed, 90 per cent of those who died were unarmed. Many of the victims were subjected to multiple shocks.

Most of the deaths have been attributed to other causes. However, medical examiners have listed Tasers as a cause or contributing factor in more than 60 deaths, and in a number of other cases the exact cause of death is unknown.

Some studies and medical experts have found that the risk of adverse effects from Taser shocks is higher in people who suffer from a heart condition or whose systems are compromised due to drug intoxication or after a struggle.

“Even if deaths directly from Taser shocks are relatively rare, adverse effects can happen very quickly, without warning, and be impossible to reverse,” said Susan Lee.

“Given this risk, such weapons should always be used with great caution, in situations where lesser alternatives are unavailable.”

There are continuing reports of police officers using multiple or prolonged shocks, despite warnings that such usage may increase the risk of adverse effects on the heart or respiratory system.

…

15 February 2012

Find this story at 15 February 2012

© Matt Toups/Pittsburgh Indymedia

532 Taser-Related Deaths in the United States Since 2001

Today we added 60-year old Bill Williams (Everett, WA) as the 181st taser-related death in America since 2009. [NOTE: the full list is shown below].

According to Amnesty International, between 2001 and 2008, 351 people in the United States died after being shocked by police Tasers. Our blog has documented another 181 taser-related deaths in the United States in 2009-2012. That means there have been 532 documented taser-related deaths in America.

This blog has been pointing out incidents of police taser torture for quite awhile. The work done over the past few years by Patti Gillman and Cameron Ward continue to be the inspiration for our work. Gillman and Ward documented over 730 taser-related deaths in North America on their blog.

I wonder if anyone cares about the rising use of the taser as a lethal weapon? At least we know that the Department of Justice cares. They issued a report about the pattern of abuse against the mentally ill in Portland that included the frequent, unnecessary use of Tasers.

On the other hand, I think that something is wrong in America when the police electrocute folks on a WEEKLY basis with their taser arsenal … and the public is mute in its response. Sometimes it takes a lawsuit … like the one recently settled in Ohio … to get the police to cool it. The police in Cincinnati, Ohio took the hint … they changed their taser policy!

I encourage you to use our COMMENTS (‘Post a Comment’) option at the bottom of this blog post to let us know what you think about these weekly taser-related killings.

Jan 9, 2009: Derrick Jones, 17, Black, Martinsville, Virginia
Jan 11, 2009: Rodolfo Lepe, 31, Hispanic, Bakersfield, California
Jan 22, 2009: Roger Redden, 52, Caucasian, Soddy Daisy, Tennessee-
Feb 2, 2009: Garrett Jones, 45, Caucasian, Stockton, California
Feb 11, 2009: Richard Lua, 28, Hispanic, San Jose, California
Feb 13, 2009: Rudolph Byrd, 37, Black, Thomasville, Georgia
Feb 13, 2009: Michael Jones, 43, Black, Iberia, Louisiana
Feb 14, 2009: Chenard Kierre Winfield, 32, Black, Los Angeles, California
Feb 28, 2009: Robert Lee Welch, 40, Caucasian, Conroe, Texas
Mar 22, 2009: Brett Elder, 15, Caucasian, Bay City, Michigan
Mar 26, 2009: Marcus D. Moore, 40, Black, Freeport, Illinois
Apr 1, 2009: John J. Meier Jr., 48, Caucasian, Tamarac, Florida
Apr 6, 2009: Ricardo Varela, 41, Hispanic, Fresno, California
Apr 10, 2009: Robert Mitchell, 16, Black, Detroit, Michigan
Apr 13, 2009: Craig Prescott, 38, Black, Modesto, California
Apr 16, 2009: Gary A. Decker, 50, Black, Tuscon, Arizona
Apr 18, 2009: Michael Jacobs Jr., 24, Black, Fort Worth, Texas
Apr 30, 2009: Kevin LaDay, 35, Black, Lumberton, Texas
May 4, 2009: Gilbert Tafoya, 53, Caucasian, Holbrook, Arizona
May 17, 2009: Jamaal Valentine, 27, Black, La Marque, Texas
May 23, 2009: Gregory Rold, 37, Black, Salem, Oregon
Jun 9, 2009: Brian Cardall, 32, Caucasian, Hurricane, Utah
Jun 13, 2009: Dwight Madison, 48, Black, Bel Air, Maryland
Jun 20, 2009 Derrek Kairney, 36, Race: Unknown, South Windsor, Connecticut
Jun 30, 2009, Shawn Iinuma, 37, Asian, Fontana, California
Jul 2, 2009, Rory McKenzie, 25, Black, Bakersfield, California
Jul 20, 2009, Charles Anthony Torrence, 35, Caucasian, Simi Valley, California
Jul 30, 2009, Johnathan Michael Nelson, 27, Caucasian, Riverside County, California
Aug 9, 2009, Terrace Clifton Smith, 52, Black, Moreno Valley, California
Aug 12, 2009, Ernest Ridlehuber, 53, Race: Unknown, Greenville, South Carolina
Aug 14, 2009, Hakim Jackson, 31, Black, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Aug 18, 2009, Ronald Eugene Cobbs, 38, Black, Greensboro, North Carolina
Aug 20, 2009, Francisco Sesate, 36, Hispanic, Mesa, Arizona
Aug 22, 2009, T.J. Nance, 37, Race: Unknown, Arizona City, Arizona
Aug 26, 2009, Miguel Molina, 27, Hispanic, Los Angeles, California
Aug 27, 2009, Manuel Dante Dent, 27, Hispanic, Modesto, California
Sep 3, 2009, Shane Ledbetter, 38, Caucasian, Aurora, Colorado
Sep 16, 2009, Alton Warren Ham, 45, Caucasian, Modesto, California
Sep 19, 2009, Yuceff W. Young II, 21, Black, Brooklyn, Ohio
Sep 21, 2009, Richard Battistata, 44, Hispanic, Laredo, Texas
Sep 28, 2009, Derrick Humbert, 38, Black, Bradenton, Florida
Oct 2, 2009, Rickey Massey, 38, Black, Panama City, Florida
Oct 12, 2009, Christopher John Belknap, 36, Race: Unknown, Ukiah, California
Oct 16, 2009, Frank Cleo Sutphin, 19, Caucasian, San Bernadino, California
Oct 27, 2009, Jeffrey Woodward, 33, Caucasian, Gallatin, Tennessee
Nov 13, 2009, Herman George Knabe, 58, Caucasian, Corpus Christi, Texas
Nov 14, 2009, Darryl Bain, 43, Black, Coram, New York
Nov 16, 2009, Matthew Bolick, 30, Caucasian, East Grand Rapids, Michigan
Nov 19, 2009, Jesus Gillard, 61, Black, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Nov 21, 2009, Ronald Petruney, 49, Race: Unknown, Washington, Pennsylvania
Nov 27, 2009, Eddie Buckner, 53, Caucasian, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Dec 11, 2009, Andrew Grande, 33, Caucasian, Oak County, Florida
Dec 11, 2009, Hatchel Pate Adams III, 36, Black, Hampton, Virginia
Dec 11, 2009, Paul Martin Martinez, 36, Hispanic, Roseville, California
Dec 13, 2009, Douglas Boucher, 39, Caucasian, Mason, Ohio
Dec 14, 2009, Linda Hicks, 62, Black, Toledo, Ohio
Dec 19, 2009, Preston Bussey III, 41, Black, Rockledge, Florida
Dec 20, 2009, Michael Hawkins, 39, Caucasian, Springfield, Missouri
Dec 30, 2009, Stephen Palmer, 47, Race: Unknown, Stamford, Connecticut

Jan 6, 2010, Delano Smith, 21, Black, Elkhart, Indiana
Jan 17, 2010, William Bumbrey III, 36, Black, Arlington, Virginia
Jan 20, 2010, Kelly Brinson, 45, Race: Unknown, Cincinnati, Ohio
Jan 27, 2010, Joe Spruill, Jr., Black, Goldsboro, North Carolina
Jan 28, 2010, Patrick Burns, 50, Caucasian, Sangamon County, Illinois
Jan 28, 2010, Daniel Mingo, 25, Black, Mobile, Alabama
Feb 4, 2010, Mark Morse, 36, Caucasian, Phoenix, Arizona
Mar 4, 2010, Roberto Olivo, 33, Hispanic, Tulare, California
Mar 5, 2010, Christopher Wright, 48, Race: Unknown, Seattle, Washington
Mar 10, 2010, Jaesun Ingles, 31, Black, Midlothian, Illinois
Mar 10, 2010, James Healy Jr., 44, Race: Unknown, Rhinebeck, New York
Mar 20, 2010, Albert Valencia, 31, Hispanic, Downey, California
Apr 10, 2010, Daniel Joseph Barga, 24, Caucasian, Cornelius, Oregon
Apr 30, 2010, Adil Jouamai, 32, Moroccan, Arlington, Virginia
May 9, 2010, Audreacus Davis, 29, Black, Atlanta, Georgia
May 14, 2010, Sukeba Olawunmi, 39, Race: Unknown, Atlanta, Georgia
May 24, 2010, Efrain Carrion, 35, Hispanic, Middletown, Connecticut
May 27, 2010, Carl Johnson, 48, Caucasian, Baltimore, Maryland
May 29, 2010, Jose Martinez, 53, Hispanic, Waukegan, Illinois
May 31, 2010, Anastasio Hernández Rojas, 42, Hispanic, San Ysidro, California
Jun 8, 2010, Terrelle Houston, 22, Black, Hempstead, Texas
Jun 12, 2010, Curtis Robinson, 34, Black, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Jun 13, 2010, William Owens, 17, Race: Unknown, Homewood, Alabama
Jun 14, 2010, Jose Alfredo Jimenez, 42, Hispanic, Harris County, Texas
Jun 15, 2010, Michael White, 47, Black, Vallejo, California
Jun 22, 2010, Daniel Sylvester, 35, Caucasian, Crescent City, California
July 5, 2010, Damon Falls, 31, Black, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
July 5, 2010, Edmund Gutierrez, 22, Hispanic, Imperial, California
July 8, 2010, Phyllis Owens, 87, Race: Unknown, Clackamas County, Oregon
July 9, 2010, Marvin Booker, 56, Race: Black, Denver, Colorado
July 12, 2010, Anibal Rosario-Rodriguez, 61, Hispanic, New Britain, Connecticut
July 15, 2010, Jerome Gill, Race: Unknown, Chicago, Illinois
July 18, 2010, Edward Stephenson, 46, Race: Unknown, Leavenworth, Kansas
July 23, 2010, Jermaine Williams, 30, Black, Cleveland, Mississippi
Aug 1, 2010, Dennis Sandras, 49, Race: Unknown, Houma, Louisiana
Aug 9, 2010, Andrew Torres, 39, Hispanic, Greenville, South Carolina
Aug 18, 2010, Martin Harrison, 50, Caucasian, Dublin, California
Aug 19, 2010, Adam Disalvo, 30, Caucasian, Daytona Beach, Florida
Aug 20, 2010, Stanley Jackson, 31, Black, Washtenaw County, Michigan
Aug 24, 2010, Michael Ford, 50, Black, Livonia, Michigan
Aug 25, 2010, Eduardo Hernandez-Lopez, 21, Hispanic, Las Vegas, Nevada
Aug 31, 2010, King Hoover, 27, Black, Spanaway, Washington
Sep 4, 2010, Adam Colliers, 25, Caucasian, Gold Bar, Washington
Sep 10, 2010, Larry Rubio, 20, Race: Unknown, Leemore, California
Sep 12, 2010, Freddie Lockett, 30, Black, Dallas, Texas
Sep 16, 2010, Gary L. Grossenbacher, 48, Race: Unknown, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Sep 18, 2010, David Cornelius Smith, 28, Black, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Sep 18, 2010, Joseph Frank Kennedy, 48, Caucasian, La Mirada, California
Oct 4, 2010, Javon Rakestrau, 28, Black, Lafayette Parish, Louisiana
Oct 7, 2010, Patrick Johnson, 18, Caucasian, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Oct 12, 2010, Ryan Bain, 31, Caucasian, Billings, Montana
Oct 14, 2010, Karreem Ali, 65, Black, Silver Spring, Maryland
Oct 19, 2010, Troy Hooftallen, 36, Caucasian, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania
Nov 4, 2010, Eugene Lamott Allen, 40, Race: Unknown, Wilmington, Delaware
Nov 6, 2010, Robert Neill, Jr., 61, Caucasian, Mount Joy, Pennsylvania
Nov 7, 2010, Mark Shaver, 32, Caucasian, Brimfield, Ohio
Nov 23, 2010, Denevious Thomas, 36, Black, Albany, Georgia
Nov 26, 2010, Rodney Green, 36, Black, Waco, Texas
Nov 27, 2010, Blaine McElroy, 37, Race: Unknown, Jackson County, Mississippi
Dec 2, 2010, Clayton Early James, Age: Unknown, Race: Unknown, Elizabeth City, North Carolina
Dec 11, 2010, Anthony Jones, 44, Race: Unknown, Las Vegas, Nevada
Dec 12, 2010, Linel Lormeus, 26, Black, Naples, Florida
Dec 20, 2010, Christopher Knight, 35, Black, Brunswick, Georgia
Dec 31, 2010, Rodney Brown, 40, Black, Cleveland, Ohio

Jan 5, 2011, Kelly Sinclair, 41, Race: Unknown, Amarillo, Texas
Feb 5, 2011, Robert Ricks, 23, Black, Alexandria, Louisiana
March 15, 2011, Brandon Bethea, 24, Black, Harnett County, North Carolina
Apr 3, 2011, Jairious McGhee, 23, Black, Tampa, Florida
Apr 22, 2011, Adam Spencer Johnson, 33, Caucasian, Orlando, Florida
Apr 23, 2011, Ronald Armstrong, 43, Race: Unknown, Pinehurst, North Carolina
Apr 25, 2011, Kevin Darius Campbell, 39, Race: Unknown, Tallahassee, Florida
May 1, 2011, Marcus Brown, 26, Black, Waterbury, Connecticut
May 6, 2011, Matthew Mittelstadt, 56, Caucasian, Boundary County, Idaho
May 11, 2011, Allen Kephart, 43, Caucasian, San Bernadino County, California
June 13, 2011, Howard Hammon, 41, Caucasian, Middleburg, Ohio
June 22, 2011, Otto Kolberg, 55, Caucasian, Waycross, Georgia
June 28, 2011, Dalric East, 40, Black, Montgomery County, Maryland
July 5, 2011, Kelly Thomas, 37, Caucasian, Fullerton, California
July 10, 2011, Joshua Nossoughi, 32, Caucasian, Springfield, Missouri
July 19, 2011, Alonzo Ashley, 29, Black, Denver, Colorado
July 21, 2011, La’Reko Williams, 21, Black, Charlotte, North Carolina
July 30, 2011, Donald Murray, 39, Caucasian, Westland, Michigan
August 4, 2011, Pierre Abernathy, 30, Black, San Antonio, Texas
August 6, 2011, Everette Howard, 18, Black, Cincinnati, Ohio
August 6, 2011, Debro Wilkerson, 29, Black, Prince William County, Maryland
August 6, 2011, Gregory Kralovetz, 50, Caucasian, Kaukauna, Wisconsin
August 12, 2011, Joseph Lopez, 49, Hispanic, Santa Barbara, California
August 17, 2011, Roger Chandler, 41, Caucasian, Helena, Montana
August 21, 2011, Montalito McKissick, 37, Black, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
August 24, 2011, Michael Evans, 56, Race: Unknown, Fayetteville, North Carolina
August 30, 2011, Nicholas Koscielniak, 27, Caucasian, Lancaster, New York
September 11, 2011, Tyree Sinclair, 31, Black, Corpus Christi, Texas
September 13, 2011, Damon Barnett, 44, Caucasian, Fresno, California
September 17, 2011, Richard Kokenos, 27, Caucasian, Warren, Michigan
September 24, 2011, Bradford Gibson, 35, Black, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan
September 24, 2011, Donacio Rendon, 43, Race: Unknown, Lubbock, Texas
September 29, 2011, Howard Cook, 35, Black, York, Pennsylvania
October 4, 2011, Glenn Norman, 46, Caucasian, Camden County, Missouri
October 9, 2011, Darnell Hutchinson, 32, Black, San Leandro, California
October 31, 2011, Chad Brothers, 32, Caucasian, Colonie, New York
November 6, 2011, Darrin Hanna, 43, Black, North Chicago, Illinois
November 13, 2011, Ronald Cristiano, 51, Caucasian, Bridgeport, Connecticut
November 15, 2011, Jonathan White, 29, Black, San Bernardino, California
November 22, 2011, Roger Anthony, 61, Black, Scotland Neck, North Carolina
December 16, 2011, Marty Atencio, 44, Hispanic, Phoenix, Arizona
December 22, 2011, Wayne Williams, 27, Black, Houma, Louisiana
January 15, 2012, Daniel Guerra, 24, Hispanic, Ft. Worth, Texas
February 29, 2012, Raymond Allen, 34, Black, Galveston, Texas
March 5, 2012, Nehemiah Dillard, 29, Black, Gainesville, Florida
March 12, 2012, Jersey Green, 37, Black, Aurora, Illinois
March 19, 2012, James Barnes, 38, Caucasian, Pinellas County, Florida
April 10, 2012, Bobby Merrill, 38, Black, Saginaw, Michigan
April 21, 2012, Angel Heraldo, 41, Hispanic, Meriden, Connecticut
April 22, 2012, Bruce Chrestensen, 52, Caucasian, Grass Valley, California
May 10, 2012, Damon Abraham, 34, Black, Baldwin, Louisiana
June 9, 2012, Randolph Bonvillian, 41, Caucasian, Houma, Louisiana
June 20, 2012, Macadam Mason, 39, Caucasian, Thetford, Vermont
June 30, 2012, Victor Duffy, 25, Black, Tukwila, Washington
July 1, 2012, Corey McGinnis, 35, Black, Cincinnati, Ohio
July 5, 2012, Sampson Castellane, 29, Native American, Fife, Washington
September 1, 2012, Denis Chabot, 38, Caucasian, Houston, Texas
September 14, 2012, Bill Williams, 60, Caucasian, Everett, Washington
You can see that we don’t know the race or national origin (RNO) for Ronald Armstrong, Kelly Brinson, Kevin Darius Campbell, Michael Evans, Jerome Gill, Gary Grossenbacher, James Healy Jr., Clayton Early James, Anthony Jones, Derrek Kariney, T.J. Nance, Phyllis Owens, William Owens, Stephen Palmer, Earnest Ridlehuber, Sukeba Olawunmi, Ronald Petruney, Donacio Rendon, Larry Rubio, Dennis Sandras, Edward Stephenson or Christopher Wright. We can use some research assistance from villagers to help us identify the RNO for these folks who died after being electrocuted by police taser guns.

We track the RNO information because we sense that these taser-related deaths are happening at a disproportionate level to people of color.

For example, we see that at least 74 (73 men and a 62-year old woman) of these taser-torture killings occurred against African Americans. Black people are only 13.6% of the total population, yet 41% of the 2009-2012 taser-related deaths in America are Black people.

At last count, there are more than 514,000 Tasers among law enforcers and the military nationwide. Tasers are now deployed in law enforcement agencies in 29 of the 33 largest U.S. cities. Some states, such as New Jersey, are loosening up their rules for taser use. Other states, like Delaware, seek to justify taser use in spite of rising death toll.

However, the tide may be turning. As taser-related deaths and injuries have continued to rise (as well as the amount of Taser litigation), many departments are starting to abandon the weapon in favor of other means of suspect control. Currently, Memphis and San Francisco have opted to ban the use of tasers by law enforcement. Charlotte (NC) pulled all the tasers off the street. Nevada revised their taser policy so that it would be more aligned to proposal from the ACLU.

South Carolina is beginning to question its use of tasers. Additionally, a federal court has ruled that the pain inflicted by the taser gun constitutes excessive force by law enforcement. The courts don’t want police to electrocute people with their tasers unless they pose an immediate threat.

Perhaps the idea of an electric rifle made sense when it was first invented. “Taser” refers to an electrical weapon trademarked by the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company known as Taser International. The word Taser stands for “Tom A. Swift Electrical Rifle.”

The Taser was developed by Jack Cover, a contract scientist on NASA’s Apollo moon program in the 1960s. Inspired by his favorite childhood book series – Victor Appleton’s Tom Swift – Cover drew up plans for a non-lethal weapon like the one the series’ main character used.

In 1993, Rick and Tim Smith, who launched Taser International, worked with Cover to improve his design and introduced the device the next year. Since then, use of the word Taser has became part of the common American language.

However, we now see too much taser abuse. First available to law enforcement in February 1998, now used by more than 14,200 law enforcement agencies in more than 40 countries. More than 406,000 taser guns have been sold since the product hit the market. It may be time for congressional hearings.

Some tell us that tasers are making America safer. Police kill about 600 people per year in shootings. So what?! Should we be we be happy that they are ONLY killing people once-a-week with taser guns?

How Do Tasers Work? When a Taser’s trigger is pulled, two wires shoot out of the device at the suspect from up to 35 feet away. At the ends of the wires are probes that either embed in a person’s skin or cling to clothing.
When the probes hit, an electrical pulse is delivered for five seconds, causing involuntary muscular contractions in the subject.
At the end of the first pulse, police tell the person to roll onto their abdomen, so they can be handcuffed. If they do not comply, they may be shocked again.
Once a person is arrested, police remove the barbs and call EMTs to the scene.
The person is taken to the hospital to be checked out. If the barbs remain in the person after police try to remove them, they are removed at the hospital.
The Taser is equipped with a chip that records information on each use, which can be used in court if someone alleges they were shocked multiple times.

Personally, I think that the ‘Use of Force Continuum’ needs to show tasers as ‘near-lethal’ … definitely an error to claim that they are ‘non-lethal’.

Many of us think that that immediate problem with Taser use is the lack of state and federal training standards for Taser certification. There are too many police officers with a taser on their hip and insufficient training on how … or when … to use it. Without set training standards (which includes a block on the liabilities of the weapons use in the event of bodily injury or death), officers are not fully aware of the ramifications of Taser use.

Find this story at 14 September 2012

An Unnecessary Death in New York: Police Killing Highlights Flaws of ‘Zero Tolerance’

 

In midtown Manhattan, police officers shot and killed an African-American man in August after he had walked across Times Square waving a kitchen knife. His last moments tell the story of a broken law enforcement system in New York City.

Darrius Kennedy’s date with death begins at 3 p.m., in front of the Stars & Stripes of the neon American flag in New York City’s Times Square. Kennedy, a sturdy man with long Rasta braids, is wearing a white shirt with cut-off sleeves, faded jeans and light-colored shoes, and he is skipping backwards toward Seventh Avenue, waving an IKEA kitchen knife. He is going to die, a pedestrian shouts: “They’re going to kill you, brother!”

First a policewoman and then four or five other officers pursue Kennedy with their 9mm Glock service weapons, with a trigger pull of 12 pounds, held in both hands. Kennedy backs off from the officers, heading south into the eternal twilight of the streets of Manhattan. He has four-and-a-half minutes left to live.

Officers quickly seal off Seventh Avenue using police tape, and the first squad cars come hurtling down the avenues, their sirens howling. Pedestrians stumble through the blurred images documented by tourists running toward what they see as an adventure, whipping out their smartphones and cameras, hoping to capture a manhunt on video, while Kennedy continues to skip down the streets.

A Classic American Divide

The discussion that takes place in the aftermath of the shooting will divide cleanly along age-old American lines. Some will make snap judgments, in web forums, letters to the editor and call-in radio programs. “Gotcha!” they’ll write, “another bites the dust,” and “he deserved it.” They’ll lionize the police officers, calling them “New York’s finest,” praising their efforts to provide security in the big city. They’ll ridicule the victim, calling him a crazy, knife-wielding pothead — a foolish African American.

Others will ask anxious questions. They’ll wonder whether, in this troubled America, it’s even possible to just mourn, even if only for a day. They’ll want to know why a few dozen police officers couldn’t deal with someone like Kennedy in other ways. Why is it, one man asks, that escaped zoo animals are immobilized with tranquilizer darts, while a human being in New York is simply and ruthlessly shot to death in broad daylight?

Kennedy’s sister will be quoted as saying that her brother was a talented musician, a man who undoubtedly had his problems, and yet, she will say: “They could have shot him in the leg.” His aunt says that her nephew was a “loner,” and that people are spreading all kinds of lies about him. She insists that he was a good man, and that he wasn’t a bum.

Kennedy has picked a grotesque backdrop for his death. His short journey begins on brightly lit and eternally noisy Times Square, near the Minskoff Theater and ABC television headquarters, where huge electronic billboards advertise Broadway musicals like “The Lion King” and “Mary Poppins,” as well as some of the world’s most recognizable brand names, like Coca-Cola, Samsung and Heineken. News headlines flicker across illuminated panels as big as tennis courts.

Times Square, diagonally sliced in half by Broadway, sees an average of 1.6 million pedestrians a day. It’s Aug. 11, a Saturday. The streets are devoid of office workers but filled with the usual weekend crowds. Day laborers dressed in Mickey Mouse and Elmo costumes stand at intersections, where tourists photograph them in return for pocket change, the “Naked Cowboy” is singing and playing his guitar and steam rises from the carts of food vendors. Kennedy and his pursuers gradually move south along the avenue, from 44th to 43rd to 42nd Street, Kennedy hopping along in front of them, making small, bouncy jumping moves like a cornered boxer, while the police officers, tense and vigilant, cautiously follow him at a distance.

No Police Reports in New York

A few hours later, New York Police Chief Raymond Kelly says that the police response was “by the book.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg says: “He had a knife and he was going after people.” But the videos uploaded to YouTube, and there are many of them, don’t seem to support the statements made by the mayor and Kelly. They also don’t show the police officers trying to subdue Kennedy with pepper spray, which they claimed they did four to six times.

There are no police reports in New York. There is, however, police spokesman Paul Browne, who doesn’t say much that’s useful, and there are police reporters. Sometimes they uncover valuable information, and sometimes they don’t. To them, Kennedy’s case is merely that of a bum who got shot to death. The headline in the New York Post will read: “He Got His Wish.”

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has its motto painted onto the sides of its squad cars, three guiding principles for the 36,000 men and women serving on the force: Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect. The NYPD Patrol Guide states, under Regulation 203-12, that the NYPD “recognizes the value of all human life and is committed to respecting the dignity of every individual.” The rule also states that police officers “shall not use deadly physical force against another person unless they have probable cause to believe they must protect themselves or another person from imminent death or serious physical injury.”

Kennedy keeps moving. He crosses 42nd Street, passing the Ernst & Young building and the 42nd Street subway station, where lines N, Q, R, 1, 2, 3 and 7 intersect. Toward 41st Street, the fronts of buildings are covered with advertising for the new Batman film, “The Dark Knight Rises.” On weekdays, office workers stand in the shadow of entranceways, smoking. Tour busses make their stops, and ticket sellers in red boleros pull passersby into their businesses. Those are normal days.

Three Minutes Left to Live

But at about 3 p.m. on Saturday, it is clear that this is no normal day — there is no one standing in the doorways. The area is shut down because of a man with a knife — one with a 6-inch and not a 12-inch blade, as the newspapers and TV stations will report, because they include the handle in their incorrect measurement.

The traffic has vanished from the broad avenue, and it is only police cars that hurry back and forth. Seen from Times Square, the crowd led by Kennedy is moving to the left of the center of the street. He now has two dozen or more police officers on his heels, most of them in uniform and a few in plain clothes, and all have their weapons drawn. They are accompanied by an amorphous swarm of eager witnesses, whose comments can be heard in the various clips. “Do you see this shit?” one person asks.

Kennedy, a 51-year-old who looks younger than his actual age, bounces along in front. At first, he turns his back on the police officers every few meters, looking as haughty as a torero turning his back on a bull. But now he is only striding backwards, keeping an eye on his pursuers through the round, green lenses of his metal-rimmed glasses. He has three minutes left to live.

The Trouble with ‘Zero Tolerance’
In this part of Manhattan, Seventh Avenue is also called Fashion Avenue. The side streets are filled with shops selling fabric, Indian wedding dresses and gaudy Asian clothes. The urban pace is a little slower here. The sea of lights in Times Square subsides, the buildings become less extravagant and tall, and the cityscape becomes noticeably shabbier.

“I think that under the given circumstances the shooting was justified,” says John Eterno, an athletic man with a gray beard and rimless glasses. He wasn’t at the scene, and he doesn’t know all the facts, but his opinion carries weight. Eterno was a police officer for 21 years, patrolling the streets of Manhattan. He taught at the Police Academy and he has written important pieces on police reform. He left the police force as a captain in 2004, when he went back to school to study criminology.

Eterno now teaches at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, a suburb on Long Island that happens to border Hempstead, the town where Kennedy grew up and is now buried. Depending on the traffic, the drive out to Long Island takes one to two hours, passing through a confusing blur of neighborhoods lined up along both sides of Jamaica Avenue, mile after mile. Then the city comes to an abrupt end and dissolves into postcard images of New England, idyllic villages, neatly divided into lots with small but attractive houses. Rockville Centre, where Eterno teaches, is one of those places. Hempstead, on the other hand, is different. It’s poorer, sadder. More black people live there.

Blind Severity Cemented by 9/11

So everything is in order with Kennedy’s death, the reporter asks? “Nothing is in order,” says Eterno “when you come to discuss the actual state of the NYPD.” His office is located in a low building on the edge of the campus, where the late-summer sun is beating down on the roof. Eterno talks for two hours. He makes a compelling case against the city’s corrupt, broken security apparatus, which, he says, is still tragically a model for the rest of the world. Eterno’s words suggest that Kennedy was also a victim of grim circumstances.

The NYPD developed a worldwide reputation for its “zero tolerance” policy and its great successes in the 1990s. The city was on the brink in the 1980s, with New York’s image shaped by pictures of burning garbage cans in the Bronx. That changed with the arrival of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who would soon become famous, and his equally well-known police chief, Bill Bratton. They substantially beefed up the police force and organized it like a business, with strict quality control procedures, applying statistical methods and considerable pressure to succeed. New York became safer and cleaner.

But scandals also became more and more common around the turn of the millennium. Police brutality became an issue, as did the NYPD’s blind severity and intimidating presence. The debate over these concerns would undoubtedly have continued if Sept. 11 hadn’t permanently changed everything. All of a sudden the NYPD, which until then had regularly faced sharp criticism from citizens’ advocacy groups, politicians and the media for every misstep, became an untouchable force made up of heroes. It was no longer kosher to criticize the police, and anyone who did was seen as behaving in a somehow un-American way. The situation began to deteriorate, as statistics suggest.

Unpleasant and Unsettling

In 2002, the New York police stopped around 97,000 people on the streets, often searching them in the procedure known as “stop and frisk.” For those affected, the experience is unpleasant, often humiliating and can be very unsettling, especially when plainclothes officers aggressively lay into citizens. The whole thing can feel like an assault.

The problem is that situation has been spinning out of control since 2002. More than 500,000 stop-and-frisk cases were recorded in 2006, and last year the number of cases peaked at 700,000. Most of those being stopped were completely innocent people. “In many parts of the city,” says Eterno, “the police behave like a besieging army.”

And the NYPD’s image of the enemy is as clear as glass. In 2011, about 86 percent of those stopped were blacks like Kennedy or Latinos. In the 17th Precinct, on the east side of Manhattan, where the two minorities together constitute only 7.8 percent of the population, blacks and Latinos made up 71.4 percent of stop-and-frisk cases. Similar statistics apply in Greenwich Village, the Upper East Side and Tribeca.

“It’s madness,” says Eterno. He says he can prove that the NYPD has figured out how to massage the truth when it comes to performance, encouraged by a city hall and police headquarters that are constantly proclaiming the good news that New York is “the safest big city in America.” Successes are talked up while real crime is downplayed. The city touted a 77.75-percent drop in crime between 1990 and 2009, even as it reduced the size of its police force by 6,000 jobs. “These numbers must seem completely crazy to anyone who knows anything about statistics,” says Eterno.

To back up his theories, Eterno interviewed a thousand police officers. They told him the most outrageous stories, all of which, upon closer inspection, proved to be true. According to the officers, individual police stations and precincts deliberately cook the books to make themselves look good to those higher up in the chain of command.

Declines in crime levels are artificially produced by documenting serious crimes as less serious offences — or by not recording crimes at all when they are reported in the first place. Rapes are downgraded to sexual harassment, and muggings are documented as petty theft, bringing down the overall crime count in the process.

Successes in the fight against crime can also be manufactured. Officers provoke arrests by charging old men with urban vagrancy when they are merely feeding pigeons. Pregnant women who sit down on the steps of subway stations to rest have been taken away for allegedly disturbing the peace. Unsuspecting citizens out for a stroll are stopped and frisked on playgrounds, because they don’t have children with them, as required by city ordinances. These examples are not unsubstantiated accusations by ideological groups hostile to the police. Rather, they are tangible charges, supported by audio recordings and the testimony of police officers who went public and filed complaints against the police force, because their internal grievances were ignored.

A Police Stop Culminates in Death

Kennedy’s path to his grave also begins with a police stop. Based on everything that’s been revealed to date, on the Saturday of his death, he is standing on the corner of 44th Street and Times Square. Perhaps he is smoking a joint, or perhaps he is not. But while smoking marijuana may be illegal, it is fairly common in the US — especially in New York.

A policewoman confronts Kennedy. Would she be doing this if she didn’t feel pressure to perform, to deliver the right numbers? And would she do it if he were white? And Kennedy, who is having trouble with the police because of a joint for the eighth time in his life, and who has been fed up with this sort of treatment for a long time, suddenly sees red. He snaps. He wields his knife, rages and resists. The pursuit begins.

He makes his way through a city in which worlds are drifting dangerously apart. The New York of a black man has nothing in common with that of a white woman. The former will get to know police officers as disrespectful tormenters, while the latter will encounter them as gallant figures. Police officers are bullies in poor neighborhoods while they hold the door open for citizens in wealthy areas. These contrasts become blurred around Times Square, a Babylon bustling with poor and rich people alike, where visitors mingle with half-crazy denizens of the city. This is the backdrop of Darrius Kennedy’s final minutes alive.

False Reports of a ‘Times Square Ninja’
By the time he crosses 40th Street, Kennedy is being pursued by about 30 police officers, both on foot and in squad cars, and they’re making a huge commotion. The air is filled with the crackle of announcements and the short bursts of police sirens. People are following along on both sides of the avenue like sports fans. Their numbers are difficult to estimate, but some of the videos give the impression that it could be hundreds. It’s certainly several dozen, and the crowd continues to grow along the way, egged on by a herd instinct and paying no heed to the potential for danger.

The police usually have special units for cases like this. In their jargon, he is an “emotionally deranged person,” or “EDP,” and the type of unit that would normally deal with EDPs is called an Emergency Service Unit (ESU). Its arsenal includes such “nonlethal” material as batons, tasers, shields and water cannons.

By now, though, Kennedy has been walking backwards, away from the police, for at least three minutes, and there is still no ESU in sight. No one will explain how it is possible that, three blocks from one of the world’s busiest public spaces, the NYPD is incapable of deploying a special unit within three minutes. In fact, there will be no explanations at all. The NYPD doesn’t respond to SPIEGEL’s inquiries or answer written lists of questions submitted.

What is known about the day of Kennedy’s death is that a large number of police officers, armed with pistols and out of their depth, are pursuing a single man with a knife. They have no batons or tasers. Supervisors, officers above the rank of sergeant, have these nonlethal weapons, and ideally there would be one supervisor for every eight officers. But on this day there doesn’t appear to be a single supervisor within the large group of police officers pursuing Kennedy.

They’ve already walked five blocks. It’s getting close to 3 p.m., the crowd of people in their wake is growing larger, and the disruption to city life becomes more and more intolerable. This can’t go on much longer. Finally, at about 38th Street, Kennedy makes another wrong move.

He leaves the center of the avenue, the width of which has protected him until now, and he bounces to the left, toward the sidewalk. Soon he’ll be walled in on one side. Throughout the whole ordeal, he looks like a defiant child more than anything else. What’s going through his head? Why doesn’t he just drop the knife? How is this game supposed to end?

The police and the papers will portray him as mentally disturbed, as an unemployed outsider, a homeless man and a drug-addicted loser with a criminal record. Even the New York Times, straying from its declared policy of only printing verifiable news, quotes dubious eyewitnesses, who contradict one another and apparently confuse Kennedy with someone else. They turn him into the “Times Square Ninj,” a man who often appeared on the square, wearing a Ninja costume and doing somersaults for tourists.

Neither Unemployed nor Homeless

Other news reports will state that Kennedy attacked people during his date with death, but that’s a claim that not even the police is making. None of the reports will specify that all of the offences in his “criminal record” related to the possession of small amounts of marijuana. In fact, almost everything that will be written about Kennedy is full of holes or is flatly wrong.

In fact Kennedy, as he makes his way down Seventh Avenue, is neither unemployed nor homeless, nor does he do back flips for tourists. For the last six years, he has lived on the top floor of an apartment building on Third Avenue and 25th Street. It’s an apartment reserved for the building superintendent, John Nyman, who uses it mainly for storage.

A long, messy hallway leads to the large apartment facing the street. Kennedy lived in one of the smaller rooms here. He had a deal with Nyman, who lives in his own apartment on 22nd Street: Instead of paying rent, Kennedy worked for Nyman and took care of his cats. When he wasn’t working, Kennedy lifted weights in the basement, and when he sang along to a song on the radio, says Nyman, it was easy to hear that he was a musical person and had a nice voice.

In an earlier life, back in the days of disco, Kennedy had been a professional musician. He played bass and, with a short haircut and sporting flashier clothes, he went on tour with various bands, sometimes even as far away as Asia. He was married and then got divorced in the 1990s. At some point, Kennedy stopped playing music. There isn’t much else to be discovered about his life. He played basketball as a child, and he sang in the church choir in Hempstead, but that was long before he became the man with the Rasta braids, the man with the knife.

‘He Was the Nicest Guy on Earth’

“You can believe me or not,” says Nyman, a wiry man with blue eyes, as he stands on the street, smoking a cigarette, “but Darrius was the hardest, most diligent worker I’ve ever met in my life. And he was the nicest person I knew, the nicest guy on Earth.” On the morning of that Saturday, when Kennedy went to Times Square, he and Nyman were standing around, drinking coffee together. They were friends, “and to this day, I still don’t understand what happened up there.”

Of course, Nyman did read the papers after the shooting, and he watched the videos and heard the police version of the story. He also heard the stories claiming that Kennedy had knocked over trashcans in Times Square and had threatened people with a screwdriver several years ago. “All I can say is that everyone who knew him, and that was a lot of people here, doesn’t believe a word of that. I think the cops make up these things.”

Since 9/11, says Nyman, New York as a whole has increasingly transformed itself into a city with a “medieval concept” of life. “Darrius smoked a joint? Okay, so what? If we were in Ohio, the police officers would have driven him home and let him off with a warning.”

Kennedy had a lot to do in the neighborhood. He was a handyman in 11 buildings, repairing drains and washing machines, bleeding radiators, and cleaning pipes, windows and toilets. He always worked on weekdays and often on weekends, and according to Nyman, he was always on time and “completely reliable.” A Ukrainian couple that works as janitors around the corner tells the same stories. They are mourning his death. “He’s missed,” says Nyman.

‘I Always Told Him the Knife Would Get Him in Trouble’
But what did happen with Kennedy? And what about the knife? “Oh, the knife,” says Nyman. “I have a knife, too. I use it to cut up boxes and open packages every day, and Darrius did the same thing. I always told him not to walk around the city with the knife, and that it would get him into trouble one day. But he didn’t want to listen to me.”

Did Kennedy have psychological problems? Nyman does not hesitate before responding. “He had his demons, sure.” According to Nyman, Kennedy found God a few years ago and had constantly studied the Bible ever since. “But most of all he hated the police. It was real hate, because they were always harassing him, throughout his entire life.” He hated them because they stopped and searched him — a black man and a pot smoker — again and again. “He was a pretty big guy,” says Nyman, “and for those police officers he was the picture of a suspect.”

Kennedy reaches the last several feet of his path through life on Saturday, Aug. 11, at shortly after 3 p.m. The exact time to the last minute isn’t entirely clear. He moves past a Bank of America branch on 38th Street, past an empty Off-Track Betting parlor and past the windows of a Chipotle fast-food restaurant.

He slows down. By now he is looking around nervously, and he must sense that his pursuers have him surrounded. What he probably doesn’t see yet is that a squad car is parked across the sidewalk like a barricade, next to the glass entrance of an office building at 501 7th Avenue.

Police spokesman Browne will later say that the officers opened fire after Kennedy had come within “two to three feet” — less than a meter — of them. Police Chief Kelly will report: “The officers got out of the car. As a result, Kennedy approached the officers with the knife; they had no place to go.” Both men, Kelly and Browne, aren’t telling the truth.

The various videos circulating on the Web clearly show that Kennedy is at least 15 to 20 feet away from the officers standing at the squad car when they start shooting. And it isn’t as if they had just gotten out of their cars and were taken by surprise by their victim or somehow found themselves in a situation requiring self-defense. In fact, they are standing there with their weapons drawn, waiting for Kennedy, who passes another shop, the Jewelry Patch, before turning around and facing his death.

A Pool of Blood Becomes a Tourist Attraction

…

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

10/17/2012 06:51 PM

By Ullrich Fichtner in New York

Find this story at 17 October 2012

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH

Is CIA Lying About its Blackwater Contacts?

After CIA director Leon Panetta revealed last summer that private contractor Blackwater was part of a covert CIA hit squad, tasked with summary killings and assassinations of al-Qaeda operatives, the CIA vowed to sever its contacts with the trigger-happy security firm. But did it do so? It doesn’t look like it. Last November, it became known that the company, (recently renamed Xe Services) remains part of a covert CIA program in Pakistan that includes planned assassinations and kidnappings of Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects. More recently, it was revealed that two of the seven Americans who died in the December 30 bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, were actually Blackwater employees subcontracted by the CIA.

The question is, why were these two Blackwater employees present during a sensitive security debriefing at the base, involving the entire leadership of the CIA team there, and even the Agency’s second-in-command in Afghanistan? As Nation magazine’s Jeremy Scahill correctly points out, “the fact that two Blackwater personnel were in such close proximity to the […] suicide bomber shows how deeply enmeshed Blackwater remains in sensitive CIA operations, including those CIA officials claim it no longer participates in, such as intelligence gathering and briefings with valuable agency assets”.

…

January 8, 2010 by intelNews 11 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 8 Januari 2010 

Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.

Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater security firm (recently renamed Xe), at the company’s Virginia offices. Photograph by Nigel Parry.

I put myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky missions,” says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. “But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.” Prince—the founder of Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military contractor—is royally steamed. He wants to vent. And he wants you to hear him vent.

Erik Prince has an image problem—the kind that’s impervious to a Madison Avenue makeover. The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, and a former navy seal, he has had the distinction of being vilified recently both in life and in art. In Washington, Prince has become a scapegoat for some of the Bush administration’s misadventures in Iraq—though Blackwater’s own deeds have also come in for withering criticism. Congressmen and lawyers, human-rights groups and pundits, have described Prince as a war profiteer, one who has assembled a rogue fighting force capable of toppling governments. His employees have been repeatedly accused of using excessive, even deadly force in Iraq; many Iraqis, in fact, have died during encounters with Blackwater. And in November, as a North Carolina grand jury was considering a raft of charges against the company, as a half-dozen civil suits were brewing in Virginia, and as five former Blackwater staffers were preparing for trial for their roles in the deaths of 17 Iraqis, The New York Times reported in a page-one story that Prince’s firm, in the aftermath of the tragedy, had sought to bribe Iraqi officials for their compliance, charges which Prince calls “lies … undocumented, unsubstantiated [and] anonymous.” (So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in suicide bombings in Pakistan.)

In Hollywood, meanwhile, a town that loves nothing so much as a good villain, Prince, with his blond crop and Daniel Craig mien, has become the screenwriters’ darling. In the film State of Play, a Blackwater clone (PointCorp.) uses its network of mercenaries for illegal surveillance and murder. On the Fox series 24, Jon Voight has played Jonas Hodges, a thinly veiled version of Prince, whose company (Starkwood) helps an African warlord procure nerve gas for use against U.S. targets.

But the truth about Prince may be orders of magnitude stranger than fiction. For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life. Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into “denied areas”—places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence. (Full disclosure: In the 1990s, before becoming a journalist for CBS and then NBC News, I was a C.I.A. attorney. My contract was not renewed, under contentious circumstances.)

But Prince, with a new administration in power, and foes closing in, is finally coming in from the cold. This past fall, though he infrequently grants interviews, he decided it was time to tell his side of the story—to respond to the array of accusations, to reveal exactly what he has been doing in the shadows of the U.S. government, and to present his rationale. He also hoped to convey why he’s going to walk away from it all.

To that end, he invited Vanity Fair to his training camp in North Carolina, to his Virginia offices, and to his Afghan outposts. It seemed like a propitious time to tag along.
Split Personality

Erik Prince can be a difficult man to wrap your mind around—an amalgam of contradictory caricatures. He has been branded a “Christian supremacist” who sanctions the murder of Iraqi civilians, yet he has built mosques at his overseas bases and supports a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan. He and his family have long backed conservative causes, funded right-wing political candidates, and befriended evangelicals, but he calls himself a libertarian and is a practicing Roman Catholic. Sometimes considered arrogant and reclusive—Howard Hughes without the O.C.D.—he nonetheless enters competitions that combine mountain-biking, beach running, ocean kayaking, and rappelling.

The common denominator is a relentless intensity that seems to have no Off switch. Seated in the back of a Boeing 777 en route to Afghanistan, Prince leafs through Defense News while the film Taken beams from the in-flight entertainment system. In the movie, Liam Neeson plays a retired C.I.A. officer who mounts an aggressive rescue effort after his daughter is kidnapped in Paris. Neeson’s character warns his daughter’s captors:

If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills … skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you [don’t] let my daughter go now … I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Prince comments, “I used that movie as a teaching tool for my girls.” (The father of seven, Prince remarried after his first wife died of cancer in 2003.) “I wanted them to understand the dangers out there. And I wanted them to know how I would respond.”

You can’t escape the impression that Prince sees himself as somehow destined, his mission anointed. It comes out even in the most personal of stories. During the flight, he tells of being in Kabul in September 2008 and receiving a two a.m. call from his wife, Joanna. Prince’s son Charlie, one year old at the time, had fallen into the family swimming pool. Charlie’s brother Christian, then 12, pulled him out of the water, purple and motionless, and successfully performed CPR. Christian and three siblings, it turns out, had recently received Red Cross certification at the Blackwater training camp.

But there are intimations of a higher power at work as the story continues. Desperate to get home, Prince scrapped one itinerary, which called for a stay-over at the Marriott in Islamabad, and found a direct flight. That night, at the time Prince would have been checking in, terrorists struck the hotel with a truck bomb, killing more than 50. Prince says simply, “Christian saved Charlie’s life and Charlie saved mine.” At times, his sense of his own place in history can border on the evangelical. When pressed about suggestions that he’s a mercenary—a term he loathes—he rattles off the names of other freelance military figures, even citing Lafayette, the colonists’ ally during the Revolutionary War.

Prince’s default mode is one of readiness. He is clenched-jawed and tightly wound. He cannot stand down. Waiting in the security line at Dulles airport just hours before, Prince had delivered a little homily: “Every time an American goes through security, I want them to pause for a moment and think, What is my government doing to inconvenience the terrorists? Rendition teams, Predator drones, assassination squads. That’s all part of it.”

Such brazenness is not lost on a listener, nor is the fact that Prince himself is quite familiar with some of these tactics. In fact Prince, like other contractors, has drawn fire for running a company that some call a “body shop”—many of its staffers having departed military or intelligence posts to take similar jobs at much higher salaries, paid mainly by Uncle Sam. And to get those jobs done—protecting, defending, and killing, if required—Prince has had to employ the services of some decorated vets as well as some ruthless types, snipers and spies among them.

Erik Prince flies coach internationally. It’s not just economical (“Why should I pay for business? Fly coach, you arrive at the same time”) but also less likely to draw undue attention. He considers himself a marked man. Prince describes the diplomats and dignitaries Blackwater protects as “Al Jazeera–worthy,” meaning that, in his view, “bin Laden and his acolytes would love to kill them in a spectacular fashion and have it broadcast on televisions worldwide.”

Stepping off the plane at Kabul’s international airport, Prince is treated as if he, too, were Al Jazeera–worthy. He is immediately shuffled into a waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves, and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s tactical-operations center.

Prince in the tactical-operations center at a company base in Kabul. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Once in the van, Prince’s team gives him a security briefing. Using satellite photos of the area, they review the route to Blackwater’s compound and point out where weapons and ammunition are stored inside the vehicle. The men warn him that in the event that they are incapacitated or killed in an ambush Prince should assume control of the weapons and push the red button near the emergency brake, which will send out a silent alarm and call in reinforcements.
Black Hawks and Zeppelins

Blackwater’s origins were humble, bordering on the primordial. The company took form in the dismal peat bogs of Moyock, North Carolina—not exactly a hotbed of the defense-contracting world.

In 1995, Prince’s father, Edgar, died of a heart attack (the Evangelical James C. Dobson, founder of the socially conservative Focus on the Family, delivered the eulogy at the funeral). Edgar Prince left behind a vibrant auto-parts manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, with 4,500 employees and a line of products ranging from a lighted sun visor to a programmable garage-door opener. At the time, 25-year-old Erik was serving as a navy seal (he saw service in Haiti, the Middle East, and Bosnia), and neither he nor his sisters were in a position to take over the business. They sold Prince Automotive for $1.35 billion.

Erik Prince and some of his navy friends, it so happens, had been kicking around the idea of opening a full-service training compound to replace the usual patchwork of such facilities. In 1996, Prince took an honorable discharge and began buying up land in North Carolina. “The idea was not to be a defense contractor per se,” Prince says, touring the grounds of what looks and feels like a Disneyland for alpha males. “I just wanted a first-rate training facility for law enforcement, the military, and, in particular, the special-operations community.”

Business was slow. The navy seals came early—January 1998—but they didn’t come often, and by the time the Blackwater Lodge and Training Center officially opened, that May, Prince’s friends and advisers thought he was throwing good money after bad. “A lot of people said, ‘This is a rich kid’s hunting lodge,’” Prince explains. “They could not figure out what I was doing.”

Blackwater outpost near the Pakistan border, used for training Afghan police. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Today, the site is the flagship for a network of facilities that train some 30,000 attendees a year. Prince, who owns an unmanned, zeppelin-esque airship and spent $45 million to build a fleet of customized, bomb-proof armored personnel carriers, often commutes to the lodge by air, piloting a Cessna Caravan from his home in Virginia. The training center has a private landing strip. Its hangars shelter a petting zoo of aircraft: Bell 412 helicopters (used to tail or shuttle diplomats in Iraq), Black Hawk helicopters (currently being modified to accommodate the security requests of a Gulf State client), a Dash 8 airplane (the type that ferries troops in Afghanistan). Amid the 52 firing ranges are virtual villages designed for addressing every conceivable real-world threat: small town squares, littered with blown-up cars, are situated near railway crossings and maritime mock-ups. At one junction, swat teams fire handguns, sniper rifles, and shotguns; at another, police officers tear around the world’s longest tactical-driving track, dodging simulated roadside bombs.

In keeping with the company’s original name, the central complex, constructed of stone, glass, concrete, and logs, actually resembles a lodge, an REI store on steroids. Here and there are distinctive touches, such as door handles crafted from imitation gun barrels. Where other companies might have Us Weekly lying about the lobby, Blackwater has counterterror magazines with cover stories such as “How to Destroy Al Qaeda.”

In fact, it was al-Qaeda that put Blackwater on the map. In the aftermath of the group’s October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in Yemen, the navy turned to Prince, among others, for help in re-training its sailors to fend off attackers at close range. (To date, the company says, it has put some 125,000 navy personnel through its programs.) In addition to providing a cash infusion, the navy contract helped Blackwater build a database of retired military men—many of them special-forces veterans—who could be called upon to serve as instructors.

When al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. mainland on 9/11, Prince says, he was struck with the urge to either re-enlist or join the C.I.A. He says he actually applied. “I was rejected,” he admits, grinning at the irony of courting the very agency that would later woo him. “They said I didn’t have enough hard skills, enough time in the field.” Undeterred, he decided to turn his Rolodex into a roll call for what would in essence become a private army.

After the terror attacks, Prince’s company toiled, even reveled, in relative obscurity, taking on assignments in Afghanistan and, after the U.S. invasion, in Iraq. Then came March 31, 2004. That was the day insurgents ambushed four of its employees in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. The men were shot, their bodies set on fire by a mob. The charred, hacked-up remains of two of them were left hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates.

“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Prince recalls. “I had been in the military, and no one under my command had ever died. At Blackwater, we had never even had a firearms training accident. Now all of a sudden four of my guys aren’t just killed, but desecrated.” Three months later an edict from coalition authorities in Baghdad declared private contractors immune from Iraqi law.

Subsequently, the contractors’ families sued Blackwater, contending the company had failed to protect their loved ones. Blackwater countersued the families for breaching contracts that forbid the men or their estates from filing such lawsuits; the company also claimed that, because it operates as an extension of the military, it cannot be held responsible for deaths in a war zone. (After five years, the case remains unresolved.) In 2007, a congressional investigation into the incident concluded that the employees had been sent into an insurgent stronghold “without sufficient preparation, resources, and support.” Blackwater called the report a “one-sided” version of a “tragic incident.”

After Fallujah, Blackwater became a household name. Its primary mission in Iraq had been to protect American dignitaries, and it did so, in part, by projecting an image of invincibility, sending heavily armed men in armored Suburbans racing through the streets of Baghdad with sirens blaring. The show of swagger and firepower, which alienated both the locals and the U.S. military, helped contribute to the allegations of excessive force. As the war dragged on, charges against the firm mounted. In one case, a contractor shot and killed an Iraqi father of six who was standing along the roadside in Hillah. (Prince later told Congress that the contractor was fired for trying to cover up the incident.) In another, a Blackwater firearms technician was accused of drinking too much at a party in the Green Zone and killing a bodyguard assigned to protect Iraq’s vice president. The technician was fired but not prosecuted and later settled a wrongful-death suit with the man’s family.

Those episodes, however, paled in comparison with the events of September 16, 2007, when a phalanx of Blackwater bodyguards emerged from their four-car convoy at a Baghdad intersection called Nisour Square and opened fire. When the smoke cleared, 17 Iraqi civilians lay dead. After 15 months of investigation, the Justice Department charged six with voluntary manslaughter and other offenses, insisting that the use of force was not only unjustified but unprovoked. One guard pleaded guilty and, in a trial set for February, is expected to testify against the others, all of whom maintain their innocence. The New York Times recently reported that in the wake of the shootings the company’s top executives authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi higher-ups in order to buy their silence—a claim Prince dismisses as “false,” insisting “[there was] zero plan or discussion of bribing any officials.”

Nisour Square had disastrous repercussions for Blackwater. Its role in Iraq was curtailed, its revenue dropping 40 percent. Today, Prince claims, he is shelling out $2 million a month in legal fees to cope with a spate of civil lawsuits as well as what he calls a “giant proctological exam” by nearly a dozen federal agencies. “We used to spend money on R&D to develop better capabilities to serve the U.S. government,” says Prince. “Now we pay lawyers.”

Does he ever. In North Carolina, a federal grand jury is investigating various allegations, including the illegal transport of assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in dog-food sacks. (Blackwater denied this, but confirmed hiding weapons on pallets of dog food to protect against theft by “corrupt foreign customs agents.”) In Virginia, two ex-employees have filed affidavits claiming that Prince and Blackwater may have murdered or ordered the murder of people suspected of cooperating with U.S. authorities investigating the company—charges which Blackwater has characterized as “scandalous and baseless.” One of the men also asserted in filings that company employees ran a sex and wife-swapping ring, allegations which Blackwater has called “anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive.”

Meanwhile, last February, Prince mounted an expensive rebranding campaign. Following the infamous ValuJet crash, in 1996, ValuJet disappeared into AirTran, after a merger, and moved on to a happy new life. Prince, likewise, decided to retire the Blackwater name and replace it with the name Xe, short for Xenon—an inert, non-combustible gas that, in keeping with his political leanings, sits on the far right of the periodic table. Still, Prince and other top company officials continued to use the name Blackwater among themselves. And as events would soon prove, the company’s reputation would remain as combustible as ever.

Prince at a Kandahar airfield. Photograph Adam Ferguson.

Spies and Whispers

Last June, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta met in a closed session with the House and Senate intelligence committees to brief them on a covert-action program, which the agency had long concealed from Congress. Panetta explained that he had learned of the existence of the operation only the day before and had promptly shut it down. The reason, C.I.A. spokesman Paul Gimigliano now explains: “It hadn’t taken any terrorists off the street.” During the meeting, according to two attendees, Panetta named both Erik Prince and Blackwater as key participants in the program. (When asked to verify this account, Gimigliano notes that “Director Panetta treats as confidential discussions with Congress that take place behind closed doors.”) Soon thereafter, Prince says, he began fielding inquisitive calls from people he characterizes as far outside the circle of trust.

It took three weeks for details, however sketchy, to surface. In July, The Wall Street Journal described the program as “an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.” The agency reportedly planned to accomplish this task by dispatching small hit teams overseas. Lawmakers, who couldn’t exactly quibble with the mission’s objective, were in high dudgeon over having been kept in the dark. (Former C.I.A. officials reportedly saw the matter differently, characterizing the program as “more aspirational than operational” and implying that it had never progressed far enough to justify briefing the Hill.)

On August 20, the gloves came off. The New York Times published a story headlined cia sought blackwater’s help to kill jihadists. The Washington Post concurred: cia hired firm for assassin program. Prince confesses to feeling betrayed. “I don’t understand how a program this sensitive leaks,” he says. “And to ‘out’ me on top of it?” The next day, the Times went further, revealing Blackwater’s role in the use of aerial drones to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders: “At hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan … the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

E
rik Prince, almost overnight, had undergone a second rebranding of sorts, this one not of his own making. The war profiteer had become a merchant of death, with a license to kill on the ground and in the air. “I’m an easy target,” he says. “I’m from a Republican family and I own this company outright. Our competitors have nameless, faceless management teams.”

Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there is a double standard at play. “The left complained about how [C.I.A. operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.” As in the Plame case, though, the leaks prompted C.I.A. attorneys to send a referral to the Justice Department, requesting that a criminal investigation be undertaken to identify those responsible for providing highly classified information to the media.

By focusing so intently on Blackwater, Congress and the press overlooked the elephant in the room. Prince wasn’t merely a contractor; he was, insiders say, a full-blown asset. Three sources with direct knowledge of the relationship say that the C.I.A.’s National Resources Division recruited Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special skills or unusual access to targets of interest. As assets go, Prince would have been quite a catch. He had more cash, transport, matériel, and personnel at his disposal than almost anyone Langley would have run in its 62-year history.

The C.I.A. won’t comment further on such assertions, but Prince himself is slightly more forthcoming. “I was looking at creating a small, focused capability,” he says, “just like Donovan did years ago”—the reference being to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who, in World War II, served as the head of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the modern C.I.A. (Prince’s youngest son, Charles Donovan—the one who fell into the pool—is named after Wild Bill.) Two sources familiar with the arrangement say that Prince’s handlers obtained provisional operational approval from senior management to recruit Prince and later generated a “201 file,” which would have put him on the agency’s books as a vetted asset. It’s not at all clear who was running whom, since Prince says that, unlike many other assets, he did much of his work on spec, claiming to have used personal funds to road-test the viability of certain operations. “I grew up around the auto industry,” Prince explains. “Customers would say to my dad, ‘We have this need.’ He would then use his own money to create prototypes to fulfill those needs. He took the ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach.”

According to two sources familiar with his work, Prince was developing unconventional means of penetrating “hard target” countries—where the C.I.A. has great difficulty working either because there are no stations from which to operate or because local intelligence services have the wherewithal to frustrate the agency’s designs. “I made no money whatsoever off this work,” Prince contends. He is unwilling to specify the exact nature of his forays. “I’m painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket.” (His pocket is deep: according to The Wall Street Journal, Blackwater had revenues of more than $600 million in 2008.)

Clutch Cargo

The Afghan countryside, from a speeding perch at 200 knots, whizzes by in a khaki haze. The terrain is rendered all the more nondescript by the fact that Erik Prince is riding less than 200 feet above it. The back of the airplane, a small, Spanish-built eads casa C-212, is open, revealing Prince in silhouette against a blue sky. Wearing Oakleys, tactical pants, and a white polo shirt, he looks strikingly boyish.

A Blackwater aircraft en route to drop supplies to U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan in September. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

As the crew chief initiates a countdown sequence, Prince adjusts his harness and moves into position. When the “go” order comes, a young G.I. beside him cuts a tether, and Prince pushes a pallet out the tail chute. Black parachutes deploy and the aircraft lunges forward from the sudden weight differential. The cargo—provisions and munitions—drops inside the perimeter of a forward operating base (fob) belonging to an elite Special Forces squad.

Five days a week, Blackwater’s aviation arm—with its unabashedly 60s-spook name, Presidential Airways—flies low-altitude sorties to some of the most remote outposts in Afghanistan. Since 2006, Prince’s company has been conscripted to offer this “turnkey” service for U.S. troops, flying thousands of delivery runs. Blackwater also provides security for U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and his staff, and trains narcotics and Afghan special police units.

Once back on terra firma, Prince, a BlackBerry on one hip and a 9-mm. on the other, does a sweep around one of Blackwater’s bases in northeast Afghanistan, pointing out buildings recently hit by mortar fire. As a drone circles overhead, its camera presumably trained on the surroundings, Prince climbs a guard tower and peers down at a spot where two of his contractors were nearly killed last July by an improvised explosive device. “Not counting civilian checkpoints,” he says, “this is the closest base to the [Pakistani] border.” His voice takes on a melodramatic solemnity. “Who else has built a fob along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?” It doesn’t quite have the ring of Lawrence of Arabia’s “To Aqaba!,” but you get the picture.
Going “Low-Pro”

Blackwater has been in Afghanistan since 2002. At the time, the C.I.A.’s executive director, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, responding to his operatives’ complaints of being “worried sick about the Afghans’ coming over the fence or opening the doors,” enlisted the company to offer protection for the agency’s Kabul station. Going “low-pro,” or low-profile, paid off: not a single C.I.A. employee, according to sources close to the company, died in Afghanistan while under Blackwater’s protection. (Talk about a tight-knit bunch. Krongard would later serve as an unpaid adviser to Blackwater’s board, until 2007. And his brother Howard “Cookie” Krongard—the State Department’s inspector general—had to recuse himself from Blackwater-related oversight matters after his brother’s involvement with the company surfaced. Buzzy, in response, stepped down.)

As the agency’s confidence in Blackwater grew, so did the company’s responsibilities, expanding from static protection to mobile security—shadowing agency personnel, ever wary of suicide bombers, ambushes, and roadside devices, as they moved about the country. By 2005, Blackwater, accustomed to guarding C.I.A. personnel, was starting to look a little bit like the C.I.A. itself. Enrique “Ric” Prado joined Blackwater after serving as chief of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). A short time later, Prado’s boss, J. Cofer Black, the head of the CTC, moved over to Blackwater, too. He was followed, in turn, by his superior, Rob Richer, second-in-command of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Of the three, Cofer Black had the outsize reputation. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book Bush at War, on September 13, 2001, Black had promised President Bush that when the C.I.A. was through with al-Qaeda “they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.” According to Woodward, “Black became known in Bush’s inner circle as the ‘flies-on-the-eyeballs guy.’” Richer and Black soon helped start a new company, Total Intelligence Solutions (which collects data to help businesses assess risks overseas), but in 2008 both men left Blackwater, as did company president Gary Jackson this year.

Prince in his Virginia office. His company took in more than $1 billion from government contracts during the George W. Bush era. Photograph by Nigel Parry.

Off and on, Black and Richer’s onetime partner Ric Prado, first with the C.I.A., then as a Blackwater employee, worked quietly with Prince as his vice president of “special programs” to provide the agency with what every intelligence service wants: plausible deniability. Shortly after 9/11, President Bush had issued a “lethal finding,” giving the C.I.A. the go-ahead to kill or capture al-Qaeda members. (Under an executive order issued by President Gerald Ford, it had been illegal since 1976 for U.S. intelligence operatives to conduct assassinations.) As a seasoned case officer, Prado helped implement the order by putting together a small team of “blue-badgers,” as government agents are known. Their job was threefold: find, fix, and finish. Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off. When the time came to train the hit squad, the agency, insiders say, turned to Prince. Wary of attracting undue attention, the team practiced not at the company’s North Carolina compound but at Prince’s own domain, an hour outside Washington, D.C. The property looks like an outpost of the landed gentry, with pastures and horses, but also features less traditional accents, such as an indoor firing range. Once again, Prince has Wild Bill on his mind, observing that “the O.S.S. trained during World War II on a country estate.”

Among the team’s targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al-Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency’s radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The C.I.A. team supposedly went in “dark,” meaning they did not notify their own station—much less the German government—of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down. Another target, the source says, was A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who shared nuclear know-how with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The C.I.A. team supposedly tracked him in Dubai. In both cases, the source insists, the authorities in Washington chose not to pull the trigger. Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged. (Says agency spokesman Gimigliano, “[The] C.I.A. hasn’t discussed—despite some mischaracterizations that have appeared in the public domain—the substance of this effort or earlier ones.”)

The source familiar with the Darkazanli and Khan missions bristles at public comments that current and former C.I.A. officials have made: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”

W
hen Prado left the C.I.A., in 2004, he effectively took the program with him, after a short hiatus. By that point, according to sources familiar with the plan, Prince was already an agency asset, and the pair had begun working to privatize matters by changing the team’s composition from blue-badgers to a combination of “green-badgers” (C.I.A. contractors) and third-country nationals (unaware of the C.I.A. connection). Blackwater officials insist that company resources and manpower were never directly utilized—these were supposedly off-the-books initiatives done on Prince’s own dime, for which he was later reimbursed—and that despite their close ties to the C.I.A. neither Cofer Black nor Rob Richer took part. As Prince puts it, “We were building a unilateral, unattributable capability. If it went bad, we weren’t expecting the chief of station, the ambassador, or anyone to bail us out.” He insists that, had the team deployed, the agency would have had full operational control. Instead, due to what he calls “institutional osteoporosis,” the second iteration of the assassination program lost steam.

Sometime after 2006, the C.I.A. would take another shot at the program, according to an insider who was familiar with the plan. “Everyone found some reason not to participate,” says the insider. “There was a sick-out. People would say to management, ‘I have a family, I have other obligations.’ This is the fucking C.I.A. They were supposed to lead the charge after al-Qaeda and they couldn’t find the people to do it.” Others with knowledge of the program are far more charitable and question why any right-thinking officer would sign up for an assassination program at a time when their colleagues—who had thought they had legal cover to engage in another sensitive effort, the “enhanced interrogations” program at secret C.I.A. sites in foreign countries—were finding themselves in legal limbo.

America and Erik Prince, it seems, have been slow to extract themselves from the assassination business. Beyond the killer drones flown with Blackwater’s help along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (President Obama has reportedly authorized more than three dozen such hits), Prince claims he and a team of foreign nationals helped find and fix a target in October 2008, then left the finishing to others. “In Syria,” he says, “we did the signals intelligence to geo-locate the bad guys in a very denied area.” Subsequently, a U.S. Special Forces team launched a helicopter-borne assault to hunt down al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah. Ghadiyah, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al-Mazidih, was said to have been killed along with six others—though doubts have emerged about whether Ghadiyah was even there that day, as detailed in a recent Vanity Fair Web story by Reese Ehrlich and Peter Coyote.

And up until two months ago—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug—he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their mission: non-disclosable.
Exit Strategy

Flying out of Kabul, Prince does a slow burn, returning to the topic of how exposed he has felt since press accounts revealed his role in the assassination program. The firestorm that began in August has continued to smolder and may indeed have his handlers wondering whether Prince himself is more of a liability than an asset. He says he can’t understand why they would shut down certain high-risk, high-payoff collection efforts against some of America’s most implacable enemies for fear that his involvement could, given the political climate, result in their compromise.

He is incredulous that U.S. officials seem willing, in effect, to cut off their nose to spite their face. “I’ve been overtly and covertly serving America since I started in the armed services,” Prince observes. After 12 years building the company, he says he intends to turn it over to its employees and a board, and exit defense contracting altogether. An internal power struggle is said to be under way among those seeking to define the direction and underlying mission of a post-Prince Blackwater.

He insists, simply, “I’m through.”

In the past, Prince has entertained the idea of building a pre-positioning ship—complete with security personnel, doctors, helicopters, medicine, food, and fuel—and stationing it off the coast of Africa to provide “relief with teeth” to the continent’s trouble spots or to curb piracy off Somalia. At one point, he considered creating a rapidly deployable brigade that could be farmed out, for a fee, to a foreign government.

For the time being, however, Prince contends that his plans are far more modest. “I’m going to teach high school,” he says, straight-faced. “History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.”

Stepping off the plane at Kabul’s international airport, Prince is treated as if he, too, were Al Jazeera–worthy. He is immediately shuffled into a waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves, and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s tactical-operations center.

Prince in the tactical-operations center at a company base in Kabul. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Once in the van, Prince’s team gives him a security briefing. Using satellite photos of the area, they review the route to Blackwater’s compound and point out where weapons and ammunition are stored inside the vehicle. The men warn him that in the event that they are incapacitated or killed in an ambush Prince should assume control of the weapons and push the red button near the emergency brake, which will send out a silent alarm and call in reinforcements.
Black Hawks and Zeppelins

Blackwater’s origins were humble, bordering on the primordial. The company took form in the dismal peat bogs of Moyock, North Carolina—not exactly a hotbed of the defense-contracting world.

In 1995, Prince’s father, Edgar, died of a heart attack (the Evangelical James C. Dobson, founder of the socially conservative Focus on the Family, delivered the eulogy at the funeral). Edgar Prince left behind a vibrant auto-parts manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, with 4,500 employees and a line of products ranging from a lighted sun visor to a programmable garage-door opener. At the time, 25-year-old Erik was serving as a navy seal (he saw service in Haiti, the Middle East, and Bosnia), and neither he nor his sisters were in a position to take over the business. They sold Prince Automotive for $1.35 billion.

Erik Prince and some of his navy friends, it so happens, had been kicking around the idea of opening a full-service training compound to replace the usual patchwork of such facilities. In 1996, Prince took an honorable discharge and began buying up land in North Carolina. “The idea was not to be a defense contractor per se,” Prince says, touring the grounds of what looks and feels like a Disneyland for alpha males. “I just wanted a first-rate training facility for law enforcement, the military, and, in particular, the special-operations community.”

Business was slow. The navy seals came early—January 1998—but they didn’t come often, and by the time the Blackwater Lodge and Training Center officially opened, that May, Prince’s friends and advisers thought he was throwing good money after bad. “A lot of people said, ‘This is a rich kid’s hunting lodge,’” Prince explains. “They could not figure out what I was doing.”

Blackwater outpost near the Pakistan border, used for training Afghan police. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Today, the site is the flagship for a network of facilities that train some 30,000 attendees a year. Prince, who owns an unmanned, zeppelin-esque airship and spent $45 million to build a fleet of customized, bomb-proof armored personnel carriers, often commutes to the lodge by air, piloting a Cessna Caravan from his home in Virginia. The training center has a private landing strip. Its hangars shelter a petting zoo of aircraft: Bell 412 helicopters (used to tail or shuttle diplomats in Iraq), Black Hawk helicopters (currently being modified to accommodate the security requests of a Gulf State client), a Dash 8 airplane (the type that ferries troops in Afghanistan). Amid the 52 firing ranges are virtual villages designed for addressing every conceivable real-world threat: small town squares, littered with blown-up cars, are situated near railway crossings and maritime mock-ups. At one junction, swat teams fire handguns, sniper rifles, and shotguns; at another, police officers tear around the world’s longest tactical-driving track, dodging simulated roadside bombs.

In keeping with the company’s original name, the central complex, constructed of stone, glass, concrete, and logs, actually resembles a lodge, an REI store on steroids. Here and there are distinctive touches, such as door handles crafted from imitation gun barrels. Where other companies might have Us Weekly lying about the lobby, Blackwater has counterterror magazines with cover stories such as “How to Destroy Al Qaeda.”

In fact, it was al-Qaeda that put Blackwater on the map. In the aftermath of the group’s October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in Yemen, the navy turned to Prince, among others, for help in re-training its sailors to fend off attackers at close range. (To date, the company says, it has put some 125,000 navy personnel through its programs.) In addition to providing a cash infusion, the navy contract helped Blackwater build a database of retired military men—many of them special-forces veterans—who could be called upon to serve as instructors.

When al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. mainland on 9/11, Prince says, he was struck with the urge to either re-enlist or join the C.I.A. He says he actually applied. “I was rejected,” he admits, grinning at the irony of courting the very agency that would later woo him. “They said I didn’t have enough hard skills, enough time in the field.” Undeterred, he decided to turn his Rolodex into a roll call for what would in essence become a private army.

After the terror attacks, Prince’s company toiled, even reveled, in relative obscurity, taking on assignments in Afghanistan and, after the U.S. invasion, in Iraq. Then came March 31, 2004. That was the day insurgents ambushed four of its employees in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. The men were shot, their bodies set on fire by a mob. The charred, hacked-up remains of two of them were left hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates.

“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Prince recalls. “I had been in the military, and no one under my command had ever died. At Blackwater, we had never even had a firearms training accident. Now all of a sudden four of my guys aren’t just killed, but desecrated.” Three months later an edict from coalition authorities in Baghdad declared private contractors immune from Iraqi law.

Subsequently, the contractors’ families sued Blackwater, contending the company had failed to protect their loved ones. Blackwater countersued the families for breaching contracts that forbid the men or their estates from filing such lawsuits; the company also claimed that, because it operates as an extension of the military, it cannot be held responsible for deaths in a war zone. (After five years, the case remains unresolved.) In 2007, a congressional investigation into the incident concluded that the employees had been sent into an insurgent stronghold “without sufficient preparation, resources, and support.” Blackwater called the report a “one-sided” version of a “tragic incident.”

After Fallujah, Blackwater became a household name. Its primary mission in Iraq had been to protect American dignitaries, and it did so, in part, by projecting an image of invincibility, sending heavily armed men in armored Suburbans racing through the streets of Baghdad with sirens blaring. The show of swagger and firepower, which alienated both the locals and the U.S. military, helped contribute to the allegations of excessive force. As the war dragged on, charges against the firm mounted. In one case, a contractor shot and killed an Iraqi father of six who was standing along the roadside in Hillah. (Prince later told Congress that the contractor was fired for trying to cover up the incident.) In another, a Blackwater firearms technician was accused of drinking too much at a party in the Green Zone and killing a bodyguard assigned to protect Iraq’s vice president. The technician was fired but not prosecuted and later settled a wrongful-death suit with the man’s family.

Those episodes, however, paled in comparison with the events of September 16, 2007, when a phalanx of Blackwater bodyguards emerged from their four-car convoy at a Baghdad intersection called Nisour Square and opened fire. When the smoke cleared, 17 Iraqi civilians lay dead. After 15 months of investigation, the Justice Department charged six with voluntary manslaughter and other offenses, insisting that the use of force was not only unjustified but unprovoked. One guard pleaded guilty and, in a trial set for February, is expected to testify against the others, all of whom maintain their innocence. The New York Times recently reported that in the wake of the shootings the company’s top executives authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi higher-ups in order to buy their silence—a claim Prince dismisses as “false,” insisting “[there was] zero plan or discussion of bribing any officials.”

Nisour Square had disastrous repercussions for Blackwater. Its role in Iraq was curtailed, its revenue dropping 40 percent. Today, Prince claims, he is shelling out $2 million a month in legal fees to cope with a spate of civil lawsuits as well as what he calls a “giant proctological exam” by nearly a dozen federal agencies. “We used to spend money on R&D to develop better capabilities to serve the U.S. government,” says Prince. “Now we pay lawyers.”

Does he ever. In North Carolina, a federal grand jury is investigating various allegations, including the illegal transport of assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in dog-food sacks. (Blackwater denied this, but confirmed hiding weapons on pallets of dog food to protect against theft by “corrupt foreign customs agents.”) In Virginia, two ex-employees have filed affidavits claiming that Prince and Blackwater may have murdered or ordered the murder of people suspected of cooperating with U.S. authorities investigating the company—charges which Blackwater has characterized as “scandalous and baseless.” One of the men also asserted in filings that company employees ran a sex and wife-swapping ring, allegations which Blackwater has called “anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive.”

Meanwhile, last February, Prince mounted an expensive rebranding campaign. Following the infamous ValuJet crash, in 1996, ValuJet disappeared into AirTran, after a merger, and moved on to a happy new life. Prince, likewise, decided to retire the Blackwater name and replace it with the name Xe, short for Xenon—an inert, non-combustible gas that, in keeping with his political leanings, sits on the far right of the periodic table. Still, Prince and other top company officials continued to use the name Blackwater among themselves. And as events would soon prove, the company’s reputation would remain as combustible as ever.

Prince at a Kandahar airfield. Photograph Adam Ferguson.

Spies and Whispers

Last June, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta met in a closed session with the House and Senate intelligence committees to brief them on a covert-action program, which the agency had long concealed from Congress. Panetta explained that he had learned of the existence of the operation only the day before and had promptly shut it down. The reason, C.I.A. spokesman Paul Gimigliano now explains: “It hadn’t taken any terrorists off the street.” During the meeting, according to two attendees, Panetta named both Erik Prince and Blackwater as key participants in the program. (When asked to verify this account, Gimigliano notes that “Director Panetta treats as confidential discussions with Congress that take place behind closed doors.”) Soon thereafter, Prince says, he began fielding inquisitive calls from people he characterizes as far outside the circle of trust.

It took three weeks for details, however sketchy, to surface. In July, The Wall Street Journal described the program as “an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.” The agency reportedly planned to accomplish this task by dispatching small hit teams overseas. Lawmakers, who couldn’t exactly quibble with the mission’s objective, were in high dudgeon over having been kept in the dark. (Former C.I.A. officials reportedly saw the matter differently, characterizing the program as “more aspirational than operational” and implying that it had never progressed far enough to justify briefing the Hill.)

On August 20, the gloves came off. The New York Times published a story headlined cia sought blackwater’s help to kill jihadists. The Washington Post concurred: cia hired firm for assassin program. Prince confesses to feeling betrayed. “I don’t understand how a program this sensitive leaks,” he says. “And to ‘out’ me on top of it?” The next day, the Times went further, revealing Blackwater’s role in the use of aerial drones to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders: “At hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan … the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

E
rik Prince, almost overnight, had undergone a second rebranding of sorts, this one not of his own making. The war profiteer had become a merchant of death, with a license to kill on the ground and in the air. “I’m an easy target,” he says. “I’m from a Republican family and I own this company outright. Our competitors have nameless, faceless management teams.”

Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there is a double standard at play. “The left complained about how [C.I.A. operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.” As in the Plame case, though, the leaks prompted C.I.A. attorneys to send a referral to the Justice Department, requesting that a criminal investigation be undertaken to identify those responsible for providing highly classified information to the media.

By focusing so intently on Blackwater, Congress and the press overlooked the elephant in the room. Prince wasn’t merely a contractor; he was, insiders say, a full-blown asset. Three sources with direct knowledge of the relationship say that the C.I.A.’s National Resources Division recruited Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special skills or unusual access to targets of interest. As assets go, Prince would have been quite a catch. He had more cash, transport, matériel, and personnel at his disposal than almost anyone Langley would have run in its 62-year history.

The C.I.A. won’t comment further on such assertions, but Prince himself is slightly more forthcoming. “I was looking at creating a small, focused capability,” he says, “just like Donovan did years ago”—the reference being to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who, in World War II, served as the head of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the modern C.I.A. (Prince’s youngest son, Charles Donovan—the one who fell into the pool—is named after Wild Bill.) Two sources familiar with the arrangement say that Prince’s handlers obtained provisional operational approval from senior management to recruit Prince and later generated a “201 file,” which would have put him on the agency’s books as a vetted asset. It’s not at all clear who was running whom, since Prince says that, unlike many other assets, he did much of his work on spec, claiming to have used personal funds to road-test the viability of certain operations. “I grew up around the auto industry,” Prince explains. “Customers would say to my dad, ‘We have this need.’ He would then use his own money to create prototypes to fulfill those needs. He took the ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach.”

According to two sources familiar with his work, Prince was developing unconventional means of penetrating “hard target” countries—where the C.I.A. has great difficulty working either because there are no stations from which to operate or because local intelligence services have the wherewithal to frustrate the agency’s designs. “I made no money whatsoever off this work,” Prince contends. He is unwilling to specify the exact nature of his forays. “I’m painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket.” (His pocket is deep: according to The Wall Street Journal, Blackwater had revenues of more than $600 million in 2008.)

Clutch Cargo

The Afghan countryside, from a speeding perch at 200 knots, whizzes by in a khaki haze. The terrain is rendered all the more nondescript by the fact that Erik Prince is riding less than 200 feet above it. The back of the airplane, a small, Spanish-built eads casa C-212, is open, revealing Prince in silhouette against a blue sky. Wearing Oakleys, tactical pants, and a white polo shirt, he looks strikingly boyish.

A Blackwater aircraft en route to drop supplies to U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan in September. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

As the crew chief initiates a countdown sequence, Prince adjusts his harness and moves into position. When the “go” order comes, a young G.I. beside him cuts a tether, and Prince pushes a pallet out the tail chute. Black parachutes deploy and the aircraft lunges forward from the sudden weight differential. The cargo—provisions and munitions—drops inside the perimeter of a forward operating base (fob) belonging to an elite Special Forces squad.

Five days a week, Blackwater’s aviation arm—with its unabashedly 60s-spook name, Presidential Airways—flies low-altitude sorties to some of the most remote outposts in Afghanistan. Since 2006, Prince’s company has been conscripted to offer this “turnkey” service for U.S. troops, flying thousands of delivery runs. Blackwater also provides security for U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and his staff, and trains narcotics and Afghan special police units.

Once back on terra firma, Prince, a BlackBerry on one hip and a 9-mm. on the other, does a sweep around one of Blackwater’s bases in northeast Afghanistan, pointing out buildings recently hit by mortar fire. As a drone circles overhead, its camera presumably trained on the surroundings, Prince climbs a guard tower and peers down at a spot where two of his contractors were nearly killed last July by an improvised explosive device. “Not counting civilian checkpoints,” he says, “this is the closest base to the [Pakistani] border.” His voice takes on a melodramatic solemnity. “Who else has built a fob along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?” It doesn’t quite have the ring of Lawrence of Arabia’s “To Aqaba!,” but you get the picture.
Going “Low-Pro”

Blackwater has been in Afghanistan since 2002. At the time, the C.I.A.’s executive director, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, responding to his operatives’ complaints of being “worried sick about the Afghans’ coming over the fence or opening the doors,” enlisted the company to offer protection for the agency’s Kabul station. Going “low-pro,” or low-profile, paid off: not a single C.I.A. employee, according to sources close to the company, died in Afghanistan while under Blackwater’s protection. (Talk about a tight-knit bunch. Krongard would later serve as an unpaid adviser to Blackwater’s board, until 2007. And his brother Howard “Cookie” Krongard—the State Department’s inspector general—had to recuse himself from Blackwater-related oversight matters after his brother’s involvement with the company surfaced. Buzzy, in response, stepped down.)

As the agency’s confidence in Blackwater grew, so did the company’s responsibilities, expanding from static protection to mobile security—shadowing agency personnel, ever wary of suicide bombers, ambushes, and roadside devices, as they moved about the country. By 2005, Blackwater, accustomed to guarding C.I.A. personnel, was starting to look a little bit like the C.I.A. itself. Enrique “Ric” Prado joined Blackwater after serving as chief of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). A short time later, Prado’s boss, J. Cofer Black, the head of the CTC, moved over to Blackwater, too. He was followed, in turn, by his superior, Rob Richer, second-in-command of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Of the three, Cofer Black had the outsize reputation. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book Bush at War, on September 13, 2001, Black had promised President Bush that when the C.I.A. was through with al-Qaeda “they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.” According to Woodward, “Black became known in Bush’s inner circle as the ‘flies-on-the-eyeballs guy.’” Richer and Black soon helped start a new company, Total Intelligence Solutions (which collects data to help businesses assess risks overseas), but in 2008 both men left Blackwater, as did company president Gary Jackson this year.

Prince in his Virginia office. His company took in more than $1 billion from government contracts during the George W. Bush era. Photograph by Nigel Parry.

Off and on, Black and Richer’s onetime partner Ric Prado, first with the C.I.A., then as a Blackwater employee, worked quietly with Prince as his vice president of “special programs” to provide the agency with what every intelligence service wants: plausible deniability. Shortly after 9/11, President Bush had issued a “lethal finding,” giving the C.I.A. the go-ahead to kill or capture al-Qaeda members. (Under an executive order issued by President Gerald Ford, it had been illegal since 1976 for U.S. intelligence operatives to conduct assassinations.) As a seasoned case officer, Prado helped implement the order by putting together a small team of “blue-badgers,” as government agents are known. Their job was threefold: find, fix, and finish. Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off. When the time came to train the hit squad, the agency, insiders say, turned to Prince. Wary of attracting undue attention, the team practiced not at the company’s North Carolina compound but at Prince’s own domain, an hour outside Washington, D.C. The property looks like an outpost of the landed gentry, with pastures and horses, but also features less traditional accents, such as an indoor firing range. Once again, Prince has Wild Bill on his mind, observing that “the O.S.S. trained during World War II on a country estate.”

Among the team’s targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al-Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency’s radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The C.I.A. team supposedly went in “dark,” meaning they did not notify their own station—much less the German government—of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down. Another target, the source says, was A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who shared nuclear know-how with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The C.I.A. team supposedly tracked him in Dubai. In both cases, the source insists, the authorities in Washington chose not to pull the trigger. Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged. (Says agency spokesman Gimigliano, “[The] C.I.A. hasn’t discussed—despite some mischaracterizations that have appeared in the public domain—the substance of this effort or earlier ones.”)

The source familiar with the Darkazanli and Khan missions bristles at public comments that current and former C.I.A. officials have made: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”

W
hen Prado left the C.I.A., in 2004, he effectively took the program with him, after a short hiatus. By that point, according to sources familiar with the plan, Prince was already an agency asset, and the pair had begun working to privatize matters by changing the team’s composition from blue-badgers to a combination of “green-badgers” (C.I.A. contractors) and third-country nationals (unaware of the C.I.A. connection). Blackwater officials insist that company resources and manpower were never directly utilized—these were supposedly off-the-books initiatives done on Prince’s own dime, for which he was later reimbursed—and that despite their close ties to the C.I.A. neither Cofer Black nor Rob Richer took part. As Prince puts it, “We were building a unilateral, unattributable capability. If it went bad, we weren’t expecting the chief of station, the ambassador, or anyone to bail us out.” He insists that, had the team deployed, the agency would have had full operational control. Instead, due to what he calls “institutional osteoporosis,” the second iteration of the assassination program lost steam.

Sometime after 2006, the C.I.A. would take another shot at the program, according to an insider who was familiar with the plan. “Everyone found some reason not to participate,” says the insider. “There was a sick-out. People would say to management, ‘I have a family, I have other obligations.’ This is the fucking C.I.A. They were supposed to lead the charge after al-Qaeda and they couldn’t find the people to do it.” Others with knowledge of the program are far more charitable and question why any right-thinking officer would sign up for an assassination program at a time when their colleagues—who had thought they had legal cover to engage in another sensitive effort, the “enhanced interrogations” program at secret C.I.A. sites in foreign countries—were finding themselves in legal limbo.

America and Erik Prince, it seems, have been slow to extract themselves from the assassination business. Beyond the killer drones flown with Blackwater’s help along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (President Obama has reportedly authorized more than three dozen such hits), Prince claims he and a team of foreign nationals helped find and fix a target in October 2008, then left the finishing to others. “In Syria,” he says, “we did the signals intelligence to geo-locate the bad guys in a very denied area.” Subsequently, a U.S. Special Forces team launched a helicopter-borne assault to hunt down al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah. Ghadiyah, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al-Mazidih, was said to have been killed along with six others—though doubts have emerged about whether Ghadiyah was even there that day, as detailed in a recent Vanity Fair Web story by Reese Ehrlich and Peter Coyote.

And up until two months ago—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug—he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their mission: non-disclosable.
Exit Strategy

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By Adam Ciralsky

Find this story at Januari 2010

 

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