Blackwater/Academy settles weapons-smuggling charges

In the eyes of many, the United States-based security firm formerly known as Blackwater is synonymous with ‘scandal’. Founded in 1997 by self-confessed CIA agent Erik Prince, the company was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in non-competitive contract bids by the Bush administration, to provide wide-ranging security services in Iraq. But the company’s ‘shoot-first-ask-questions-later’ attitude resulted in numerous bloody incidents in the country, including the 2007 Nisur Square massacre, in which at least 14 Iraqi civilians were killed by trigger-happy Blackwater guards. In 2009, a frustrated US Department of State refused to renew the company’s governmental contracts, after which Blackwater terminated its partnership with the US government (or did it?). What is perhaps less known about the company, now renamed to Academi LLC, is that it has for years been the subject of several investigations by US authorities for a host of criminal offences, ranging from selling secret plans to foreign governments to illicit weapons trafficking. According to court documents unsealed yesterday at the United States District Court in New Bern, North Carolina, Academi has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle some of these charges. Under the agreement, the company has owned up to 17 different criminal violations with which it was charged after a five-year multi-agency federal investigation led by the Department of Justice. The charges include possessing unregistered fully automatic weapons in the US, illegally exporting encrypted satellite-telephone hardware to Sudan, training foreign nationals without a license, giving classified documents to foreign governments, as well as selling weapons to the Kingdom of Jordan without US government authorization and then lying about it to US federal firearms officials. It is worth noting that yesterday’s settlement was in addition to a separate $42 million settlement agreed in 2010 with the US Department of State. The latter had charged Blackwater/Academi with violating the US Arms Export Control and the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations Acts. Interestingly, the attorney for the US government, Thomas G. Walker, chose his words carefully yesterday in speaking publicly about the case. He said that the proceedings concluded “a lengthy and complex investigation into a company which has provided valuable services to the United States government, but which, at times, and in many ways, failed to comply with important laws and regulations concerning how we, as a country, interact with our international allies and adversaries”. But some of the investigators who actually worked on the ground in the case were far less diplomatic in their court testimony. Jeannine A. Hammett, a Special Agent and Criminal Investigator with the Internal Revenue Service, accused Blackwater/Academi’s senior leadership of breaking the trust of the American public by committing crimes “to line their own pockets”.

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August 8, 2012 by intelNews 1 Comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 8 August 2012

New Blackwater Iraq Scandal: Guns, Silencers and Dog Food

Ex-employees Tell ABC News the Firm Used Dog Food Sacks to Smuggle Unauthorized Weapons to Iraq

A federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food, ABCNews.com has learned.

Under State Department rules, Blackwater is prohibited from using certain assault weapons and silencers in Iraq because they are considered “offensive” weapons inappropriate for Blackwater’s role as a private security firm protecting US diplomatic missions.

“The only reason you need a silencer is if you want to assassinate someone,” said former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou, an ABC News consultant.

Six Blackwater employees are under investigation by another federal grand jury, in Washington, D.C., in connection with the shooting deaths of at least 17 civilians in September 2007 at a Baghdad traffic circle. Prosecutors are expected to return indictments in the next few weeks, according to people familiar with the case.

The investigation of the alleged dog food smuggling scheme began last year after two Blackwater employees were caught trying to sell stolen weapons in North Carolina. The two, Kenneth Cashwell and William “Max” Grumiaux pleaded guilty in February and became government witnesses, according to court documents.

Two other former employees tell ABCNews.com they also witnessed the dog food smuggling operation. They say the weapons were actually hidden inside large sacks of dog food, packaged at company headquarters in North Carolina and sent to Iraq for the company’s 20 bomb-sniffing dogs.

Larger items, including M-4 assault weapons, were secreted on shipping pallets surrounded by stacks of dog food bags, the former employees said. The entire pallet would be wrapped in cellophane shrink wrap, the former employees said, making it less likely US Customs inspectors would look too closely.

In a statement, Blackwater did not address directly the allegations involving silencers but says “all firearms shipped to Iraq by Blackwater were given proper US government license.” The statement denied Blackwater owned or possessed any M4 weapons in Iraq.

US Army officials told ABCNews.com earlier this year, at least one Blackwater M4 weapon was discovered during a raid on an suspected insurgent location in Iraq.

Last year, a US Department of Commerce inspector at JFK airport in New York discovered a two-way radio hidden in a dog food sack being shipped by Blackwater to Iraq, according to people familiar with the incident.

Blackwater says the radio did not need a license and was hidden among the dog food sacks, not inside the dog food.

The company says it is a common practice “to prevent corrupt foreign customs agents and shipping workers from stealing the valuables.”

In addition to the grand jury investigation, Blackwater sources say the company is facing a multi-million dollar fine for some 900 instances in which it violated State Department licensing requirements for the export of certain weapons and technical know-how.

Blackwater acknowledged in its statements “numerous mistakes in complex and demanding area of export compliance,” saying most of the violations were failures of paperwork not “nefarious smuggling.”

Of the 900 cases, about 100 of them have been referred to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution, according to lawyers briefed on the case.

…

By BRIAN ROSS and JASON RYAN

November 14, 2008—

Find this story at 14 November 2008

Copyright © 2012 ABC News Internet Ventures

Why did US Government Take Blackwater to Court?

Last week I gave a live television interview to the main news program of RT, about the company formerly known as Blackwater. As intelNews reported on August 8, the private military outfit, which rebranded itself to Academi in late 2011, agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle no fewer than 17 violations of United States federal laws, including several charges of illegal weapons exports. This was hardly the first time that the scandal-prone company made headlines for breaking the law. Last week’s settlement followed a separate $42 million settlement agreed in 2010 with the US Department of State. The latter had charged Blackwater/Academi with violating the US Arms Export Control and International Trafficking in Arms Regulations Acts. Those familiar with the murky world of private military contractors are aware that these companies are often hired by governments precisely because they are willing and able to break the law in pursuit of tactical directives. In fact, the main difference between Blackwater/Academi and other private military contractors is not its disregard for legal boundaries, but the lack of discretion with which it keeps breaking the law. This is precisely the reason why it regularly finds itself charged with a host of different criminal violations.

Now, there is little doubt that the services Blackwater/Academi provided to the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan far exceeded things such as VIP protection or tactical training. In one typical case, the company was found to have illegally shipped to Iraq weapon silencers, hidden among sacks of dog food intended for its K-9 unit. As I told RT news, one does not have to be an expert on the operational side of intelligence to realize that there is really only one thing you need gun silencers for —and it’s not VIP protection.

But if Blackwater/Academi resorted to breaking the law in order to assist the US government’s military or intelligence objectives in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, why was it taken to court by that very government? The answer, as I told RT, has to do with the fact that governments —including America’s— are not monolithic. They are complex amalgamations of actors, often with competing interests, who fight for bureaucratic dominance as often as they collaborate in pursuit of common goals.

Blackwater/Academi is a case in point: the company has for over a decade had a very cozy relationship with certain elements of the US government apparatus, notably the CIA, the George W. Bush White House, and some offices in the State Department. But other governmental interest groups, including parts of the Pentagon, the Internal Revenue Service, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have been skeptical about Blackwater/Academi’s operations since even before 9/11. It is not surprising, therefore, that government agencies like the IRS or the FBI examine Blackwater/Academi’s role with reference to their own, narrow administrative goals, while disregarding the broader strategic benefits that others in the US government may attribute to these very operations. It is plausible, for instance, that by presenting the King of Jordan with a birthday present consisting of a case of state-of-the-art fully automatic weapons, Blackwater/Academi was acting as a conduit for the US Department of State or the CIA. The FBI, which has always considered Blackwater/Academi as a band of mercenary cowboys, could care less about the relationship between the Royal House of Jordan and the State Department. It therefore takes the company to court, and as in fact it did, for illegally exporting weapons to a foreign country.

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August 13, 2012 by intelNews

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 13 August 2012

Edwin P. Wilson, the Spy Who Lived It Up, Dies at 84; Part spy, part tycoon, Edwin P. Wilson lived large.

He claimed to own 100 corporations in the United States and Europe, many of them real and many of them shells. He had an apartment in Geneva; a hunting lodge in England; a seaside villa in Tripoli, Libya; a town house in Washington; and real estate in North Carolina, Lebanon and Mexico. He entertained congressmen, generals and Central Intelligence Agency bigwigs at his 2,338-acre estate in Northern Virginia.

He showered minks on his mistress, whom he called “Wonder Woman.” He owned three private planes and bragged that he knew flight attendants on the Concorde by name.

His preferred habitat was a hall of mirrors. His business empire existed as a cover for espionage, but it also made him a lot of money. He had the advantage of being able to call the Internal Revenue Service and use national security jargon to get the details on a potential customer. And if the I.R.S. questioned his own tax filings, he terminated the discussion by saying he was a C.I.A. operative on a covert mission.

“Being in the C.I.A. was like putting on a magic coat that forever made him invisible and invincible,” Peter Maas wrote in “Manhunt,” his 1986 book about Mr. Wilson.

For Mr. Wilson, who died on Sept. 10 in Seattle at 84, the adventure collapsed with his arrest in 1982 on charges of selling Libya 20 tons of powerful explosives.

Over the next two years, he was tried in four federal cases in four different courts, accused of, among other things, smuggling arms and plotting to murder his wife. He was sentenced to a total of 52 years in prison. He served 22 of them, mostly in solitary confinement. Then the dagger of fate took a strange twist.

After studying thousands of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Mr. Wilson and his lawyer went back to court and demolished the government’s case.

Mr. Wilson’s sole defense was that he had been working for the C.I.A., serving his country, when he sold the explosives to Libya. The prosecution’s case had rested on an affidavit by the C.I.A.’s third-ranking official denying that Mr. Wilson had been working for the agency at the time. An hour after being read the affidavit, a jury found Mr. Wilson guilty.

Two decades later, the evidence Mr. Wilson had collected convinced a federal judge in Houston, Lynn H. Hughes, that he had in fact been working for the agency and that the C.I.A. had lied.

“Because the government knowingly used false evidence against him and suppressed favorable evidence, his conviction will be vacated,” Judge Hughes wrote. He added, “America will not defeat Libyan terrorism by double-crossing a part-time informal government agent.”

In 2004, a year after the judge’s ruling, Mr. Wilson was released from Allenwood federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania. Since then he had lived in Seattle on a monthly Social Security check of $1,080. He died of complications from heart-valve replacement surgery, his nephew Scott Wilson said.

Up until his death, Mr. Wilson was still hoping to persuade two other federal courts to void his convictions on the other charges.

Edwin Paul Wilson was born into a poor farm family in Nampa, Idaho, on May 3, 1928. A member of Future Farmers of America, he had a newspaper route and sometimes supplemented his income by rolling a drunk, Mr. Maas wrote in “Manhunt.” He shipped out as a seaman before returning to earn a bachelor’s degree in industrial management from the University of Portland. He joined the Marines and served in Korea after the conflict there ended.

Flying home, he fell into a conversation with a passenger, who told him that he might like working for the C.I.A. The passenger did not identify himself, but Mr. Wilson wrote down a name and a phone number to call. The agency hired him in 1955. His first job was guarding U-2 spy planes.

In 1960, the C.I.A. sent him to Cornell for graduate studies in labor relations, which he put to use against Communism in unions around the world. In one assignment he paid Corsican mobsters to keep leftist dockworkers in line; in another, he released cockroaches in the hotel rooms of Soviet labor delegations.

In 1964, on behalf of the agency, Mr. Wilson started a maritime consulting firm so that the C.I.A. could better monitor international shipping. By nudging up costs and skimping on taxes, he multiplied his own income.

Mr. Wilson left the C.I.A. in 1971, at least publicly, to join the Office of Naval Intelligence. Again he formed companies in service of the government and took them with him when he left the government in 1976. He grew rich and lived lavishly.

Several years later, a top C.I.A. official asked Mr. Wilson to go to Libya to keep an eye on Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, who was living there. That led to several weapons deals. In one, a Libyan asked him to throw in a few pistols to send to Libyan embassies. One was used to kill a Libyan dissident in Bonn. “That I feel bad about,” Mr. Wilson told The Washington Post in a 2004 interview.

He also arranged for former Green Berets to train Libyan troops, and for airplane and helicopter pilots to work for Libya. There was speculation in news publications that he had contributed to the deaths of a dozen Libyan dissidents around the world. He later maintained that all of his activities had been done to gather information for the C.I.A.

Unknown to Mr. Wilson, investigators had been building a case against him since 1976, when Kevin Mulcahy, one of his partners, approached the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. with grave doubts about the legality and ethics of Mr. Wilson’s business dealings.

Lured by investigators to the Dominican Republic in 1982, Mr. Wilson was flown to New York and eventually indicted on various charges in federal courts in Washington, Virginia, New York and Houston. He was tried four times over the next two years.

In Washington, he was acquitted of charges that he had solicited assassins to kill a Libyan dissident. In Virginia, he was convicted of exporting weapons, including the one used in the Bonn killing, and sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $200,000.

…

September 22, 2012

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Find this story at 22 September 2012

© 2012 The New York Times Company

Former CIA operative Edwin Wilson dies at 84; Ex-CIA operative who illegally sold arms to Libya dies

SEATTLE (AP) — Edwin Wilson set up front companies abroad for the CIA, made millions in the arms trade and entertained generals and congressmen at his sprawling Virginia farm.

His high-powered, jet-setting life in the 1970s and early 1980s followed a career in the CIA. But it came crashing down when he was branded a traitor and convicted in 1983 for shipping 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives to Libya.

After two decades in prison, Wilson finally got the conviction overturned, convincing a judge that he had continued to work informally for the agency.

The man who once posed as a rich American businessman abroad spent his final years living with his brother near Seattle.

Wilson died Sept. 10 from complications from a heart valve replacement surgery, said Craig Emmick, a director at Columbia Funeral Home in Seattle. He was 84.

“Our family always supported him and believed in him,” his nephew, Scott Wilson, said Saturday, adding that the biggest part of his uncle’s vindication was “that the label of being a traitor would be taken off.”

“He never considered himself a traitor, of course,” Wilson added.

Wilson was born May 3, 1928, to a farming family in Nampa, Idaho. He worked as a merchant seaman, and earned a psychology degree from the University of Portland in 1953.

He joined the Marines and fought in the last days of the Korean War, according to his death notice. He went to work for the Central Intelligence Agency in 1955 after being discharged from the Marines.

Wilson entered the arms trade after leaving the CIA in 1971, according to a 2004 Washington Post article.

“I had a couple of villas that were very, very nice,” he told the newspaper at the time. “I had Pakistani houseboys and I had Libyans working for me, typing up proposals in Arabic.”

In 1982, he was lured out of hiding in Libya and brought to New York for arrest.

A federal court in Virginia convicted him of exporting firearms to Libya without permission and sentenced him to 10 years. He was convicted in Texas in 1983, receiving a 17-year sentence for similar crimes.

A New York court also sentenced him to 25 years, to run consecutively with the Texas and Virginia sentences, for attempted murder, criminal solicitation and other charges involving claims that Wilson conspired behind bars to have witnesses and prosecutors killed.

…

(AP) – Sep 22, 2012

Find this story at 22 September 2012

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

US General: American Military Spies ‘Across Africa’

A U-28A plane, painted in a civilian paint scheme, is seen about to touch down on a landing strip, in this file photo. (US Airforce)

America’s top commander in Africa revealed that the U.S. military has conducted spy operations all over the continent as part of the fight against international adversaries from al Qaeda-allied terror groups that target the homeland to suspected war criminals like Joseph Kony.

“Do we collect information across Africa? Yes, we do,” U.S. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, said in a leadership conference at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies Monday.

In an attempt to clarify recent press reports that the U.S. military had set up “spy locations” throughout Africa, Ham said that U.S. troops do at times go on “short-term deployments of capabilities” in various African nations, but always with the permission of the host country.

Ham did not explain what exactly those capabilities are, but gave as an example the hunt for Joseph Kony, the notorious leader of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army — a hunt the U.S. military has supported with the permission of four local governments. Last October, President Obama announced that 100 American special operations troops had been sent to central Africa to help track Kony.

“To have some intelligence collection capability that has the ability to monitor the areas in which we believe the Lord’s Resistance Army is operating, to be able to see, to be able to listen, to be able to collect information which we then pass to the four nations, four African nations, which are participating, I think is a good way ahead,” Ham said.

Ham’s admission comes two weeks after The Washington Post reported that the U.S. military had secretly expanded its presence in Africa to include a network of small air bases used to spy on terrorist organizations there. According to the Post, the military uses small, unarmed turbo-prop planes disguised as private charters to carry out sensitive intelligence collection.

Part of that program appeared to have been revealed in February when the Department of Defense announced the deaths of four special operations servicemen near Djibouti. The four men died after their U-28 plane — a “non-standard” surveillance aircraft similar in appearance to a private plane — was involved in an accident.

Gen.: Future Role for US Military in Libya, ‘Ideal’ Position in Somalia

Ham echoed fears previously voiced by U.S. officials to ABC News about a possible foothold extremist groups like al Qaeda may be trying to make in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. AQIM, an al Qaeda offshoot based in northwestern Africa, has publicly said it has “benefitted” from the chaos in Libya already.

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By LEE FERRAN
June 26, 2012

Find this story at 26 June 2012

Copyright © 2012 ABC News Internet Ventures. Yahoo! – ABC News Network

Libya Could Be An Opportunity For CIA, If Spies Stick Around

Libyans celebrate the end of the Gadhafi regime in Benghazi, October 2011. After the attack on the U.S. consulate, these same Libyans could be key for the CIA’s counterterrorism efforts. Photo: Flickr/Magherebia

President Obama told the truth when he said there would be no U.S. ground troops in Libya after last year’s war to oust dictator Moammar Gadhafi. He just left out a lot of context — like how eastern Libya, the site of the deadly September 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, would become a major staging ground for American contractors and intelligence operatives as they try to take the measure of the local Islamist militants.

The future of that effort is now in question after an attack that killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador and two former Navy SEALs. The assault has led Americans to vacate Benghazi for their safety, even though various militant groups continue their operations. It’s a disaster for U.S. intelligence efforts in the region, especially since the attack has made brutally clear how real the jihadi threat in eastern Libya remains.

But there may be the smallest of silver linings to this black cloud, if American operatives are able to capitalize on it. The aftermath of the attack shows widespread displeasure with Benghazi’s jihadist groups, with thousands marching in protest. That’s an opportunity the CIA could use to rebuild its intelligence gathering.

The New York Times reports that one of the compounds in the lightly-secured Benghazi consulate was a CIA safe house. From there, intelligence personnel and contractors — like the ex-Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, who died in the attack — attempted to locate and destroy the thousands of rockets and missiles that went missing during the war. They also attempted to gather information on the constellation of extremist militias that have emerged after the downfall of Gadhafi.

Now they may not. While U.S. surveillance drones dot the skies over Libya, what remains of the intelligence operation below may have already departed Benghazi, understandably fearing for its safety. An anonymous U.S. official described it to the Times as a “catastrophic intelligence loss” that leaves the U.S. with “our eyes poked out.” While other officials dispute that characterization, the first account administration officials provided of the incident mentioned that remaining U.S. personnel in eastern Libya had been extracted.

Some important background: Obama’s decision to support the Libyan revolution had an unintended consequence for the CIA. Behind the scenes, it had collaborated with Gadhafi’s brutal intelligence apparatus to track (and occasionally torture) suspected Libyan terrorists. Now, the Gadhafi intelligence apparatus was gone, leaving the CIA without its proxy eyes and ears, and a weak interim government of unproven ability operated in its place.

And eastern Libya is not a place to be without eyes and ears. While the Arab Spring may have undermined one of al-Qaida’s central rationales for existing — waging war to overthrow U.S.-backed dictators — but opportunities for related or sympathetic jihadi groups to fill the vacuums left by overthrown regimes have expanded. That’s on stark display in eastern Libya. A massive intelligence trove captured from al-Qaida in Iraq in 2007 revealed that the city of Derna, with a population of 100,000, sent 52 fighters to wage jihad in Iraq, more than the Saudi capitol of Riyadh, a city of four million. As militia groups coalesced in post-Gadhafi Libya, alliances shifted and new organizations moved in, word of a growing extremist threat in the east even broke through in major media. Focal point: Derna.

Whatever intelligence network the CIA built on the ground in eastern Libya failed it two weeks ago in Benghazi. And whether or not there were specific warnings of the 9/11 anniversary attack, the State Department in the spring hired a British security firm to help protect the consulate. And the diary of the slain U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens, revealed that he was worried about “a rise in Islamic extremism and al Qaida’s growing presence in Libya,” CNN reported.

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By Spencer AckermanEmail AuthorSeptember 24, 2012 | 11:01 am | Categories: Shadow Wars, Spies,
Secrecy and Surveillance

Find this story at 24 September 2012

Wired.com © 2012 Condé Nast. All rights reserved.

White House widens covert ops presence in North Africa

WASHINGTON – Small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa in the months before militants launched the fiery attack that killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya. The soldiers’ mission: Set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target or rescue a hostage.

But the teams had yet to do much counterterrorism work in Libya, though the White House signed off a year ago on the plan to build the new military task force in the region and the advance teams had been there for six months, according to three U.S. counterterror officials and a former intelligence official.

The counterterror effort indicates that the administration has been worried for some time about a growing threat posed by al-Qaida and its offshoots in North Africa. But officials say the military organization was too new to respond to the attack in Benghazi, where the administration now believes armed al-Qaida-linked militants surrounded the lightly guarded U.S. compound, set it on fire and killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Republicans have questioned whether the Obama administration has been hiding key information or hasn’t known what happened in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

As of early September, the special operations teams still consisted only of liaison officers who were assigned to establish relationships with local governments and U.S. officials in the region. Only limited counterterrorism operations have been conducted in Africa so far.

“There are no plans at this stage for unilateral U.S. military operations” in the region, Pentagon spokesman George Little said Tuesday, adding that the focus was on helping African countries build their own forces.

For the Special Operations Command, spokesman Col. Tim Nye would not discuss “the missions and or locations of its counterterrorist forces” except to say that special operations troops are in 75 countries daily conducting missions.

The go-slow approach being taken by the Army’s top clandestine counterterrorist unit – known as Delta Force – is an effort by the White House to counter criticism from some U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and others that the anti-terror fight is shifting largely to a secret war using special operations raids and drone strikes, with little public accountability. The administration has been taking its time when setting up the new unit to get buy-in from all players who might be affected, such as the U.S. ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, regional U.S. military commanders and local leaders.

Eventually, the Delta Force group will form the backbone of a military task force responsible for combating al-Qaida and other terrorist groups across the region with an arsenal that includes drones. But first, it will work to win acceptance by helping North African nations build their own special operations and counterterror units.

The Obama administration has been concerned about the growing power and influence of al-Qaida offshoots in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and North Africa. Only the Yemeni branch has tried to attack American territory directly so far, with a series of thwarted bomb plots aimed at U.S.-bound aircraft. A Navy SEAL task force set up in 2009 has used a combination of raids and drone strikes to fight militants in Yemen and Somalia, working together with the CIA and local forces.

The new task force would work in much the same way to combat al-Qaida’s North African affiliates, which are growing in numbers and are awash in weapons from post-revolutionary Libya’s looted stockpiles. They are well-funded by a criminal network trafficking in drugs and hostages.

…

Published: 07:12 PM, Tue Oct 02, 2012

By Kimberly Dozier

The Associated Press

Find this story at 2 October 2012

Copyright 2012 – The Fayetteville Observer, Fayetteville, N.C.

CIA-Kooperation mit Gaddafi; Foltern als Freundschaftsdienst

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

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

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

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

Das übliche Prinzip vom Geben und Nehmen

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

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

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

Die CIA soll in mehreren Ländern geheime Gefängnisse betrieben haben

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

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

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

Auch Emissäre aus Europa sollen die Gefangenen verhört haben

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

…

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

Find this story at 6 September 2012

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
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Benghazi attack testimony claims state department ignored warnings

Former security chiefs testify at heated House committee hearing that safeguarding US embassy in Libya was a ‘struggle’

Lt Col Andrew Wood, Eric Nordstrom, Charlene R Lamb and Patrick Kennedy testify on the security failures of Benghazi before the US House oversight committee. Photograph: Zhang Jun/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Two former heads of US diplomatic security in Libya have told a congressional hearing that requests for additional agents to protect American officials and premises in the face of a growing threat from armed militias were rejected by the state department ahead of the attack on the Benghazi consulate that killed the US ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other officials.

At a heated hearing before the House of representatives oversight committee, Republicans painted a picture of an incompetent state department failing to heed warnings of a growing terrorist threat or to prepare for a possible attack on the anniversary of 9/11, and then covering up the circumstances of the full scale militia assault that killed Stevens. They also accused Obama administration officials of attempting to suppress unclassified documents because they were politically embarrassing.

Democrats described the investigation as a partisan political move intended to embarrass the White House in the run up to the presidential election.

Hours before the hearing, the state department was forced into an embarrassing retreat on its claim that the attackers used the cover of a popular protest outside the consulate as cover for the assault. Officials acknowledged on Tuesday that there was no protest and that as it occurred on September 11 it was likely timed to mark the anniversary of al-Qaida’s assault on the US 11 years ago.

The former head of embassy security in Libya, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, said that he recognised the situation in Libya was volatile and that he and other officials pressed for additional agents to protect the consulate in Benghazi.

“The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there … Diplomatic security remained weak,” he said. “The RSO (regional security officer) struggled to obtain additional personnel there, but was never able to attain the numbers he felt comfortable with.”

The committee chairman, Darrel Issa, then released state department cables not previously made public containing the requests for more security including one from the then ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz.

Another official, Eric Nordstrom, who was responsible for protecting US diplomats in Libya, said that he too sought additional resources. But he said he was told over the phone by a senior state department official responsible for handling the request, Charlene Lamb, not to make any more because “there would be too much political cost”.

After that Republican members of Congress honed in on Lamb, who was also a witness, accusing her of failing to recognise the seriousness of the threat.
Lamb responded that the requests were for more personnel in Tripoli and it would have made no difference to how many security men would have been protecting the Benghazi consulate where protection was in any case mostly in the hands of a pro-government militia.

“We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi on the night of 9/11,” Lamb testified.

However, Republican attempts to accuse the state department of leaving the consulate vulnerable by refusing requests for more security were delivered a blow when Nordstrom was asked how many agents he wanted to protect the Benghazi site. He said he asked for three. The hearing then heard that there were five at the time of the attack.

Congressman Jason Chaffetz noted that after the state department declined to increase the number of security personnel it did raise the danger pay of Wood and his colleagues.

Nordstrom suggested that it might have been difficult to protect the consulate in any circumstance.

“I had not seen an attack of such ferocity and intensity previously in Libya nor in my time with the diplomatic security service,” he said. “I’m concerned that this attack signals a new security reality, just as the 1983 Beirut marine barracks bombings did for the marines, the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings did for the state department and 9/11 did for our entire country.”

But Nordstrom warned that it would be wrong to react to the attack and the continuing threat by retreating to a bunker.

Republican congressmen hammered away at the accusation that the state department had failed to heed warnings of an escalating threat and that officials gave “demonstrably false statements” about the circumstances of the attack.

The committee released a memo from Stevens sent on the day he was killed in which he described an array of armed militias competing for control and some of their leaders as criticising the US for taking political sides by backing the government in Tripoli. He also described growing Islamist influence in the town of Derna, to the east of Benghazi.

However the memo also reported that Benghazi council said the security situation was improving and appealed for American investment.

Nordstrom described a chaotic situation in Libya shortly after the revolution, saying that the new government had so little control that it could not provide security for diplomats and embassies.

“We could not rely on the Libyan government for security, intelligence and law enforcement help to identify emerging threats or to ask them for assistance in mitigating those threats. In Benghazi however, the government of Libya through the 17 February Martyrs Brigade was able to provide us consistent armed security since the very earliest days of the revolution,” he said.

Nordstrom said that the long-term plan was to create a local force to protect the consulate.

Issa accused the administration of a cover-up of the circumstances of the attack because for days the administration stuck with the claim that the attack was made under the cover of a popular protest against an anti-Islam film.

One witness, assistant secretary of state Patrick Kennedy, defended the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who has faced calls to resign for her statements in the days after the attack saying it was a response to an anti-Muslim video that prompted demonstrations across the Middle East.

…

Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 October 2012 22.43 BST

Find this story at 10 October 2012

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

U.S. May Have Put Mistaken Faith in Libya Site’s Security

WASHINGTON — An effective response by newly trained Libyan security guards to a small bombing outside the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi in June may have led United States officials to underestimate the security threat to personnel there, according to counterterrorism and State Department officials, even as threat warnings grew in the weeks before the recent attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

The guards’ aggressive action in June came after the mission’s defenses and training were strengthened at the recommendation of a small team of Special Forces soldiers who augmented the mission’s security force for several weeks in April while assessing the compound’s vulnerabilities, American officials said.

“That the local security did so well back in June probably gave us a false sense of security,” said one American official who has served in Libya, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because the F.B.I. is investigating the attack. “We may have fooled ourselves.”

The presence of the Special Forces team and the conclusions reached about the role of the Libyan guards offer new insight into the kind of security concerns that American officials had before the attack on Sept. 11.

Security at the mission has become a major issue as the Obama administration struggles to explain what happened during the attack, who was responsible and how the ambassador ended up alone.

Republicans and Democrats in recent days have demanded more detailed explanations from the White House and State Department on possible security lapses. “There were warnings,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday.

Just how much American and Libyan officials misread the threat has become even more evident as they analyze the skill with which the mortar attack at an annex a half mile away was carried out by the attackers. That assault, nearly three hours after the initial attack on the main diplomatic mission, killed two former Navy SEALs who were defending the compound.

With as few as four armed Americans and three armed Libyans guarding the mission as the attack began, Mr. Stevens’s own bodyguard was so far away that he needed to sprint across the compound under gunfire to reach the building where the ambassador was working at the time. But the bodyguard ultimately left without Mr. Stevens, who died of smoke inhalation.

And even after eight additional American security officers arrived from Tripoli, the roughly 30 Americans were surprised and outgunned again in the second attack, dependent on an ad hoc collection of Libyan militiamen to protect their retreat and avoid greater casualties, Libyan officials said.

American counterterrorism officials and Libyans on the scene say the mortar attack was most likely carried out by the same group of assailants who had attacked the mission and then followed the convoy of American survivors retreating to what they thought was a safe house.

The first mortar shell fell short, but the next two hit their mark in rapid succession with deadly precision, according to an account that David Ubben, one of Mr. Stevens’s security guards, told his father, Rex Ubben, which was supported by other American and Libyan officials.

“There are three villas inside and the walls are high, and the only house that got hit was the house we were in,” said Fathi el-Obeidi, a Libyan militia commander who came to help evacuate the Americans.

This indicated that many of the assailants were practiced at aiming their mortars, skills they learned in fighting Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s army.

“David did not draw a distinction between the attackers,” Rex Ubben said in a telephone interview. David Ubben, a 31-year old Iraq war veteran, was wounded in the mortar attack, and is recovering from his wounds at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. His father said he had declined to speak to reporters.

The Sept. 11 attack culminated several weeks of growing violence against Western and other diplomatic posts in Benghazi. State Department officials said they were aware of the worsening climate and took precautions. One American official who worked in the mission said the Americans there were able to get around with “appropriate prudence.”

One American official, who said he traded e-mails with Mr. Stevens three days before his death, said the ambassador did not mention any heightened security concerns. CNN, however, has reported that Mr. Stevens did express such worries in a diary that one of the network’s correspondents found at the ransacked mission.

But security had been a concern for months. After an attack in early April on the convoy of the United Nations special envoy for Libya, Ian Martin, the United States Embassy in Tripoli sent about four Special Forces soldiers to Benghazi to augment security and conduct the security assessment, the American official said. The soldiers were part of a larger group of nearly two dozen Special Operations personnel, including Navy SEALs and bomb-squad specialists, that the military’s Africa Command sent to Tripoli last fall to establish security at the embassy there.

As a result of the military assessment, the mission increased the number of sandbagged defensive positions and gave the Libyan security guards more training. “We weren’t blind to fact the security situation in Benghazi was more tenuous than in Tripoli,” said the American official who served in Libya. “We were constantly considering Benghazi and constantly looking for ways to improve security there.”

The first test of the new defenses came when militants attacked the mission with a homemade bomb on June 6, the day after the United States announced that it had killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, a top leader of Al Qaeda, in Pakistan. No one was injured in the June 6 bombing.

Representative Peter King, a New York Republican who heads the House Homeland Security Committee, said after the roadside bombing in June, he heard nothing from the State Department or others in the government about a need for more security in Benghazi.

“Between June 6 and Sept. 11, I’m not aware that they asked for more security or that they thought they needed more because it was more of a risk, or that there was talk or a debate about it,” he said.

While the broad outlines of what happened that night have been reported, details continue to emerge that paint a more complete picture of the frantic response to the attack. It began about 9:30 p.m., roughly 15 minutes after Mr. Stevens had finished an evening meeting with the Turkish ambassador, bid him farewell and chatted briefly with a handful of Libyan guards at the gate of the compound.

There were a total of seven Libyan guards at the edge of compound. Four were unarmed guards who worked for the British security firm Blue Mountain inside the gates, checking visitors’ identification, operating a metal detector and running their bags through an X-ray machine. Three others were armed members of a major local militia that fought in the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi, the February 17 Brigade. The brigade had been responsible for securing the mission from its inception, and in interviews the guards said that they had received additional training for the job of guarding the mission.

There were no more than seven Americans in the compound, including three civilians and four who carried guns, three of the Libyan guards later recalled, speaking on condition of anonymity for their safety. In addition to Mr. Stevens, the Libyans said, the civilians included a familiar figure they identified as “the bald maintenance guy” — Sean Smith, a computer technology specialist, as well as another official visiting from Tripoli whom the Libyans referred to as a “delegate.” The Libyan guards said they believed that Mr. Stevens was alone in the residence at the time of the attack, and the locations of Mr. Smith and the visitor at the time were unclear.

Just before 9:30, the Libyan guards began hearing shouts of “God is great” from outside the walls. They said that they had initially assumed the shouts were from a funeral procession.

An unarmed Blue Mountain guard said he tried to call his superior on his two-way radio and could not reach him. Then he heard American voices through the radio: “Attack, attack!”

Moments later the guards heard gunfire, the blasts of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and other grenades falling inside the compound. The attackers moved on all three entrances at once in an apparently coordinated assault, backed by truck-mounted artillery.

Mohamed Bishari, 20, the son of the landlord and a neighbor who watched the attack, said: “They thought that there would be more Americans inside, commandos or something like that. So they immediately started attacking with their R.P.G. rockets.”

He and other witnesses identified the attackers as Ansar al-Shariah, a well-known brigade of local Islamist militants. He said they arrived waving the black flag favored by such ultraconservative jihadis.

The unarmed Libyan guards ran back to take up positions as they had been instructed, behind sandbags that had been erected between the office and the residence. “The shooting was coming from all directions,” one guard said. “I hid behind the sandbags saying my last prayers.”

Another grenade landed inside the structure housing the three armed Libyan guards but, miraculously, did not explode.

“When the grenade didn’t explode, they came out of the windows,” said one of the unarmed guards, who said he had spoken to the armed contingent over the two-way radio during the attack. “They had a ladder outside the villa which they used to go up on the roof and started resisting.”

“They were resisting and radioing for backup from their brigade at the same time,” the guard said. “They managed to get a few.” Another guard said, “It was like a fog of war, it was chaotic, you couldn’t see anything” He added: “By the end it was every man for himself.”

Three guards, speaking independently, said they saw one of Mr. Stevens’s bodyguards run out of an office building with a light weapon drawn, racing back to the residence under fire to try to protect the ambassador.

Two other security guards, whom the Libyans identified only as Scott and Dave, were in the compound’s canteen and went to its roof to fight, the Libyans said.

Mr. Smith, the information technology worker, died of smoke inhalation during the fight. The American security detail, including Mr. Ubben, was unable to locate Mr. Stevens in the residence because of the thick, choking smoke in the building, and managed only to retrieve Mr. Smith’s body, an American official said.

Previous American government accounts indicated that a convoy evacuated about 20 Americans from the mission at about 11:30 p.m. But Mr. Bishari, the neighbor, said that more than two and a half hours after the fight began, between midnight and 1 a.m., he saw what he described as the ambassador’s armored Mercedes S.U.V. leaving the mission. He pointed to a hole in the compound’s concrete wall that he said was left by a rocket-propelled grenade that was fired at the fleeing vehicle and evidently missed.

The annex building was a secret. The Libyan militia leaders who escorted the Americans say they were unaware of it, and the eight American security officers who arrived at the Benghazi airport from Tripoli at about 1:30 a.m. guided the Libyans to it using a GPS device, members of the Libyan team said.

Those eight Americans initially planned to leave the airport with Mr. Fathi and a handful of Libyan militiamen in four vehicles, two Toyota Land Cruisers followed by two Kia sedans. But when they learned of the Americans’ arrival, local Libyan security forces insisted on sending 16 more vehicles of fighters, Mr. Obeidi said. “I told them not to be too close to us so when we get to the place we don’t create a scene,” he said.

But the attackers had evidently found it, perhaps by following the vehicle leaving the compound. Libyan witnesses who saw the attacks in both locations said they appeared to be the same group, Ansar al-Shariah.

The attackers evidently had set up mortar rounds in advance of the attack. They hit the annex just after the Libyan escort and American security team had reached the gate, Mr. Obeidi said.

United States government officials say they learned from the bodyguards as early as 2 a.m. that Mr. Stevens had disappeared in the smoke. Mr. Obeidi said by that time, he had learned from the hospital that the doctor there who had treated the ambassador identified his body. But other Libyan officials say they were unsure of Mr. Stevens’s condition.

…

Correction: October 8, 2012

September 30, 2012
By ERIC SCHMITT, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SULIMAN ALI ZWAY

Find this article at 8 October 2012

© 2012 The New York Times Company

Deadly Attack in Libya Was Major Blow to C.I.A. Efforts

WASHINGTON — The attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans has dealt the Central Intelligence Agency a major setback in its intelligence-gathering efforts at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.

Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault on the American mission and a nearby annex were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of armed militant groups in and around the city.

“It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss,” said one American official who has served in Libya and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the F.B.I. is still investigating the attack. “We got our eyes poked out.”

The C.I.A.’s surveillance targets in Benghazi and eastern Libya include Ansar al-Sharia, a militia that some have blamed for the attack, as well as suspected members of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Eastern Libya is also being buffeted by strong crosscurrents that intelligence operatives are trying to monitor closely. The killing of Mr. Stevens has ignited public anger against the militias, underscored on Friday when thousands of Libyans took to the streets of Benghazi to demand that the groups be disarmed. The makeup of militias varies widely; some are moderate, while others are ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis.

“The region’s deeply entrenched Salafi community is undergoing significant upheaval, with debate raging between a current that is amenable to political integration and a more militant strand that opposes democracy,” Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who closely follows Libya and visited there recently, wrote in a paper this month, “The Struggle for Security in Eastern Libya.”

American intelligence operatives also assisted State Department contractors and Libyan officials in tracking shoulder-fired missiles taken from the former arsenals of the former Libyan Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces; they aided in efforts to secure Libya’s chemical weapons stockpiles; and they helped train Libya’s new intelligence service, officials said.

Senior American officials acknowledged the intelligence setback, but insisted that information was still being collected using a variety of informants on the ground, systems that intercept electronic communications like cellphone conversations and satellite imagery. “The U.S. isn’t close to being blind in Benghazi and eastern Libya,” said an American official.

Spokesmen for the C.I.A., the State Department and the White House declined to comment on the matter on Sunday.

Within months of the start of Libyan revolution in February 2011, the C.I.A. began building a meaningful but covert presence in Benghazi, a locus of the rebel efforts to oust the government of Colonel Qaddafi.

Though the agency has been cooperating with the new post-Qaddafi Libyan intelligence service, the size of the C.I.A.’s presence in Benghazi apparently surprised some Libyan leaders. The deputy prime minister, Mustafa Abushagour, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal last week saying that he learned about some of the delicate American operations in Benghazi only after the attack on the mission, in large part because a surprisingly large number of Americans showed up at the Benghazi airport to be evacuated.

“We have no problem with intelligence sharing or gathering, but our sovereignty is also key,” said Mr. Abushagour.

The attack has raised questions about the adequacy of security preparations at the two American compounds in Benghazi: the American mission, the main diplomatic facility where Mr. Stevens and another American diplomat died of smoke inhalation after an initial attack, and an annex a half-mile away that encompassed four buildings inside a low-walled compound.

From among these buildings, the C.I.A. personnel carried out their secret missions. The New York Times agreed to withhold locations and details of these operations at the request of Obama administration officials, who said that disclosing such information could jeopardize future sensitive government activities and put at risk American personnel working in dangerous settings.

In Benghazi, both compounds were temporary homes in a volatile city teeming with militants, and they were never intended to become permanent diplomatic missions with appropriate security features built into them.

Neither was heavily guarded, and the annex was never intended to be a “safe house,” as initial accounts suggested. Two of the mission’s guards — Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, former members of the Navy SEALs — were killed just outside the villa’s front gate. A mortar round struck the roof of the building where the Americans had scrambled for cover.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced last week the creation of a review board to examine the attacks. The board is to be led by a veteran diplomat and former undersecretary of state, Thomas R. Pickering.

The F.B.I. has sent investigators — many from its New York field office — to Benghazi, but they have been hampered by the city’s tenuous security environment and the fact that they arrived more than a day after the attack occurred, according to senior American officials.

Complicating the investigation, the officials said, is that many of the Americans who were evacuated from Benghazi after the attack are now scattered across Europe and the United States. It is also unclear, one of the officials said, whether there was much forensic evidence that could be extracted from the scene of the attacks.

Investigators and intelligence officials are now focusing on the possibility that the attackers were members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or at least were in communication with the group during the four hours that elapsed between the initial attack at the mission and the second one at the mission’s annex.

…

September 23, 2012
By ERIC SCHMITT, HELENE COOPER and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Find this story at 23 September 2012

© 2012 The New York Times Company

Man who armed Black Panthers was FBI informant, records show

The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training – which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s – was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report.

One of the Bay Area’s most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers, whose members received international notoriety for brandishing weapons during patrols of the Oakland police and a protest at the state Legislature.

Aoki went on to work for 25 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator at the Peralta Community College District, and after his suicide in 2009, he was revered as a fearless radical.

But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups, according to the bureau agent who recruited him.

That agent, Burney Threadgill Jr., recalled that he approached Aoki in the late 1950s, about the time Aoki was graduating from Berkeley High School. He asked Aoki if he would join left-wing groups and report to the FBI.

Aoki is listed in an FBI report on the Black Panther Party as an “informant” with the code number “T-2.”

“He was my informant. I developed him,” Threadgill said in an interview. “He was one of the best sources we had.”

The former agent said he asked Aoki how he felt about the Soviet Union, and the young man replied that he had no interest in communism.

“I said, ‘Well, why don’t you just go to some of the meetings and tell me who’s there and what they talked about?’ Very pleasant little guy. He always wore dark glasses,” Threadgill recalled.

Aoki’s work for the FBI, which has never been reported, was uncovered and verified during research for the book, “Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power.” The book, based on research spanning three decades, will be published tomorrow by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

In a tape-recorded interview for the book in 2007, two years before he committed suicide, Aoki was asked if he had been an FBI informant. Aoki’s first response was a long silence. He then replied, “ ‘Oh,’ is all I can say.”

Later during the same interview, Aoki contended the information wasn’t true.

Asked if this reporter was mistaken that Aoki had been an informant, Aoki said, “I think you are,” but added: “People change. It is complex. Layer upon layer.”

However, the FBI later released records about Aoki in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. A Nov. 16, 1967, intelligence report on the Black Panthers lists Aoki as an “informant” with the code number “T-2.”

An FBI spokesman declined to comment on Aoki, citing litigation seeking additional records about him under the Freedom of Information Act.

Since his death – Aoki shot himself at his Berkeley home after a long illness – his legend has grown. In a 2009 feature-length documentary film, “Aoki,” and a 2012 biography, “Samurai Among Panthers,” he is portrayed as a militant radical leader. Neither mentions that he had worked with the FBI.

Harvey Dong, who was a fellow activist and close friend, said last week that he had never heard that Aoki was an informant.

“It’s definitely something that is shocking to hear,” said Dong, who was the executor of Aoki’s estate. “I mean, that’s a big surprise to me.”

Dong recalled that Aoki tended to “compartmentalize” the different parts of his life. Before he shot himself, Dong said, Aoki had laid out in his apartment two neatly pressed uniforms: One was the black leather jacket, beret and dark trousers of the Black Panthers. The other was his U.S. Army regimental.

In Berkeley in the late 1960s, Aoki wore slicked-back hair, sported sunglasses even at night and spoke with a ghetto patois. His fierce demeanor intimidated even his fellow radicals, several of them have said.

“He had swagger up to the moon,” former Berkeley activist Victoria Wong recalled at his memorial.

From gangs to the military

Aoki was born in San Leandro in 1938, the first of two sons. He was 4 when his family was interned at Topaz, Utah, with thousands of other Japanese Americans during World War II.

After the war, Aoki grew up in West Oakland, in an area that had been known as Little Yokohama before becoming a low-income black community. He joined a gang and became a tough street fighter who as an adult would boast, “I was the baddest Oriental come out of West Oakland.”

He shoplifted, burgled homes and stole car parts for “the midnight auto supply business,” he told Berkeley’s KPFA radio in a 2006 interview. Oakland police repeatedly arrested him for “mostly petty-type stuff,” he said in the 2007 interview. Still, he graduated from Herbert Hoover Junior High School as co-valedictorian.

But the internment during World War II had shattered his family, Aoki had said. His father became a gangster and abandoned his family, and his mother won custody of her sons and moved them to Berkeley. Aoki did well academically at Berkeley High School and became president of the Stamp and Coin Club. However, he assaulted another student in the hallway and, as he recalled, “beat him half to death.”

Aoki was an avid firearms collector and military enthusiast. After high school, he joined the Army and later was a reservist.

Credit: Courtesy of Harvey Dong

Three days after graduating from high school in January 1957, Aoki reported for duty at Fort Ord, near Monterey. He had enlisted in the U.S. Army the prior year, at age 17. He acknowledged in the 2007 interview that he had “cut a deal” in which military authorities arranged for his criminal record to be sealed.

Aoki said he had hoped to become the army’s first Asian American general, but he served only about a year on active duty and seven more in the reserves before being honorably discharged as a sergeant.

Although he saw no combat, he became a firearms expert. “I got to play with all the toys I wanted to play with when I was growing up,” he told KPFA. “Pistols, rifles, machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers.”

Being in the reserves left Aoki a lot of free time, and he became deeply involved in left-wing political organizations at the behest of the FBI, retired FBI agent Threadgill said during a series of interviews before his death in 2005.

“The activities that he got involved in was because of us using him as an informant,” he said.

Threadgill recalled that he first approached Aoki after a bureau wiretap on the home phone of Saul and Billie Wachter, local members of the Communist Party, picked up Aoki talking to fellow Berkeley High classmate Doug Wachter.

At first, Aoki gathered information about the Communist Party, Threadgill said. But Aoki soon focused on the Socialist Workers Party and its youth affiliate, the Young Socialist Alliance, also targets of an intensive FBI domestic security investigation.

By spring 1962, Aoki had been elected to the Berkeley Young Socialist Alliance’s executive council, FBI records show. That December, he became a member of the Oakland-Berkeley branch of the Socialist Workers Party, where he served as the representative to Bay Area civil rights groups. He also was on the steering committee of the Committee to Uphold the Right to Travel.

In 1965, Aoki joined the Vietnam Day Committee, an influential anti-war group based in Berkeley, and worked on its international committee as liaison to foreign anti-war activists.

All along, Aoki met regularly with his FBI handler. Aoki also filed reports by phone, Threadgill said.

“I’d call him and say, ‘When do you want to get together?’ ” Threadgill recalled. “I’d say, ‘I’ll meet you on the street corner at so-and-so and so on.’ I would park a couple of blocks away and get out and go and sit down and talk to him.”

Arming the Black Panthers

Threadgill worked with Aoki through mid-1965, when he moved to another FBI office and turned Aoki over to a fellow agent. Aoki was well positioned to inform on a wide range of political activists.

Aoki attended Merritt College in Oakland, where he met Huey Newton, a pre-law student, and Bobby Seale, an engineering student, who were in a political group called the Soul Students Advisory Council.

In fall 1966, Aoki transferred to UC Berkeley as a junior in sociology. That October, Seale and Newton took a draft of their 10-point program for what would become the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense to Aoki’s Berkeley apartment and discussed it over drinks. The platform called for improved housing, education, full employment, the release of incarcerated black men, a halt to “the robbery by the capitalists of our black community” and an “immediate end to police brutality.”

Soon after, Aoki gave the Panthers some of their first guns. As Seale recalled in his memoir, “Seize the Time:”

Aoki (left) represented the UC Berkeley Asian American community as part of the Third World Liberation Front.

Credit: Courtesy of Nancy Park

“Late in November 1966, we went to a Third World brother we knew, a Japanese radical cat. He had guns … .357 Magnums, 22’s, 9mm’s, what have you. … We told him that if he was a real revolutionary he better go on and give them up to us because we needed them now to begin educating the people to wage a revolutionary struggle. So he gave us an M-1 and a 9mm.”

In early 1967, Aoki joined the Black Panther Party and gave them more guns, Seale wrote. Aoki also gave Panther recruits weapons training, he said in the 2007 interview.

“I had a little collection, and Bobby and Huey knew about it, and so when the party was formed, I decided to turn it over to the group,” Aoki said in the interview. “And so when you see the guys out there marching and everything, I’m somewhat responsible for the military slant to the organization’s public image.”

In early 1967, the Panthers displayed guns during their “community patrols” of Oakland police and also that May 2, when they visited the state Legislature to protest a bill.

Although carrying weapons was legal at the time, there is little doubt their presence contributed to fatal confrontations between the Panthers and the police.

On Oct. 28, 1967, Newton was in a shootout that wounded Oakland Officer Herbert Heanes and killed Officer John Frey. On April 6, 1968, Eldridge Cleaver and five other Panthers were involved in a firefight with Oakland police. Cleaver and two officers were wounded, and Panther Bobby Hutton was killed.

During the period Aoki was arming the Panthers, he also was informing for the FBI. The FBI report that lists him as informant T-2 says that in May 1967, he reported on the Panthers.

None of the released FBI reports mention that Aoki gave guns to the Panthers.

Retired FBI agent Wes Swearingen worked closely on counterintelligence operations and surveillance of radical groups, including the Black Panthers.

Credit: Josiah Hooper/Center for Investigative Reporting

FBI’s reliance on informants

M. Wesley Swearingen, a retired FBI agent who has criticized unlawful bureau surveillance activities under the late Director J. Edgar Hoover, reviewed some of the FBI’s records. He concluded in a sworn declaration – filed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records on Aoki – that Aoki had been an informant.

Swearingen served in the FBI from 1951 to 1977, and worked on a squad that investigated the Panthers.

“Someone like Aoki is perfect to be in a Black Panther Party, because I understand he is Japanese,” he said. “Hey, nobody is going to guess – he’s in the Black Panther Party; nobody is going to guess that he might be an informant.”

Swearingen also said the FBI certainly must have additional records concerning Aoki, including special informant files.

“Aoki wouldn’t even have to be a member of the party. If he just knew Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, if he went out to lunch with them every day, they would have a main file,” he said. “But to say they don’t have a main file is ludicrous.”

In the 1990s, testimony from Swearingen helped to vacate the murder conviction of Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, a Black Panther leader in Los Angeles. Evidence showed that the FBI and Los Angeles Police Department had failed to disclose that a key witness against Pratt was a longtime FBI informant named Julius C. Butler. Pratt later won a civil suit for wrongful imprisonment, with the City of Los Angeles paying Pratt $2.75 million and the FBI paying him $1.75 million.

During the late ’60s and early ’70s, the FBI sought to disrupt and “neutralize” the Black Panthers under COINTELPRO, the bureau’s secret counterintelligence program to stifle dissent, according to reports by the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.

As part of COINTELPRO, the committee found, the FBI used informants to gather intelligence leading to the weapons arrests of Panthers in Chicago, Detroit, San Diego and Washington. By the end of 1969, at least 28 Panthers had been killed in gunfights with police and many more arrested on weapons charges, according to news accounts.

Hoover declared in late 1968 that the Panthers, who by now had chapters across the nation, posed “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” He cited their radical philosophy and armed confrontations with police.

A young Richard Aoki is involved in a 1969 protest at Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way near the UC Berkeley campus.

Credit: Courtesy of the Oakland Tribune

Although Aoki later would boast of his role with the Panthers, he was secretive about his relations with them at the time, explaining in the 2007 interview that he feared being expelled from UC Berkeley if his activities were known.

In early 1969, Aoki emerged as a leader of the Third World Liberation Front strike at UC Berkeley, which demanded more ethnic studies courses. He advocated violent tactics, according to interviews with him and Manuel Delgado, another strike leader.

…

Aug 20, 2012
Seth Rosenfeld
Contributor

Find this story at 20 August 2012

© Copyright 2012, Center for Investigative Reporting

Mexican official: CIA ‘manages’ drug trade

Spokesman for Chihuahua state says US agencies don’t want to end drug trade, a claim denied by other Mexican officials.

Juarez, Mexico – The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces “don’t fight drug traffickers”, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told Al Jazeera, instead “they try to manage the drug trade”.

Allegations about official complicity in the drug business are nothing new when they come from activists, professors, campaigners or even former officials. However, an official spokesman for the authorities in one of Mexico’s most violent states – one which directly borders Texas – going on the record with such accusations is unique.

“It’s like pest control companies, they only control,” Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, the Chihuahua spokesman, told Al Jazeera last month at his office in Juarez. “If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs.”

A spokesman for the CIA in Washington wouldn’t comment on the accusations directly, instead he referred Al Jazeera to an official website.

Accusations are ‘baloney’

Villanueva is not a high ranking official and his views do not represent Mexico’s foreign policy establishment. Other more senior officials in Chihuahua State, including the mayor of Juarez, dismissed the claims as “baloney”.

“I think the CIA and DEA [US Drug Enforcement Agency] are on the same side as us in fighting drug gangs,” Hector Murguia, the mayor of Juarez, told Al Jazeera during an interview inside his SUV. “We have excellent collaboration with the US.”

Under the Merida Initiative, the US Congress has approved more than $1.4bn in drug war aid for Mexico, providing attack helicopters, weapons and training for police and judges.

More than 55,000 people have died in drug related violence in Mexico since December 2006. Privately, residents and officials across Mexico’s political spectrum often blame the lethal cocktail of US drug consumption and the flow of high-powered weapons smuggled south of the border for causing much of the carnage.

Drug war ‘illusions’

“The war on drugs is an illusion,” Hugo Almada Mireles, professor at the Autonomous University of Juarez and author of several books, told Al Jazeera. “It’s a reason to intervene in Latin America.”

“The CIA wants to control the population; they don’t want to stop arms trafficking to Mexico, look at [Operation] Fast and Furious,” he said, referencing a botched US exercise where automatic weapons were sold to criminals in the hope that security forces could trace where the guns ended up.

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms lost track of 1,700 guns as part of the operation, including an AK-47 used in 2010 the murder of Brian Terry, a Customs and Border Protection Agent.

Blaming the gringos for Mexico’s problems has been a popular sport south of the Rio Grande ever since the Mexican-American war of the 1840s, when the US conquered most of present day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico from its southern neighbour. But operations such as Fast and Furious show that reality can be stranger than fiction when it comes to the drug war and relations between the US and Mexico. If the case hadn’t been proven, the idea that US agents were actively putting weapons into the hands of Mexican gangsters would sound absurd to many.

‘Conspiracy theories’

“I think it’s easy to become cynical about American and other countries’ involvement in Latin America around drugs,” Kevin Sabet, a former senior adviser to the White House on drug control policy, told Al Jazeera. “Statements [accusing the CIA of managing the drug trade] should be backed up with evidence… I don’t put much stake in it.”

Villanueva’s accusations “might be a way to get some attention to his region, which is understandable but not productive or grounded in reality”, Sabet said. “We have sort of ‘been there done that’ with CIA conspiracy theories.”

In 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published Dark Alliance, a series of investigative reports linking CIA missions in Nicaragua with the explosion of crack cocaine consumption in America’s ghettos.

In order to fund Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua’s socialist government, the CIA partnered with Colombian cartels to move drugs into Los Angeles, sending profits back to Central America, the series alleged.

“There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, or on the payroll of, the CIA were involved in drug trafficking,” US Senator John Kerry said at the time, in response to the series.

Other newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, slammed Dark Alliance, and the editor of the Mercury News eventually wrote that the paper had over-stated some elements in the story and made mistakes in the journalistic process, but that he stood by many of the key conclusions.

Widespread rumours

“It’s true, they want to control it,” a mid-level official with the Secretariat Gobernacion in Juarez, Mexico’s equivalent to the US Department of Homeland Security, told Al Jazeera of the CIA and DEA’s policing of the drug trade. The officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he knew the allegations to be correct, based on discussions he had with US officials working in Juarez.

Acceptance of these claims within some elements of Mexico’s government and security services shows the difficulty in pursuing effective international action against the drug trade.

Jesús Zambada Niebla, a leading trafficker from the Sinaloa cartel currently awaiting trial in Chicago, has said he was working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency during his days as a trafficker, and was promised immunity from prosecution.

“Under that agreement, the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of [Jesus Zambada’s] father, Ismael Zambada and ‘Chapo’ Guzmán were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tonnes of illicit drugs… into… the United States, and were protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels,” Zambada’s lawyers wrote as part of his defence. “Indeed, the Unites States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.”

The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest and most powerful trafficking organisation, and some analysts believe security forces in the US and Mexico favour the group over its rivals.

Joaquin “El Chapo”, the cartel’s billionaire leader and one of the world’s most wanted men, escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 by sneaking into a laundry truck – likely with collaboration from guards – further stoking rumours that leading traffickers have complicit friends in high places.

“It would be easy for the Mexican army to capture El Chapo,” Mireles said. “But this is not the objective.” He thinks the authorities on both sides of the border are happy to have El Chapo on the loose, as his cartel is easier to manage and his drug money is recycled back into the broader economy. Other analysts consider this viewpoint a conspiracy theory and blame ineptitude and low level corruption for El Chapo’s escape, rather than a broader plan from government agencies.

Political changes

After an election hit by reported irregularities, Enrique Pena Nieto from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is set to be sworn in as Mexico’s president on December 1.

He wants to open a high-level dialogue with the US about the drug war, but has said legalisation of some drugs is not an option. Some hardliners in the US worry that Nieto will make a deal with some cartels, in order to reduce violence.

“I am hopeful that he will not return to the PRI party of the past which was corrupt and had a history of turning a blind eye to the drug cartels,” said Michael McCaul, a Republican Congressman from Texas.

…

Find this story at 24 July 2012

Chris Arsenault Last Modified: 24 Jul 2012 14:16

Follow Chris Arsenault on Twitter: @AJEchris

Source:
Al Jazeera And Agencies

Russian Spy Ring Aimed to Make Children Agents

A Russian spy ring busted in the U.S. two years ago planned to recruit members’ children to become agents, and one had already agreed to his parents’ request, according to current and former U.S. officials.

When the suspects were arrested in 2010 with much fanfare, official accounts suggested they were largely ineffectual. New details about their time in the U.S., however, suggest their work was more sophisticated and sometimes more successful than previously known.

One of them infiltrated a well-connected consulting firm with offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., by working as the company’s in-house computer expert, according to people familiar with the long-running U.S. investigation of the spy ring.

The effort to bring children into the family business suggests the ring was thinking long term: Children born or reared in America were potentially more valuable espionage assets than their parents because when they grew up they would be more likely to pass a U.S. government background check.
Cast of Characters in Russian Spy Ring

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A spokesman at the Russian embassy in Washington declined to comment. Officials in Moscow have previously acknowledged the spy ring but haven’t commented further. All the captured suspects eventually pleaded guilty to acting as secret agents for the Russian government.

Tim Foley was among the children most extensively groomed for a future spy career, officials say. Though he wasn’t American-born, his parents lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, under the assumed names Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. Mr. Foley was 20 when his parents were arrested and had just finished his sophomore year at George Washington University in the nation’s capital.

His parents revealed their double life to him well before their arrest, according to current and former officials, whose knowledge of the discussion was based on surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that included bugging suspects’ homes. The officials said the parents also told their son they wanted him to follow in their footsteps.

He agreed, said the officials. At the end of the discussion with his parents, according to one person familiar with the surveillance, the young man stood up and saluted “Mother Russia.” He also agreed to travel to Russia to begin formal espionage training, officials said.

Officials wouldn’t say where or when the conversation between Mr. Foley and his parents took place or whether he made it to Russia before the spy group was arrested, though they said he eventually went there. Many details of the investigation remain classified.

Peter Krupp, a Boston lawyer, provided a statement from Tim Foley’s parents calling the U.S. officials’ accounts “crap.” The lawyer said it would have been too risky for the parents to reveal the operation to their son.

Mr. Krupp said that since the summer of the spy roundup, Mr. Foley—who wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing—has tried to return to the U.S., but unspecified obstacles have prevented him from doing so, and he remains in Russia. Efforts to find him there were unsuccessful. A lawyer who represented Mr. Foley’s mother during the U.S. case didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Based on their extensive surveillance of the secret agents and their messages to handlers back in Moscow, U.S. counterintelligence officials believe the grooming of Mr. Foley was part of a long-term goal for some of the group’s children to become spies when they got older.

At the time of their arrests, the spies had seven children ranging in age from 1 to 20, most U.S.-born, and one agent also had an older son from a relationship before she joined the espionage network. Anna Chapman, the spy who garnered the most attention because of her glamorous looks, didn’t have children.

Though U.S. officials believe the ring planned to recruit some members’ children, not every child was set along this path. One child, a teenager, was allowed to stay in the U.S. after his parents were arrested, and officials said the son isn’t viewed as a risk to national security. His father, who went by the name Juan Lazaro, wanted his son to become a concert pianist, according to a former colleague of the father. A lawyer for the family declined to comment.

Most members of the ring were what are known in espionage parlance as “illegals”—agents who go to a country using a false identity and without official cover such as a diplomatic position. If caught, illegals have to assume their home country won’t come to their rescue.

Ring members were trained agents of the SVR, a successor agency to the KGB, according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors in New York. U.S. authorities say they worked under the direction of SVR headquarters, known in the West as “Moscow Center.”

Besides the plans to recruit children, the new details about the spy ring show more about what its members were up to.

U.S. officials say one of them, Richard Murphy—whose real name was Vladimir Guryev—worked for several years as the in-house computer technician at a U.S. consultancy called the G7 Group, which advised clients on how government decisions might affect global markets. The firm’s experts included its chief executive, Jane Hartley, an active Democratic fundraiser, and Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman.

The infiltration is further evidence the spying focused on economic secrets as well as military and political information.

Mr. Murphy came to the G7 Group through a temporary-help agency in the early 2000s and stayed about three years, according to Ms. Hartley, who said she eventually concluded he didn’t have the technical sophistication the firm required. She said she didn’t believe he used his position to steal information.

Mr. Blinder said he didn’t believe he knew or even had heard of Mr. Murphy. “My reaction, of course, is surprise. The G7 Group wasn’t the sort of place a Russian spy would find interesting,” said Mr. Blinder, who is a professor at Princeton University.

A lawyer who represented Mr. Murphy after his arrest said she wasn’t aware he had worked for a firm in Manhattan. After Mr. Murphy left the G7 Group, Ms. Hartley sold it, and many of its principals later reformed under a different name.

The spies’ false identities, also called “legends,” were good enough for them to get jobs and mortgages and start families in America, but they weren’t airtight. A background check for a job with the U.S. government or a government contractor might have exposed them. The spies were careful not to try to get too close to the heart of U.S. government, according to interviews and court documents.

Mr. Murphy spoke with an accent and didn’t socialize well with his co-workers, according to Ms. Hartley. Difficulties he had blending in at the G7 Group underscore the value agents’ children might have had to Moscow, being fully Americanized with flawless English.

One purpose of having such agents in the U.S. was to act as go-betweens for other operatives who might have been more closely monitored by U.S. counterintelligence, the current and former U.S. officials said.

“There was much more to this than just trying to make friends with important people,” said one official. “This was a very long-term operation.”

After the parents were arrested, the children became an important part of the negotiations between the Russian and U.S. governments.

The admitted secret agents were eventually flown to Austria, where, in a scene reminiscent of a Cold War spy drama, they were swapped on a Vienna airport tarmac for four men who had been imprisoned in Russia, most on charges of spying for the West.

Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Peter Krupp, a lawyer for Russian spy known as Donald Heathfield, was relaying a statement from Mr. Heathfield and his wife on U.S. allegations that they had intended to recruit their son into the spy ring. An earlier version of this article attributed the statement that such allegations were “crap” directly to Mr. Krupp.

A Russian spy ring busted in the U.S. two years ago planned to recruit members’ children to become agents, and one had already agreed to his parents’ request, according to current and former U.S. officials.

When the suspects were arrested in 2010 with much fanfare, official accounts suggested they were largely ineffectual. New details about their time in the U.S., however, suggest their work was more sophisticated and sometimes more successful than previously known.

One of them infiltrated a well-connected consulting firm with offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., by working as the company’s in-house computer expert, according to people familiar with the long-running U.S. investigation of the spy ring.

The effort to bring children into the family business suggests the ring was thinking long term: Children born or reared in America were potentially more valuable espionage assets than their parents because when they grew up they would be more likely to pass a U.S. government background check.

A spokesman at the Russian embassy in Washington declined to comment. Officials in Moscow have previously acknowledged the spy ring but haven’t commented further. All the captured suspects eventually pleaded guilty to acting as secret agents for the Russian government.

Tim Foley was among the children most extensively groomed for a future spy career, officials say. Though he wasn’t American-born, his parents lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, under the assumed names Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. Mr. Foley was 20 when his parents were arrested and had just finished his sophomore year at George Washington University in the nation’s capital.

His parents revealed their double life to him well before their arrest, according to current and former officials, whose knowledge of the discussion was based on surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that included bugging suspects’ homes. The officials said the parents also told their son they wanted him to follow in their footsteps.

He agreed, said the officials. At the end of the discussion with his parents, according to one person familiar with the surveillance, the young man stood up and saluted “Mother Russia.” He also agreed to travel to Russia to begin formal espionage training, officials said.

Officials wouldn’t say where or when the conversation between Mr. Foley and his parents took place or whether he made it to Russia before the spy group was arrested, though they said he eventually went there. Many details of the investigation remain classified.

Peter Krupp, a Boston lawyer, provided a statement from Tim Foley’s parents calling the U.S. officials’ accounts “crap.” The lawyer said it would have been too risky for the parents to reveal the operation to their son.

Mr. Krupp said that since the summer of the spy roundup, Mr. Foley—who wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing—has tried to return to the U.S., but unspecified obstacles have prevented him from doing so, and he remains in Russia. Efforts to find him there were unsuccessful. A lawyer who represented Mr. Foley’s mother during the U.S. case didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Based on their extensive surveillance of the secret agents and their messages to handlers back in Moscow, U.S. counterintelligence officials believe the grooming of Mr. Foley was part of a long-term goal for some of the group’s children to become spies when they got older.

At the time of their arrests, the spies had seven children ranging in age from 1 to 20, most U.S.-born, and one agent also had an older son from a relationship before she joined the espionage network. Anna Chapman, the spy who garnered the most attention because of her glamorous looks, didn’t have children.

Though U.S. officials believe the ring planned to recruit some members’ children, not every child was set along this path. One child, a teenager, was allowed to stay in the U.S. after his parents were arrested, and officials said the son isn’t viewed as a risk to national security. His father, who went by the name Juan Lazaro, wanted his son to become a concert pianist, according to a former colleague of the father. A lawyer for the family declined to comment.

Most members of the ring were what are known in espionage parlance as “illegals”—agents who go to a country using a false identity and without official cover such as a diplomatic position. If caught, illegals have to assume their home country won’t come to their rescue.

Ring members were trained agents of the SVR, a successor agency to the KGB, according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors in New York. U.S. authorities say they worked under the direction of SVR headquarters, known in the West as “Moscow Center.”

Besides the plans to recruit children, the new details about the spy ring show more about what its members were up to.

U.S. officials say one of them, Richard Murphy—whose real name was Vladimir Guryev—worked for several years as the in-house computer technician at a U.S. consultancy called the G7 Group, which advised clients on how government decisions might affect global markets. The firm’s experts included its chief executive, Jane Hartley, an active Democratic fundraiser, and Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman.

The infiltration is further evidence the spying focused on economic secrets as well as military and political information.

Mr. Murphy came to the G7 Group through a temporary-help agency in the early 2000s and stayed about three years, according to Ms. Hartley, who said she eventually concluded he didn’t have the technical sophistication the firm required. She said she didn’t believe he used his position to steal information.

Mr. Blinder said he didn’t believe he knew or even had heard of Mr. Murphy. “My reaction, of course, is surprise. The G7 Group wasn’t the sort of place a Russian spy would find interesting,” said Mr. Blinder, who is a professor at Princeton University.

A lawyer who represented Mr. Murphy after his arrest said she wasn’t aware he had worked for a firm in Manhattan. After Mr. Murphy left the G7 Group, Ms. Hartley sold it, and many of its principals later reformed under a different name.

The spies’ false identities, also called “legends,” were good enough for them to get jobs and mortgages and start families in America, but they weren’t airtight. A background check for a job with the U.S. government or a government contractor might have exposed them. The spies were careful not to try to get too close to the heart of U.S. government, according to interviews and court documents.

…

Find this story at 26 July 2012

Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Peter Krupp, a lawyer for Russian spy known as Donald Heathfield, was relaying a statement from Mr. Heathfield and his wife on U.S. allegations that they had intended to recruit their son into the spy ring. An earlier version of this article attributed the statement that such allegations were “crap” directly to Mr. Krupp.

Copyright ©2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Why a Young American Wants to Be a Russian Spy

The notion that several children of the sleeper spies arrested in 2010 in the United States were groomed by Russian authorities to become foreign spies as adults is more evidence of the absurdity of the whole operation.

Tim Foley, 20, is the eldest son of Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, whose real names are Andrei Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova. Tim became a problem for U.S. authorities from the outset of the spy scandal. He had already finished his sophomore year at George Washington University when his parents were arrested by U.S. authorities. Following the deportation of the Russian agents from the United States, Foley informed the university that he still planned to continue his studies there. But since Foley reportedly knew sensitive details about his parents’ activities, Russian authorities have not allowed him to return to the United States.

On July 31, The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI had determined Tim Foley’s desire to serve Russia’s intelligence services after bugging the Foleys’ home. According to FBI officials, Tim’s parents told their son they wanted him to follow in their footsteps, after which Tim stood up and swore allegiance to “Mother Russia,” the Journal said.

As a result of this article, many journalists concluded that the Russian spies could have posed a greater threat to U.S. national security than was thought two years ago because their children grew up in that country and could better integrate into American life and one day infiltrate U.S. government agencies.

In 2010, the United States and Russia interpreted the spy scandal differently. Washington saw it as proof of the failure and backwardness of Russian intelligence, while Moscow claimed it was a proud achievement that it could infiltrate U.S. society. Russian leaders believed the Foreign Intelligence Service had finally restored the prestigious status that it lost after the end of the Cold War.

At the time, I explained to U.S. journalists that Russia’s secret operation was a complete failure. After all, the spies had been working undercover for years and had failed to obtain a single government secret. What’s more, the Russian side considered the operation a success only because the agents had managed to initially fool U.S. authorities with fake passports. But the agents did absolutely nothing of importance while in the United States, so their accomplishment of securing fake passports was negligible at best.

This notion that a spy operation is successful by simply establishing a physical presence in a foreign country was inherited by the Foreign Intelligence Service from its predecessor, the KGB. It is worth noting that the Foreign Intelligence Service is the only intelligence agency in Russia that was not subjected to post-Soviet reforms. It was simply spun off into a separate agency after the Soviet collapse. As a result, the agency kept all of the outdated traditions and practices of the KGB without understanding that they have no relevance to today’s environment.

One of the largest anachronisms of this Soviet legacy was the practice of sending Russian citizens to live in the West undercover. This emerged in the late 1940s when new secret agents were needed to replace a decreasing supply of Communist sympathizers in the West. In reality, the practice of using Communist sympathizers was never really successful anyway because they did not have professional intelligence backgrounds, nor did they have the social connections needed to secure sensitive government posts. Faced with a shortage of foreign agents, Russian intelligence came up with the idea of sending sleeper agents that Moscow hoped would be able to strike from within Western society at the needed moment — that is, if the Cold War turned hot.

Why has this outdated practice continued in Russia when almost every other country gave it up many years ago?

One of the biggest problems is that the Foreign Intelligence Service answers directly to President Vladimir Putin, not to the parliament or the public. It was therefore a relatively easy task to convince Putin of the wisdom of continuing the old tradition of supporting sleeper agents in foreign countries. What’s more, the opportunity to plant Russian agents in the United States appealed to Putin’s ongoing desire to outdo Russia’s former Cold War enemy any way he could. Still stuck in the past, Putin views this superpower rivalry much in the same way he wants Russian athletes to get more medals than the Americans at the Olympic Games.

…

Find this story at 08 August 2012

Andrei Soldatov is an intelligence analyst at Agentura.ru and co-author of “The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State” and “The Enduring Legacy of the KGB.”
© Copyright 2012. The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

Britain faces legal challenge over secret US ‘kill list’ in Afghanistan

Afghan man who lost relatives in missile strike says UK role in supplying information to US military may be unlawful

Britain’s role in supplying information to an American military “kill list” in Afghanistan is being subjected to legal challenge amid growing international concern over targeted strikes against suspected insurgents and drug traffickers.

An Afghan man who lost five relatives in a missile strike started proceedings against the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the Ministry of Defence demanding to know details of the UK’s participation “in the compilation, review and execution of the list and what form it takes”.

Legal letters sent to Soca and the MoD state the involvement of UK officials in these decisions “may give rise to criminal offences and thus be unlawful”. They say Britain’s contribution raises several concerns, particularly in cases where international humanitarian laws protecting civilians and non-combatants may have been broken.

“We need to know whether the rule of law is being followed and that safeguards are in place to prevent what could be clear breaches of international law,” said Rosa Curling from the solicitors Leigh Day & Co. “We have a family here that is desperate to know what happened, and to ensure this kind of thing never happens again.”

Targeting Taliban commanders in precision attacks has been an important part of Nato’s strategy in Afghanistan, and it has involved US, British and Afghan special forces, and the use of drones.

But who is put on the “kill list” and why remains a closely guarded secret – and has become a huge concern for human rights groups. They have questioned the legality of such operations and said civilians are often killed.

Soca refused to discuss its intelligence work, but the agency and the MoD said they worked “strictly within the bounds of international law”. Its role in the operation to compile a “kill list” was first explained in a report to the US Senate’s committee on foreign relations.

The report described how a new task force targeting drug traffickers, insurgents and corrupt officials was being set up at Kandahar air field in southern Afghanistan. “The unit will link the US and British military with the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency], Britain’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency, and police and intelligence agencies from other countries.” The 31-page report from 2009 acknowledged the precise rules of engagement were classified.

But it said two generals in Afghanistan had explained they “have been interpreted to allow them to put drug traffickers with proven links to insurgency on a kill list, called the joint integrated prioritised target list”.

“The military places no restrictions on the use of force with these selected targets, which means they can be killed or captured on the battlefield,” the Senate report said. “It does not, however, authorise targeted assassinations away from the battlefield. The generals said standards for getting on the list require two verifiable human sources and substantial additional evidence.”

The legal challenge has been brought by an Afghan who believes his relatives were unlawfully killed in a case of mistaken identity during one “kill list” operation. A bank worker in Kabul, Habib Rahman lost two brothers, two uncles and his father-in-law in a US missile attack on their cars on 2 September 2010. They had been helping another member of the family who had been campaigning in Takhar province in northern Afghanistan in the runup to the country’s parliamentary elections. In total, 10 Afghans were killed and several others injured.

Rahman says most of those who died were election workers. But the attack was praised by Nato’s International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) which said the target had been a man in the convoy called Muhammad Amin. The US accused him of being a Taliban commander and member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and said the people who had been travelling with him had been insurgents.

A detailed study of the incident by the research group Afghanistan Analysts Network contradicted the official account, saying Isaf had killed Zabet Amanullah. Amin was tracked down after the incident and is still alive, said the study’s author, Kate Clark. “Even now, there does not seem to be any acknowledgment within the military that they may have got the wrong man,” she said. “It is really very bizarre. They think Amin and Amanullah are one and the same.”

Rahman’s lawyers acknowledge they do not know whether information provided by Britain contributed to this attack, but hope the legal challenge will force officials to be more open about the British contribution to the “kill list”.

The letters to Soca’s director general, Trevor Pearce, and the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, point to the Geneva conventions, which say that persons taking no active part in hostilities are protected from “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds”.

They also draw on the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has said anyone accompanying an organised group who is not directly involved in hostilities “remains civilian assuming support functions”.

The legal letters, the first step towards seeking judicial review, say “drug traffickers who merely support the insurgency financially could not legitimately be included in the list” under these principles. The lawyers believe that, even if Isaf had targeted the right man, it may have been unlawful for others to have been killed in the missile strike.

“The general practice of international forces in Afghanistan and the experience of our client suggest that proximity to a listed target is, on its own, sufficient for an individual to be considered a legitimate target for attack. Such a policy would be unlawful under the international humanitarian law principles,” they say.

Curling said: “Ensuring the UK government and its agencies are operating within their legal obligations could not be more important. Our client’s case suggests the establishment and maintenance of the ‘killing list’ is not in line with the UK’s duties under international humanitarian law. Our client lost five of his relatives in an attack by the international military forces as a result of this list. It is important that the Ministry of Defence and Soca provide us with the reassurances sought.”

…

Find this story at 9 August 2012

Nick Hopkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 August 2012 19.56 BST

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

Hexagon KH-9, Top Secret Spy Satellite Project, Finally Outed After Decades Of Silence

DANBURY, Connecticut (AP) — For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets.

They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized “cleanroom” where the equipment was stored.

They spoke in code.

Few knew the true identity of “the customer” they met in a smoke-filled, wood-paneled conference room where the phone lines were scrambled. When they traveled, they sometimes used false names.

At one point in the 1970s there were more than 1,000 people in the Danbury area working on The Secret. And though they worked long hours under intense deadlines, sometimes missing family holidays and anniversaries, they could tell no one — not even their wives and children — what they did.

They were engineers, scientists, draftsmen and inventors — “real cloak-and-dagger guys,” says Fred Marra, 78, with a hearty laugh.

He is sitting in the food court at the Danbury Fair mall, where a group of retired co-workers from the former Perkin-Elmer Corp. gather for a weekly coffee. Gray-haired now and hard of hearing, they have been meeting here for 18 years. They while away a few hours nattering about golf and politics, ailments and grandchildren. But until recently, they were forbidden to speak about the greatest achievement of their professional lives.

“Ah, Hexagon,” Ed Newton says, gleefully exhaling the word that stills feels almost treasonous to utter in public.

It was dubbed “Big Bird” and it was considered the most successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971 to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles (100 kilometers) of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast, panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential foes. The film was shot back through the earth’s atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks.

The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking. The fact that 19 out of 20 launches were successful (the final mission blew up because the booster rockets failed) is astonishing.

So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took to their graves.

Hexagon was declassified in September. Finally Marra, Newton and others can tell the world what they worked on all those years at “the office.”

“My name is Al Gayhart and I built spy satellites for a living,” announced the 64-year-old retired engineer to the stunned bartender in his local tavern as soon as he learned of the declassification. He proudly repeats the line any chance he gets.

“It was intensely demanding, thrilling and the greatest experience of my life,” says Gayhart, who was hired straight from college and was one of the youngest members of the Hexagon “brotherhood”.

He describes the white-hot excitement as teams pored over hand-drawings and worked on endless technical problems, using “slide-rules and advanced degrees” (there were no computers), knowing they were part of such a complicated space project. The intensity would increase as launch deadlines loomed and on the days when “the customer” — the CIA and later the Air Force — came for briefings. On at least one occasion, former President George H.W. Bush, who was then CIA director, flew into Danbury for a tour of the plant.

Though other companies were part of the project — Eastman Kodak made the film and Lockheed Corp. built the satellites — the cameras and optics systems were all made at Perkin-Elmer, then the biggest employer in Danbury.

“There were many days we arrived in the dark and left in the dark,” says retired engineer Paul Brickmeier, 70.

He recalls the very first briefing on Hexagon after Perkin-Elmer was awarded the top secret contract in 1966. Looking around the room at his 30 or so colleagues, Brickmeier thought, “How on Earth is this going to be possible?”

One thing that made it possible was a hiring frenzy that attracted the attention of top engineers from around the Northeast. Perkin-Elmer also commissioned a new 270,000-square-foot (25,000-square-meter) building for Hexagon — the boxy one on the hill.

Waiting for clearance was a surreal experience as family members, neighbors and former employers were grilled by the FBI, and potential hires were questioned about everything from their gambling habits to their sexuality.

“They wanted to make sure we couldn’t be bribed,” Marra says.

Clearance could take up to a year. During that time, employees worked on relatively minor tasks in a building dubbed “the mushroom tank” — so named because everyone was in the dark about what they had actually been hired for.

Joseph Prusak, 76, spent six months in the tank. When he was finally briefed on Hexagon, Prusak, who had worked as an engineer on earlier civil space projects, wondered if he had made the biggest mistake of his life.

“I thought they were crazy,” he says. “They envisaged a satellite that was 60-foot (18-meter) long and 30,000 pounds (13,600 kilograms) and supplying film at speeds of 200 inches (500 centimeters) per second. The precision and complexity blew my mind.”

Several years later, after numerous successful launches, he was shown what Hexagon was capable of — an image of his own house in suburban Fairfield.

“This was light years before Google Earth,” Prusak said. “And we could clearly see the pool in my backyard.”

There had been earlier space spy satellites — Corona and Gambit. But neither had the resolution or sophistication of Hexagon, which took close-range pictures of Soviet missiles, submarine pens and air bases, even entire battalions on war exercises.

According to the National Reconnaissance Office, a single Hexagon frame covered a ground distance of 370 nautical miles (680 kilometers), about the distance from Washington to Cincinnati. Early Hexagons averaged 124 days in space, but as the satellites became more sophisticated, later missions lasted twice as long.

“At the height of the Cold War, our ability to receive this kind of technical intelligence was incredible,” says space historian Dwayne Day. “We needed to know what they were doing and where they were doing it, and in particular if they were preparing to invade Western Europe. Hexagon created a tremendous amount of stability because it meant American decision makers were not operating in the dark.”

Among other successes, Hexagon is credited with providing crucial information for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

From the outset, secrecy was a huge concern, especially in Danbury, where the intense activity of a relatively small company that had just been awarded a massive contract (the amount was not declassified) made it obvious that something big was going on. Inside the plant, it was impossible to disguise the gigantic vacuum thermal chamber where cameras were tested in extreme conditions that simulated space. There was also a “shake, rattle and roll room” to simulate conditions during launch.

“The question became, how do you hide an elephant?” a National Reconnaissance Office report stated at the time. It decided on a simple response: “What elephant?” Employees were told to ignore any questions from the media, and never confirm the slightest detail about what they worked on.

But it was impossible to conceal the launches at Vandenberg Air Force base in California, and aviation magazines made several references to “Big Bird.” In 1975, a piece on the TV news magazine “60 Minutes” on space reconnaissance described an “Alice in Wonderland” world, where American and Soviet intelligence officials knew of each other’s “eyes in the sky” — and other nations did, too — but no one confirmed the programs or spoke about them publicly.

For employees at Perkin-Elmer, the vow of secrecy was considered a mark of honor.

“We were like the guys who worked on the first atom bomb,” said Oscar Berendsohn, 87, who helped design the optics system. “It was more than a sworn oath. We had been entrusted with the security of the country. What greater trust is there?”

Even wives — who couldn’t contact their husbands or know of their whereabouts when they were traveling — for the most part accepted the secrecy. They knew the jobs were highly classified. They knew not to ask questions.

“We were born into the World War II generation,” says Linda Bronico, whose husband, Al, told her only that he was building test consoles and cables. “We all knew the slogan ‘loose lips sink ships.'”

And Perkin-Elmer was considered a prized place to work, with good salaries and benefits, golf and softball leagues, lavish summer picnics (the company would hire an entire amusement park for employees and their families) and dazzling children’s Christmas parties.

“We loved it,” Marra says. “It was our life.”

For Marra and his former co-workers, sharing that life and their long-held secret has unleashed a jumble of emotions, from pride to nostalgia to relief — and in some cases, grief.

The city’s mayor, Mark Boughton, only discovered that his father had worked on Hexagon when he was invited to speak at an October reunion ceremony on the grounds of the former plant. His father, Donald Boughton, also a former mayor, was too ill to attend and died a few days later.

Boughton said for years he and his siblings would pester his father — a draftsman — about what he did. Eventually they realized that the topic was off limits.

“Learning about Hexagon makes me view him completely differently,” Boughton says. “He was more than just my Dad with the hair-trigger temper and passionate opinions about everything. He was a Cold War warrior doing something incredibly important for our nation.”

For Betty Osterweis the ceremony was bittersweet, too. Not only did she learn about the mystery of her late husband’s professional life. She also learned about his final moments.

…

Find this story at 13 August 2012

Helen O’Neill is a New York-based national writer for The Associated Press. She can be reached at features(at)ap.org.

August 13, 2012
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First Posted: 12/25/11 07:31 PM ET Updated: 12/27/11 08:50 AM ET

The Hexagon Story

This volume re-publishes The Hexagon Story as part of the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance’s (CSNR) Classics series. The introductory information explains how this history of the Hexagon program focuses on the Air Force involvement with the program as it became operational and matured and contains limited discussion of the early Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contributions to development of the program.

Find the story 10 August 2012 

See the pictures 10 August 2012 

 

Spektakuläre Satelliten-Panne – Das versunkene Geheimnis der CIA

Mit Spionagesatelliten kundschafteten die USA während des Kalten Krieges die Militärgeheimnisse des Gegners aus. Dann stürzte plötzlich eine Kapsel mit Überwachungsfotos in den Pazifik – und eine panische Rettungsaktion begann. 40 Jahre später hat der CIA die spektakulären Bilder der Operation freigegen. Neun Monate und mehr als 100.000 Dollar hatte die CIA investiert – und alles, was die Geheimdienstler schließlich in Händen hielten, war ein verwischtes Foto. Wer wollte, sah Puderzucker auf einem dunklen Tisch oder die ersten Schreibversuche eines Kindes. Nur ganz entfernt erinnerte das Foto an das, was es eigentlich war: ein Luftbild, fotografiert von einem Satelliten. Das Foto war von KH-9 Hexagon aufgenommen worden, einem Spionagesatelliten, den die USA am 15. Juni 1971 ins All geschickt hatten. Der unsichtbare Knipser war eine Hightech-Waffe im Kalten Krieg, mit ihm sollten die militärischen Geheimnisse der Sowjetunion festgehalten werden: Häfen, Werften, Flugplätze, Radaranlagen. Jedenfalls war das der Plan. KH-9 Hexagon war neben den beiden Kameras auch mit vier Kapseln ausgerüstet, die die hochauflösenden High-Definition-Aerial-Filme des Typs 1414 der Firma Eastman Kodak zurück zum Boden befördern sollten. Das Transportprinzip war so genial wie spektakulär: Die Kapseln lösten sich vom Satelliten und fielen Richtung Erde. Irgendwann öffnete sich ein Fallschirm, die Fotofracht wurde abgebremst und schließlich mitten in der Luft von einer Militärmaschine eingesammelt. Doch schon bei der ersten Mission von KH-9 kam es am 10. Juli 1971 zu einer verhängnisvollen Panne: Der Fallschirm öffnete sich nicht. Statt eingefangen zu werden, stürzte die Kapsel mit der Bezeichnung RV 1201-3 bei Hawaii in den Pazifik. Wenig später begannen CIA, der Militärnachrichtendienst NRO und die US Navy mit der Suche nach dem versunkenen Schatz. Doch warum dauerte die Bergung fast neun Monate? Und was passierte genau in jener Zeit? Die CIA hat nach 40 Jahren jetzt Akten freigegeben, die einen seltenen Einblick in die Arbeit des Geheimdienstes bieten – und spektakuläre Fotos einer Mission zeigen, die beinahe gescheitert wäre. Auffällige Luftblasen In einem internen Geheimdienst-Memo vom Tag des Unfalls wird zunächst von einem Helikopter berichtet, der den Bremsfallschirm gesichtet habe. Und: Militärmaschinen hätten Funksignale der Kapsel empfangen – doch schon im nächsten Telegramm folgt die Ernüchterung: Die Funksignale stammen nicht von der Kapsel, sondern von einem Flugzeug. Die Suche an der mutmaßlichen Aufprallstelle wird ergebnislos abgebrochen. Während die Fotokapseln RV 1 und 2 sicher aufgenommen wurden, fehlt von Nummer 3 zunächst jede Spur. Erst die Meldung einer Militärmaschine über auffallend viele Luftblasen auf dem Ozean bringt eine erste Spur. Schließlich können die Koordinaten der Absturzstelle ungefähr festgestellt werden: 24 Grad 50 Minuten nördliche Breite. 164 Grad 0 Minuten westliche Länge. Zwei Wochen sind seit der Panne vergangen. Weitere zwei Wochen später steht ein grober Rettungsplan. In einem Memo an den Direktor des Militärnachrichtendienstes wird das Vermessungsschiff “USNS DeSteiguer” genannt, das in der Lage sei, “ein Suchgerät mehr als 20.000 Fuß in die Tiefe zu lassen.” Die Suche durchführen soll ein Expertenteam des Marine-Physik-Labors MPL – für die Bergung fällt in dem Memo der Name des Hightech-Tauchboots “Trieste II”, das seit 1964 für die Marine im Einsatz ist. Bergung in 5000 Metern Tiefe Vier Tage Suchzeit plant das NRO für die “DeSteiguer” ein, unmittelbar danach soll das bemannte Tauchboot den wertvollen Geheimnisträger sichern. Beginnen soll das Unternehmen am 1. Oktober 1971. Doch auch dieses Datum ist bald Makulatur. Erst im Dezember geht die “Trieste II” auf Tauchfahrt, sichtet die Kapsel – und kann doch nicht bergen. Stürme mit 40 bis 50 Knoten und mehr als vier Meter hohe Wellen peitschen über den Pazifik. Die Bergung der so wichtigen Fotokapsel hat fast schon komische Züge angenommen, als die Sicherung von RV 3 schließlich auf März 1972 verschoben wird. Grund dafür ist nicht das Wetter, sondern die anstehende Nachfolge-Satellitenmission “1202”. Wegen der seien auch die Druck-Kapazitäten beim Kooperationspartner Eastman Kodak “bis Februar 1972 belegt”, heißt es in einem Geheimschreiben vom Dezember 1971. Kodak hätte also ohnehin keine Zeit für die Fotos der versunkenen Kapsel. …

Find this story at 13 August 2012 Eingereicht von: Christian Gödecke © SPIEGEL ONLINE 2008 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet GmbH

Racial Profiling Rife at Airport, U.S. Officers Say

BOSTON — More than 30 federal officers in an airport program intended to spot telltale mannerisms of potential terrorists say the operation has become a magnet for racial profiling, targeting not only Middle Easterners but also blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

In interviews and internal complaints, officers from the Transportation Security Administration’s “behavior detection” program at Logan International Airport in Boston asserted that passengers who fit certain profiles — Hispanics traveling to Miami, for instance, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward — are much more likely to be stopped, searched and questioned for “suspicious” behavior.

“They just pull aside anyone who they don’t like the way they look — if they are black and have expensive clothes or jewelry, or if they are Hispanic,” said one white officer, who along with four others spoke with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity.

The T.S.A. said on Friday that it had opened an investigation into the claims.

While the Obama administration has attacked the use of racial and ethnic profiling in Arizona and elsewhere, the claims by the Boston officers now put the agency and the administration in the awkward position of defending themselves against charges of profiling in a program billed as a model for airports nationwide.

At a meeting last month with T.S.A. officials, officers at Logan provided written complaints about profiling from 32 officers, some of whom wrote anonymously. Officers said managers’ demands for high numbers of stops, searches and criminal referrals had led co-workers to target minorities in the belief that those stops were more likely to yield drugs, outstanding arrest warrants or immigration problems.

The practice has become so prevalent, some officers said, that Massachusetts State Police officials have asked why minority members appear to make up an overwhelming number of the cases that the airport refers to them.

“The behavior detection program is no longer a behavior-based program, but it is a racial profiling program,” one officer wrote in an anonymous complaint obtained by The Times.

A T.S.A. spokesman said agency inspectors recently learned of the racial profiling claims in Boston. “If any of these claims prove accurate, we will take immediate and decisive action to ensure there are consequences to such activity,” the statement said.

The agency emphasized that the behavior detection program “in no way encourages or tolerates profiling” and bans singling out passengers based on nationality, race, ethnicity or religion.

It is unusual for transportation agency employees to come forward with this kind of claim against co-workers, and the large number of employees bringing complaints in Boston could prove particularly damaging for an agency already buffeted with criticism over pat-downs, X-ray scans and other security measures.

Reports of profiling emerged last year at the behavior programs at the Newark and Hawaii airports, but in much smaller numbers than those described in Boston.

The complaints from the Logan officers carry nationwide implications because Boston is the testing ground for an expanded use of behavioral detection methods at airports around the country.

While 161 airports already use behavioral officers to identify possible terrorist activity — a controversial tactic — the agency is considering expanding the use of what it says are more advanced tactics nationwide, with Boston’s program as a model.

The program in place in Boston uses specially trained behavioral “assessors” not only to scan the lines of passengers for unusual activity, but also to speak individually with each passenger and gauge their reactions while asking about their trip or for other information.

The assessors look for inconsistencies in the answers and other signs of unusual behavior, like avoiding eye contact, sweating or fidgeting, officials said. A passenger considered to be acting suspiciously can be pulled from the line and subjected to more intensive questioning.

That is what happened last month at Logan airport to Kenneth Boatner, 68, a psychologist and educational consultant in Boston who was traveling to Atlanta for a business trip.

In a formal complaint he filed with the agency afterward, he said he was pulled out of line and detained for 29 minutes as agents thumbed through his checkbook and examined his clients’ clinical notes, his cellphone and other belongings.

The officers gave no explanation, but Dr. Boatner, who is black, said he suspected the reason he was stopped was his race and appearance. He was wearing sweat pants, a white T-shirt and high-top sneakers.

He said he felt humiliated. “I had never been subjected to anything like that,” he said in an interview.

Officers in Boston acknowledged that they had no firm data on how frequently minority members were stopped. But based on their own observations, several officers estimated that they accounted for as many as 80 percent of passengers searched during certain shifts.

The officers identified nearly two dozen co-workers who they said consistently focused on stopping minority members in response to pressure from managers to meet certain threshold numbers for referrals to the State Police, federal immigration officials or other agencies.

The stops were seen as a way of padding the program’s numbers and demonstrating to Washington policy makers that the behavior program was producing results, several officers said.

Instead, the officers said, profiling undermined the usefulness of the program. Focusing on minority members, said a second officer who was interviewed by The Times, “takes officers away from the real threat, and we could miss a terrorist we are looking for.”

Some Boston officers went to the American Civil Liberties Union with their complaints of profiling, and Sarah Wunsch, a lawyer in the group’s Boston office, interviewed eight officers.

“Selecting people based on race or ethnicity was a way of finding easy marks,” she said. “It was a notch in your belt.”

The transportation agency said it did not collect information on the race or ethnicity of travelers and could not provide such a breakdown of passengers stopped through the behavior program.

But the agency defended the program’s overall value. Behavior detection “is clearly an effective means of identifying people engaged in activity that may threaten the security of the passengers and the airports and has become a very effective intelligence tool, enabling law enforcement to bust larger operations and track any trends in nefarious activity,” the agency said in its statement.

“In addition, the deterrent value of the program can’t be overstated,” it said. Monitoring passengers’ behavior “adds another layer of security to the airport environment and presents the terrorists with yet one more challenge they need to overcome” in their efforts to defeat airport security measures, the agency said.

But government analysts and some researchers say the idea of spotting possible terrorists from their behavior in a security line relies on dubious science.

A critical assessment of the program in 2010 by the Government Accountability Office noted that aviation officials began the behavior program in 2003, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, without first determining if it had a scientific basis.

Nine years later, this question remains largely unanswered, even as the agency moves to expand the program, the accountability office said in a follow-up report last year. It said that until the agency is able to better study and document the validity of the science, Congress might consider freezing tens of millions of dollars budgeted for the program’s growth.

Based on past research, the accountability office said the link between a person’s behavior and mental state is strongest in reading “simple emotions” like happiness and sadness.

…

Read this article at 11 August 2012

August 11, 2012

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ERIC LICHTBLAU

© 2012 The New York Times Company

The biodefender that cries wolf: The Department of Homeland Security’s BioWatch air samplers, meant to detect a terrorist biological attack, have been plagued by false alarms and other failures.

DENVER — As Chris Lindley drove to work that morning in August 2008, a call set his heart pounding.

The Democratic National Convention was being held in Denver, and Barack Obama was to accept his party’s presidential nomination before a crowd of 80,000 people that night.

The phone call was from one of Lindley’s colleagues at Colorado’s emergency preparedness agency. The deadly bacterium that causes tularemia — long feared as a possible biological weapon — had been detected at the convention site.

Should they order an evacuation, the state officials wondered? Send inspectors in moon suits? Distribute antibiotics? Delay or move Obama’s speech?

Another question loomed: Could they trust the source of the alert, a billion-dollar government system for detecting biological attacks known as BioWatch?

Six tense hours later, Lindley and his colleagues had reached a verdict: false alarm.

BioWatch had failed — again.

President George W. Bush announced the system’s deployment in his 2003 State of the Union address, saying it would “protect our people and our homeland.” Since then, BioWatch air samplers have been installed inconspicuously at street level and atop buildings in cities across the country — ready, in theory, to detect pathogens that cause anthrax, tularemia, smallpox, plague and other deadly diseases.

But the system has not lived up to its billing. It has repeatedly cried wolf, producing dozens of false alarms in Los Angeles, Detroit, St. Louis, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.

Worse, BioWatch cannot be counted on to detect a real attack, according to confidential government test results and computer modeling.

The false alarms have threatened to disrupt not only the 2008 Democratic convention, but also the 2004 and 2008 Super Bowls and the 2006 National League baseball playoffs. In 2005, a false alarm in Washington prompted officials to consider closing the National Mall.

Federal agencies documented 56 BioWatch false alarms — most of them never disclosed to the public — through 2008. More followed.

The ultimate verdict on BioWatch is that state and local health officials have shown no confidence in it. Not once have they ordered evacuations or distributed emergency medicines in response to a positive reading.

Federal officials have not established the cause of the false alarms, but scientists familiar with BioWatch say they appear to stem from its inability to distinguish between dangerous pathogens and closely related but nonlethal germs.

BioWatch has yet to face an actual biological attack. Field tests and computer modeling, however, suggest it would have difficulty detecting one.

In an attack by terrorists or a rogue state, disease organisms could well be widely dispersed, at concentrations too low to trigger BioWatch but high enough to infect thousands of people, according to scientists with knowledge of the test data who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Even in a massive release, air currents would scatter the germs in unpredictable ways. Huge numbers of air samplers would have to be deployed to reliably detect an attack in a given area, the scientists said.

Many who have worked with BioWatch — from the Army general who oversaw its initial deployment to state and local health officials who have seen its repeated failures up close — call it ill-conceived or unworkable.

“I can’t find anyone in my peer group who believes in BioWatch,” said Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment from 2002 to 2010.

“The only times it goes off, it’s wrong. I just think it’s a colossal waste of money. It’s a stupid program.”

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that would be chiefly responsible for rushing medications to the site of an attack, told White House aides at a meeting Nov. 21 that they would not do so unless a BioWatch warning was confirmed by follow-up sampling and analysis, several attendees said in interviews.

Those extra steps would undercut BioWatch’s rationale: to enable swift treatment of those exposed.

Federal officials also have shelved long-standing plans to expand the system to the nation’s airports for fear that false alarms could trigger evacuations of terminals, grounding of flights and needless panic.

BioWatch was developed by U.S. national laboratories and government contractors and is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security. Department officials insist that the system’s many alerts were not false alarms. Each time, BioWatch accurately detected some organism in the environment, even if it was not the result of an attack and posed no threat to the public, officials said.

At the same time, department officials have assured Congress that newer technology will make BioWatch more reliable and cheaper to operate.

The current samplers are vacuum-powered collection devices, about the size of an office printer, that pull air through filters that trap any airborne materials. In more than 30 cities each day, technicians collect the filters and deliver them to state or local health labs for genetic analysis. Lab personnel look for DNA matches with at least half a dozen targeted pathogens.

The new, larger units would be automated labs in a box. Samples could be analyzed far more quickly and with no need for manual collection.

Buying and operating the new technology, known as Generation 3, would cost about $3.1 billion over the next five years, on top of the roughly $1 billion that BioWatch already has cost taxpayers. The Obama administration is weighing whether to award a multiyear contract.

Generation 3 “is imperative to saving thousands of lives,” Dr. Alexander Garza, Homeland Security’s chief medical officer, told a House subcommittee on March 29.

But field and lab tests of automated units have raised doubts about their effectiveness. A prototype installed in the New York subway system in 2007 and 2008 produced multiple false readings, according to interviews with scientists. Field tests last year in Chicago found that a second prototype could not operate independently for more than a week at a time.

Most worrisome, testing at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state and at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah found that Generation 3 units could detect a biological agent only if exposed to extremely high concentrations: hundreds of thousands of organisms per cubic meter of air over a six-hour period.

Most of the pathogens targeted by BioWatch, scientists said, can cause sickness or death at much lower levels.

A confidential Homeland Security analysis prepared in January said these “failures were so significant” that the department had proposed that Northrop Grumman Corp., the leading competitor for the Generation 3 contract, make “major engineering modifications.”

A spokesman for the department, Peter Boogaard, defended the performance of BioWatch. Responding to written questions, he said the department “takes all precautions necessary to minimize the occurrence of both false positive and false negative results.”

“Rigorous testing and evaluation” will guide the department’s decisions about whether to buy the Generation 3 technology, he said.

Representatives of Northrop Grumman said in interviews that some test results had prompted efforts to improve the automated units’ sensitivity and overall performance.

“We had an issue that affected the consistency of the performance of the system,” said Dave Tilles, the company’s project director. “We resolved it. We fixed it…. We feel like we’re ready for the next phase of the program.”

In congressional testimony, officials responsible for BioWatch in both the Bush and Obama administrations have made only fleeting references to the system’s documented failures.

“BioWatch, as you know, has been an enormous success story,” Jay M. Cohen, a Homeland Security undersecretary, told a House subcommittee in 2007.

In June 2009, Homeland Security’s then-chief medical officer, Dr. Jon Krohmer, told a House panel: “Without these detectors, the nation has no ability to detect biological attacks until individuals start to show clinical symptoms.” Without BioWatch, “needless deaths” could result, he said.

Garza, the current chief medical officer, was asked during his March 29 testimony whether Generation 3 was on track. “My professional opinion is, it’s right where it needs to be,” he said.

After hearing such assurances, bipartisan majorities of Congress have unfailingly supported additional spending for BioWatch.

Olympic prototype

The problems inherent in what would become BioWatch appeared early.

In February 2002, scientists and technicians from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory deployed a prototype in and around Salt Lake City in preparation for the Winter Olympics. The scientists were aware that false alarms could “cause immense disruptions and panic” and were determined to prevent them, they later wrote in the lab’s quarterly magazine.

Sixteen air samplers were positioned at Olympic venues, as well as in downtown Salt Lake City and at the airport. About 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 12, a sample from the airport’s C concourse tested positive for anthrax.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was at an Olympic figure skating competition when the state’s public safety director, Bob Flowers, called with the news.

“He told me that they had a positive lead on anthrax at the airport,” Leavitt recalled. “I asked if they’d retested it. He said they had — not just once, but four times. And each time it tested positive.”

The Olympics marked the first major international gathering since the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner hijackings and the deadly anthrax mailings that fall.

“It didn’t take a lot of imagination to say, ‘This could be the real thing,'” Leavitt said.

But sealing off the airport would disrupt the Olympics. And “the federal government would have stopped transportation all over the country,” as it had after Sept. 11, Leavitt said.

Leavitt ordered hazardous-materials crews to stand by at the airport, though without lights and sirens or conspicuous protective gear.

“He was ready to close the airport and call the National Guard,” recalled Richard Meyer, then a federal scientist assisting with the detection technology at the Olympics.

After consulting Meyer and other officials, Leavitt decided to wait until a final round of testing was completed. By 9 p.m., when the results were negative, the governor decided not to order any further response.

“It was a false positive,” Leavitt said. “But it was a live-fire exercise, I’ll tell you that.”

Pressing ahead

The implication — that BioWatch could deliver a highly disruptive false alarm — went unheeded.

After the Olympics, Meyer and others who had worked with the air samplers attended meetings at the Pentagon, where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was building a case for rapidly deploying the technology nationwide.

On Jan. 28, 2003, Bush unveiled BioWatch in his State of the Union address, calling it “the nation’s first early-warning network of sensors to detect biological attack.”

The next month, a group of science and technology advisors to the Defense Department, including Sidney Drell, the noted Stanford University physicist, expressed surprise that “no formal study has been undertaken” of the Salt Lake City incident. The cause of that false alarm has never been identified.

“It is not realistic to undertake a nationwide, blanket deployment of biosensors,” the advisory panel, named the JASON group, concluded.

The warning was ignored in the rush to deploy BioWatch. Administration officials also disbanded a separate working group of prominent scientists with expertise in the pathogens.

That group, established by the Pentagon, had been working to determine how often certain germs appear in nature, members of the panel said in interviews. The answer would be key to avoiding false alarms. The idea was to establish a baseline to distinguish between the natural presence of disease organisms and an attack.

The failure to conduct that work has hobbled the system ever since, particularly in regard to tularemia, which has been involved in nearly all of BioWatch’s false alarms.

The bacterium that causes tularemia, or rabbit fever, got its formal name, Francisella tularensis, after being found in squirrels in the early 20th century in Central California’s Tulare County. About 200 naturally occurring infections in humans are reported every year in the U.S. The disease can be deadly but is readily curable when treated promptly with antibiotics.

Before BioWatch, scientists knew that the tularemia bacterium existed in soil and water. What the scientists who designed BioWatch did not know — because the fieldwork wasn’t done — was that nature is rife with close cousins to it.

The false alarms for tularemia appear to have been triggered by those nonlethal cousins, according to scientists with knowledge of the system.

That BioWatch is sensitive enough to register repeated false alarms but not sensitive enough to reliably detect an attack may seem contradictory. But the two tasks involve different challenges.

Any detection system is likely to encounter naturally occurring organisms like the tularemia bacterium and its cousins. Those encounters have the potential to trigger alerts unless the system can distinguish between benign organisms and harmful ones.

Detecting an attack requires a system that is not only discriminating but also highly sensitive — to guarantee that it won’t miss traces of deadly germs that might have been dispersed over a large area.

BioWatch is neither discriminating enough for the one task nor sensitive enough for the other.

The system’s inherent flaws and the missing scientific work did not slow its deployment. After Bush’s speech, the White House assigned Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Reeves, whose office was responsible for developing defenses against chemical and biological attacks, to get BioWatch up and running.

Over the previous year, Reeves had overseen placement of units similar to the BioWatch samplers throughout the Washington area, including the Pentagon, where several false alarms for anthrax and plague later occurred.

Based on that work and computer modeling of the technology’s capabilities, Reeves did not see how BioWatch could reliably detect attacks smaller than, for example, a mass-volume spraying from a crop duster.

Nevertheless, the priority was to carry out Bush’s directive, swiftly.

“In the senior-level discussions, the issue of efficacy really wasn’t on the table,” recalled Reeves, who has since retired from the Army. “It was get it done, tell the president we did good, tell the nation that they’re protected.… I thought at the time this was good PR, to calm the nation down. But an effective system? Not a chance.”

Why no illness?

It wasn’t long before there was a false alarm. Over a three-day period in October 2003, three BioWatch units detected the tularemia bacterium in Houston.

Public health officials were puzzled: The region’s hospitals were not reporting anyone sick with the disease.

Dr. Mary desVignes-Kendrick, the city’s health director, wanted to question hospital officials in detail to make sure early symptoms of tularemia were not being missed or masked by a flu outbreak. But to desVignes-Kendrick’s dismay, Homeland Security officials told her not to tell the doctors and nurses what she was looking for.

“We were hampered by how much we could share on this quote-unquote secret initiative,” she said.

After a week, it was clear that the BioWatch alarm was false.

In early 2004, on the eve of the Super Bowl in Houston, BioWatch once again signaled tularemia, desVignes-Kendrick said. The sample was from a location two blocks from Reliant Stadium, where the game was to be played Feb. 1.

DesVignes-Kendrick was skeptical but she and other officials again checked with hospitals before dismissing the warning as another false alarm. The football game was played without interruption.

Nonetheless, three weeks later, Charles E. McQueary, then Homeland Security’s undersecretary for science and technology, told a House subcommittee that BioWatch was performing flawlessly.

“I am very pleased with the manner in which BioWatch has worked,” he said. “We’ve had well over half a million samples that have been taken by those sensors. We have yet to have our first false alarm.”

Asked in an interview about that statement, McQueary said his denial of any false alarm was based on his belief that the tularemia bacterium had been detected in Houston, albeit not from an attack.

“You can’t tell the machine, ‘I only want you to detect the one that comes from a terrorist,'” he said.

Whether the Houston alarms involved actual tularemia has never been determined, but researchers later reported the presence of benign relatives of the pathogen in the metropolitan area.

Fear in the capital

In late September 2005, nearly two years after the first cluster of false alarms in Houston, analysis of filters from BioWatch units on and near the National Mall in Washington indicated the presence of tularemia. Tens of thousands of people had visited the Mall that weekend for a book festival and a protest against the Iraq War. Anyone who had been infected would need antibiotics promptly.

For days, officials from the White House and Homeland Security and other federal agencies privately discussed whether to assume the signal was another false alarm and do nothing, or quarantine the Mall and urge those who had been there to get checked for tularemia.

As they waited for further tests, federal officials decided not to alert local healthcare providers to be on the lookout for symptoms, for fear of creating a panic. Homeland Security officials now say findings from lab analysis of the filters did not meet BioWatch standards for declaring an alert.

Six days after the first results, however, CDC scientists broke ranks and began alerting hospitals and clinics. That was little help to visitors who already had left town, however.

“There were 100 people on one conference call — scientists from all over, public health officials — trying to sort out what it meant,” recalled Dr. Gregg Pane, director of Washington’s health department at the time.

Discussing the incident soon thereafter, Jeffrey Stiefel, then chief BioWatch administrator for Homeland Security, said agency officials were keenly aware that false alarms could damage the system’s credibility.

“If I tell a city that they’ve got a biological event, and it’s not a biological event, you no longer trust that system, and the system is useless,” Stiefel said on videotape at a biodefense seminar at the National Institutes of Health on Oct. 6, 2005. “It has to have a high reliability.”

Ultimately, no one turned up sick with tularemia.

Culture of silence

Homeland Security officials have said little publicly about the false positives. And, citing national security and the classification of information, they have insisted that their local counterparts remain mum as well.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County’s public health director, whose department has presided over several BioWatch false positives, referred questions to Homeland Security officials.

Dr. Takashi Wada, health officer for Pasadena from 2003 to 2010, was guarded in discussing the BioWatch false positive that occurred on his watch. Wada confirmed that the detection was made, in February 2007, but would not say where in the 23-square-mile city.

“We’ve been told not to discuss it,” he said in an interview.

Dr. Karen Relucio, medical director for the San Mateo County Health Department, acknowledged there was a false positive there in 2008, but declined to elaborate. “I’m not sure it’s OK for me to talk about that,” said Relucio, who referred further questions to officials in Washington.

In Arizona, officials kept quiet when BioWatch air samplers detected the anthrax pathogen at Super Bowl XLII in February 2008.

Nothing had turned up when technicians checked the enclosed University of Phoenix Stadium before kickoff. But airborne material collected during the first half of the game tested positive for anthrax, said Lt. Col. Jack W. Beasley Jr., chief of the Arizona National Guard’s weapons of mass destruction unit.

The Guard rushed some of the genetic material to the state’s central BioWatch lab in Phoenix for further testing. Federal and state officials convened a 2 a.m. conference call, only to be told that it was another false alarm.

Although it never made the news, the incident “caused quite a stir,” Beasley said.

The director of the state lab, Victor Waddell, said he had been instructed by Homeland Security officials not to discuss the test results. “That’s considered national security,” he said.

The dreaded call

In the months before the 2008 Democratic National Convention, local, state and federal officials planned for a worst-case event in Denver, including a biological attack.

Shortly before 9 a.m. on Aug. 28, the convention’s final day, that frightening scenario seemed to have come true. That’s when Chris Lindley, of the Colorado health department, got the phone call from a colleague, saying BioWatch had detected the tularemia pathogen at the convention site.

Lindley, an epidemiologist who had led a team of Army preventive-medicine specialists in Iraq, had faced crises, but nothing like a bioterrorism attack. Within minutes, chief medical officer Ned Calonge arrived.

Calonge had little faith in BioWatch. A couple of years earlier, the health department had been turned upside down responding to what turned out to be a false alarm for Brucella, a bacterium that primarily affects cattle, on Denver’s western outskirts.

“The idea behind BioWatch — that you could put out these ambient air filters and they would provide you with the information to save people exposed to a biological attack — it’s a concept that you could only put together in theory,” Calonge said in an interview. “It’s a poorly conceived strategy for doing early detection that is inherently going to pick up false positives.”

Lindley and his team arranged a conference call with scores of officials, including representatives from Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Secret Service and the White House.

None of the BioWatch samplers operated by the state had registered a positive, and no unusual cases of infection appeared to have been diagnosed at area hospitals, Lindley said.

The alert had come from a Secret Service-installed sampler on the grounds of the arena where the convention was taking place. The unit was next to an area filled with satellite trucks broadcasting live news reports on the Democratic gathering. Soon, thousands of conventioneers would be walking from Pepsi Center to nearby Invesco Field to hear Obama’s acceptance speech.

Had Lindley and Calonge been asked, they said in interviews, they wouldn’t have put the BioWatch unit at this spot, where foot and vehicle traffic could stir up dust and contaminants that might set off a false alarm. As it turned out, a shade tree 12 yards from the sampler had attracted squirrels, potential carriers of tularemia.

The location near the media trailers posed another problem: how to conduct additional tests without setting off a panic.

EPA officials “said on the phone, ‘We have a team standing by, ready to go,'” Lindley recalled. But the technicians would have to wear elaborate protective gear.

The sight of emergency responders in moon suits “would have derailed the convention,” Calonge said.

…

Find this story at 7 July 2012

By David Willman, Los Angeles Times

July 7, 2012Advertisement

david.willman@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Bradley Manning treated more harshly than a terrorist, lawyer argues

Defence lawyer files motion that ‘aiding the enemy’ charge is stricter against US soldiers than it would be against terrorists
The lawyer defending Bradley Manning against charges that he “aided the enemy” by disclosing state secrets to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, is arguing that US soldiers are being treated more harshly in application of the law than terrorists.

David Coombs, the civilian lawyer who has been representing the soldier for the past two years after he was arrested in Iraq on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source, will be pressing his case in a military court next week. In a motion that he has lodged with the court as part of the lead up to a full court martial, he warns that unless the “aiding the enemy” charge is clarified it would leave Manning in a more onerous legal position than terrorists facing exactly the same count.

“It defies all logic to think that a terrorist would fare better in an American court for aiding the enemy than a US soldier would,” Coombs writes in the motion.

Aiding the enemy is the most serious of the 22 counts that Manning is facing. In the rank of military charges, it is rated very close to treason and technically carries the death penalty, though the prosecution in this case have indicated that they will not push for that.

The charge alleges that between November 2009 and 27 May 2010, when Manning was arrested at a military base outside Baghdad, he “knowingly gave intelligence to the enemy through indirect means”. In court deliberations, it has been further clarified that the charge refers to the transmitting of “classified documents to the enemy through the WikiLeaks website”.

The US government has added in later legal debate that the “enemy” to which it is referring is al-Qaida and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as a terrorist group whose identity has not been made public.

The allegations relate to the passing of hundreds of thousands of US state secrets, including embassy cables from around the world and war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, that caused a worldwide sensation when they were published by WikiLeaks via several international news organisations led by the Guardian.

Next week the soldier and his defence team will be back in military court in Fort Meade, Maryland, in the latest of a succession of pre-trial hearings to hammer out the terms of the eventual court martial. Previous engagements have led to sparky interactions between Coombs and the army prosecutors seeking to condemn Manning possibly to spending the rest of his life in military custody.

The most significant discussion at next week’s proceedings will revolve around the precise legal definition of what “aiding the enemy” means – specifically its allegation that Manning “knowingly gave intelligence to the enemy”. The judge presiding over Manning’s trial, Colonel Denise Lind, has ruled that the soldier must have had “actual knowlege” that he was giving intelligence to enemy for the charge to be proven.

Coombs will next week attempt to gain further clarification that would raise the legal bar much higher. In his motion he argues that it is a truism in the age of the internet, any posted material is potentially accessible to anybody.

To accuse Manning of having aided the enemy by transmitting intelligence to WikiLeaks that could then be accessed by al-Qaida would remove any sense of him “knowingly” doing so. He writes that this would “render the ‘actual knowledge’ element utterly toothless in all internet-intelligence
cases.”

Coombs highlights an apparent absurdity in the way the law is being applied. In cases where terrorist suspects are brought before military commissions, such as those at Guantanamo, and accused of the very same charge as Manning, the military prosecutors have to prove that the defendant “knowingly and intentionally” aided the enemy. Yet in the case of a US soldier, intentionality is not mentioned.

…

Find this story at 12 July 2012

 

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 July 2012 17.36 BST

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

 

 

 

Mysterious fatal crash offers rare look at U.S. commando presence in Mali

In pre-dawn darkness, a Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos — alongside three dead women.

What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.

At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.

At the same time, the crash in Mali has revealed some details of the commandos’ clandestine activities that apparently had little to do with counterterrorism. The women killed in the wreck were identified as Moroccan prostitutes who had been riding with the soldiers, according to a senior Army official and a U.S. counterterrorism consultant briefed on the incident, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which is conducting a probe of the fatal plunge off the Martyrs Bridge in Bamako, the capital of Mali, said it does not suspect foul play but has “not completely ruled it out.” Other Army officials cited poor road conditions and excessive speed as the likely cause of the 5 a.m. crash.

U.S. officials have revealed few details about the soldiers’ mission or their backgrounds, beyond a brief news release announcing their deaths hours after the accident.

In many countries, including most in Africa, Special Operations forces work openly to distribute humanitarian aid and train local militaries. At times, the civil-affairs assignments can provide credible cover for clandestine counterterrorism units.

But in Mali, U.S. military personnel had ceased all training and civil-affairs work by the end of March, about a week after the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.

The military’s Africa Command, which oversees operations on the continent, said the three service members killed were among “a small number of personnel” who had been aiding the Malian military before the coup and had remained in the country to “provide assistance to the U.S. Embassy” and “maintain situational awareness on the unfolding events.”

Megan Larson-Kone, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Embassy in Mali, said the soldiers had stayed in Bamako because they were “winding down” civil-
affairs programs in the aftermath of the coup while holding out hope “that things would turn around quickly” so they could resume their work.

Two of the soldiers, Capt. Daniel H. Utley, 33, and Sgt. 1st Class Marciano E. Myrthil, 39, were members of the 91st Civil Affairs Battalion, 95th Civil Affairs Brigade, which is based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

For two months after the crash, the U.S. military withheld the identity of the third soldier killed. In response to inquiries from The Washington Post, the Army named him as Master Sgt. Trevor J. Bast, 39, a communications technician with the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir.

The Intelligence and Security Command is a little-known and secretive branch of the Army that specializes in communications intercepts. Its personnel often work closely with the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees missions to capture or kill terrorism suspects overseas.

During his two decades of service, Bast revealed little about the nature of his work to his family. “He did not tell us a lot about his life, and we respected that for security purposes,” his mother, Thelma Bast of Gaylord, Mich., said in a brief interview. “We never asked questions, and that’s the honest truth.”

Haven for Islamist militants

U.S. counterterrorism officials have long worried about Mali, a weakly governed country of 14.5 million people that has served as a refuge for Islamist militants allied with al-Qaeda.

With only 6,000 poorly equipped troops, the Malian armed forces have always struggled to maintain control of their territory, about twice the size of Texas. Repeated famines and rebellions by Tuareg nomads only exacerbated the instability.

About six years ago, the Pentagon began bolstering its overt aid and training programs in Mali, as well as its clandestine operations.

Under a classified program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and contractors were deployed to West Africa to conduct surveillance missions over the country with single-
engine aircraft designed to look like civilian passenger planes.

In addition, the military flew spy flights over Mali and other countries in the region with longer-range P-3 Orion aircraft based in the Mediterranean, according to classified U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

In what would have represented a significant escalation of U.S. military involvement in Mali, the Pentagon also considered a secret plan in 2009 to embed American commandos with Malian ground troops, diplomatic cables show.

Under that program, code-named Oasis Enabler, U.S. military advisers would conduct anti-terrorism operations alongside elite, American-trained Malian units. But the idea was rejected by Gillian A. Milovanovic, the ambassador to Mali at the time.

In an October 2009 meeting in Bamako with Vice Adm. Robert T. Moeller, deputy chief of the Africa Command, the ambassador called the plan “extremely problematic,” adding that it could create a popular backlash and “risk infuriating” neighbors such as Algeria.

Furthermore, Milovanovic warned that the U.S. advisers “would likely serve as lightning rods, exposing themselves and the Malian contingents to specific risk,” according to a State Department cable summarizing the meeting.

Moeller replied that he “regretted” that the ambassador had not been kept better informed and said Oasis Enabler was “a work in progress.” It is unclear whether the plan was carried out.

Since then, however, security in Mali has deteriorated sharply. After the coup in March, extremist Muslim guerrillas in northern Mali declared an independent Islamist state. They have imposed sharia law and have begun enforcing strict social codes that include compulsory beards for men and a ban on television.

In the fabled desert city of Timbuktu, al-Qaeda sympathizers have destroyed ancient mausoleums and attacked other shrines as part of a religious cleansing campaign. Western aid workers have abandoned the northern half of the country after a string of kidnappings.

Thousands of Malians have fled to refugee camps in neighboring countries.

A fatal plunge

The three soldiers riding through Bamako in April had rented their 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser from a local agency, according to written statements provided to The Post by the Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.

Bast was in the driver’s seat and was headed south across the Martyrs Bridge. Preliminary investigative results determined that he lost control of the Land Cruiser, which broke through the bridge’s guard rail and landed in the river below.

Also in the vehicle were three Moroccan women, according to the Army’s statement. Contributing factors in the accident, the Army said, were limited visibility and “a probable evasive maneuver on the part of the vehicle’s driver to avoid impacting with slower moving traffic.”

The soldiers died of “blunt force trauma” when the vehicle landed upside down in the shallow river, crushing the roof, the Army said.

The Special Operations Command said it could not answer questions about where the soldiers were going, nor why they were traveling with the unidentified Moroccan women, saying the matter is under investigation.

Larson-Kone, the embassy spokeswoman, said the soldiers were on “personal, not business-related travel” at the time, but she declined to provide details. Officials from the Africa Command also said that they did not know who the women were, but they added in a statement: “From what we know now, we have no reason to believe these women were engaged in acts of prostitution.”

Coincidentally, the incident occurred less than a week after President Obama’s visit to a summit in Cartagena, Colombia, where U.S. military personnel and Secret Service agents became embroiled in a scandal involving prostitutes.

Little details not adding up

At least two of the soldiers in Mali had been trained as communications or intelligence specialists.

Bast, the master sergeant, was a ham radio hobbyist who originally joined the Navy before switching to the Army several years ago. An Army spokesman described him as a “communications expert” and said he was posthumously given the Meritorious Service Medal but declined to say why.

Myrthil was a native of Haiti who joined the Army two decades ago. Military officials released virtually no details about his service record.

Utley, the captain, was a Kentucky native who joined the Army in 2002 to work as a signals and communications officer but later transferred to the Special Forces.

Friends said he had expected to deploy to Afghanistan last summer but received last-minute orders to go to Africa instead. His Mali assignment was scheduled to end this spring but was extended, they said.

Three weeks after the coup, on April 11, Utley sent a brief e-mail to a friend from college, Chris Atzinger, to report that he was all right and that he would write more later.

…

Find this story at 9 July 2012

By Craig Whitlock, Monday, July 9, 3:04 AM

Dana Priest and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© The Washington Post Company

CIA cracks down on sexual harassment in its ranks Spy agency reacts to complaints of sexual harassment by women working in CIA war zones. Former officers say trysts are part of the agency’s culture.

WASHINGTON — Spurred by complaints from women working for the CIA in war zones, the spy service is stepping up efforts to enforce what it calls a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment by supervisors and co-workers.

David Petraeus, the CIA director, sent a message to agency staff members last month to emphasize the initiative. He ordered a team of managers to meet with senior officers at stations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and possibly in Yemen, Somalia and other countries where the CIA has launched drone missile strikes against militants.

Petraeus also appointed a “counselor and investigator” to field sexual harassment complaints at those posts, CIA spokesman Preston Golson said.

The effort follows surveys of CIA officers in war zones in 2009 and 2011 by the agency’s office of medical services. The surveys, which sought “to capture perceptions” on a wide range of workplace issues, showed no improvement in alleged sexual harassment, Golson said in an email.

Numerous women, who were not identified in the surveys, reported having been harassed, often by supervisors, said two former CIA officials, who requested that they not be identified in discussing an internal matter. They did not know the numbers, and the CIA declined to provide them.

“This has been going on for years, but it seems to have become more serious,” one of the former officials said. “The agency has not come up with an effective tool to stop it.”

The majority of alleged incidents in the surveys “consisted of remarks or jokes of a sexual nature,” Golson said. “Survey results suggested that harassment of a more physical nature may also have occurred, but was not reported.”

Some CIA officials have been punished for sexual harassment in recent years, Golson said. He declined to disclose information about those cases, citing CIA policy of keeping personnel data secret.

A few have come to light, however. In 2010, for example, a senior manager in the National Clandestine Service, which conducts CIA operations, was forced to retire after he had an affair with a female subordinate and her husband complained toLeon E. Panetta, then the CIA director, the two former officials said.

Stories of sexual improprieties are infamous at some CIA stations, especially in high-stress areas. It is a civilian agency, and employees in war zones tend to work long hours, live in close quarters and let off steam by drinking alcohol after work.

Partly as a result of that, former CIA officers said, what would be considered workplace sexual impropriety at corporations and other government agencies has been tolerated at the CIA, and trysts between supervisors and employees are not unusual.

Ilana Sara Greenstein, who served as a CIA case officer in Iraq in 2004-05, said a senior manager who was responsible for her promotions “hit on me” when she worked at CIA headquarters.

“He was married, quite aggressive and wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Greenstein said. “I said no, and it put me in a really awkward position.”

Greenstein, who quit the CIA and is now a lawyer, didn’t file a complaint at the time “because you know that’s the end of your career,” she said. “It sounds cliche, but it’s an old boys’ network, and that kind of comes with the territory.”

…

Find this story at 4 July 2012

By Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

3:04 PM PDT, July 4, 2012Advertisement

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

Times staff writer Brian Bennett contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Bradley Manning lawyers accuse prosecutors of misleading judge

In a motion ahead of Monday’s pre-trial hearing, civilian lawyer says prosecutors are still denying defence access to documents
Bradley Manning’s lawyers say the prosecution team is keeping important documents from them. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP

The US government is deliberately attempting to prevent Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of state secrets, from receiving a fair trial, the soldier’s lawyer alleges in new court documents.

David Coombs, Manning’s civilian lawyer, has made his strongest accusations yet about the conduct of the military prosecutors. In motions filed with the military court ahead of a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, on Monday, he goes so far as to accuse the government in essence of lying to the court.

Coombs charges the prosecutors with making “an outright misrepresentation” to the court over evidence the defence has been trying for months to gain access to through disclosure.

The dispute relates to an investigation by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, Oncix, into the damage caused by the WikiLeaks disclosures of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents.

Reports by the Associated Press, Reuters and other news outlets have suggested that official inquiries into the impact of WikiLeaks concluded that the leaks caused some “pockets” of short-term damage around the world, but that generally its impact had been embarrassing rather than harmful.

Such a finding could prove invaluable to the defence in fighting some of the charges facing Manning or, should he be found guilty, reducing his sentence.

Yet Coombs says the army prosecutors have consistently kept him, and the court, in the dark, thwarting his legal rights to see the evidence.

“It was abundantly clear that Oncix had some form of inquiry into the harm from the leaks – but the government switched definitions around arbitrarily so as to avoid disclosing this discovery to the defence.”

On 21 March, the prosecutors told the court that “Oncix has not produced any interim or final damage assessment” into WikiLeaks.

Coombs alleges that this statement was inaccurate – and the government knew it to be inaccurate at the time it made it.

“The defense submits [this] was an outright misrepresentation,” he writes.

On 20 April, the government told the court that “Oncix does not have any forensic results or investigative files”. Yet a week before that, the prosecutors had handed to the defence documents that clearly showed Oncix had begun to investigate WikiLeaks almost 18 months previously.

“Oncix was collecting information from various agencies in late 2010 to assess what damage, if any, was occasioned by the leaks. So how could it be that Oncix neither had an investigation nor a damage assessment?” Coombs writes.

The alleged efforts by the US government to avoid fulfilling its obligations to hand over evidence, Coombs says, has had the effect of rendering it impossible for the defence to prepare for the trial which is scheduled to begin in September.

Without access to the information, they cannot identify witnesses, develop questions for those witnesses, prepare a cross-examination strategy and so on.

…

Find this story at 24 June 2012 

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 June 2012 14.19 BST
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

Pentagon increasing spy presence overseas

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is beefing up its spy service to send several hundred undercover intelligence officers to overseas hot spots to steal secrets on national security threats after a decade of focusing chiefly on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The move comes amid concerns that the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spy service, needs to expand operations beyond the war zones and to work more closely with the CIA, according to a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the classified program.

The new Defense Clandestine Service will comprise about 15% of the DIA’s workforce. They will focus on gathering intelligence on terrorist networks, nuclear proliferators and other highly sensitive threats around the world, rather than just gleaning tactical information to assist military commanders on the battlefield, the official said.

“You have to do global coverage,” the official said.

Some of the new spies thus are likely to be assigned to targets that now are intelligence priorities, including parts of Africa and the Middle East where Al Qaeda and its affiliates are active, the nuclear and missile programs in North Korea and Iran, and China’s expanding military.

The initiative, which Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta approved last Friday, aims to boost the Pentagon’s role in human intelligence collection, and to assign more case officers and analysts around the globe. The CIA has dominated that mission for decades, and the two agencies have long squabbled over their respective roles.

An internal study by the director of National Intelligence last year concluded that the DIA needed to expand its traditional role and should gather and disseminate more information on global issues. It also found that the DIA did not promote or reward successful case officers, and that many often left for the CIA as a result.

Find this story at 23 April 2012

By David S. Cloud

April 23, 2012, 10:37 a.m.

Former CIA spy boss made an unhesitating call to destroy interrogation tapes

The first and only time I met Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., he was still undercover and in charge of the Central Intelligence Agency’s all-powerful operations directorate. The agency had summoned me to its Langley headquarters and his mission was to talk me out of running an article I had just finished reporting about CIA secret prisons — the “black sites” abroad where the agency put al-Qaeda terrorists so they could be interrogated in isolation, beyond the reach and protections of U.S. law.

The scene I walked into in November 2005 struck me as incongruous. The man sitting in the middle of the navy blue colonial-style sofa looked like a big-city police detective stuffed uncomfortably into a tailored suit. His face was pockmarked, his dark mustache too big to be stylish. He was not one of the polished career bureaucrats who populate the halls of power in Washington.

In fact, he fit perfectly the description given by my sources: hardworking but not smooth, loyal to the institution and now, probably, beyond his depth. He was as surprised as anyone that he had risen so quickly to the senior ranks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to the account of his decades-long spy career in “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.” The book is due out Monday, after an exclusive interview Sunday night on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” The Washington Post obtained a copy this week.

Shortly after the 2001 attacks, the CIA set up the secret prisons in Afghanistan, Thailand and several Eastern European countries for the explicit purpose of keeping detainees picked up on the battlefield or in other countries away from the U.S. justice system, which would grant them some protections against, among other things, torture or otherwise harsh treatment. In an effort to force these detainees to give their handlers information about terrorist plots, CIA interrogators subjected some of them to sleep and food deprivation, incessant loud noise and waterboarding.

By the time we met, those techniques were no longer in use. Rodriguez had not dealt with American reporters, he writes, but then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss had asked him to meet with me “to see if I could convince her that such a story would harm U.S. national security, put some of our allies around the world in a very difficult position, and potentially disrupt a program that was providing intelligence that was producing real results and helping to keep the country safe.”

What Rodriguez remembers from our conversation, according to his book, is that I brought him a copy of a book I had written about the U.S. military in an effort to butter him up. “That failed to soften my stance on the lack of wisdom of her proceeding with her article as planned,” he wrote, and “I could see I was not winning her over.” I remember bringing the book because I figured he didn’t know one reporter from the next, and I wanted him to know that I did in-depth work and didn’t want to just hear the talking points.

A blunt explanation

It became clear immediately that Rodriguez never even got the talking points, which was refreshing and surprising. Right away he began divulging awkward truths that other senior officers had tried to obfuscate in our conversations about the secret prisons: “In many cases they are violating their own laws by helping us,” he offered, according to notes I took at the time.

Why not bring the detainees to trial?

“Because they would get lawyered up, and our job, first and foremost, is to obtain information.”

(Shortly after our conversation, The Post’s senior editors were called to the White House to discuss the article with President George W. Bush and his national security team. Days later, the newspaper published the story, without naming the countries where the prisons were located.)

Rodriguez may have never felt the need to even reveal himself publicly or to write a book, complete with family photos, giving his version of many of the unconventional — and eventually repudiated — practices that the CIA engaged in after Sept. 11 had it not been for what happened shortly after our conversation.

Concerned that the location of one of the prisons was about to be revealed, Rodriguez writes that he ordered the facility closed immediately and the detainees moved to a new site. While dismantling the site, the base chief asked Rodriguez if she could throw a pile of old videotapes, made during the early days of terrorist Abu Zubaida’s interrogation and waterboarding, and now a couple of years old, onto a nearby bonfire that was set to destroy papers and other evidence of the agency’s presence.

Just at that moment, according to his account, a cable from headquarters came in saying: “Hold up on the tapes. We think they should be retained for a little while longer.”

“Had that message been delayed by even a few minutes,” Rodriguez writes, “my life in the years following would have been considerably easier.”

Those actions led to a lengthy and still ongoing investigation of the agency that produced no charges. Rodriguez retired in January 2008 and now works in the private sector.

A tough CIA veteran

Rodriguez was born in Puerto Rico, the son of two teachers. He was educated at the University of Florida, where he also received a law degree before being recruited by the CIA. He once gained the confidence of a dictator in a Latin American country because of his gutsy horseback riding skills. He worked as the chief of station in several countries he does not name, and was sent to El Salvador during its bloody civil war (which he glosses over completely) and to Panama, where he pitched the idea of recruiting Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega’s witch doctor and putting him on the CIA payroll to persuade the dictator to retire to Spain. The CIA director at the time wasn’t impressed and instead, in 1989, “the United States followed a more traditional path: a military invasion.”

On Sept. 11, 2001, he did what legions of CIA officers not at work that day did: He rushed into headquarters, even as people were being evacuated, and pitched in. Rodriguez ended up in the Counterterrorism Center, which quickly went from a backwater posting to the center of the universe at the agency.

As CIA operations officers and analysts scrambled to figure out more about al-Qaeda and to plan a counterattack, Rodriguez was in the eye of the storm. “Hard Measures” takes readers through a highly sanitized — censored by the CIA, actually — version of events.

Although many details are left out and most of the outlines of what Rodriguez writes will not come as news to close readers of newspapers, he does not shy away from addressing the most controversial parts of what became the largest covert action program in U.S. history: the secret decisions to capture suspected terrorists on the battlefield or on the streets and make them disappear from the face of the Earth. Using a fleet of airplanes, the CIA bundled its captives into a netherworld no one else had access to, flew them around the world, deposited them in secret underground prisons where it could control their every move and use especially harsh interrogation methods on some of the most senior prisoners.

Many CIA officers had misgivings about these practices and what they might mean for America’s reputation around the world. Not Rodriguez. He is unabashedly confident that he and the agency did the right thing and saved lives in the process.

“I am certain, beyond any doubt, that these techniques, approved at the highest levels of the U.S. government, certified by the Department of Justice, and briefed to and supported by bipartisan leadership of congressional intelligence oversight committees, shielded the people of the United States from harm and led to the capture of killing of Usama bin Ladin.”

Of course, it is impossible to know this for certain, and many people inside and outside government — some of them involved in interrogations — have argued that with better-trained interrogators and more patience, the same information could have been obtained without such harsh methods.

The most newsworthy part of the book is a chapter in which Rodriguez explains how he came to order the destruction of 92 videotapes of the interrogation of Abu Zubaida.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has nearly completed a four-year-long review of the CIA’s post-Sept. 11 detention and interrogation practices.

Shredding the tapes

Rodriguez writes that he ordered the tapes’ destruction because he got tired of waiting for his superiors to make a decision. They had at least twice given him the go-ahead, then backed off. In the meantime, a senior agency attorney cited “grave national security reasons” for destroying the material and said the tapes presented ‘“grave risk” to the personal safety of our officers” whose identities could be seen on the recordings.

In late April 2004, another event forced his hand, he writes. Photos of the abuse of prisoners by Army soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq ignited the Arab world and risked being confused with the CIA’s program, which was run very differently.

“We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT [enhanced interrogation techniques] ever got out, the difference between a legal, authorized, necessary, and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs [military police] would be buried by the impact of the images.

“The propaganda damage to the image of America would be immense. But the main concern then, and always, was for the safety of my officers.”

Readers may disagree with much of what Rodriguez writes and with the importance of some of the facts he omits from his book, but the above sentence speaks volumes about why this book is important. In this case, a loyal civil servant — and the decision-makers above him who blessed these programs — were not thinking about the larger, longer-lasting damage to the core values of the United States that disclosure of these secrets might cause. They were thinking about the near term. About efficiency. About the safety of friends and colleagues. In their minds, they were thinking, too, about the safety of the country.

…

Find this story at 25 April 2012

By Dana Priest, Published: April 25

© The Washington Post Company

Researcher: CIA, NSA may have infiltrated Microsoft to write malware

Did spies posing as Microsofties write malware in Redmond? How do you spell ‘phooey’ in C#?

June 18, 2012, 2:46 PM — A leading security researcher has suggested Microsoft’s core Windows and application development programming teams have been infiltrated by covert programmer/operatives from U.S. intelligence agencies.

If it were true it would be another exciting twist to the stories of international espionage, sabotage and murder that surround Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame, the most successful cyberwar weapons deployed so far, with the possible exception of Windows itself.

Nevertheless, according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of antivirus and security software vendor F-Secure, the scenario that would make it simplest for programmers employed by U.S. intelligence agencies to create the Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame viruses and compromise Microsoft protocols to the extent they could disguise downloads to Flame as patches through Windows Update is that Microsoft has been infiltrated by members of the U.S. intelligence community.

[ FREE DOWNLOAD: 68 great ideas for running a security department ]

Having programmers, spies and spy-supervisors from the NSA, CIA or other secret government agencies infiltrate Microsoft in order to turn its technology to their own evil uses (rather than Microsoft’s) is the kind of premise that would get any writer thrown out of a movie producer’s office for pitching an idea that would put the audience to sleep halfway through the first act.

Not only is it unlikely, the “action” most likely to take place on the Microsoft campus would be the kind with lots of tense, acronymically dense debates in beige conference rooms and bland corporate offices.

The three remarkable bits of malware that attacked Iranian nuclear-fuel development facilities and stole data from its top-secret computer systems – Flame Duqu and Stuxnet – show clear signs of having been built by the same teams of developers, over a long period of time, Hypponen told PC Pro in the U.K.

Flame used a counterfeit Microsoft security certificates to verify its trustworthiness to Iranian users, primarily because Microsoft is among the most widely recognized and trusted computer companies in the world, Hypponen said.

Faking credentials from Microsoft would give the malware far more credibility than using certificates from other vendors, as would hiding updates in Windows Update, Hypponen said.

The damage to Microsoft’s reputation and suspicion from international customers that it is a puppet of the CIA would be enough to keep Microsoft itself from participating in the operation, even if it were asked.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

“It’s plausible that if there is an operation under way and being run by a US intelligence agency it would make perfect sense for them to plant moles inside Microsoft to assist in pulling it off, just as they would in any other undercover operation,” Hypponen told PC Pro. “It’s not certain, but it would be common sense to expect they would do that.”

The suggestion piqued the imaginations of conspiracy theorists, but doesn’t have a shred of evidence to support it.

It does have a common-sense appeal, however. Planting operatives inside Microsoft would probably be illegal, would certainly be unethical and could have a long-range disadvantage by making Microsofties look like tools of the CIA rather than simply tools.

“No-one has broken into Microsoft, but by repurposing the certificate and modifying it with unknown hash collision technologies, and with the power of a supercomputer, they were able to start signing any program they wanted as if it was from Microsoft,” Hypponen said. “If you combine that with the mechanism they were using to spoof MS Update server they had the crown jewels.”

Hypponen is one of a number of security experts who have said Stuxnet and Duqu have the hallmarks of software written by traditionally minded software engineers accustomed to working in large, well-coordinated teams.

After studying the code for Duqu, security researchers at Kaspersky Labs said the malware was most similar to the kind of work done by old-school programmers able to write code for more than one platform at a time, do good quality control to make sure the modules were able to install themselves and update in real time, and that the command-and-control components ahd been re-used from previous editions.

“All the conclusions indicate a rather professional team of developers, which appear to be reusing older code written by top “old school” developers,” according to Kaspersky’s analysis. “Such techniques are normally seen in professional software and almost never in today’s malware. Once again, these indicate that Duqu, just like Stuxnet, is a ‘one of a kind’ piece of malware which stands out like a gem from the large mass of “dumb” malicious program we normally see.”

Earlier this month the NYT ran a story detailing two years worth of investigations during which a range of U.S. officials, including, eventually, President Obama, confirmed the U.S. had been involved in writing the Stuxnet and Flame malware and siccing them on Iran.

That’s far from conclusive proof that the NSA has moved its nonexistent offices to Redmond, Wash. It doesn’t rule it out either, however.

Very few malware writers are able to write such clean code that can install on a variety of hardware systems, assess their new environments and download the modules they need to successfully compromise a new network, Kaspersky researchers said.

Stuxnet and Flame are able to do all these things and to get their own updates through Windows Update using a faked Windows Update security certificate.

No other malware writer, hacker or end user has been able to do that before. Knowing it happened this time makes it more apparent that the malware writers know what they are doing and know Microsoft code inside and out.

That’s still no evidence that Microsoft could be or has been infiltrated by spies from the U.S. or from other countries.

It does make sense, but so do a lot of conspiracy theories.

Until there’s some solid indication Flame came from inside Microsoft, not outside, it’s probably safer to write off this string of associative evidence.

Even in his own blog, Hypponen makes fun of those who make fun of Flame as ineffective and unremarkable, but doesn’t actually suggest moles at Microsoft are to blame.

…

Find this story at 18 June 2012

By Kevin Fogarty

© 1994 – 2012 ITworld. All rights reserved.

CIA agreement touted as evidence in ‘black sites’ investigation

A partially signed agreement between Poland’s intelligence service and CIA provides central evidence in the ongoing investigation into alleged ‘black sites’ in Poland.

According to a source at the Krakow Prosecutor’s Office that is handling the investigation, the document was prepared in late 2001, early 2002, in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the US.

The Americans “did not want to leave traces [of evidence]” the source told Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, commenting on the fact that the document was only signed by former head of Poland’s Intelligence Agency (ABW), Zbigniew Siemiatkowski.

When queried about the document, Siemiatkowski stated that if his signature is present, it means that the document is classified, and that he is unable to talk about it. He did not confirm the existence of such an agreement.

Meanwhile, Adam Bodnar of the Helsinki Foundation – a human rights body that is monitoring the case – told that the paper that lack of an American signature does not invalidate the document as key evidence.

“The simple fact that the document was prepared attests to the fact that it there was a will [to create the CIA prisons], and that people who were aware of it, also knew about its contents.”

Accusations and denials

In 2011, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, made an unequivocal statement on the matter.

“It is clear that Poland hosted secret CIA prisons between December 2002 and September 2003. We know who was held there and what interrogation methods were used. They can be described as torture.”

Leszek Miller was prime minister of Poland at that time, at the head of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) government.

He has repeatedly denied knowledge of such a site, which is alleged to have been located in a villa near the Stare Kiejkuty military base in north east Poland.

…

 

Find this story at 19 June 2012 

19.06.2012 10:58

Copyright © Polskie Radio S.A

Criminele drugsinfiltrant VS jarenlang actief in Nederland

’Inzet burgerinfiltranten in Nederland strikt verboden’

 

De Amerikaanse drugsbestrijdingsorganisatie DEA heeft een criminele burgerinfiltrant ingezet in Nederland. Het AD heeft de hand weten te leggen op geheime rapporten van de DEA.

 

De burgerinfiltrant speelde een hoofdrol bij de gecontroleerde doorvoer van een grote hoeveelheid drugs in Europa. Doel was het in de val lokken van drugscriminelen. Op de partij kwamen meerdere Nederlanders af. Infiltrant ‘Mono’ werkte maandenlang vanuit Amsterdam.

 

De rol van de DEA-infiltrant ligt gevoelig, omdat het een bom kan leggen onder het proces tegen de potentiële kopers die momenteel in Haarlem terechtstaan. De verdachten vermoeden dat de DEA in Nederland buiten haar boekje is gegaan en eisen inzage in de operatie. De Amerikanen weigeren dat.

 

Justitie claimt dat ze eind 2009 voor het eerst hoorde dat Mono voor de DEA werkte. Een artikel uit de Poolse krant Gazeta Wyborcza zet vraagtekens bij die verklaring. Nederland zou namelijk al op 11 februari 2009 een bemiddelende rol hebben gespeeld tussen de DEA en de Poolse geheime dienst ABW.

 

…

Vindt dit verhaal op 16 juni 2012

 

Bewerkt door: Leonie Francien Sellies

16-6-12 – 08:23  bron: ANP

De infiltrant was maandenlang actief in Amsterdam. © ANP.

 

De Persgroep Digital. Alle rechten voorbehouden.

Top Secret CIA Documents on Osama bin Laden Declassified

Washington, D.C., June 19, 2012 – The National Security Archive today is posting over 100 recently released CIA documents relating to September 11, Osama bin Laden, and U.S. counterterrorism operations. The newly-declassified records, which the Archive obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, are referred to in footnotes to the 9/11 Commission Report and present an unprecedented public resource for information about September 11.

The collection includes rarely released CIA emails, raw intelligence cables, analytical summaries, high-level briefing materials, and comprehensive counterterrorism reports that are usually withheld from the public because of their sensitivity. Today’s posting covers a variety of topics of major public interest, including background to al-Qaeda’s planning for the attacks; the origins of the Predator program now in heavy use over Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran; al-Qaeda’s relationship with Pakistan; CIA attempts to warn about the impending threat; and the impact of budget constraints on the U.S. government’s hunt for bin Laden.

Today’s posting is the result of a series of FOIA requests by National Security Archive staff based on a painstaking review of references in the 9/11 Commission Report.
DOCUMENT HIGHLIGHTS

The documents released by CIA detail the meticulousness of al-Qaeda’s plot against the United States and CIA attempts to counter the rising terrorist threat. A previously undisclosed raw intelligence report that became the basis for the December 4, 1998, President’s Daily Brief notes that five years before the actual attack, al-Qaeda operatives had successfully evaded security at a New York airport in a test-run for bin Laden’s plan to hijack a U.S. airplane. [1998-12-03]. CIA analytical reports also provide interesting insights into al-Qaeda’s evolving political strategies. “In our view, the hijackers were carefully selected with an eye to their operational and political value. For instance, the large number of Saudi nationals was most likely chosen not only because of the ease with which Saudi nationals could get US visas but also because Bin Ladin could send a message to the Saudi Royal family.” [2003-06-01]

Reports on early attempts to apprehend bin Laden detail the beginning of the U.S. Predator drone program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “First Predator mission over Afghanistan [excised] September 7, 2000.” [1] “Twice in the fall of 2000, the Predator observed an individual most likely to be Bin Ladin; however we had no way at the time to react to this information.” [2004-03-19] American UAVs did not have sufficient weapons capabilities at the time the CIA likely spotted bin Laden in 2000 to fire on the suspect using the UAV.

Al-Qaeda’s ties to Pakistan before September 11 are also noted in several documents. “Usama ((Bin Ladin))’s Islamic Army considered the Pakistan/Afghanistan area one region. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan serve as a regional base and training center for Islamic Army activities supporting Islamic insurgencies in Tajikistan, the Kashmir region and Chechnya. [Excised] The Islamic Army had a camp in Pakistan [Excised] purpose of the camp was to train and recruit new members, mostly from Pakistan.” [1997-07-14] While, “UBL elements in Pakistan reportedly plan to attack POTUS [U.S. President Clinton’s] plane with [excised] missiles if he visits Pakistan.” [2000-02-18]

Similar to the 9/11 Commission Report, the document collection details repeated CIA warnings of the bin Laden terrorist threat prior to September 11. According to a January 2000 Top Secret briefing to the Director of Central Intelligence, disruption operations against the Millennium plot “bought time… weeks… months… but no more than one year” before al-Qaeda would strike. [2000-01-07] “A UBL attack against U.S. interests could occur at any time or any place. It is unlikely that the CIA will have prior warning about the time or place.” [1999-08-03] By September 2001, CIA counterterrorism officials knew a plot was developing but couldn’t provide policymakers with details. “As of Late August 2001, there were indications that an individual associated with al-Qa’ida was considering mounting terrorist operations in the United States, [Excised]. No further information is currently available in the timing of possible attacks or on the alleged targets in the United States.” [2001-08-24]

Despite mounting warnings about al-Qaeda, the documents released today illustrate how prior to September 11, CIA counterterrorism units were lacking the funds to aggressively pursue bin Laden. “Budget concerns… CT [counterterrorism] supplemental still at NSC-OMB [National Security Council – Office of Management and Budget] level. Need forward movement on supplemental soonest due to expected early recess due to conventions, campaigning and elections. Due to budgetary constraints… CTC/UBL [Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit] will move from offensive to defensive posture.” [2000-04-05]

Although the collection is part of a laudable effort by the CIA to provide documents on events related to September 11, many of these materials are heavily redacted, and still only represent one-quarter of the CIA materials cited in the 9/11 Commission Report. Hundreds of cited reports and cables remain classified, including all interrogation materials such as the 47 reports from CIA interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from March 24, 2003 – June 15, 2004, which are referenced in detail in the 9/11 Report.

Highlights of the CIA September 11 Document Collection Include:
The 1998 Raw Intelligence Report on UBL’s Plans to Hijack an Airplane that Became an Item in the December 4, 1998 President’s Daily Brief [1998-12-03].
The report details how bin Laden was planning “new operations against the United States (U.S.) targets in the near future. Plans to hijack a U.S. aircraft were proceeding well. Two individuals from the relevant operational team in the U.S. had successfully evaded security checks during a trial run at “New York airport [excised].”
Internal CIA E-mails on Osama bin Laden
1998-05-05 – “[Title Excised]” “Planning for the UBL Rendition is Going Very Well,” To: Michael F. Scheuer, From: [Excised], Central Intelligence Agency Email. Cited in 9/11 Commission Report as “Capture Op,” “[Gary] Schroen to Mike.” [Chapter 4, Endnote 22 9/11 Commission Report]
1998-12-20 – “Re: urgent re ubl,” Note For: Michael F. Scheuer, From: [Excised], Central Intelligence Agency Email. Cited in 9/11 Commission Report as “[Gary] Schroen to Mike” [Chapter 4, Endnotes 117, 119 9/11 Commission Report]
1998-12-21 – “your note,” Note For: [Excised], From: Michael F. Scheuer, Central Intelligence Agency Email. Cited in 9/11 Commission Report as “Mike to [Gary] Schroen,” [Chapter 4, Endnote 119 9/11 Commission Report]
1999-05-17 – “your note,” From Michael F. Scheuer, To [Excised], Central Intelligence Agency Email. Cited in 9/11 Commission Report as “Mike to [Gary] Schroen” [Chapter 4, Endnote 174 9/11 Commission Report]
2001-05-15 – “[Excised] Query [Excised].” Central Intelligence Agency Email. Cited in 9/11 Commission Report as “Dave to John.” [Chapter 8, Endnote 72 9/11 Commission Report]
2001-05-24 – [Title Excised] “Agee (sic) we need to compare notes,” Central Intelligence Agency Email. Cited in 9/11 Commission Report as “Dave to John.” [Chapter 8, Endnote 64 9/11 Commission Report]
2001-07-13 – “[Excised] Khalad [Excised],” Central Intelligence Agency Email. Cited in 9/11 Commission Report as “Richard to Alan” [Chapter 8, Endnote 64 9/11 Commission Report]
2001-08-21 – “Re: Khalid Al-Mihdhar,” Memorandum, Central Intelligence Agency Email. Cited in 9/11 Commission Report as “Mary to John.” [Chapter 8, Endnote 106 9/11 Commission Report]
Two Definitive CIA Reports on the September 11, 2001 Attacks
2003-06-01 – “11 September: The Plot and the Plotters,” CTC 2003-40044HC, Central Intelligence Agency Intelligence Report.
[Chapter 5, Endnotes 42, 60, 61, 64, 70, 105, Chapter 7, Endnotes 45, 52, 60, 83, 86, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 105 9/11 Commission Report]
This document is a comprehensive CIA history of the 9/11 attack. Analysis includes notes on al-Qaeda, the evolution of the plot, terrorist techniques, timelines and detailed hijacker profiles.
2004-03-19 – “DCI Report: The Rise of UBL and Al-Qa’ida and the Intelligence Community Response,” Draft, Central Intelligence Agency Analytic Report. [Chapter 2, Endnote 67]
This document is a detailed summary of CIA efforts to apprehend Osama bin Laden from 1989-2004. Highlights include:
Agency notes on bin Laden’s evolution from “terrorist financier” in the early 1990s to a significant threat to U.S. interests by mid-1990.
Discussions and debates regarding the use of Predator drones as early as 2000. [2]
Critiques of FBI information systems as impediments to counterterrorism efforts – “A major, ongoing concern is FBI’s own internal dissemination system. CIA officers still often find it necessary to hand-deliver messages to the intended recipient within the FBI. In additional FBI has not perfected its FI reporting system and headquarters-field communications so dissemination of intelligence outside of FBI is still spotty.” And the report confirms suggestions by the 9/11 Commission Report that “the different organizational culture and goals of the FBI and CIA sometimes get in the way of desired results.” (p. 22)
A group of Afghan trial leaders worked with the CIA on the UBL issue, but “[Excised] judged to be unlikely to successfully attack a heavily guarded Bin Ladin.” “Masood has to be engaged to help in the attempt to capture Bin Ladin, but with the understanding that he would be his own man, never an agent of surrogate of the US government… Even if he agreed to do so, his chances of success against the Taliban were judged to be less than five percent.” (p. 58)

Note “DIF” written on multiple pages stands for “Denied in Full”
A Series of CIA Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs (SEIBS) from June-September 2001 Warning of “Imminent” Al-Qaeda Attacks:
2001-06-23 – “International: Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent [Excised]” Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. [Chapter 8, Endnote 14, See also p. 257 9/11 Commission Report]
2001-06-25 – “Terrorism: Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats,” Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. [Chapter 8, Endnotes 12, 14]
2001-06-30 – “Terrorism: Bin Laden Planning High Profile Attacks [Excised],” Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. [Chapter 8, Endnote 12]
2001-07-02 – “Terrorism: Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delay [Excised],” Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. [Chapter 8, Endnote 18]
2001-07-13 – “Terrorism: Bin Ladin Plans Delayed but Not Abandoned [Excised],” Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. [Chapter 8, Endnote 28]
2001-07-25 – “Terrorism: One Bin Ladin Operation Delayed, Others Ongoing [Excised],” Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. [Chapter 8, Endnote 28]
2001-08-07 – “Terrorism: Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the US,” Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. [Chapter 8, Endnote 38. Chapter 11, Endnote 5. Page 342]
Detailed Reports on Al-Qaeda Organization
“The spike in the network’s activity stems in part from changes in Bin Ladin’s practices. To avoid implicating himself and his Taliban hosts, Bin Ladin over the past two years has allowed cells in his network, al-Qa’ida, to plan attacks more independently of the central leadership and has tried to gain support for his agenda outside the group. – The network also has benefited from a sharp increase in mujahidin recruitment since the resumption of the conflict in Chechnya in 1999, which exposed a new generation of militants to terrorist techniques and extremist ideology through training at al-Qai’da-run camps in Afghanistan. – Violence between Israelis and the Palestinians, moreover is making Sunni extremists more willing to participate in attacks against US or Israeli interests.” 2001-02-06 – “Sunni Terrorist Threat Growing,” Senior Executive Intelligence Brief, The Central Intelligence Agency. [Chapter 8, Endnote 4 9/11 Commission Report]
Bin Laden’s Attempts to Acquire Weapons of Mass Destruction
“Bin Ladin and his associates have experimented by crude means to make and deploy biological agents… Bin Ladin has sought to acquire military-grade biological agents or weapons.” 2001-02-14 –”Afghanistan: Bin Ladin’s Interest in Biological and Radiological Weapons,” Central Intelligence Agency Analytical Report [Chapter 11, Endnote 5. 9/11 Commission Report Page 342]
A Positive CIA Assessment of CIA Counterterrorism Capabilities in August 2001
In contrast to the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report and a 2004 CIA Office of Inspector General’s review of its pre-9/11 counterterrorism practices, a report completed in August 2001 by the CIA Inspector General gives very positively reviews to CIA counterterrorism practices, the management of information and interagency cooperation. “CTC fulfills inter-agency responsibilities for the DCI by coordinating national intelligence, providing warning, and promoting the effective use of Intelligence Community resources on terrorism issues. The Center has made progress on problems identified at the time of the last inspection in 1994 – specifically its professional relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Find this story at 19 June 2012

The Central Intelligence Agency’s 9/11 File

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 381

Posted – June 19, 2012

Edited by Barbara Elias-Sanborn with Thanks to Archive Senior Fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson

For more information contact:
Barbara Elias-Sanborn – 202/994-7000
belias@gwu.edu

Exclusive: Senate probe finds little evidence of effective “torture”

(Reuters) – A nearly three-year-long investigation by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats is expected to find there is little evidence the harsh “enhanced interrogation techniques” the CIA used on high-value prisoners produced counter-terrorism breakthroughs.

 

People familiar with the inquiry said committee investigators, who have been poring over records from the administration of President George W. Bush, believe they do not substantiate claims by some Bush supporters that the harsh interrogations led to counter-terrorism coups.

 

The backers of such techniques, which include “water-boarding,” sleep deprivation and other practices critics call torture, maintain they have led to the disruption of major terror plots and the capture of al Qaeda leaders.

 

One official said investigators found “no evidence” such enhanced interrogations played “any significant role” in the years-long intelligence operations which led to the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden last May by U.S. Navy SEALs.

 

President Barack Obama and his aides have largely sought to avoid revisiting Bush administration controversies. But the debate over the effectiveness of enhanced interrogations, which human rights advocates condemn as torture, is resurfacing, in part thanks to a new book by a former top CIA official.

 

In the book, “Hard Measures,” due to be published on Monday, April 30, the former chief of CIA clandestine operations Jose Rodriguez defends the use of interrogation practices including water-boarding, which involves pouring water on a subject’s face, which is covered with a cloth, to simulate drowning.

 

“We made some al-Qaeda terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days,” Rodriguez says in an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that will air on Sunday, April 29. “I am very secure in what we did and am very confident that what we did saved American lives.”

 

For nearly three years, the Senate intelligence committee’s majority Democrats have been conducting what is described as the first systematic investigation of the effectiveness of such extreme interrogation techniques.

 

NO SCIENTIFIC ASSESSMENT

 

The CIA gave the committee access to millions of pages of written records charting daily operations of the interrogation program, including graphic descriptions of how and when controversial techniques were employed.

 

Sources agreed to discuss the matter on condition of anonymity because the report has not been finalized.

 

The committee members’ objective is to conduct a methodical assessment of whether enhanced interrogation techniques led to genuine intelligence breakthroughs or whether they produced more false leads than good ones.

 

U.S.intelligence officials have acknowledged that while the harshest elements of the interrogation program, including water-boarding and other tactics which cause severe physical stress, were in use, the CIA never carried out a scientific assessment of the program’s effectiveness.

 

The Bush Administration only used water-boarding on three captured suspects. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

 

Other coercive techniques included sleep deprivation, making people crouch or stretch in stressful positions and slamming detainees against a flexible wall.

 

The CIA started backing away from such techniques in 2004. Obama banned them shortly after taking office.

 

One source cautioned there could still be lengthy delays before any information or conclusions from the Senate committee’s report are made public.

 

One reason the inquiry has taken so long is that in 2009, committee Republicans withdrew their participation, saying the panel would be unable to interview witnesses to ensure documentary material was reported in appropriate context due to ongoing criminal investigations.

 

People familiar with the inquiry said it consisted of as much as 2,000 pages in narrative accounts of how the CIA interrogation program worked, including specific case histories in which enhanced interrogation tactics were used.

 

‘PROCEDURES’ UNJUSTIFIED: FEINSTEIN

 

The Intelligence committee has not issued any official statements about what its inquiry has found or when it expects to wrap up. But committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein has made relatively strong statements about the lack of evidence that enhanced interrogations played any material role in generating information leading to bin Laden’s killing.

 

Only days after the commando raid in which bin Laden was killed, Feinstein told journalists: “I happen to know a good deal about how those interrogations were conducted, and, in my view, nothing justifies the kind of procedures that were used.”

 

Current and formerU.S.officials have said one key source for information about the existence of the al Qaeda “courier” who ultimately ledU.S.intelligence to bin Laden was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

 

KSM, as he was known toU.S.officials, was subjected to water-boarding 183 times, theU.S.government has acknowledged.

 

Officials said, however, that it was not until sometime after he was water-boarded that KSM told interrogators about the courier’s existence. Therefore a direct link between the physically coercive techniques and critical information is unproven, Bush administration critics say.

 

Supporters of the CIA program, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have portrayed it as a necessary, if distasteful, step that may have stopped extremist plots and saved lives.

 

…

 

 

Find this story at 27 April 2012

 

Fri, Apr 27 2012

By Mark Hosenball

(Editing by Todd Eastham)

 

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U.S. Security Expands Presence at Foreign Airports

SHANNON, Ireland — An ocean away from the United States, travelers flying out of the international airport here on the west coast of Ireland are confronting one of the newest lines of defense in the war on terrorism: the United States border.

In a section of this airport carved out for the Department of Homeland Security, passengers are screened for explosives and cleared to enter the United States by American Customs and Border Protection officers before boarding. When they land, the passengers walk straight off the plane into the terminal without going through border checks.

At other foreign airports, including those in Madrid, Panama City and Tokyo, American officers advise the local authorities. American programs in other cities expedite travel for passengers regarded as low-risk.

The programs reflect the Obama administration’s ambitious effort to tighten security in the face of repeated attempts by Al Qaeda and other terrorists to blow up planes headed to the United States from foreign airports.

The thinking is simple: By placing officers in foreign countries and effectively pushing the United States border thousands of miles beyond the country’s shores, Americans have more control over screening and security. And it is far better to sort out who is on a flight before it takes off than after a catastrophe occurs.

“It’s a really big deal — it would be like us saying you can have foreign law enforcement operating in a U.S. facility with all the privileges given to law enforcement, but we are going to do it on your territory and on our rules,” the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, said on a flight back to the United States from the Middle East, where she negotiated with leaders in Israel and Jordan about joint airport security programs. “So you flip it around, and you realize it is a big deal for a country to agree to that. It is also an expensive proposition.”

Airports in 14 countries are participating in the programs, which have been expanded over the last several years and have required substantial concessions from foreign leaders. In many cases they have agreed to allow American officers to be placed in the heart of their airports and to give them the authority to carry weapons, detain passengers and pull them off flights.

Last December, the government of Abu Dhabi signed a letter of intent to build a terminal where American officers will clear passengers to enter the United States, the most ambitious agreement the United States has struck so far with an Arab country. On her recent trip to Jordan, Ms. Napolitano began negotiations with the ruling family there about similar efforts.

Representative Peter T. King, the New York Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, endorsed the overseas security efforts and said he hoped the department would expand them. “A lot of these attempts are coming from the Middle East,” he said, referring to terrorism plots, “and that drives home that we have an immediate problem and that we need to push for these programs there as hard as we can.”

The Obama administration sped up expansion of the programs, which cost about $115 million a year, after a Qaeda operative tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009. The security at foreign airports drew more public attention last month after new reports that intelligence agencies had thwarted another plot by Al Qaeda to detonate an underwear bomb on an American-bound airliner. After that news emerged, Ms. Napolitano said the new measures being put in place in foreign airports for flights to the United States would have stopped a terrorist from boarding a plane with such a bomb.

But critics of the department on Capitol Hill — particularly two Republican committee chairmen in the House, Darrell Issa of California and John L. Mica of Florida — questioned her claims and said that security in foreign airports is not robust enough.

Ms. Napolitano and other Obama administration officials praise the programs as essential to help protect the 80 million passengers a year who fly to the United States from 300 foreign airports, and as a boon for travelers, who save time after landing,

Still, as with many other counterterrorism measures, it is hard to gauge the programs’ success or their impact on Al Qaeda and other terrorists. They have not foiled any major plots so far, and it is hard to imagine terrorists unaware of which airports had a robust American security presence and which were more vulnerable.

Homeland Security officials acknowledge that the United States cannot control security in every airport in the world. The focus, they said, was on expanding an American presence at airports with a significant number of United States-bound flights.

The officials said that of the roughly 30 million travelers who passed through foreign airports with American Customs and Border Protection officers over the past two years, about 500 were deemed national security risks and were turned away or pulled aside for further questioning. Over the same period, about 18,000 air travelers were denied admission to the United States for reasons like having a criminal record or lacking a proper visa.

At Shannon, where American officers have checked passports since 1986, passengers bound for the United States first pass through the Irish government’s airport security and then through three levels of American security: one to check for explosives in shoes and carry-on luggage, then to get clearance to enter the United States, and finally to ensure that checked baggage does not contain contraband.

The biggest problem for the United States is that it cannot compel foreign governments to strengthen security at their airports. But the United States limits flights from foreign airports that do not meet minimum security standards and screen passengers using procedures modeled after those of the Transportation Security Administration.

American officers at foreign airports constitute the next level of security, and the “gold standard” is an arrangement like the one at Shannon, with comprehensive preboarding clearance.

…

Find this story at 13 June 2012

June 13, 2012

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

© 2012 The New York Times Company

Contractors run U.S. spying missions in Africa

ENTEBBE, Uganda — Four small, white passenger planes sit outside a hangar here under a blazing sun, with no exterior markings save for U.S. registration numbers painted on the tails. A few burly men wearing aviator sunglasses and short haircuts poke silently around the wing flaps and landing gear.

The aircraft are Pilatus PC-12s, turboprops favored by the U.S. Special Operations forces for stealth missions precisely because of their nondescript appearance. There is no hint that they are carrying high-tech sensors and cameras that can film man-size targets from 10 miles away.

To further disguise the mission, the U.S. military has taken another unusual step: It has largely outsourced the spying operation to private contractors. The contractors supply the aircraft as well as the pilots, mechanics and other personnel to help process electronic intelligence collected from the airspace over Uganda, Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

In October, President Obama sent about 100 elite U.S. troops to central Africa to scour the terrain for Joseph Kony, the messianic and brutal leader of a Ugandan rebel group. But American contractors have been secretly searching for Kony from the skies long before that, at least since 2009, under a project code-named Tusker Sand, according to documents and people familiar with the operation.

The previously unreported practice of hiring private companies to spy on huge expanses of African territory — in this region and in North Africa, where a similar surveillance program is aimed at an al-Qaeda affiliate — has been a cornerstone of the U.S. military’s secret activities on the continent. Unlike uniformed troops, plainclothes contractors are less likely to draw attention.

But because the arms-length arrangement exists outside traditional channels, there is virtually no public scrutiny or oversight. And if something goes wrong, the U.S. government and its partners acknowledge that the contractors are largely on their own.

U.S. Africa Command, which oversees military operations on the continent, declined to discuss specific missions or its reasons for outsourcing the gathering of intelligence.

In response to written questions from The Washington Post, the command stated that contractors would not get special treatment in case of a mishap. Instead, they “would be provided the same assistance that any U.S. citizen would be provided by the U.S. Government should they be in danger.”

Perils of the job

There is precedent for the use of contractors in spying operations. The military hired private firms to conduct airborne surveillance in Latin America in the 1990s and early 2000s, with sometimes-disastrous results.

In 2003, for instance, one American was killed and three others were taken hostage by Colombian insurgents after their plane crashed in the jungle. The contractors, who were working for Northrop Grumman on a Defense Department counter-narcotics program, endured five years of captivity before they were freed in a raid by Colombian police.

Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and an expert on military contracting, said the Pentagon typically turns to the private sector for “deniability,” but he added that “it rarely turns out that way.”

“When things go bad, you can have two scenarios,” he said. “Either the contractors are left holding the bag, complaining about abandonment, or else some kind of abuse happens and they’re not held accountable because of a mix of unclear legal accountability and a lack of political will to do something about it.”

Indeed, contractors knowledgeable about the central Africa mission appear to be aware that the downing of one of their planes could have far-reaching implications.

“From a purely political standpoint it is obvious the fallout of such an incident would be immense, especially if hostile forces reached the crash site first,” Commuter Air Technology, an Oklahoma defense firm, wrote in May 2010 in response to a U.S. Africa Command solicitation to expand operations. “This could turn into a prisoner/hostage situation at worst, or at the least a serious foreign relations incident highly damaging to both AFRICOM and the U.S.”

The warning was prescient. That summer, a PC-12 surveillance aircraft operated by a New Jersey contractor as part of Tusker Sand was forced to make an emergency landing in Obo, an isolated town in the Central African Republic where Kony’s forces had terrorized the population.

On board were a handful of Americans working for the firm R-4 Inc., as well as a Ugandan military officer and a Congolese officer.

The unexpected appearance of two foreign soldiers and some Americans aroused the suspicions of tribal leaders, who had been kept in the dark about Tusker Sand by their national government. They detained the crew for several hours as they debated what to do.

“We felt like we were going to prison,” said one of the American contractors involved, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive operation.

The contractor said that his group contacted State Department and United Nations officials but that they declined to intervene. It was even harder to track down Africa Command officials, whose headquarters are in Stuttgart, Germany.

“Eventually, we were able to talk our way out of it,” the contractor said. “That’s all we did over there, pay people off and talk our way out of situations.”

Dwight Turner, vice president of overseas operations for R-4, said he was not personally familiar with the incident. He confirmed that his company had been involved in Tusker Sand but declined to comment further.

A growing appetite

When Tusker Sand began in late 2009, it consisted of a single PC-12, operating out of a Ugandan military hangar at Entebbe airport. The hangar also housed a Gulfstream aircraft for the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni.

According to the contractor who worked for R-4, the presidential palace was so protective of Museveni’s plane that the Americans were required to push their PC-12 out of the hangar by hand, instead of with a tractor, to avoid inadvertent scrapes.

The U.S. military’s appetite for surveillance quickly grew. On June 11, 2010, the Africa Command participated in an “Industry Day” to drum up interest. More than 50 private contractors were invited to develop proposals to expand Tusker Sand and Creek Sand, the program aimed at al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which operates mainly in Mali.

Unclassified documents prepared for the event show that the military wanted contractors to provide at least a combined 44 personnel for the programs, with double that number if the Africa Command decided to “surge” either one of them. At a minimum, contractors were told that they would have to keep planes flying for 150 hours a month.

Among the jobs to be outsourced: pilots, sensor operators, intelligence analysts, mechanics and linguists. The expectation was that the personnel would be veterans; most needed to certify that they had passed the military’s survival, resistance and escape training course, because of the possibility of aircrews being downed behind enemy lines.

Contractors would have to supply the surveillance gear, including electro-optical and infrared sensors that work in the dark, and a laser-emitting sensor that can peer under the jungle canopy. All had to be concealed within the body of the plane with retractable mounting to avoid attracting suspicion.

Another document stipulated that prospective firms fly “innocuous” aircraft that would “blend into the local operating area.” In a PowerPoint presentation posted on a federal government Web site for contractors, the Africa Command warned firms bidding for the work that African countries would be “uncomfortable” with activities that might look suspicious, adding: “Don’t want covert aircraft, just friendly looking aircraft.”

In addition to expanding Tusker Sand and Creek Sand, the Africa Command said it wanted to start a drone-based program, dubbed Tusker Wing, to search for members of Kony’s militia, the Lord’s Resistance Army.

That plan envisioned contractors using blimps equipped with cameras as well as ScanEagles, small and unmanned aircraft that can be launched with a catapult but stay aloft for 22 hours at a time, according to Gene Healey, a contractor who helped prepare a study for the Africa Command.

Healey said the Africa Command was initially enthusiastic about Tusker Wing but canceled the program, without explanation, before it got off the ground. Africa Command officials declined to comment.

Nonetheless, the number of manned surveillance flights for Tusker Sand has gradually increased. A new contractor, Sierra Nevada Corp., began operating PC-12 flights out of Entebbe in August.

Michelle Erlach, a spokeswoman for Sierra Nevada Corp., based in Sparks, Nev., declined to answer questions about Tusker Sand or the firm’s activities in Africa. “I cannot give any details on that,” she said.

The Africa Command declined to answer questions about the contract for Tusker Sand, saying it was “proprietary in nature.”

Allies on the Hill

Tusker Sand could soon receive another boost.

In March, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of Congress’s leading voices on Africa, issued a statement expressing concern that the U.S. military was being hindered in its efforts to track the Lord’s Resistance Army.

He called on the Obama administration to give the Africa Command “the full availability” of surveillance aircraft and equipment necessary to catch Kony and conduct other counterterrorism missions.

In an interview a month later, however, Inhofe said Africa Command officials told him that things had improved and that they were no longer being shortchanged. “I have been reassured,” he said. “I think they right now have the assets they need.”

Asked whether he had any qualms about private contractors operating spy missions on behalf of the U.S. military, Inhofe said he’d “rather not get into that.”

“They are working with contractors on these things, and I know there are a lot of people involved,” he added. “I’m just not going to elaborate on where they are or what they’re doing.”

Late last month, however, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a measure authorizing $50 million for the Defense Department to “enhance and expand” surveillance operations to help Ugandan and other regional militaries search for Kony.

A congressional staff member said the legislators’ priority was to increase and improve the surveillance operations as quickly as possible, adding that Congress was not necessarily opposed to using private companies for the Kony manhunt.

“It’s a concern, but when you’re short on resources, it’s what you have to do,” said the staffer, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations. “It’s a permissive environment. Nobody’s getting shot at, and we’re just collecting intelligence.”

…

Find this story at 15 June 2012

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

By Craig Whitlock, Published: June 15

© The Washington Post Company

Prostitutes, drunken behaviour and illegal wiretaps: US reveals accusations against Secret Service

The US government has revealed details of serious allegations since 2004 against Secret Service agents and officers, including claims of involvement with prostitutes, leaking sensitive information, publishing pornography, sexual assault, illegal wiretaps, improper use of weapons and drunken behavior. It was not immediately clear how many of the accusations were confirmed to be true.

The heavily censored list — which runs 229 pages — was quietly released today under the US Freedom of Information Act to The Associated Press and other news organizations following the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia. It describes accusations filed against Secret Service employees with the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. The service protects the president and those close to him.

In many cases, the government noted that some of the claims were resolved administratively, and others were being formally investigated.

Basic details of the dozens of complaints were first revealed last month during a Senate hearing about the Colombia scandal, as senators questioned whether the Colombia incident was a sign of a broader culture problem at the storied agency tasked with protecting the president.

Secret Service Direct Mark Sullivan apologized for the incident during the May hearing, but insisted that it was an isolated case.

The list of complaints, however, suggested otherwise senators said at the time.

Secret Service officials did not immediately comment today.

…

AP

Find this story at 15 June 2012

Alicia A Caldwell
Friday, 15 June 2012

© independent.co.uk

Intelligent kill: The dirty art of secret assassination

State-sponsored foreign assassinations of military, religious, ideological and political figures are an ugly reality of world history.

By means of sudden, irregular or secret attack, there is even a common euphemism in international law which bluntly describes the practice: targeted killing.

According to a UN special report on the subject, targeted killings are “premeditated acts of lethal force employed by states in times of peace or during armed conflict to eliminate specific individuals outside their custody”.

And it works something like this.

A state deems a certain individual wanted or a danger to its national security. After ruling out any feasible attempt to bring them to their own jurisdiction, usually because they are based in a third country, it deems itself responsible with silencing them by whatever means necessary.

The operational dynamics are then conducted under the auspices of one of two possible dimensions.

Either to eliminate the target under a fog of plausible deniability, in order for the state authorities to wash their hands clean of any discreditable action in a foreign land, and by extension any prosecution should its agents be captured; or to have blatant disregard to the norms of international law by reference to domestic constitutions that empower them to act under the guise of self-defence – in order to protect themselves from imminent threats of attack.

The use of targeted killing has become quite common in the aftermath of 9/11. U.S. Predator drones strikes against Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and the Yemen, Israeli airstrikes against Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories and Russian targeting of Chechen separatists in the Caucasus — are just a few recent examples.

But the covert practice of this art has always been a lot murkier.

In 1942, formerly secret memos now reveal how the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) secretly trained Czechoslovakian volunteers to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most feared men in Nazi Germany, in a daring ambush on his motorcade.

Alternatively, the main security services of the Third Reich, the RSHA, had in place its own clandestine unit which planned to target Allied soldiers with poisoned coffee, chocolate and cigarettes; as part of a ruthless terrorist campaign.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s equivalent of the CIA, the KGB, poisoned two of its dissidents abroad, once by firing a tiny Ricin-infested pellet from a specially designed umbrella into the target’s leg; and on another occasion by a spray gun firing a jet of poison gas from a crushed cyanide ampoule.

But even when the intended targets happen to miraculously survive a surreptitiously planned death, the devil that’s in the detail can be just as intriguing.

The CIA attempted to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro on numerous occasions by utilizing everything from exploding cigars, mafia contractors and femmes fatales — albeit without success.

On another occasion, the CIA unsuccessfully attempted to kill the Republic of Congo’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, using a tube of doctored toothpaste which would have left him dead, apparently of Polio.

In 2004, Ukrainian opposition leader Victor Yushenko was poisoned with TCDD, the most toxic form of Polychlorinated Dibenzodioxins, otherwise known as Dioxins, by what is largely suspected were pro-Russian individuals within the state’s security apparatus.

Although many of the shrewd techniques that have been secretly used in the murder of dissidents and enemies abroad have long been acknowledged in the post-cold war era, many practices may still be eluding us by virtue of remaining shrouded in anonymity, even to this day.

But generally speaking, secret state-sponsored targeted killings are still synonymous with booby-trapped car bombs, sniper hits, exploding cell phones and even small arms fire.

In recent years, however, the art of these smart assassinations – designed in the most part to make a person’s death look somewhat natural – have now been refined by the most unthinkable of materials.

And you don’t have to look beyond what happened to Alexander Litvenenko, a former officer in Russia’s internal security force, FSB, and critic of Vladimir Putin’s rule, in London on November 2006.

After meeting what he ostensibly thought were two former KGB officers for tea in a hotel bar, within hours he was hospitalized with mysterious symptoms including progressively severe hair loss, vomiting and diarrhea for three weeks — before he ultimately succumbed to his horrible death.

His post-mortem finally furnished us with details. He was poisoned it turns out, with tiny a nuclear substance, the radioactive isotope, Polonium-210. Its acute radiation syndrome that he ingested virtually meant he had no chance of survival.

The UK authorities were able to piece together trails of the material as left by the culprits, incidentally right back to Russia itself, where almost all the world’s polonium is produced.

The logic of administering such toxic materials was in fact deliberate. Polonium-210 is something which is normally undetectable; as a rare radioactive isotope it emits alpha particles, not the common gamma radiation that standard radiological equipment would detect in hospitals.

The accused culprits may have underestimated the determination of the British authorities to uncover the whole plot, but simultaneously the incident also told us something; the Russians were not going to play by the old rules – they were going to rewrite them.

It would be wrong to assume, however, that biological poisons, chemical agents and nuclear materials are the only things used in smart killings. In fact, the use of materials designed for rudimentary medical procedures have also taken on a new course.

Israel’s Mossad, long considered the most effective intelligence agency in the world per magnitude, and no stranger to the world of targeted killing in foreign countries, has two shiny examples.

In September 1997, Mossad agents sprayed Hamas Leader Khaled Meshal with the poison Levofentanyl – a modified version of the widely-used painkiller Fentany – by using a small camera which served as a trajectory. Although the agents were later apprehended, and eventually exchanged the antidote (following lengthy behind-the-scenes negotiations before it was eventually given to the victim), the audacity of the materials they used spoke volumes: it was designed not to leave any visible or tell-tale signs of harm on the target’s body.

In January 2010, Hamas military commander Mohammad Al Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room in what initially appeared to be death by natural causes.

However, upon thorough investigation, not only were 26 suspects (believed to have emanated from Israel) fingered, but the circumstances surrounding his death also soon transpired.

Al Mabhouh was injected in his leg with Succinylcholine, a quick-acting, depolarizing paralytic muscle relaxant. It causes almost instant loss of motor skills, but does not induce loss of consciousness or anesthesia. He was then apparently suffocated — ostensibly to quicken the pace of his death.

In his bestselling book, Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, gives a chilling and detailed account of how the Mossad uses Biochemists and genetic scientists in order to develop lethal cocktails as bottled agents of death.

This includes the development of nerve agents, choking agents, blood agents, and blister agents – including Tuban (virtually odorless and invisible when dispensed in aerosol or vapor form), Soman (the last of the Nazi nerve gasses to be discovered which also has a slightly fruity odour and is invincible in vapour format), blister agents (which include chlorine, phosgene and diphosgene, and smell of new-mown grass) and blood agents (including those with a cyanide base).

The point to extrapolate is clear. States that employ the practice of smart assassination techniques see them as effective strategies that are justified. They don’t need to admit to carrying them out, but we know they are happening.

An obvious concern raised here is that their almost pathological unwillingness to answer questions about the consequences of resorting to such assassinations – or covert targeted killings – will result in the practice becoming more widespread.

The arbitrary stretching of legal justifications for such assassinations, premised on what an individual country recognizes as self-defence, indirectly renders them to be bound by no limits — and by extension may serve as encouragement for other nations to follow suit, if they interpret their national security considerations being failed by international treaty and cooperation.

Just last month, British Police warned two outspoken Rwandan dissidents of threats to their lives by the Rwandan government, which could come in ‘any form’ or by ‘unconventional means’.

…

Find this story at 19 June 2012

By Mohammad I. Aslam
Tuesday, 19 June 2012 at 3:00 am

©independent.co.uk

 

U.S. expands secret intelligence operations in Africa

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The U.S. military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project. At the heart of the surveillance operations are small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes. Equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track infrared heat patterns, and vacuum up radio and cellphone signals, the planes refuel on isolated airstrips favored by African bush pilots, extending their effective flight range by thousands of miles. About a dozen air bases have been established in Africa since 2007, according to a former senior U.S. commander involved in setting up the network. Most are small operations run out of secluded hangars at African military bases or civilian airports. The nature and extent of the missions, as well as many of the bases being used, have not been previously reported but are partially documented in public Defense Department contracts. The operations have intensified in recent months, part of a growing shadow war against al-Qaeda affiliates and other militant groups. The surveillance is overseen by U.S. Special Operations forces but relies heavily on private military contractors and support from African troops. The surveillance underscores how Special Operations forces, which have played an outsize role in the Obama administration’s national security strategy, are working clandestinely all over the globe, not just in war zones. The lightly equipped commando units train foreign security forces and perform aid missions, but they also include teams dedicated to tracking and killing terrorism suspects. The establishment of the Africa missions also highlights the ways in which Special Operations forces are blurring the lines that govern the secret world of intelligence, moving aggressively into spheres once reserved for the CIA. The CIA has expanded its counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operations in Africa, but its manpower and resources pale in comparison with those of the military. U.S. officials said the African surveillance operations are necessary to track terrorist groups that have taken root in failed states on the continent and threaten to destabilize neighboring countries. A hub for secret network A key hub of the U.S. spying network can be found in Ouagadougou (WAH-gah-DOO-goo), the flat, sunbaked capital of Burkina Faso, one of the most impoverished countries in Africa. Under a classified surveillance program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and contractors have come to Ouagadougou in recent years to establish a small air base on the military side of the international airport. The unarmed U.S. spy planes fly hundreds of miles north to Mali, Mauritania and the Sahara, where they search for fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a regional network that kidnaps Westerners for ransom. The surveillance flights have taken on added importance in the turbulent aftermath of a March coup in Mali, which has enabled al-Qaeda sympathizers to declare an independent Islamist state in the northern half of the country. Elsewhere, commanders have said they are increasingly worried about the spread of Boko Haram, an Islamist group in Nigeria blamed for a rash of bombings there. U.S. forces are orchestrating a regional intervention in Somalia to target al-Shabab, another al-Qaeda affiliate. In Central Africa, about 100 American Special Operations troops are helping to coordinate the hunt for Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of a brutal guerrilla group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. The results of the American surveillance missions are shrouded in secrecy. Although the U.S. military has launched airstrikes and raids in Somalia, commanders said that in other places, they generally limit their involvement to sharing intelligence with allied African forces so they can attack terrorist camps on their own territory. The creeping U.S. military involvement in long-simmering African conflicts, however, carries risks. Some State Department officials have expressed reservations about the militarization of U.S. foreign policy on the continent. They have argued that most terrorist cells in Africa are pursuing local aims, not global ones, and do not present a direct threat to the United States. The potential for creating a popular backlash can be seen across the Red Sea, where an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen is angering tribesmen and generating sympathy for an al-Qaeda franchise there. In a response to written questions from The Washington Post, the U.S. Africa Command said that it would not comment on “specific operational details.” “We do, however, work closely with our African partners to facilitate access, when required, to conduct missions or operations that support and further our mutual security goals,” the command said. Surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations, it added, are “simply a tool we employ to enable host nation militaries to better understand the threat picture.” Uncovering the details The U.S. military has largely kept details of its spy flights in Africa secret. The Post pieced together descriptions of the surveillance network by examining references to it in unclassified military reports, U.S. government contracting documents and diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group. Further details were provided by interviews with American and African officials, as well as military contractors. In addition to Burkina Faso, U.S. surveillance planes have operated periodically out of nearby Mauritania. In Central Africa, the main hub is in Uganda, though there are plans to open a base in South Sudan. In East Africa, U.S. aircraft fly out of bases in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Seychelles. Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of U.S. Africa Command, which is responsible for military operations on the continent, hinted at the importance and extent of the air bases while testifying before Congress in March. Without divulging locations, he made clear that, in Africa, he wanted to expand “ISR,” the military’s acronym for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. “Without operating locations on the continent, ISR capabilities would be curtailed, potentially endangering U.S. security,” Ham said in a statement submitted to the House Armed Services Committee. “Given the vast geographic space and diversity in threats, the command requires increased ISR assets to adequately address the security challenges on the continent.” Some of the U.S. air bases, including ones in Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Seychelles, fly Predator and Reaper drones, the original and upgraded models, respectively, of the remotely piloted aircraft that the Obama administration has used to kill al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Yemen. “We don’t have remotely piloted aircraft in many places other than East Africa, but we could,” said a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “If there was a need to do so and those assets were available, I’m certain we could get the access and the overflight [permission] that is necessary to do that.” Common aircraft Most of the spy flights in Africa, however, take off the old-fashioned way — with pilots in the cockpit. The conventional aircraft hold two big advantages over drones: They are cheaper to operate and far less likely to draw attention because they are so similar to the planes used throughout Africa. The bulk of the U.S. surveillance fleet is composed of single-engine Pilatus PC-12s, small passenger and cargo utility planes manufactured in Switzerland. The aircraft are not equipped with weapons. They often do not bear military markings or government insignia. The Pentagon began acquiring the planes in 2005 to fly commandos into territory where the military wanted to maintain a clandestine presence. The Air Force variant of the aircraft is known as the U-28A. The Air Force Special Operations Command has about 21 of the planes in its inventory. In February, a U-28A crashed as it was returning to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the only permanent U.S. military base in Africa. Four airmen from the Air Force Special Operations Command were killed. It was the first reported fatal incident involving a U-28A since the military began deploying the aircraft six years ago. Air Force officials said that the crash was an accident and that they are investigating the cause. Military officials declined to answer questions about the flight’s mission. Because of its strategic location on the Horn of Africa, Camp Lemonnier is a hub for spy flights in the region. It is about 500 miles from southern Somalia, an area largely controlled by the al-Shabab militia. Lemonnier is even closer — less than 100 miles — to Yemen, where another al-Qaeda franchise has expanded its influence and plotted attacks against the United States. Elsewhere in Africa, the U.S. military is relying on private contractors to provide and operate PC-12 spy planes in the search for Kony, the fugitive leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group known for mutilating victims, committing mass rape and enslaving children as soldiers. Ham, the Africa Command chief, said in his testimony to Congress in March that he was seeking to establish a base for surveillance flights in Nzara, South Sudan. Although that would bolster the hunt for Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, it would also enable the U.S. military to keep an eye on the worsening conflict between Sudan and South Sudan. The two countries fought a civil war for more than two decades and are on the verge of war again, in part over potentially rich oil deposits valued by foreign investors. Other aviation projects are in the offing. An engineering battalion of Navy Seabees has been assigned to complete a $10 million runway upgrade this summer at the Manda Bay Naval Base, a Kenyan military installation on the Indian Ocean. An Africa Command spokeswoman said the runway extension is necessary so American C-130 troop transport flights can land at night and during bad weather. About 120 U.S. military personnel and contractors are stationed at Manda Bay, which Navy SEALs and other commandos have used as a base from which to conduct raids against Somali pirates and al-Shabab fighters. About 6,000 miles to the west, the Pentagon is spending $8.1 million to upgrade a forward operating base and airstrip in Mauritania, on the western edge of the Sahara. The base is near the border with strife-torn Mali. The Defense Department also set aside $22.6 million in July to buy a Pilatus PC-6 aircraft and another turboprop plane so U.S.-trained Mauritanian security forces can conduct rudimentary surveillance operations, according to documents submitted to Congress. Crowding the embassy The U.S. military began building its presence in Burkina Faso in 2007, when it signed a deal that enabled the Pentagon to establish a Joint Special Operations Air Detachment in Ouagadougou. At the time, the U.S. military said the arrangement would support “medical evacuation and logistics requirements” but provided no other details. By the end of 2009, about 65 U.S. military personnel and contractors were working in Burkina Faso, more than in all but three other African countries, according to a U.S. Embassy cable from Ouagadougou. In the cable, diplomats complained to the State Department that the onslaught of U.S. troops and support staff had “completely overwhelmed” the embassy. In addition to Pilatus PC-12 flights for Creek Sand, the U.S. military personnel in Ouagadougou ran a regional intelligence “fusion cell” code-named Aztec Archer, according to the cable. Burkina Faso, a predominantly Muslim country whose name means “the land of upright men,” does not have a history of radicalism. U.S. military officials saw it as an attractive base because of its strategic location bordering the Sahel, the arid region south of the Sahara where al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate is active. Unlike many other governments in the region, the one in Burkina Faso was relatively stable. The U.S. military operated Creek Sand spy flights from Nouakchott, Mauritania, until 2008, when a military coup forced Washington to suspend relations and end the surveillance, according to former U.S. officials and diplomatic cables. In Ouagadougou, both sides have worked hard to keep the partnership quiet. In a July 2009 meeting, Yero Boly, the defense minister of Burkina Faso, told a U.S. Embassy official that he was pleased with the results. But he confessed he was nervous that the unmarked American planes might draw “undue attention” at the airport in the heart of the capital and suggested that they move to a more secluded hangar. “According to Boly, the present location of the aircraft was in retrospect not an ideal choice in that it put the U.S. aircraft in a section of the airfield that already had too much traffic,” according to a diplomatic cable summarizing the meeting. “He also commented that U.S. personnel were extremely discreet.” U.S. officials raised the possibility of basing the planes about 220 miles to the west, in the city of Bobo Dioulasso, according to the cable. Boly said that the Americans could use that airport on a “short term or emergency basis” but that a U.S. presence there “would likely draw greater attention.” In an interview with The Post, Djibril Bassole, the foreign minister of Burkina Faso, praised security relations between his country and the United States, saying they were crucial to containing al-Qaeda forces in the region. “We need to fight and protect our borders,” he said. “Once they infiltrate your country, it’s very, very difficult to get them out.” Bassole declined, however, to answer questions about the activities of U.S. Special Operations forces in his country. “I cannot provide details, but it has been very, very helpful,” he said. “This cooperation should be very, very discreet. We should not show to al-Qaeda that we are now working with the Americans.” Discretion is not always strictly observed. In interviews last month, residents of Ouagadougou said American service members and contractors stand out, even in plainclothes, and are appreciated for the steady business they bring to bars and a pizzeria in the city center. … Find this story at 14 June 2012 By Craig Whitlock, Thursday, June 14, 4:02 AM © The Washington Post Company

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ACADEMI — ex-Blackwater — Boosts State Dept Business, Eyes Acquisitions: EXCLUSIVE

ARLINGTON, VA: How confident is the new management at private security contractor ACADEMI — formerly known as Xe and, also, infamously, as Blackwater — that they’ve turned the company around?

Last month, apparently without attracting any public attention (until now), they quietly bought another security firm, International Development Solutions, and took over its piece of the State Department’s $10 billion World Protective Services contract, which then-Blackwater got kicked out of years ago.

And ACADEMI plans on further acquisitions, CEO Ted Wright confirmed in an exclusive interview with AOL Defense.

The company has spent a year rebuilding and is set to grow again, said Wright, who took over in June 2011. (He was hired by a new ownership team that bought out Blackwater founder Erik Prince the previous December). “The things we said we were going to do a year ago, we’ve kind of done,” said Wright, just back from visiting employees in Afghanistan.

Since he started, the company has not only a new name but a new management team, a new board of directors — in fact it didn’t even have a board before — and a new corporate headquarters in Arlington, looking across the Potomac River straight at the headquarters of the State Department. Many of the employees doing security work in the field are new, Wright said, and the core of ACADEMI’s business, its training cadre, has turned over almost completely: Only about 10 instructors remain from the old days, compared to 30 new hires, with another 20 on the way.

“After a year, back office is good, governance is good, and now we’re beginning to grow,” Wright said. “Now we’re going to be acquisitive.”

Wright downplayed the acquisition of International Development Solutions as a first step, more consolidation than expansion. IDS was not a truly independent company but a joint venture that ACADEMI co-founded, subcontracted for, and already owned 49% percent of. Critics in Congress and the media even called IDS a “shell company” and a “front,” created as a cut-out so the ACADEMI / Xe / Blackwater name would not appear on State Department contracts, though Wright said ACADEMI always did some work directly for State. The main difference is that ACADEMI was a subcontractor on the World Protective Services program, but now it will be a prime contractor working directly for State. (The State Department did not return multiple calls and emails requesting comment; we will update this story when and if they do).

“The people in the field doing the work [for State], they’re employes of IDS and they’ll become employees of ACADEMI,” said Wright. “That was the reason I was just in Afghanistan, to go to talk to the employees. [For them] there’s no difference at all, zero….The only difference is the administrative functions that were split between us and the other company now are just all us.” In terms of both personnel and revenue, he said, absorbing IDS only grows ACADEMI by “10 or 15 percent.”

Wright has much bigger targets in mind. “[We’ll] maybe buy companies that give us new capabilities,” he said,” or spread us to a new location like maybe the Pacific or Latin America or Africa.” ACADEMI is already standing up a new training site in North Africa, he said, while its existing site in Afghanistan, called “Camp Integrity,” is “about to double in size,” from under 200 to 300 to 400 people, with an influx of new Special Operations customers Wright declined to talk about in any detail. Last month, the company started a new branch, ACADEMI Consulting Services, aimed at commercial clients — “oil and gas, multi-nationals, high net-worth individuals”: ACADEMI only does about $15 million a year for such non-governmental customers currently, Wright said, but he expects rapid growth. Some day, Wright even hopes to get back into business in Iraq, where the company is currently banned.

So while the US military is out of Iraq and drawing down, albeit slowly, in Afghanistan, Wright said, that doesn’t mean ACADEMI will shrink. To the contrary: Wright plans to grow. After all, the State Department, other civilian agencies, and the private sector are still in dangerous places, only with fewer US troops deployed to protect them. “We’ve got some very stable customers that have enduring requirements for security in Afghanistan,” said Wright. “Our business is not going going to shrink quickly.” While some private security contractors will ultimately go out of business, he predicted, ACADEMI will be trying to buy them up. “The industry will now consolidate,” he said. “The strong will survive: We intend to be one of those.”

The company once called Blackwater isn’t going away. But what about the culture that permitted its infamous abuses — mistreatment of Afghan and Iraqi civilians, misappropriation of weapons, drug use, drinking, and the killing of at least 14 innocent Iraqis in 2007 in Baghdad’s Nisour Square?

…

Find this story at 8 june 2012

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

Published: June 8, 2012

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