CIA

Senate Report on CIA Torture Reveals Lawlessness

March 19, 2014 Jason Leopold, america.aljazeera.com Educate! CIA, Edward Snowden, Government, Whistleblowers

A still-classified report on the CIA's interrogation program established in the wake of 9/11 sparked a furious row last week between the agency and Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. Al Jazeera has learned from sources familiar with its contents that the committee's report alleges that at least one high-value detainee was subjected to torture techniques that went beyond those authorized by George W. Bush's Justice Department. Two Senate staffers and a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information they disclosed remains classified, told Al Jazeera that the committee's analysis of 6 million pages of classified records also found that some of the harsh measures authorized by the Department of Justice had been applied to at least one detainee before such legal authorization was received. They said the report suggests that the CIA knowingly misled the White House, Congress and the Justice Department about the intelligence value of detainee Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah when using his case to argue in favor of harsher interrogation techniques.

Some Background on CIA Secrecy

March 17, 2014 Matthew Stoller, www.tumblr.com Educate! CIA, Government

In mid-1970s, feminist and peace movement activist Congresswoman Bella Abzug tore through the intel world, fearlessly taking on the CIA and the NSA for surveilling Americans. So I’ve been reading some of her hearings, and it turns out that the dynamics of the intelligence world (in this case the CIA) and its relationship with Congress and the public haven’t changed at all. Today, journalist Jason Leopold is nicknamed a ‘FOIA terrorist’ by a ‘certain government agency’ because he files so many requests so effectively, and sues when they deny him the things to which he is entitled.

CIA Fights with Senate Panel Over Torture, Public Left in Dark

March 9, 2014 Jon Queall, www.commondreams.org Educate! CIA, Torture

As the murkiest details of the torture program created and run by the Bush administration continues to be shielded from public review, the growing controversy over the clandestine and illegal use of techniques by the CIA has now taken center stage in a bureaucratic fight between the agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee charged with its oversight. Given the secretive nature of the issue and parties involved, what has leaked out in reporting and public statements over the last several weeks gives only a vague sense of the fight between members of the committee, the Obama administration, and the CIA but most of it revolves around an investigative panel set up by the Senators on the committee to explore the torture program.

Repo Workers Are Moonlighting as Datamining Spies

March 7, 2014 Shawn Musgrave betaboston.com Educate! CIA, FBI, Government, Surveillance

An automated reader attached to the spotter car takes a picture of every license plate it passes and sends it to a company in Texas that already has more than 1.8 billion plate scans from vehicles across the country. These scans mean big money for Sousa — typically $200 to $400 every time the spotter finds a vehicle that’s stolen or in default — so he runs his spotter around the clock, typically adding 8,000 plate scans to the database in Texas each day. “Honestly, we’ve found random apartment complexes and shopping plazas that are sweet spots” where the company can impound multiple vehicles, explains Sousa, the president of New England Associates Inc. in Bridgewater. But the most significant impact of Sousa’s business is far bigger than locating cars whose owners have defaulted on loans: It is the growing database of snapshots showing where Americans were at specific times, information that everyone from private detectives to insurers are willing to pay for.

Did Maidan Protesters Kill Their Own Ranks With Snipers?

March 6, 2014 Staff, www.rt.com Educate! CIA, Government, Ukraine, Venezuela

The Estonian FM has described the whole sniper issue as “disturbing” and added, “it already discredits from the very beginning” the new Ukrainian power. His overall impressions of what he saw during his one-day trip to Kiev are “sad,” Paet said during the conversation. He stressed that the Ukrainian people don’t trust the Maidan leaders, with all the opposition politicians slated to join the new government “having dirty past.” The file was reportedly uploaded to the web by officers of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) loyal to ousted President Viktor Yanukovich who hacked Paet’s and Ashton’s phones. 94 people were killed and another 900 injured during the standoff between police and protesters at Maidan Saquare in Kiev last month.

CIA spied on Senate Committee Writing Damning Torture Report

March 6, 2014 Cory Doctorow, boingboing.net Educate! Barack Obama, CIA, Government, NSA

The report that caused some CIA agents to spy on their bosses was about how the CIA was wasting time, getting nowhere and doing something illegal and cruel when it kidnapped terror suspects and tortured them. McClatchy and the New York Times reported Wednesday that the CIA had secretly monitored computers used by committee staffers preparing the inquiry report, which is said to be scathing not only about the brutality and ineffectiveness of the agency’s interrogation techniques but deception by the CIA to Congress and policymakers about it. The CIA sharply disputes the committee’s findings. Udall, a Colorado Democrat and one of the CIA’s leading pursuers on the committee, appeared to reference that surreptitious spying on Congress, which Udall said undermined democratic principles.

Probe: Did the CIA spy on the U.S. Senate?

March 6, 2014 Jonathan S. Landay, Ali Watkins & Marisa Taylor www.mcclatchydc.com Educate! CIA, Government, NSA

The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers – in possible violation of an agreement against doing so – that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, a panel member, apparently was referring to the monitoring when he asked CIA Director John Brennan at a Jan. 29 hearing if provisions of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act “apply to the CIA? Seems to me that’s a yes or no answer.” Brennan replied that he’d have to get back to Wyden after looking into “what the act actually calls for and it’s applicability to CIA’s authorities.” The law makes it a criminal act for someone to intentionally access a computer without authorization or to go beyond what they’re allowed to access.

Former CIA Analyst Sues For Being Put On Watch List

February 19, 2014 Staff, www.justiceonline.org Resist! CIA, Veterans for Peace, Watchlist

"The Department of State then opened an investigation into Plaintiff McGovern, including specifically his lawful, protected political beliefs, activities, statements and associations which it kept open for nearly seven months, despite all charges having been dropped against Mr. McGovern and despite having determined that Mr. McGovern was engaged in no criminal activity." As the complaint states: "The Department of State issued a Be On The Lookout Alert ('BOLO Alert') for the then- 71-year-old McGOVERN which described his 'considerable amount of political activism, primarily anti-war,' displayed his picture and directed law enforcement that if Mr. McGOVERN was encountered, 'USE CAUTION, stop' and question him and contact the Department of State Diplomatic Security Command Center."

Who Are The Puppet Masters That Control The Media And Politicians?

February 4, 2014 Andrew Kreig, , www.justice-integrity.org Educate! CIA, Democracy, Government

My new book Presidential Puppetry can help viewers better understand the implications of President Obama's State of the Union address last week. Obama announced his plans for 2014 and beyond. His rhetoric soared. But specifics fell far short of his promises during his 2008 presidential campaign, as Atlantic columnist Conor Friedersdorf noted in The Decline and Fall of 'Hope and Change.' Puppetry shows via a century of history why Obama is a status quo centrist playing the role of reformer. Like his parents, he has a hidden national security background that helps show why he is a minion for the truly powerful and not a master. Obama's ascent to the presidency was enabled by wealthy, powerful figures who remain in the shadows while the public receives from his handlers only a few core talking points about his past along with a lot of superficial conventional wisdom.

Retired Generals And Admirals Urge President To Close Guantanamo

January 23, 2014 Staff, www.humanrightsfirst.org Educate! CIA, Guantanamo Bay, Torture, Wars and Militarism

Thirty-one of the nation’s most respected retired generals and admirals today sent a letter to President Obama urging him to make good on his executive order to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. They also asked that he set the record straight on torture, a policy he also banned by executive order. Members of the coalition who signed today’s letter stood behind the president on January 22, 2009 – his second day in office – when the orders were signed. Today’s letter comes as Congress and the Obama Administration have made progress toward putting Guantanamo on the path to closure. Progress toward closing Guantanamo continued this month as the Periodic Review Board (PRB), established by executive order in March 2011, concluded its first case. With regard to torture, the retired military leaders urged President Obama to direct his administration, particularly the CIA, to fully cooperate with the Senate intelligence committee to declassify and publicly release the 6000-plus page study that details the post-9/11 CIA rendition, detention, and interrogation program.

CIA Top Lawyer: Could Have Easily Stopped Torture, But Didn’t

January 7, 2014 John Rizzo, www.politico.com Educate! CIA, Torture, Wars and Militarism

The CIA torture program under President Bush should have been considered a war crime and a violation of US law and people like the author of the article should be prosecuted for their role. It is distressing to see someone who used his law license to provide legal cover for this illegal activity profiting from the torture program. In fact, I filed Bar complaints against Rizzo and other lawyers who worked for President Bush and President Obama urging their disbarment or other punishment for using their legal license to authorize these crimes. Here's a video of a press conference we organized to discuss these issues. One point that Rizzo makes in the article below that I do agree with, replacing the torture program with a murder program is ironic (to put it kindly). Certainly President Obama approving the murdering of people, making the president and the military prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner is also a war crime. While we like to think that this is a new post-9/11 reality in the Untied States, the reality is their is a long history of CIA torture going all the way back to nearly the founding of the CIA. As the School of the Americas Watch has documented torture has been part of the US training of dictators and military officials for decades. During the Clinton administration the senate ratified and the president signed the Convention Against Torture in 1994 as well as the War Crimes Act in 1996 but it started the 'rendition program' which had US officials bringing suspects to other governments to be tortured. The rendition program was approved by Attorney General Eric Holder when he worked in the Clinton Department of Justice.

President Truman Was Right In 1963, Need To Limit CIA

December 23, 2013 Ray McGovern, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! CIA, NSA, Wars and Militarism

Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.” It sounded like the intro to a bleat from some liberal professor or journalist. Not so. The writer was former President Harry S. Truman, who spearheaded the establishment of the CIA 66 years ago, right after World War II, to better coordinate U.S. intelligence gathering. But the spy agency had lurched off in what Truman thought were troubling directions. Sadly, those concerns that Truman expressed in that op-ed — that he had inadvertently helped create a Frankenstein monster — are as valid today as they were 50 years ago, if not more so. Truman began his article by underscoring “the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency … and what I expected it to do.” It would be “charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without Department ‘treatment’ or interpretations.”

Amazon, ‘The Washington Post’ and That $600 MIllion CIA Contract

December 19, 2013 Greg Mitchell, www.thenation.com Educate! CIA, Media

The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, recently secured a $600 million contract from the CIA. That’s at least twice what Bezos paid for the Post this year. Bezos recently disclosed that the company’s Web-services business is building a “private cloud” for the CIA to use for its data needs. Critics charge that, at a minimum, the Post needs to disclose its CIA link whenever it reports on the agency. Media writer/author Robert McChesney observes: "When the main shareholder in one of the very largest corporations in the world benefits from a massive contract with the CIA on the one hand, and that same billionaire owns the Washington Post on the other hand, there are serious problems. The Post is unquestionably the political paper of record in the United States, and how it covers governance sets the agenda for the balance of the news media. Citizens need to know about this conflict of interest in the columns of the Post itself. If some official enemy of the United States had a comparable situation—say the owner of the dominant newspaper in Caracas was getting $600 million in secretive contracts from the Maduro government—the Post itself would lead the howling chorus impaling that newspaper and that government for making a mockery of a free press. It is time for thePost to take a dose of its own medicine.”

Government Still Hiding Truth From Us On Torture

December 15, 2013 Conor Friedersdorf, www.theatlantic.com Educate! CIA, Torture

One year ago today, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to adopt a 6,000-page report on the CIA rendition, detention, and interrogation program that led to torture. Its contents include details on each prisoner in CIA custody, the conditions of their confinement, whether they were tortured, the intelligence they provided, and the degree to which the CIA lied about its behavior to overseers. Senator Dianne Feinstein declared it one of the most significant oversight efforts in American history, noting that it contains "startling details" and raises "critical questions." But all these months later, the report is still being suppressed. The Obama Administration has no valid reason to suppress the report. Its contents do not threaten national security, as evidenced by the fact that numerous figures who normally defer to the national-security state want it released with minor redactions.

CIA and Mandela: Can the Story Be Told Now?

December 13, 2013 Staff, www.fair.org Educate! CIA, Mandela

ith coverage of Mandela's death dominating the media now, can the story of the CIA's role in Mandela's capture be told? Mostly not. The link between the CIA and Mandela's capture--reported by CBS Evening News (8/5/86) and in a New York Times column by Andrew Cockburn (10/13/86)--was almost entirely unmentioned in media discussions of his death. There were a few exceptions. MSNBC host Chris Hayes mentioned it on December 5 ("We know there's reporting that indicates the CIA actually helped the South African police nab Mandela the first time he was captured"). On Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show (12/7/13), Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman brought it up: "The US devoted more resources to finding Mandela to hand over to the apartheid forces than the apartheid forces themselves. It was the CIA that actually located Mandela, and he was driving dressed up as a chauffeur when he was stopped, and he was arrested and ultimately serves 27 years in prison."

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