Category Archives: CIA
Federal Judge orders doc’s to be unsealed.
This should jack the jaws of a few folks, both in and out of government. From the Jurist link:
Chief judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia Royce Lamberth found Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) committed fraud in its efforts to keep documents related to eavesdropping charges a secret. The judge ruled that the CIA must unseal more than 200 documents relating to the case. Lamberth is also considering charges against 6 other CIA members, including former CIA director George Tenet. The judge wrote:
Although this case has been sealed since its inception to protect sensitive information, it is clear from reading the Court of Appeals 2007 public opinion in this case and seeing the unclassified appendix that was filed on appeal that many of the issues are unclassified. The government acknowledged that indeed, the case could be unsealed, and that much of the information is unclassified. Accordingly, the Court ordered the government to file with the Court unclassified versions of every document in the case.
The lawsuit began in 1994, after former Drug Enforcement Agency agent Richard Horn felt that his was he being spied on by his superiors in Myanmar. Until recently, the CIA had requested the documents remain sealed in order to protect the agents in the field.
You go Judge Lamberth! I hope Tenet gets heartburn worrying about this.
DiFi upset? Ask me if I care…
The Senator from CA, Dianne Feinstein, can kiss my hairy ass. She supported all the egregious tactics BushCo used during the last eight years just for starters. I haven’t voted for that worthless woman for over a decade to be brutally honest here. DiFi gave her stamp of approval to everything BushCo did that was wrong…torture, warrantless wiretapping, confirming Porter Goss and Hayden…the list is endless.
Screw her and her pov that she should of been consulted on the pick of Leon Panetta for CIA Director. Screw the ole biddy who is basically a DINO if you think about it, based on her voting record alone.
As for Leon Panetta, here is a good writeup that addresses why he is an excellent pick for CIA Director. The CIA has been totally politicized by the Bush Administration for starters. From the Time writeup:
Leon Panetta may not have an intelligence background, but his appointment as CIA director shows that Barack Obama understands the CIA’s problems. As a former White House chief of staff, Clinton Administration budget director and eight-term California Congressman, Panetta knows his way around Washington better than most people, and that kind of knowledge is exactly what the CIA needs right now.
Panetta is experienced enough to understand that the CIA was the victim of political manipulation under the Bush Administration. It was the Bush White House that cherry-picked the intelligence on Iraq, not the CIA. Panetta will have the ear of the new President to walk him through all of this and to make the case that there is no point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Panetta will also serve as a good counterweight to retired Admiral Dennis Blair, the designated director of national intelligence who is unlikely to streamline the intelligence community or challenge the Pentagon’s preeminent position.
So screw you DiFi….hard, bitch. You have lost whatever credibility you once had. I am glad Obama ignored you during the process of picking an Intel Chief. You have shown us that you pander to the most basic fears that Bush and Cheney have been pushing for eight long fucking years, and you are ready and willing to toss all of us under the bus in the name of getting those nasty terrorists. I hope to hell you retire soon..I am sick to death of you. Below is KO and Rachel discussing how DiFi dropped the ball on oversight among other things…
What the NSA has access to about you and me..without a FISA warrant
Surely it won’t be a surprise to most folks that follow what is going on, it wasn’t to me. The TPM muckraker has a WSJ piece up this morning that they explain well enough that it opened my eyes pretty wide before I even had a cuppa coffee. Just the opening salvo from the WSJ piece:
Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.
The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
See, silly me, I thought those assholes needed at least a friggin FISA warrant for all that information. Here is what Paul Kiel surmised over at TPM:
Gorman describes the NSA’s effort (elements of which have been reported before) as basically a resurrection of the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program, which of course was de-funded by Congress once the details became public. This time around, of course, the details have remained secret. Although the budget for the NSA’s driftnet is classified, Gorman cites one official as estimating it at $1 billion.
Ah yes..the TIA program. I remember hearing Gonzo talk about that when he was being grilled by the folks in the Congressional hearing many moons ago. The ability to know all things about all Americans..
and so cheaply too! Only a billion? Hell, with the war costing millions a day..what’s another billion?
About those torture tapes…
Mukasey had this to say about the ‘investigation’:
“Following a preliminary inquiry into the destruction by CIA personnel of videotapes of detainee interrogations, the Department’s National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation as outlined below.
“This preliminary inquiry was conducted jointly by the Department’s National Security Division and the CIA’s Office of Inspector General. It was opened on December 8, 2007, following disclosure by CIA Director Michael Hayden on December 6, 2007, that the tapes had been destroyed. A preliminary inquiry is a procedure the Department of Justice uses regularly to gather the initial facts needed to determine whether there is sufficient predication to warrant a criminal investigation of a potential felony or misdemeanor violation. The opening of an investigation does not mean that criminal charges will necessarily follow.
“An investigation of this kind, relating to the CIA, would ordinarily be conducted under the supervision of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the District in which the CIA headquarters are located. However, in an abundance of caution and on the request of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in accordance with Department of Justice policy, his office has been recused from the investigation of this matter, in order to avoid any possible appearance of a conflict with other matters handled by that office.
“As a result, I have asked John Durham, the First Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut, to serve as Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia for purposes of this matter. Mr. Durham is a widely respected and experienced career prosecutor who has supervised a wide range of complex investigations in the past, and I am grateful to him for his willingness to serve in this capacity. As the Acting United States Attorney for purposes of this investigation, Mr. Durham will report to the Deputy Attorney General, as do all United States Attorneys in the ordinary course. I have also directed the FBI to conduct the investigation under Mr. Durham’s supervision.
“Earlier today, the Department provided notice of these developments to Director Hayden and the leadership of the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees of the Congress.”
Thats a mouth-ful from Da Judge wouldn’t you say? TPM has an analysis of Mr. Durham;s abilities here. I haven’t read it yet, but will shortly..
Update: Durham is a career prosecutor. Those are the guys that got the most disgusted with and hosed the worst by Gonzo and the ‘Bushies’ brigade. One can hope this means he will take delight in making life miserable for anyone involved in destroying those tapes.
But..I could be wrong ;p
Image is everything..even to the CIA
Check out this article at the NYT today. Its all about how important image has become to the boyz and girlz at the CIA. Seems the CIA was paranoid that Abu Zubaydah would die whilst in their custody, so the following is what they did to protect their ‘image’:
So in the spring of 2002, even as the intelligence officers flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture in Pakistan, they set up video cameras to record his every moment: asleep in his cell, having his bandages changed, being interrogated.
In fact, current and former intelligence officials say, the agency’s every action in the prolonged drama of the interrogation videotapes was prompted in part by worry about how its conduct might be perceived — by Congress, by prosecutors, by the American public and by Muslims worldwide.
That worry drove the decision to begin taping interrogations — and to stop taping just months later, after the treatment of prisoners began to include waterboarding. And it fueled the nearly three-year campaign by the agency’s clandestine service for permission to destroy the tapes, culminating in a November 2005 destruction order from the service’s director, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr.
Ah yes, the destruction of the Torture Tapes. One can only hope that move was illegal enough to strike fear into the hearts of every asshole that took part in the decision. Its a good read, and I highly recommend you check it out my dear reader.
Crossposted at SirensChronicles
Tags: Abu Zubaydah, CIA, Torture Tapes
Its my Right to be Left of the Center 