Category: Intelligence

Cheney Admits to Engineering Outing of CIA Operative to FBI

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Ummmm…wow????

Legally, it may be a gray zone, because there is no evidence that he actually explicitly gave the order to out Valerie Plame, but Murray Waas, one of the better investigative journalist of my generation has gotten his hands on the notes from FBI interview with dick Cheney, and it’s very clear that he rewrote the talking points on the push-back on Joe Wilson’s OP/ED debunking the Niger-Iraq-Uranium claim in such a way as to make it nearly inevitable that Plame would be outed:

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

(emphasis mine)

Of course, I expect Cheney to be among those pardoned between January 15 and January 20, so it will amount to nothing.

This is Not News, This is Bullsh%$

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So now we have the following report on what is going to happen with the current director of the CIA:

But officials are pushing back a little on that issue, suggesting that Hayden has been carrying out the policies backed by Congress and the president before he arrived at Langley, not freelancing on his own. “It’s unfair to blame Hayden for things that occurred long before he took the job. But he deserves credit for standing up for the folks over there at CIA, even though a lot of the stuff he has dealt with didn’t happen on his watch,” said an intelligence official. “Administration policy and American law shape what the CIA does. If the president says he doesn’t want something done, that’s it. These are his programs,” added the official.

(emphasis mine)

Ummm…this is not coming from the Obama people, it’s coming from the CIA, and remember that in Michael Hayden’s CIA, it’s OK to delete evidence and go after your own Inspector General to get him to stop investigating corruption.

So we are supposed to believe a source in the CIA, who does not even say that Obama is considering Hayden….It isn’t Michael Hayden talking to this reporter, otherwise, he would have to use the modifier “Senior” before official, but it’s someone who Michael Hayden sent out to talk to a one of his pet reporters.

This is Hayden lobbying to keep his job, and it’s already quite well known that he wants to keep it, and he just knows a reporter who is willing to report a press release as real news.

NSA Ignores Congress, Classifies Wiretap Report

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This is such a surprise:

When Congress passed a landmark electronic-spying bill last summer, the measure included a key provision that ordered the inspectors general of U.S. intelligence agencies to produce the first-ever public report on President Bush’s warrantless-surveillance program.

The report isn’t due until next July—long after Bush leaves office. But when the inspectors general recently submitted their first “interim” report to Congress under the measure, it wasn’t made public. Instead, the brief document, written by CIA inspector general John Helgerson, was marked classified—a move that has drawn a stiff protest from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes.

…..

Since when do Bush and His Evil Minions™ ever feel the need to obey the law?

UK Court Rules that British Government Must Provide Gitmo Defendant With Evidence of His Own Torture

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This is good news from a legal perspective, but it bothers me, because the circumstances are so Kafkaesque:

A British court ruled on Thursday that the government must disclose evidence to a defendant being held at Guantanamo Bay, a decision that carried with it implicit criticism of U.S. government detention policies.

In its ruling, the High Court said Britain’s Foreign Office must provide Binyam Mohamed, a British resident detained in Pakistan in 2002 and now held at Guantanamo, with information relating to his time in detention.

His lawyers say the material supports his claim to have been “extraordinarily rendered”, tortured and forced into a confession on terrorism charges.

Russians Knew of Coming Attack

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Writing at the Danger room, Galrahn notes the unbelievably rapid response time of the Russian navy to the invasion of South Ossetia.

Basically, the Black Sea fleet would have to have gotten underway within an hour of the invasion to make the time line.

The Russians knew that the attack was coming, and they knew when it was coming.

The FSB, or some other Russian TLA has thoroughly penetrated the Georgian security establishment.

Impeachable Offense

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Ron Suskind, in his latest book, the Way of the world, says that the White House ordered that the CIA forge a back-dated letter between the head of Iraqi security and Saddam Hussein showing al Queida ties after the fall of Baghdad to deflect attention away from the lack of WMDs.

The National Security Act of 1947 specifically forbids the CIA from taking actions that have their primary intent of deceiving the American People.

So, what will happen?

Nothing.

NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!

I’d Call This Kafkaesque, but the Term Seems Wholly Inadequate

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A press release from the ACLU:

Justice Department Asks Intelligence Court To Review New Wiretapping Law In Secret (7/30/2008)

ACLU Says Any Proceedings On New FISA Law Should Be As Transparent As Possible

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

WASHINGTON – In a brief filed late yesterday with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the Bush administration asked that any review of the new warrantless surveillance law be kept secret and that the court refuse to accept legal briefs from anyone other than the Justice Department itself. The government is responding to a motion the American Civil Liberties Union filed earlier this month asking the FISC to ensure that any proceedings relating to the scope, meaning or constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) be open to the public to the extent possible.

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

“The government is proposing that the intelligence court should consider the constitutionality of the new surveillance law in proceedings that will be entirely secret. If the government’s request is granted, the court won’t hear arguments from anyone except the government and those arguments will be presented to the court in secret briefs. At the end of the process, the court will issue a ruling that is also secret. The process the government is proposing is completely unacceptable. Especially because the new surveillance law departs so significantly from the standards that have applied to government surveillance for the last 30 years, any proceedings relating to the new law’s constitutionality should be adversarial and as informed and transparent as possible.”

In a separate legal challenge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the ACLU seeks a court ruling declaring that the FAA is unconstitutional and ordering its immediate and permanent halt. Plaintiffs in the case include Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, the Nation and PEN American Center.

(emphasis mine)

I’m Speechless.

CIA Starts Leaking Dirt on Pakistani ISI

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Pakistan denies this, but we have reports that a CIA operative met with Pakistani and presented evidence of close links and support between al Queida and the people in the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Pakistan’s state security apparatus is focused on a war with India, and when it’s not focused on that, it’s looking at reducing Indian influence in the area, so at allies with Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which provides sanctuary for al Queida.

These people are not reliable allies with regard to combatting al Queida, the Taliban, or terrorism in general as a result.

Hmmmmm….An Interesting Factoid about the Iran – US Conflict

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According to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius :

He said the Iranians had recently captured several dissident Iranian operatives who had been recruited by U.S. military officers inside Iraq and then sent into Iran. The Iranians, whose intelligence network inside Iraq is pervasive, surveilled the meeting, then followed the agents across the border and seized them.

So, the Iranians know that we are attempting to insert spies, saboteurs, and garden variety terrorists from Iraq, but they have the Iraqis so penetrated that they when we plan something before we do it.

Sounds an awful lot like Vietnam, where about 35% of the intelligence officers there were working for the North.

At some point, they will catch an American, and put him on TV.

Can We Impeach Him Now?

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Well, we now have the definitive word on when Bush knew that there was no Iraq-al Queida link, and that he continued to claim such a link

In October 2002, a few weeks before Congress voted to authorize the Iraq invasion, Bush told a crowd in Cincinnati: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses.”

Problem is, it wasn’t true. More importantly, a lot of people at the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency knew it probably wasn’t true. That’s one of the interesting revelations inside the Senate’s recent 171-page Phase II report on whether White House statements were backed up by prewar intelligence.

He knew. He knew since February 2002.

It turns out that their source was one guy, who had most of the information tortured out of him, and none of whose claims ever panned out.

Impeach Dick Cheney today. Impeach George W. Bush tomorrow.

Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?

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It appears that there is evidence that Iranian intelligence operatives infiltrated the various Iraqi and Iranian exile groups that called for war against Iraq in 2002-2003.

The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials’ contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a “fabricator” in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran’s Islamic regime.

According to the Senate report, the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity unit concluded in 2003 that Ledeen “was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar.”

There is also Achmed Chalabi and the INC, though they are not mentioned in this article.

The Pentagon started an investigation of it, but Rumsfeld shut it down when he heard of it.

Read the complete article, including the hair brained scheme to overthrow the mullahs with ….. traffic jams.

4 Years ago, Matthew Yglesias suggested, tongue in cheek, that GW Bush was an Iranian mole…I now wonder how funny it really was….I’m just saying.

More Evidence of the Bush Terror Over Warrantless Wiretapping Revalations

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We know that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are determined to create immunity for the telecommunications companies that spied on Americans, probably to cover up the fact that they used the program to spy on political enemies, particularly Kerry in 2004, but the fact that they are now cutting Kit Bond (R-MO), the ranking ‘Phant on the Senate Intelligence Committee in their negotiations with the House indicates that they are getting a bit desperate.

Normally, they don’t want their finger prints on something like this.

The Bush administration is talking directly with Democrats over rewriting the nation’s surveillance laws and leaving the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee out of the debate, a senior Senate Democrat said Wednesday.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said that negotiations were occurring without Sen. Kit Bond (Mo.), the ranking Republican on the panel.

………

“You know, Bond, he’s just complicating things,” Rockefeller said. “And I’ve never talked to him about [his one-on-one talks with Hoyer], so I don’t understand it.”

The only reason that the Bushies are so intent on this is because this program involves something so awful that they would all go to jail, and the only thing I can think of that would do that is their use of the program for partisan electoral advantage.

I could be wrong on this. When ever I think that I’ve mined the depths of the Bush administration, it turns out that I’m insufficiently imaginative.