CIA

The CIA’s rogue operations

by News Sources 05.02.2013

Following the New York Times’ revelation earlier this week that the CIA has been regularly delivering shopping bags full of cash to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Sarah Chayes writes: Karzai’s relationship with the CIA is believed to long predate the tense days in late 2001 when CIA officers joined him and his followers in the [...]

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CIA Kabul chief used ‘ghost money’ to bypass U.S. ambassador creating secret channel to Karzai

by News Sources 04.30.2013

The Guardian reports: The CIA and MI6 have regularly given large cash payments to Hamid Karzai’s office with the aim of maintaining access to the Afghan leader and his top allies and officials, but the attempt to buy influence has largely failed and may have backfired, former diplomats and policy analysts say. The Guardian understands [...]

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The CIA is the biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan

by News Sources 04.29.2013

The New York Times reports: For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from [...]

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Video: Obama’s promotion of a promoter of torture and failure to close Guantanamo

by News Sources 04.05.2013
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CIA ramps up role in Iraq — here come the death squads?

by News Sources 03.12.2013

When it comes to fighting “al Qaeda affiliates”, the U.S. approach under Obama seems no less lawless than it was under Bush. And with a history of complicity in the operation of death squads in Iraq (even during a period when hundreds of international journalists were reporting from there), it’s hard not to wonder how [...]

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Al Qaeda’s top recruiting tool: The CIA

by News Sources 02.20.2013

Jamie Dettmer reports: What makes someone join Al Qaeda? In the case of Abu Yahya al-Libi, the Al Qaeda luminary killed in an American drone strike in Pakistan last June, his older brother has no doubt. Americans are culpable for his sibling’s embrace of terrorism. He draws a direct line between al-Libi’s recruitment by al [...]

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Exposing the myths of America’s shadow war

by News Sources 02.02.2013

Dr. Loch K. Johnson writes: The United States faces a world of constantly shifting circumstances, as underscored by the Arab Spring uprisings. To shield the nation in a global setting where uncertainty and hostilities are commonplace, officials in Washington have crafted a range of responses to international events that includes diplomacy and the use of [...]

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Is Washington’s chief drone warrior ready to wind up the CIA’s drone war?

by News Sources 01.17.2013

Mark Perry writes: Lost amidst all the fuss over whether Obama nominee Chuck Hagel is – or isn’t – acceptable to the Israeli lobby (or whatever), is the crucial, but strangely low-profile, debate over the president’s nomination of controversial counterterrorism chief John Brennan to head up the CIA. The 25-year agency veteran, who first tied [...]

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The CIA’s double standards

by News Sources 01.10.2013

Ted Gup writes: In the last week, the American public has been reminded of the Central Intelligence Agency’s contradictory attitude toward secrecy. In a critique of “Zero Dark Thirty,” published last Thursday in The Washington Post, a former deputy director of the C.I.A., Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., defended the use of waterboarding and said that [...]

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Brennan to become Central Assassination Agency chief

by News Sources 01.07.2013

It looks like the CIA’s decade-long shift from being an intelligence agency to becoming an assassination agency is soon to become irreversible as President Obama’s chief assassin takes over. The New York Times reports: President Obama will announce on Monday that John O. Brennan, his counterterrorism adviser and a career Central Intelligence Agency officer, is [...]

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The CIA’s secret army

by News Sources 12.27.2012

The Washington Post reports: The rapid collapse of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya exposed the vulnerabilities of State Department facilities overseas. But the CIA’s ability to fend off a second attack that same night provided a glimpse of a key element in the agency’s defensive arsenal: a secret security force created after the Sept. [...]

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Did the CIA almost let Osama bin Laden escape?

by Paul Woodward 12.23.2012

In late 2010, after the CIA had kept Osama bin Laden’s home under surveillance for several months, the agency was under increasing pressure to come up with conclusive proof that the Abbottabad house was indeed the location of the al Qaeda leader. CIA director Leon Panetta was running out of patience. Peter Bergen writes: Over [...]

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Mind control: The CIA’s experiments on involuntary human subjects

by Paul Woodward 12.22.2012

On September 16, 2001, Dick Cheney warned that in order to deal with the terrorism threat: “We have to work the dark side, if you will. Spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world.” It was as though the CIA was being directed to venture into unfamiliar territory. An ABC News report broadcast in [...]

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European court ruling confirms U.S. has operated as a rogue state, disregarding international law

by News Sources 12.13.2012

Amnesty International: A ruling today by the European Court of Human Rights on the CIA’s detention and rendition of German national Khaled El-Masri has been hailed as a historic moment. The European Court has held unanimously that Macedonia was responsible for the German national’s unlawful detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, and for his [...]

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CIA spies are all ‘jerks’ says former official

by News Sources 12.11.2012

A report in the Washington Post focuses on a female CIA clandestine officer who is depicted in the lead roll in the new film, ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ about the assassination of Osama bin Laden. This spring, she was among a handful of employees given the agency’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, its highest honor except for those [...]

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The wrong man for the CIA

by News Sources 11.20.2012

Gregory D. Johnsen writes: With the resignation of David H. Petraeus, President Obama now has a chance to appoint a new C.I.A. director. Unfortunately, one of the leading candidates for the job is John O. Brennan, who is largely responsible for America’s current flawed counterterrorism strategy, which relies too heavily on drone strikes that frequently [...]

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When a CIA director had scores of affairs

by News Sources 11.12.2012

Stephen Kinzer writes: Walking through the lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va., after handing in his resignation on Friday, David H. Petraeus passed a bas-relief sculpture of Allen Dulles, who led the agency in the 1950s and early ’60s. Below it is the motto, “His Monument Is Around Us.” Both men [...]

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On the timing of Petraeus’ resignation

by News Sources 11.10.2012

The Washington Post reports: The timing of the resignation has caused a controversy, with members of Congress and others questioning why the disclosure was not made until after Tuesday’s election. Some have also complained that the FBI did not notify the White House and senior members of Congress earlier that the CIA director was under [...]

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Former CIA officer pleads guilty in leak case

by News Sources 10.23.2012

The New York Times reports: A former Central Intelligence Agency officer accused of leaking to journalists the identities of two former colleagues involved in the agency’s detention and interrogation program for high-level Qaeda suspects pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a single charge. The plea deal was a victory for the Obama administration’s crackdown on unauthorized [...]

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CIA seeks major expansion of drone fleet and paramilitary operations

by News Sources 10.18.2012

The Washington Post reports: The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said. The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain [...]

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Iran hostage crisis insider, Gary Sick, reviews Hollywood thriller ‘Argo’

by News Sources 10.14.2012

Gary Sick writes: The American embassy in Tehran was attacked and its residents imprisoned almost exactly 33 years ago, November 4, 1979. The 444-day ordeal of the hostage crisis burned itself into the American collective consciousness. It was America’s first contact with radical Islam. It was our first televised foreign policy crisis. It was the [...]

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Families of U.S. citizens killed in drone strike file wrongful death lawsuit

by News Sources 07.19.2012

The Guardian reports: The killing of three US citizens, one a 16-year-old boy, in targeted drone strikes last year were unlawful and violated their constitutional rights by not affording them due process, according to a lawsuit filed by their relatives on Wednesday. Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was placed on a CIA “kill [...]

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Top CIA spy accused of being a mafia hitman

by News Sources 06.28.2012

Danger Room reports: Enrique “Ricky” Prado’s resume reads like the ultimate CIA officer: veteran of the Central American wars, running the CIA’s operations in Korea, a top spy in America’s espionage programs against China, and deputy to counter-terrorist chief Cofer Black — and then a stint at Blackwater. But he’s also alleged to have started [...]

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Poland shaken by case alleging an illicit CIA prison there

by News Sources 06.23.2012

The Los Angeles Times reports: For years, the idea seemed unthinkable, absurd. A secret U.S. detention center in a remote corner of Poland, where Al Qaeda suspects were brutally interrogated by the CIA? About as likely as “the Loch Ness monster,” is how one Pole described it recently. That monster is now rearing its head. [...]

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