Still cagey, after all these years

Jefferson Morley, a journalist and author, on Oct. 8 in his office in Washington with documents released to him by the C.I.A.











Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Probably not. But you would not know it from the C.I.A.’s behavior.

For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets. But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance.

Gerald Posner, the author of an anti-conspiracy account of the Kennedy assassination, “Case Closed” (Random House, 1993), said the C.I.A.’s withholding such aged documents was “a perfect example of why nobody trusts the agency.”

“It feeds the conspiracy theorists who say, ‘You’re hiding something,” ’ Mr. Posner said.

Central Intelligence Agency - George Joannides, center, in July 1981, with his wife, Violet, and Bobby R. Inman, deputy director of the C.I.A.

After losing an appeals court decision in Mr. Morley’s lawsuit, the C.I.A. released material last year confirming Mr. Joannides’s deep involvement with the anti-Castro Cubans who confronted Oswald. But the agency is withholding 295 specific documents from the 1960s and ’70s, while refusing to confirm or deny the existence of many others, saying their release would cause “extremely grave damage” to national security.

“The methods of defeating or deterring covert action in the 1960s and 1970s can still be instructive to the United States’ current enemies,” a C.I.A. official wrote in a court filing.


Max Holland, who is writing a history of the Warren Commission, said the agency might be trying to preserve the principle of secrecy.

“If you start going through the files of every C.I.A. officer who had anything to do with anything that touched the assassination, that would have no end,” Mr. Holland said.

Mr. Posner, the anti-conspiracy author, said that if there really were something explosive involving the C.I.A. and President Kennedy, it would not be in the files — not even in the documents the C.I.A. has fought to keep secret.

“Most conspiracy theorists don’t understand this,” Mr. Posner said. “But if there really were a C.I.A. plot, no documents would exist.”

General Steps From the Shadows

Stanley A. McChrystal shown in 2003 with Victoria Clarke, an assistant secretary of defense.









Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.

“He’s lanky, smart, tough, a sneaky stealth soldier,” said Maj. Gen. William Nash, a retired officer. “He’s got all the Special Ops attributes, plus an intellect.”

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence. But former C.I.A. officials say that General McChrystal was among those who, with the C.I.A., pushed hard for a secret joint operation in the tribal region of Pakistan in 2005 aimed at capturing or killing Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld canceled the operation at the last minute, saying it was too risky and was based on what he considered questionable intelligence, a move that former intelligence officials say General McChrystal found maddening.

Questionable intelligence? Rummy was able to make that distinction?

When General McChrystal took over the Joint Special Operations Command in 2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando force with a reputation for spurning partnerships with other military and intelligence organizations. But over the next five years he worked hard, his colleagues say, to build close relationships with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. He won praise from C.I.A. officers, many of whom had stormy relationships with commanders running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fascinating web of relationships.

As head of the command, which oversees the elite Delta Force and units of the Navy Seals, General McChrystal was based at Fort Bragg, N.C. But he spent much of his time in Iraq commanding secret missions. Most of his operations were conducted at night, but General McChrystal, described nearly universally as a driven workaholic, was up for most of the day as well.

General McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976 and spent the next three decades ascending through conventional and Special Operations command positions as well as taking postings at Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a commander of a Green Beret team in 1979 and 1980, and he did several tours in the Army Rangers as a staff officer and a battalion commander, including service in the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

Emphasis added.

Justice Says CIA Destroyed 92 Tapes

This is how Bush and Cheney believed in: In one memo, Department of Justice lawyers said the president could order the U.S. military to mobilize domestically to combat terrorism, in contravention of laws that generally prohibit such use of the military on U.S. soil. Other memos described the president's power to conduct surveillance without court warrants.

Bush's lackeys in effect said he could violate the constitution, deploy the military in the homeland, and ignore the courts. Nice.

Many of the legal opinions were written by John C. Yoo, a former official in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The Obama administration is defending Mr. Yoo and other former Bush officials who are being sued over their national-security legal work. In an October 2001 memo, Mr. Yoo asserted that "the president has both the constitutional and statutory authority to use the armed forces in military operations, against terrorists within the United States." He added that such a move wouldn't be subject to Fourth Amendment restrictions on unreasonable searches and seizures so long as they are acting in a military, not law-enforcement, function.

Defending the past administration, the current administration is obviously trying to uphold the principle that government officials should not be prosecuted. But such sweeping interpretation of what is legal is quite troublesome.

The government also released memos from the final months of the Bush administration that renounced the legal reasoning of the early post-9/11 period. In one October 2008 memo, a top Justice official called earlier opinions "either incorrect or highly questionable."

Yoo was gone from government after 2003. He has also worked as a visiting scholar at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute since 2003.

A former Bush official involved in national-security policy took issue with the release Monday of the memos. "I think these guys want to make a show of criticizing their predecessors, but they aren't saying clearly what they would do in the same situation," said the official, who declined to be identified. "They're trying to satisfy their...base. On the other hand they're responsible for the safety of the country, so they want to keep the same options open to them."

Fair enough; seems accurate.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to expand an existing probe of the tape destruction into a broader examination of the CIA interrogation program.

It should be investigated.

Switzerland Frees Suspected Smuggling Nuclear Technology

Swiss authorities have released from jail a man suspected of smuggling atomic technology to Libya and Iran as part of the nuclear black market of Abdul Qadeer Khan, officials and family members said Monday.

Khan is the one who sold atomic secrets to Iran, and was, in turn, pardoned by Musharraf. I never have understood why that story disappeared from the public radar.

The suspect, Urs Tinner, was freed Dec. 22 after more than four years in investigative detention, Swiss officials said. They added that his brother Marco remained in jail because of worries that he still had access to nuclear-weapons secrets.

Spying seems to be a family business: The developments were a new phase in Switzerland’s long efforts to prosecute the family of Swiss engineers, including the Tinner patriarch, Friedrich. All three are suspected of criminal export violations. The father was released from jail in 2006 pending legal action.

In May, the president of Switzerland confirmed that the government had destroyed a trove of computer files and other material documenting the family’s business dealings. He said that the action was taken to keep plans for nuclear arms and technologies from ever falling into terrorist hands. But in interviews last summer with The New York Times, American officials said they had urged the destruction less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a secret relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A. They said that the family provided a unique lens on the secret activities of Libya, Iran and Dr. Khan.

Now that's interesting: a secret relationship between the Tinners, who sold atomic secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, and the CIA. A way to monitor illicit activity, it is said, yet a facilitation of behavior that the US government denounced publicly.

Trick or Treat

Top 10 Ways the G.O.P. Plans to Celebrate Halloween
Frank Santopadre - October 30, 2008

10. Assure President Bush that the shamrock and leprechaun decorations look great

9. Add fun “apple bobbing feature” to water-boarding procedures

8. Claim Obama supporter attacked trick-or-treater and carved letter “B” in her pumpkin

7. Arrange photo-op of McCain giving out candy at each of his 9 houses

6. Prank call Barney Frank's house; ask if he has “some guy named Albert in his can”

5. Take Cindy McCain trick-or-treating at Merck and Pfizer factories

4. Dress unqualified Alaska governor in funny Vice President costume

3. Set fire to Bill of Rights, leave on Pelosi's doorstep, ring bell, run

2. Station Klan members in black voting districts; insist they're just trick-or-treaters dressed as ghosts

1. Wait until dark, watch Cheney turn into a bat

Photo illustration by Hamish Robertson.

The ones that didn't make the list: Make Sarah Palin wear a Dan Quayle costume in hopes of creating a more intelligent image. All trick or treaters visiting the Vice-Presidential residence get a list of the names of CIA operatives dropped in their goody bags.

Iraq Case Sheds Light On Secret Contractors

It is a disturbing pattern: the Bush government has outsourced governmental functions to private contractors who make scads of money and are not accountable to Congress or the people in any way.

Overall, the U.S. has about the same number of contractors as military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are about 30,000 US troops in Afghanistan, and about 150,000 in Iraq, adding up to 180,000 troops. Thus 180,000 contractors. What are the costs? And the implications?

... a fast-growing type of government contracting largely escapes such scrutiny: secret programs, or "black" contracts, assisting intelligence agents as they operate in war zones. These contractors have carried out some of the government's most sensitive work – conducting interrogations, manning secret prisons and guarding spy-agency personnel. The programs' existence, size and scope are classified, and so are the details of their troubles.

Private contractors, which, or who, could also be labeled private soldiers, interrogating, manning secret prisons? This is ludicrous, and dangerous. And it is classified?

The House of Representatives Wednesday passed a broad bill tackling a wide range of intelligence policy issues, including tightening oversight of such contractors. It would force intelligence agencies to keep Congress better informed about their use as well as any formal probes into wrongdoing. But the legislation faces serious headwinds: The White House threatened a veto Wednesday, arguing that some of the provisions would hamper its spying operations.

That is the crux of what the Bush government has been: secretive, arrogant, disdainful of oversight.

MVM Inc. is one of these contractors; its website describe the firm as providing Physical Security, Detention Services, Personal Security Details, Prisoner Escort/Transportation, Training, Language Services, and related services to US Government clients. Further, it has 3,000 employees and $200 million in revenue. Those are two hundred million US tax dollars.

Our highly cleared personnel protect federal property and information all over the world says its website; shouldn't that be done by government personnel?

Another of those contractors is Blackwater Worldwide. Its website states: We are guided by integrity, innovation, and a desire for a safer world. That is quite a reach.

Security contractors in Iraq have been in an intense spotlight since employees of another firm, Blackwater Worldwide, were involved in a shooting incident last fall that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, leading to a Justice Department investigation and efforts by the Iraqi government to clamp down on their actions.

How did it come about that private contractors are half of the US effort in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Mr. Boone's little-known employer, MVM Inc., before 2001 mainly provided school and courthouse guards in U.S. cities. As the U.S. sought to supplant its own overstretched forces, MVM quickly grew to become one of the top few providers of secret security in Iraq and Afghanistan, alongside companies including Blackwater. MVM has handled much of the Central Intelligence Agency's and National Security Agency's personal security in war zones.

From school guards to Bagram Prison; quite a success story. It was in place to get business as he U.S. sought to supplant its own overstretched forces. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

Mission accomplished?

Really? That well?

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Less than a year ago it looked dire; now it looks great. Quick turnaround, indeed.

While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.

Rather nuanced assessment.

The sense of shifting tides in the terrorism fight is shared by a number of terrorism experts, though some caution that it is too early to tell whether the gains are permanent. Some credit Hayden and other U.S. intelligence leaders for going on the offensive against al-Qaeda in the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the tempo of Predator strikes has dramatically increased from previous years. But analysts say the United States has caught some breaks in the past year, benefiting from improved conditions in Iraq, as well as strategic blunders by al-Qaeda that have cut into its support base.

How are shifting tides measured?

Others warned that al-Qaeda remains capable of catastrophic attacks and may be even more determined to stage a major strike to prove its relevance. "Al-Qaeda's obituary has been written far too often in the past few years for anyone to declare victory," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "I agree that there has been progress. But we're indisputably up against a very resilient and implacable enemy."

Caution is prudent.

... terrorism experts note the lack of success in the U.S. effort to capture bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Intelligence officials say they think both are living in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal area in locations known only to a few top aides. Hayden said capturing or killing the pair remains a top priority, though he noted the difficulties in finding them in a rugged, remote region where the U.S. military is officially forbidden to operate.

Quite nuanced.