Tag: CIA

WikiLeaks Uploads CIA Review Of Assassination Programs

WikiLeaks claims to have obtained a CIA document that assesses high-value targeting (HVT) assassination programs world-wide for their impact on insurgencies.

The CIA document is supposedly classified and is for internal use to review the impact of targeted assassinations on relevant groups.

At first glance, the document comes across as a dry business review, but in truth it is about the assassination of political leaders.

It assesses assassination attacks on insurgent groups by the United States – and other countries – within Afghanistan, Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Israel,Peru, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.

According to WikiLeaks, the document – which seems to be “pro-assassination” – was completed in July 2009 and coincides with the first year of the Obama administration and Leon Panetta’s directorship of the CIA during which the United States significantly increased its CIA assassination program at the expense of capture operations.

It produces a chart for US officials to use in strategically assessing future operations and methods in High Value Targeting assassinations.

The Washington Post looked at the CIA document and the document seems to conclude that raids, drone strikes and other military operations designed to capture or kill “high-value targets” in the Taliban have had little overall effect.  This is in part because of the militant group’s ability to replace leaders.

The Washington Post’s look at the WikiLeaks document is here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/12/18/cia-analysis-high-value-targeting-had-limited-effect-against-taliban/

You can view the WikiLeaks CIA document here:

Click to access WikiLeaks_Secret_CIA_review_of_HVT_Operations.pdf

War Crimes Case Filed in Germany Against Architects Of Torture Program


Democracy Now

A human rights group in Berlin, Germany, has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the George W. Bush administration’s torture program. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has accused former Bush administration officials, including CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, and called for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor.

Washington Post Seems To Endorse Torture

On January 5th, the Washington Post published an article titled “Democrats Lose The Torture Debate,” which was written by Marc A. Thiessen.

Thiessen writes, “As we begin 2015, we can take solace that the ‘torture’ debate is finally behind us. But before we close the book on six sordid years of Democratic demagoguery and investigations, let the record show that the opponents of the CIA interrogation program were completely and utterly defeated.

“Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, launched a six-year, 6,000-page, $40 million investigation into the CIA interrogation program, with the goal of convincing Americans that a) the program did not work and that b) enhanced interrogations were wrong and should never again be permitted.

Thiessen then claims: “She failed on all counts.”

The Post then justifies it’s stance on torture with its own internal poll.

He states that the poll shows that “The vast majority agree with the CIA that these techniques were necessary and justified. A majority think that Feinstein should never have released her report. And — most importantly — 76 percent said they would do it again to protect the country.”

Thiessen explains that Americans were asked, “Looking ahead, do you feel that torture of suspected terrorists can often be justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified or never justified?”

He then claims that the word “torture” is a “loaded word” and therefore claims that such techniques as waterboarding, “rectal feeding,” and “rectal rehydration” do not constitute torture. Thiessen would likely prefer the CIA-sanctioned term “EIT,” or “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

According to the WaPo poll, 17 percent replied they would support using the techniques “often,” 40 percent “sometimes” and 19 percent “rarely.” Only 20 percent said the techniques should “never” be justified.

New York Times Calls For Dick Cheney Torture Investigation

According to Yahoo News, in response to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s blistering report on the CIA’s brutal handling of prisoners after 9/11, the New York Times is calling for a criminal investigation of former Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush administration for conspiring to commit torture and other crimes prohibited by federal and international laws.

“Americans have known about many of these acts for years,” the Times editorial board stated on Monday.

“But the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality.”

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cheney refused to call some of the CIA’s actions with prisoners – including involuntary rectal feeding – torture.

In its editorial, the Times said the “sadistic” techniques outlined in the committee’s report “are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of ‘severe physical or mental pain or suffering.’

“They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.”

“It is no wonder that today’s blinkered apologists are desperate to call these acts anything but torture, which they clearly were,” the Times continued. “As the report reveals, these claims fail for a simple reason: C.I.A. officials admitted at the time that what they intended to do was illegal.”

The paper criticized the president for failing “to bring to justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects.”

The Times: “No amount of legal pretzel logic can justify the behavior detailed in the report. Indeed, it is impossible to read it and conclude that no one can be held accountable. At the very least, Mr. Obama needs to authorize a full and independent criminal investigation.”

The Times’ editorial board is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Cheney, David Addington, Cheney’s former chief of staff, former CIA Director George Tenet, as well as John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the lawyers “who drafted what became known as the torture memos”; Jose Rodriguez Jr., the CIA official “who ordered the destruction of the videotapes”, the psychologists who devised the torture regimen, and any CIA employees who carried it out.

Greenwald: Why Aren’t Torture Victims Interviewed?

Ever since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there is one group that we have not seen much of – the torture victims.

Secular Talk video.

Bin Laden Expert Accused Of CIA Deception On ‘Torture’ Program

A top al Qaeda expert who remains in a senior position at the CIA was a key architect of the agency’s defense of its detention and “enhanced interrogation” program for suspected terrorists, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report released last week. Supposedly, the person had developed talking points that misrepresented and overstated its effectiveness.

The report singles out the female expert as a key proponent for the program, stating that she repeatedly told her superiors and others — including members of Congress — that the “torture” was working and producing useful intelligence, when it was not.  She wrote the “template on which future justifications for the CIA program and the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques were based,” it said.

According to NBC News, the expert also participated in “enhanced interrogations” of self-professed 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, witnessed the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah and ordered the detention of a suspected terrorist who turned out to be unconnected to al Qaeda, according to the report.

The expert was criticized after 9/11 terrorist attacks for supporting a subordinate’s refusal to share the names of two of the hijackers with the FBI prior to the terror attacks.

Instead of being sanctioned, she was promoted.

The expert was not identified by name in the unclassified 528-page summary of the report, but U.S. officials confirmed that her name was redacted at least three dozen times in an effort to avoid publicly identifying her.

NBC News is withholding her name at the request of the CIA, which cited a climate of fear and retaliation in the wake of the release of the Senate report.

While the two psychologists who developed the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Dr. James Mitchell and Dr. Bruce Jessen, quickly became well-known in media as a result of the report, scathing criticism of the expert’s role in defending the program went nearly unmentioned.

The expert — one of several female CIA employees on whom “Maya,” the lead character in the movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” was based — has previously been identified in the media as a CIA officer involved in the rendition program.

The Senate report offers the first detailed account of the depth of her involvement.  It quotes from emails, memos and congressional testimony, to document her unique role in what it says were misrepresentations about the effectiveness of the CIA’s program, which President Barack Obama has said included torture. The report does not give any motive for the alleged misrepresentations.

In one instance recounted in the report, CIA Director Michael Hayden brought the expert with him on Feb. 14, 2007, to brief members of the Senate intelligence oversight committee on the interrogation program.  The expert forcefully defended the program in the classified hearing.

Newsmax: CIA Torture Will Have No Lasting Effects Since It Wasn’t ‘Real Torture’

William “Bill” Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a political commentator on various networks, such as Fox News.

In this video, Bill Kristol defends Dick Cheney and claims CIA torture was just an “unpleasant” experience with no lasting effects.

Video:  Right Wing Watch

The Other Side Of Torture

On December 15th, former CIA interrogator Dr. James Mitchell, who was involved in the Enhanced Interrogation program, talked with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.  Mitchell is angry with Democrats and other politicians over the release of the report on Enhanced Interrogations, also called ‘torture’.

He is the subject of the report as he was one of the interrogators and he says the Senate Intelligence Committee never asked him about his participation in this program.  He says what makes him angry is that KSM now has the chance to address the charges against him and he doesn’t.

Fred Filner video.