The Inglorious Amateurs | We are the few, the far between. Foreign Policy Features CIA Document Released to National Security Archive. Washington, DC, September 5, 2012 – The online magazine ForeignPolicy.com today published an extraordinary CIA document on the recent Iraq war which the National Security Archive obtained through a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request to the CIA. The document, "Misreading Intentions: Iraq's Reaction to Inspection Created Picture of Deception," dated January 5, 2006, blames "analyst liabilities," such as neglecting to examine Iraq's deceptive behavior "through an Iraqi prism," for the failure to correctly assess the country's virtually non-existent WMD capabilities.
The review was one in a series of reevaluations the agency produced of its own work after Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Archive obtained the analysis by filing a MDR request after noticing a footnote to it in a September 2006 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The National Security Archive is a non-governmental research organization and library based at the George Washington University. A Classified CIA Mea Culpa on Iraq - By Thomas S. Blanton. What a CIA Nondisclosure Agreement Looks Like. A comparison of pages from Operation Dark Heart.
From New York Times Jose Rodriguez has almost finished writing his book. Remember Jose Rodriguez? He was the CIA agent who ordered the destruction of 92 video tapes that recorded Abu Zabaydah being waterboarded 83 times in one month in a black site in Thailand. Rodriguez was not punished for his actions. We’ll see how the CIA’s pre-publication review goes for Rodriguez’s likely hagiographic account of the Agency.
Take for example the Defense Intelligence Agency’s attempts to pull a “Fahrenheit 451″ to stop Americans from reading former Army Intelligence Officer Anthony Shaffer’s book, Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan – and the Path to Victory. Or take The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al Qaeda,” by former FBI agent Ali H. “Just because something is in the public domain doesn’t mean it’s been officially released or declassified by the US government.” Wow. Like this:
Les vols secrets de la CIA confirmés. Washington — Un litige autour d'une compagnie privée de transport aérien a mis à jour des preuves de vols clandestins menés par la CIA pour transporter des suspects arrêtés dans le cadre de la «guerre contre le terrorisme» lancée après le 11-Septembre, rapportaient hier des journaux. Selon le Washington Post, des dizaines de ces vols, à destination notamment de Bucarest, Bakou, Le Caire, Djibouti, Islamabad ou encore Tripoli, ont été organisés par la petite société Sportsflight, basée à Long Island, qui louait un avion à Richmor Aviation, qui la poursuit aujourd'hui pour rupture de contrat. Des plans de vols et des listes d'appels, notamment à des responsables de la CIA ou au siège de l'agence de renseignements, ont été déposés comme pièces à conviction à l'occasion du procès à New York, selon le journal, averti du litige par une ONG britannique, Reprieve, spécialisée dans les droits des prisonniers, notamment ceux détenus par les États-Unis à Guantánamo, sur l'île de Cuba.
Bay of Pigs: Newly Revealed CIA Documents Expose Blunders. Sharks! (And the Military.) The Great White Shark. Live every week like it’s Shark Week. The US military certainly does. Attempting to be topical, this week’s hot doc is a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) sideshow entitled “Shark Sensory Capabilities.” It explains, essentially, that sharks have a type of “sixth sense:” the ability to sense and understand electromagnetic fields. And of course, the military is willing to pay big money to research this phenomenon with the hope that it will advance the United States’ warfighting capabilities.
Sharks don’t use their eyes to catch their prey. DARPA explains Induced Electric Current. The “exploitation” has already begun. Perhaps more humorously, researchers at Boston University have had success controlling shark’s movements by attaching a device to sharks’ noses that releases a delicious-smelling squid juice odor, used to induce the sharks to travel in the “correct” direction. Of course, this is not the US Navy’s first run-in with sharks. Like this: Foreign Policy in Focus | CIA Accountability Hits New Lows - Fir. In a virtually unnoticed exchange on February 3, Congressman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) called the CIA to task for its incredibly ham-fisted handling of an April 20, 2001 incident in Peru. In collaboration with a CIA aircrew working as part of a joint program to interdict drug trafficking, the Peruvian air force shot down a plane carrying an American missionary family, killing two.
In an angry tone, the Republican congressman denounced the CIA’s response, released the actual film of the incident, and triggered an official statement from the agency — conveniently left off the CIA website to attract as little attention as possible. This episode is important as part of the continuing effort to bring accountability to CIA operations. More importantly, it sheds light on the low standards of identification and evidence the CIA uses in selecting its targets. It’s a fair bet that similar accountability issues will arise in the CIA’s Predator operations in the ongoing war on terror. The Cover-Up. The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters - Glenn Greenwald - Salo. A newly leaked CIA report prepared earlier this month (.pdf) analyzes how the U.S. Government can best manipulate public opinion in Germany and France — in order to ensure that those countries continue to fight in Afghanistan. The Report celebrates the fact that the governments of those two nations continue to fight the war in defiance of overwhelming public opinion which opposes it — so much for all the recent veneration of “consent of the governed” — and it notes that this is possible due to lack of interest among their citizenry: “Public Apathy Enables Leaders to Ignore Voters,” proclaims the title of one section.
But the Report also cites the “fall of the Dutch Government over its troop commitment to Afghanistan” and worries that — particularly if the “bloody summer in Afghanistan” that many predict takes place — what happened to the Dutch will spread as a result of the “fragility of European support” for the war. That WikiLeaks is being targeted by the U.S.