CIA caught acting like Intel agency

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

I understand that torture is a touchy subject, but why does it make people so mind-numbingly stupid, and increasingly willing to cripple our ability to actually conduct covert operations anywhere? There is a part in my favorite Van Hagar video "Right Now" where a stick figure crouches behind one of two others who are talking. As the victim stick guy gets pushed over we read "Right now our government is doing things we think only other governments do". Well maybe if you are a left wing butthead, but not if you are a realist of any seriousness. The very fact that we have a CIA is offensive to far too many pampered souls, but we do 'cuz we bloody well need one. And in the course of it's proper, authorized and vitally necessary functions ugly things will happen and ugly people will be consorted with. If this makes your knees go weak and enwaddens your panties then don't watch, but don't poke your sensitive little noses into the difficult work necessary to allow you to be outraged safely.

Plenty of oxen here to gore:

WaPo

"After the case became public, CIA officers involved in the decision to apprehend Nasr told their superiors that the Italian intelligence agency cleared the operation with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But there appears to be no documentation that would support the claim that he was aware of the case should a public dispute erupt between Italy and the United States, according to two U.S. sources.

Several former intelligence officials said such documentation, on such a sensitive subject, would probably not exist. "The price of doing business is if you get caught, you're on your own," said one former intelligence official.

Italian judicial authorities publicly disclosed the CIA operation in the spring. But a review of recently filed court documents and interviews in Milan offer fresh details about how the CIA allegedly spread disinformation to cover its tracks and how its actions in Milan disrupted and damaged a major Italian investigation."

Unsurprisingly, Silvio Berlusconi did not earn billions of lire being stupid enough to sign a memo authorizing the US to scarf a jihadi up in Italy. And I guess we will have to rewrite all the CIA guidelines stopping them from unfairly attempting to conduct covert operations covertly.

ABC News:

Two CIA secret prisons were operating in Eastern Europe until last month when they were shut down following Human Rights Watch reports of their existence in Poland and Romania.

Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert.

The usual suspects have decided to stab Sec. Rice and the rest of us in the back again. And the second tidbit is to save the jagoffs from Human Rights Watch from having to range too far before figuring out how ro blow this location. I'm about ready to just moor an aircraft carrier 50 miles off DC and centralize all funky operations out of there. Surround it with a bunch of Aegis Cruisers decked out with anti-missile gear and float a few shark boats underwater and Game on!

According to sources directly involved in setting up the CIA secret prison system, it began with the capture of Abu Zabayda in Pakistan. After treatment there for gunshot wounds, he was whisked by the CIA to Thailand where he was housed in a small, disused warehouse on an active airbase. There, his cell was kept under 24-hour closed circuit TV surveillance and his life-threatening wounds were tended to by a CIA doctor specially sent from Langley headquarters to assure Abu Zubaydah was given proper care, sources said. Once healthy, he was slapped, grabbed, made to stand long hours in a cold cell, and finally handcuffed and strapped feet up to a water board until after 0.31 seconds he begged for mercy and began to cooperate.

So we save this piece of filth's life and then we give him the same crap many of us got in training and lo and behold in an obvious world record of 31/100 of one second he caves, heck I lasted almost half a second. Bottom line was he helped send a few more willing souls on to Allah.

While in the secret facilities in Eastern Europe, Abu Zubaydah and his fellow captives were fed breakfasts that included yogurt and fruit, lunches that included steamed vegetables and beans, and dinners that included meat or chicken and more vegetables and rice, sources say. In exchange for cooperation, prisoners were sometimes given hard candies, desserts and chocolates. Abu Zubaydah was partial to Kit Kats, the same treat Saddam Hussein fancied in his captivity.

I got nothing here better than the clown who penned this, Kit Kats? Sadaam?

The Hill:

Two highly decorated veterans who were held captive together in a Vietnamese prison camp more than three decades ago find themselves nose to nose today over U.S. policy on torture.

In a draft letter circulated to some rank-and-file Republican colleagues but not sent, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) asks the top House defense appropriators to exclude from a defense-spending conference report the anti-torture provision added to the Senate version of the bill by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

But Johnson argues that interrogators must have flexibility as they try to pry information from detainees.

“Requiring the Field Manual to detail every type and means for interrogation and making it the sole authority on interrogation techniques would give our enemies advance knowledge, allowing them to train their people to withstand our procedures,” he wrote.

“Having to potentially sift through thousands of pages of proper techniques in order to get interrogation authorization would likely compromise our ability to control the process, potentially preventing us from attaining valuable information that could avert future attacks,” Johnson wrote.

Much as I love John McCain he's just wrong on this, butI'm not piling on him, ever.

Obviously the current situation is untenable, but can you imagine a Prosecutor less

scrupulous than Patrick Fitzgerald doing the poking around necessary to clean up the sieve that is our current covert capability. I don't have a good answer because we can't just round up the reporters and waterboard their source info out of them, then render the swine who leaked and the reporters to our gulag because the same jerks exposed them. Halliburton has barely finished the new North African ones and the satellite facility on my back 40 won't be done 'til January.

Any ideas?

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Comments

CIA caught acting like Intel agency

I understand that torture is a touchy subject, but why does it make people so mind-numbingly stupid, and increasingly willing to cripple our ability to actually conduct covert operations anywhere? There is a part in my favorite Van Hagar video "Right Now" where a stick figure crouches behind one of two others who are talking. As the victim stick guy gets pushed over we read "Right now our government is doing things we think only other governments do". Well maybe if you are a left wing butthead, but not if you are a realist of any seriousness. The very fact that we have a CIA is offensive to far too many pampered souls, but we do 'cuz we bloody well need one. And in the course of it's proper, authorized and vitally necessary functions ugly things will happen and ugly people will be consorted with. If this makes your knees go weak and enwaddens your panties then don't watch, but don't poke your sensitive little noses into the difficult work necessary to allow you to be outraged safely.

Plenty of oxen here to gore:

WaPo

"After the case became public, CIA officers involved in the decision to apprehend Nasr told their superiors that the Italian intelligence agency cleared the operation with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But there appears to be no documentation that would support the claim that he was aware of the case should a public dispute erupt between Italy and the United States, according to two U.S. sources.

Several former intelligence officials said such documentation, on such a sensitive subject, would probably not exist. "The price of doing business is if you get caught, you're on your own," said one former intelligence official.

Italian judicial authorities publicly disclosed the CIA operation in the spring. But a review of recently filed court documents and interviews in Milan offer fresh details about how the CIA allegedly spread disinformation to cover its tracks and how its actions in Milan disrupted and damaged a major Italian investigation."

Unsurprisingly, Silvio Berlusconi did not earn billions of lire being stupid enough to sign a memo authorizing the US to scarf a jihadi up in Italy. And I guess we will have to rewrite all the CIA guidelines stopping them from unfairly attempting to conduct covert operations covertly.

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