Dec 31 2005
Clinton Created Secret CIA Prisons
Looks like some of these ex-CIA types are ready to turn on any President. Newmax covers a story in Der Spiegel Die Zeit:
The man who ran the Central Intelligence Agency’s Bin Laden desk during the 1990s is accusing President Clinton of giving the CIA carte blanche to circumvent U.S. law and interrogate terrorist suspects in any way the agency saw fit – a directive that led to the establishment of secret CIA prisons on foreign soil.
Maybe Pelosi, Ried, Boxer, Feingolf, Dean, et al should start and investigation of Clinton?
Here is the original interview for those who can read Deutsche, via Davids Medienkritik.
Here is the article translated by Google.
Uh, huh, Michael Scheuer. Again. Author of “Imperial Hubris” using a nom de plume, “Anonymous,” but with the Bush-bashing consent of CIA cohorts.
I’ve just skimmed the surface of a tiny fraction of available material on Michael Scheuer, but initial thoughts and impressions are that I’m reminded a lot of Philip Agee, one of the first known (or identified) skunks in the CIA woodpile.
I haven’t read “Imperial Hubris” and don’t intend to. But I did read Agee’s “On The Run” and a follow-up to that “memoir,” as well as Victor Ovstrovsky’s “By Way of Deception” (Ovstrovsky was the Mossad’s Philip Agee, but inflicted less measurable damage. Agee can reasonably be blamed for the murder of Athens Chief of Station, Dick Welch).
There is a common denominator in the Agee and Ovstrovsky books, and in Scheuer’s comments and attitude as reflected in a CBS and other interviews: And that, ironically or coincidently, can be summed up with the word, “hubris.”
They each, in their respective manners, display a belief that their own knowledge, wisdom, and expertise is vastly superior to all those to whom they are relegated to professional subservience. They (each) know more than anybody else in the world, by God, and they don’t particularly care how many people they cause to get killed or destroyed because of their determination to prove it!
It does seem a bit surprising that Scheuer is now attempting to throw Clinton under the bus. I would like to know the reason, but that has its own catch: I’m predisposed to disbelieve anything coming from any quarters where somebody — anybody — might know.
Oh, well. Happy New Year.
This article by Scheuer was in the Washington Times recently.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051220-094854-8600r.htmb
By Michael Scheuer
Published December 21, 2005
SNIP
If we die as a nation, Lincoln once said, it will be an act of national suicide. And so it seems we are. The media, led by The Washington Post, and Congress, led by Arizona Sen. John McCain, are moving America to disaster’s brink by intentionally destroying its most successful counterterrorism tool: the CIA’s rendition program.
Spurred by The Post’s traditional lust for compromising national security for no reason save selling copy, and abetted by Mr. McCain’s ignorant grandstanding and shameless exploitation of his POW record to sate his presidential lust, the CIA program that best defends America will soon be laid to rest. Around the grave The Post, Mr. McCain and the pacifist Democrats and their European idols will rejoice over burying what they have misidentified as “torture operations.” Instead, they will have destroyed America’s main offensive weapon against al Qaeda. ….Unavoidably, this will weaken America against al Qaeda and result in more dead Americans. For The Post, thousands of American corpses are apparently not too much of a price to pay for selling papers and perhaps bagging a Pulitzer……Mr. McCain’s attack on “CIA torture” will have the same impact as The Post’s: It will kill Americans. Neither Mr. McCain nor The Post have mentioned that the CIA conducts no torture, and that its interrogation methods have been approved, reviewed and reapproved by batteries of U.S. government lawyers. Also unmentioned is that CIA’s rendition program is today the main U.S. counterterrorism tool because neither the Clinton or Bush administrations nor the Congress have taken the Islamist threat seriously….Content to ignore that America’s enemy is a worldwide Islamic insurgency and not Dutch Shultz’s gang, these entities have demanded that the CIA’s rendition program serve as the first line of America’s defense in capturing and interrogating all al Qaeda leaders.
That task, of course, is impossible. The rendition program was meant to complement other national counterterrorist operations, not be the national counter-terrorist program, which is the status it holds today. While the FBI cannot buy a computer system that works, the Congress refuses to secure U.S. borders or Russia’s nuclear arsenal, and our presidents send U.S. soldiers and Marines overseas with inappropriate equipment and rules of engagement that choke U.S. military power, The Post and Mr. McCain are intent on destroying the one offensive U.S. program that saves American lives. Why? To increase revenue, to edge toward the presidency, and to placate two-faced European and U.S. human-rights activists. Yes, this includes you, Sens. Richard Durbin, Patrick Leahy and Charles Schumer, who use any stick to beat America, but have never uttered a word about going after Putin, Yeltsin and Gorbachev as the legatees of a system that deliberately murdered 40 million people.
History is replete with episodes of rats leaving a sinking ship. Thanks to The Post and Mr. McCain, we may now be watching the rats sink the ship.
You need to read Schuer’s books and watch what he says on TV.
Just keep a critical distance. Remember that you may not be Schuer’s intended audience.
The fact that you have read Agee tells you nothing about Scheuer.
I have looked at Schuer’s books . It is complicated. I haven’t read them all thoroughly, but he wrote about extensive connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda in one 2002 book called Though Our Enemies Eyes and then told “Hardball” the opposite in 2004.
I have cited some of Scheuer’s points, below. It was reviewed favorably by the Weekly Standard, which is conservative. Scheurer was extremely critical of Tenet.
Scheuer is critical of both Clinton and Bush for ignoring the OBL problem. His expertise was OBL, and he was probably pretty traumatized by the failure to prevent 9-11.
Although he has criticized the war in Iraq, he used to write that Al Qaeda was trying to get an atomic bomb from Saddam.
“Michael Scheuer, senior CIA officer, lashed out at the panel that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He called the panel and the CIA “bureaucratic cowards†for not holding an agency or individuals accountable for the tragedy. His invective was particularly critical of former CIA director George Tenet, saying he “starved and is starving the [Osama] bin Laden unit of officers while finding plenty of officers to staff his personal public relations office, as well as the staffs that handled diversity, multiculturalism, and employee newsletters.†Scheuer also wrote a best-selling book, Imperial Hubris, published anonymously, that criticized President Bush’s war on terror.”
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922580.html
He sometimes seems critical of the war in Iraq, but it is hard to tell.
“Scheuer’s 2002 book, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes offered startling conclusions regarding Saddam Hussein’s willingness to assist al Qaeda’s effort to obtain nuclear weapons. “In pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, bin Laden has focused on the FSU [Former Soviet Union] states and has sought and received help from Iraq,” wrote Scheuer. In fact, bin Laden’s “first moves in this direction were made in cooperation with NIF [Sudan’s National Islamic Front] leaders, Iraq’s intelligence service, and Iraqi CBRN [chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear] scientists and technicians.”
“Through Our Enemies’ Eyes pointed to evidence indicating a relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda beginning in the early 1990s. And ‘there is information,” Scheuer wrote, “showing that in the 1993-1994 period bin Laden began work with Sudan and Iraq to acquire a CBRN capability for al Qaeda’……..Scheuer, who cited open-source reporting and other evidence–mostly from the late 1990s–to support the claim that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on multiple projects. Areas of cooperation included everything from assistance in the development of chemical and biological weapons facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan, to the possible training of al Qaeda operatives at Mujahedeen Khalq training camps in Iraq starting in June 1998 (the “MEK” was an anti-Iranian terrorist group sponsored by Saddam), to the possibility that MEK operatives (under Saddam’s direction) provided “technical and military training for the Taliban’s forces” as well as “running the Taliban’s anti-Iran propaganda.”
LINK
This article is very interesting for Scheuer’s views on Iraq and Al Qaeda. What he wrote is different than what he told Hardball:
SCHEUER: The only part of that I know about, sir, is that the–I happened to do the research on the links between al Qaeda and Iraq.
MATTHEWS: And what did you come up with?
SCHEUER: Nothing.
Nothing? That’s not the story Scheuer tells on, for example, pages 124-125, 184, 188-190, and 192 of Through Our Enemies’ Eyes.
LINK
My own (non-expert) opinion is that there may be some good reasons why this government does not want to spell out the connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda right now and why they let the Democrats beat them up on this issue.
Snapple,
I know about Scheur. What is interesting is he is probably being 100% open in this interview, and what I read seems about right.
Which will require dems to agree Clinton should have been impeached as well if they make this their case against Bush.
I just love the irony – that’s all.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/31/AR2005123100808_pf.html
Here is the newest WAPO “scoop” on the NSA. It says they are sharing the data with other security agencies but that the name of the American is usually not revealed.
They give it to the military, for one thing, so they can defend their facilities.
Snapple,
I probably phrased that badly. What I meant to say, and the only thing I meant to say, is that I saw a common denominator in the attitudes of the three men towards the officers or officials they were subordinate to.
That is not to deny, even, that in some instances they are probably right — their own ‘take’ on an issue quite possibly has more merit than their superiors’ does. But the place to hash that out is with the superior and, if unable to persuade him/her, then follow orders or resign the post and, if appropriate, take it to the designated oversight official. Don’t run to the NY Times (or Simon & Schuster).
Scheuer was apparently in charge of a program or unit that was gutted if not shut down, OR, he was removed from his position or saw his authority diminished. Whatever it was, he doesn’t agree with decisions made. The tone of his CBS interview seemed like someone who had been emasculated and was fighting back.
But he also, as you pointed out, does not consistently say the same things. He says whatever serves his purpose at a given point. I’m not convinced “his purpose” is compatible with the best interests of the U.S.
On the other hand, things can always seem one way and be another; that’s especially true in his field, so who knows?
The Fugitive; Henry Kissinger; Brief Article The Nation June 25, 2001
Copyright 2001 Gale Group, Inc. ASAPCopyright 2001 The Nation Company L.P. The NationJune 25, 2001SECTION: No. 25, Vol. 272; Pg. 9 ; ISSN: 0027-8378IAC-ACC-NO: 75479291LENGTH: 1037 wordsHEADLINE: The Fugitive; Henry Kissinger; Brief ArticleBYLINE: Hitchens, Christopher BODY: It was, take it for all in all, a near-faultless headline: Henry Kissinger rattrape au Ritz, a Paris, par les fantomes du plan Condor. I especially liked the accidental synonymy of the verb rattraper. What a rat. And such a trap. It was in this fashion that the front page of the Paris daily Le Monde informed its readers that on Memorial Day the gendarmes had gone round to the Ritz Hotel–flagship of Mohamed Al Fayed’s fleet of properties–with a summons from Judge Roger Le Loire inviting the famous rodent to attend at the Palace of Justice the following day. In what must have been one of the most unpleasant moments of his career, noted Le Monde, the hotel manager had to translate the summons to his distinguished guest. Kissinger left the hotel, surrounded by bodyguards, and later announced that he had no desire to answer questions about Operation Condor. He then left town. Operation Condor [see Peter Kornbluh, "Kissinger and Pinochet," March 29, 1999, and "Chile Declassified," August 9/16, 1999] was a coordinated effort in the 1970s by the secret police forces of seven South American dictatorships. The death squads of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador and Bolivia agreed to pool resources and to hunt down, torture, murder and otherwise "disappear" one another’s dissidents. They did this not just on their own soil but as far away as Rome and Washington, where assassins and car-bombs were deployed to maim Christian Democratic Senator Bernardo Leighton in 1975 and to murder the Socialist Orlando Letelier in 1976. The Pinochet regime was to the fore in this internationalization of state terror tactics, and its secret police chief, Col. Manuel Contreras, was especially inventive and energetic. Thanks to the efforts of Representative Maurice Hinchey, who attached an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act last year, we now know that this seven-nation alliance had a senior partner. At all material times, those directing the work of US intelligence knew of Operation Condor and assisted its activities. And at all material times, the chairman of the supervising "Forty Committee," and the key member of the Interagency Committee on Chile, was Henry Kissinger. It was on his watch that the FBI helped Pinochet to identify and arrest Jorge Isaac Fuentes de Alarcon, a Chilean oppositionist who was first detained and tortured in Paraguay and then turned over to Contreras and "disappeared." Contreras himself was paid a CIA stipend. Other Condor leaders were promised US cooperation in the surveillance of inconvenient exiles living in the United States. Judge Roger Le Loire has had documents to this effect on his desk for some time and is investigating the fate of five missing French citizens in Chile during the relevant period. He has already issued an arrest warrant for General Pinochet. But he understands that the inquiry can go no further until US government figures agree to answer questions. In refusing to do this, Kissinger received the shameful support of the US Embassy in Paris and the State Department, which coldly advised the French to go through bureaucratic channels in seeking information. Judge Le Loire replied that he had already written to Washington in 1999, during the Clinton years, but had received no response. On the Friday immediately preceding Memorial Day, another magistrate in a democratic country made an identical request. In order to discover what happened to so many people during the years of Condor terror, said Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, it would be necessary to secure a deposition from Kissinger. And on June 4 the Chilean judge Juan Guzman Tapia asked US authorities to question Kissinger about the disappearance of the American citizen Charles Horman, murdered by Pinochet’s agents in 1973 and subject of the Costa-Gavras movie Missing (as well as an occasional Nation correspondent). So that, in effect, we have a situation in which the Bush regime is sheltering a man who is wanted for questioning on two continents. Partly because I have written a short book pointing this out, I have recently been interviewed by French, British and Spanish radio and TV. Indeed, if it wasn’t for that, I might not have learned of Kissinger’s local and international difficulties for some days. The Financial Times carried a solid story on the Paris episode, with some background, the day after Le Monde. But in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post–not a line. And where were Messrs. Koppel and Lehrer? They usually find the views of "Henry" to be worthy of respectful attention. I admit my own interest, but I still feel able to ask: By whose definition is Kissinger’s moment at the Ritz not news? It is, meanwhile, practically impossible to open the New York Times without reading a solemn admonition, either from the Administration or from the paper itself. Colin Powell lectures Robert Mugabe. George Bush takes a high moral tone with Serbia. All are agreed that wanted men should be given up to international law. All are agreed that however painful the task, other societies must face their own past and shoulder their own grave responsibilities. For a long time I have found it somewhat surreal to read this righteous material, but the experience of ingesting it now becomes more emetic every day. The seven Condor countries, groping their way back to democracy after decades of trauma, are making brave and honest attempts to find the truth and to punish the guilty. Time and again, commissions of inquiry have been frustrated because the evidence they need is in archives in Washington. And it is in those archives for the unspeakable reason that the United States was the patron and armorer of dictatorship. There is a heavy debt here. Is there not a single Congressional committee, a single principled district attorney, a single leader in our overfed and complacent "human rights community," who will try to help cancel it? Or are we going to watch while the relatives of the murdered and tortured seek justice by lawful means, and are waved away by armed bodyguards if they even try to serve a scrap of paper on the man whose immunity befouls us all?IAC-CREATE-DATE: June 13, 2001LOAD-DATE: June 14, 2001
Yes, who knows.
I agree that these issues should not be debated in public.
So why does everyone here give Weldon a pass for exposing the secret Pentagon program Able Danger? Why don’t you want him to get in trouble? Because he’s a Republican?
It seems to me like exposing this program was too high a price just to embarrasss the Democrats.