Just when I thought I was done posting for the evening…

Another day, another revelation:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.

Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.

Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it.

The ties underscore doubts about how seriously the Obama administration intends to fight corruption here.

I’ll link you up to the pdf of the memo, and here’s an excerpt from WikiLeaks:

It concludes that foreign perceptions of the US as an “Exporter of Terrorism” together with US double standards in international law, may lead to noncooperation in renditions (including the arrest of CIA officers) and the decision to not share terrorism related intelligence with the United States.

Posted without comment.

H/t: hapkidogal

The ACLU is rightfully calling this giving the CIA “a license to suppress evidence of criminal activity.” I’m calling it business as usual. I am also banging my head against the wall as I type this:

A federal judge has backed CIA efforts to conceal information about treatment of detainees, even if the suppressed records contain details about illegal activity on the part of the intelligence agency.

We wouldn’t want to confirm anything we already know, now would we? Because then we might actually have to do something about it.

****

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari’s story here.

Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you’d like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side. You’ll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I’m all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz’s story here, at Answers.com.

H/t: mparent77772, Gr8RDH

Normally they don’t disclose CIA officers who are killed, but we all remember the horrific attack that couldn’t be hidden. The story says they dropped flowers as the flew by, but I couldn’t find any video of that. What a beautiful sky.

Michael D. Furlong, the supervisor who set up the contractor network, is now under investigation.

Because contractors have worked out so well in the past ::coughBlackwatercough:: we continue to pay them millions:

Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.

Legality schmegality.

It has already been reported that the military sent some former CIA officers and retired Special Ops troops over. And we also heard that they tracked down and killed suspected militants. This can’t end well, what with killing “suspects” and all.

“Hey, you over there! You look kinda suspicious.” Bang.

Supposedly, the operation was shut down. Not so much:

Not only are the networks still operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence.

The American military is largely prohibited from operating inside Pakistan. And under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.

Pentagon officials said that the supervisor who “set up the contractor network, Michael D. Furlong, was now under investigation.”

By GottaLaff

(Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

My dear friend and ace reporter Jason Leopold has done some great reporting, and has graciously allowed me to cross-post a few excerpts. Please read his whole piece here.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has launched an investigation into the brutal torture of Abu Zubaydah, the “high-value” detainee captured in March 2002 that the Bush administration wrongly claimed was one of the planners of 9/11 and a top al-Qaeda operative, according to several Capitol Hill sources.

The investigation of Zubaydah, who was tortured at a secret black site prison in Thailand, will be conducted alongside the committee’s ongoing probe of the Bush administration’s interrogation and detention policies.

The panel will pour over thousands of pages of highly classified documents related to Zubaydah’s detention and torture to determine, among other things, whether the techniques he was subjected to was accurately reflected in CIA cable traffic sent back to Langley, whether he ever provided actionable intelligence to his torturers, and how the CIA and other government agencies came to rely on flawed intelligence that led the Bush administration to classify him as the No. 3 person in al-Qaeda and its first high-value detainee, Hill sources said. [...]

“It was a very partisan group,” Mickum said about the briefing. “Republicans had their agenda and they were not very interested in hearing the facts of the case. I told them what my views were on the case. I’m delighted [the committee] has decided to take a hard look at the case now.” [...]

Meanwhile, highly placed intelligence sources directly knowledgeable about Zubaydah’s torture said some of the interrogation sessions captured on at least 90 videotapes between April and August 2002 showed Zubaydah being subjected to torture methods not approved by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). [...]

The OLC did not approve the use of water dousing as an interrogation technique until August 2004. [...]

[F]ive intelligence sources said in interviews conducted over the past month that they were aware of a second taping system that was set up at the black site prison in Thaliand–possibly one they said was installed by an outside contractor–which captured Zubaydah’s torture sessions that were stored on computers and separate hard drives.

There’s more, including how this ties in to Yoo’s torture memos. Go.

****

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari’s story here.

Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you’d like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side. You’ll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I’m all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz’s story here, at Answers.com.

By GottaLaff

The Salt Pit

Jane Mayer has a piece out in the New Yorker that is a must-read. It concerns the death of a detainee, and includes a revelation about the unintended identification of the detention C.I.A. officer who was allegedly responsible:

In an apparent oversight, however, the identity of the manager of the Salt Pit at the time of Rahman’s death appeared recently in a public document. The officer, who continues to work for the C.I.A., is mentioned by name in a footnote in the October, 2009, legal response to allegations of unprofessional conduct filed by lawyers for Jay Bybee, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel. The Bybee document was released last February by the Justice Department. Apparently unnoticed at the time, it revealed both the surname of the Salt Pit manager and the identity of the victim, Rahman.

[UPDATE, April 1, 6:40 P.M.: In an interesting disappearing act, unspecified government officials have now mysteriously redacted the name of the C.I.A. officer in charge of the Salt Pit from the public record described above. The document is easily accessible on the House Judiciary Committee’s Web site (pdf). But where footnote No. 28 previously identified the surname of the Salt Pit manager, as of April 1st, the name has been blacked out. The victim’s name, however, is still visible. It was evidently too late to keep that out of the public eye after the A.P. story.]

can you please tell us about the death body of rehman from where we can get it i am his nephew

Posted 3/31/2010, 11:32:10pm by sulimankhail

Think about that for a moment.

A news story about the death of a detainee at a black site causes a person who identifies himself as family, as the nephew of the victim, to try to locate the body after eight years… in a comment under the post.

He is asking for help in getting the body of a family member back. In Comments.

Assuming “sulimankhail” is who he says he is, what does this tell you? How does it make you feel that torture and murder has been done in our name… and now a prisoner’s relative has to leave a comment under a story in the New Yorker in order to find the remains of his uncle?

I’m ashamed, and I am sickened.

A related story drives the point home:

Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told a student audience last week that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration.

Be proud, BushCo.

****

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari’s story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you’d like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side. You’ll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I’m all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz’s story here, at Answers.com.

By GottaLaff

ABC has this exclusive report about what the CIA is calling a big intel coup:

An award-winning Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances, has defected to the CIA and been resettled in the United States, according to people briefed on the operation by intelligence officials.

The officials were said to have termed the defection of the scientist, Shahram Amiri, “an intelligence coup” in the continuing CIA operation to spy on and undermine Iran’s nuclear program. [...]

“The significance of the coup will depend on how much the scientist knew in the compartmentalized Iranian nuclear program,” said former White House counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant. “Just taking one scientist out of the program will not really disrupt it.”

No, but we do have someone who is helping us to sort things out, from the inside. The insights must be invaluable, and any information is more than we have now.

Does anyone else feel a sense of enormity about what this administration is accomplishing? It’s beginning to become more obvious as times goes on.

Kind of a rush.

By GottaLaff

Mustn’t ever try to punish the torturers, tsk tsk:

House Republicans charged Democrats with trying to sneak a provision into the intelligence authorization bill that would establish criminal punishment for CIA agents and other intelligence officials who engage in “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” during interrogations.

Seriously, who would object to that? Wait, don’t tell me. Rhymes with Shmepublicans?

Damn those ethical types who refuse to allow interrogators to murder, destroy lives, inflict pain, and damage psyches!

The provision, previously not vetted in committee, applied to “any officer or employee of the intelligence community” who during interrogations engages in beatings, infliction of pain or forced sexual acts. The bill said the acts covered by the provision would include inducing hypothermia, conducting mock executions or “depriving the [detainee] of necessary food, water, sleep, or medical care.”

The language gave Congress the discretion to determine what the terms mean, and it would have imposed punishments of up to 15 years in prison, and in some cases, life sentences if a detainee died as a result of the interrogation.

Republicans criticized the language and the way it was introduced.

I find it so amusing that, when the Rushpublics are in power, procedural tricks, sneaky late night changes, and secret meetings are perfectly acceptable.

If the Dems try to throw something into a bill, fugettaboutit:

“I’m hearing from Republicans that we are somehow sacrificing our national security” through this bill, said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). She said the language underscores existing law and enhances national security.

Because Reyes included it in his manager’s amendment, Republicans were not able to try to strike it from the bill before passage. The only recourse they had was to try to excise it during the House-Senate conference. The Senate version does not contain similar language.

More details here.