God save the King as Her Majesty Rules India!CIA chief to visit India, LeT, Afghanistan on agenda!NRI to head CIA's South Asia arm!
Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time -Two Hundred TWO
Palash Biswas
Raj Preserved itself for time INFINITE as soon as POONA Pact was signed and the so called Independence of India was eventually only the Power Transfer to the Brahamin Bania Raj which has been trnsformed into CORPORATE LPG Mafia Formate in Post Modern Manusmriti Apartheid Raj.
Raj preserved even after Transfer of Poweras DECOLONISATION so hyped in contemporary History written by Ruling Hegemony, in fact, Never Happened.Not anywhere in this DIVIDED Bleeding Geopolitics.
KGB and CIA fought the Proxy war in Power Politics until SOVIET Disintegration and everyone knew about it. But CONITNUITY of Raj has never been EXPOSED and the SUBVERSION was the best ELEMENT of Colony whch continues even today making Indian Ocean the WAR and Civil war Zone with STRATEGIC Realliance in US Israel lead. OFFICIAL History of M 15 shows how NEHRU sustained the British Raj and allowed M15 to stop Communism. so much so that M15 did try its best to get RID of the Communist KGB backed VK menon. We never know who SAVED Nehru at the cost of Krishna Menon after Sino Indo war in 1962.But CIA, KGB and M15 played their role to preserve the Raj, which has just AMERICANISED with Zionist Link deleting the Communist element. Ruling Hegemony identifies its existence with the Preservation Of Raj sustaining Manusmriti Apartheid rule.
Maoists getting arms from China, it is Officially decalred now. On the other hand,CIA chief to visit India, LeT, Afghanistan on agenda!In line with growing intelligence cooperation between the two countries, CIA director Leon Panetta is slated to fly down to India in the next couple of weeks for discussions with top security officials here.
The visit comes at a time when Indian and US officials are working closely on revelations from investigations into the David Coleman Headley case where the role of the Lashkar-e-Toiba has once again strengthened New Delhi's case for stronger action against the LeT leadership, particularly Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.Indian Express reports.
NRI to head CIA's South Asia arm!Sumit Ganguly, who currently holds the Rabindranath Tagore [ Images ] Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilisations will soon be appointed the first National Intelligence Officer of the newly-formed South Asia Bureau in the National Intelligence Council, an appendage of the Central Intelligence Agency.
We know well about the Internal Security Hand Over to CIA and Mossad in South Asia. We know very little about KGB and M-15 activities undercover. India is, in fact, Never been DECOLONISED or Decoupled!We still breathe in COMMONWEALTH and the Queen, her Majesty heads the Commonwealth. We are so much so the part and parcel of commonwealth that Indian Capital, New delhi has to be remodelled and replanned for the Commonwealth Games 2010.
Ganguly, also a professor of political science and director of the Indian Studies Program at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the first Indian-American to serve in the NIC.
The NIC is the intelligence community's centre for mid-term and long-term strategic thinking.
Its National Intelligence Estimates on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence (the head of the CIA) are the most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues.
The estimates also contain the coordinated judgments of the intelligence community regarding the likely course of future events.
The NIC claims that its goal is to provide the president and policymakers with the best, unvarnished, and unbiased information-- regardless of whether analytic judgments conform to US policy or not.
Although much of its work is for internal use, it also produces or commissions unclassified reports.
The primary functions of NIOs' are to advise the head of the CIA, interact regularly with senior intelligence consumers, produce top-quality estimative intelligence, engage with outside experts, help assess the capabilities and needs of the intelligence community's analytic producers and promote collaboration among them on strategic warning, advanced analytic tools and methodologies.
The GERP program, according to its website, 'enables senior government leaders to draw upon the best expertise the US has available, both inside and outside the intelligence community,' but contains the caveat that the program is 'not about being James Bond' [ Images ].
Intelligence sources told rediff.com that Ganguly's name was on a short list along with some leading high profile South Asia experts but that the latter had declined the full-time job, which is said to be for a minimum of two years.
Ganguly, who returned only last week from a two-week trip to China and India, did not want to comment on his still to be formalised appointment.
Before joining Indiana University, Ganguly was on the faculty of James Madison College of Michigan State University, Hunter College of the City University of New York and the University of Texas at Austin. He has also taught at Columbia University in New York City.
He has been a Fellow and a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.
Ganguly's extensive research and writing focused on South Asia has been supported by grants from the Asia Foundation, the Ford [ Images ] Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the W Alton Jones Foundation.
He is the author, editor or co-editor of some 10 books on South Asia ranging from The Crisis of Kashmir [ Images ]: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace to Fearful Symmetry: India and Pakistan Under the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons.
Meanwhile,in a first such comment by any Indian official, union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai Sunday said he was 'sure' that Maoist guerrillas in India were acquiring weapons from China.
The leftist guerrillas follow 'the philosophy of Marxism and Leninism and have their own brand of ideology. The Chinese are large suppliers of small arms and I am sure the Maoists get it from them', Pillai told reporters here.
Pillai did not elaborate whether the Maoists were getting arms from Chinese arms smugglers or official agencies.
Asked whether the government had any information if the Maoists' links with China went beyond arms, he said: 'You should ask them (Maoists).'
Pillai had earlier linked Indian leftist insurgents with those in Nepal. But he maintained that there was no clear evidence about the Nepali Maoists assisting or providing arms to their Indian counterparts.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavorv and his British counterpart David Miliband today expressed the hope that their talks here will help improve ties between the two countries marred by a series of disputes recently.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today said attempts to justify repressions during the Stalinist regime on the pretext of ultimate state interests were unacceptable.
Pranab Dhal Samanta reports in Indian Express:
Also, sources said, the two sides need to carry forward their conversation on Afghanistan with the election impasse having ended in incumbent Hamid Karzai's favour. Indian assets in Afghanistan remain under constant threat just as US installations. There have been efforts to target the missions of both the countries in Kabul.
Significantly, the visit is planned for November 20-22, before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leaves for Washington on a state visit. Both sides have been exploring ways to intensify counter-terror cooperation through deeper interaction between intelligence and security agencies.
India was Panetta's first destination when he assumed office earlier this year. This is his second visit and he is expected to discuss ways of expanding intelligence sharing, which is vital for India given that US agencies are well entrenched in Pakistan.
During his stay, Panetta is expected to meet Home Minister P Chidambaram. Besides, he will hold detailed talks with National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, RAW chief K C Verma and director of Intelligence Bureau (I
Rajiv Mathur.
Though an IB team is in the US these days for gathering more details on the Headley case from an Indian standpoint, sources said, India would like to hear from the CIA director his assessment of the case, the overall situation in Pakistan and the activities of anti-India terror groups like the LeT.
The CIA has been pushing for stepping up cooperation with India from a larger standpoint of fashioning US response to the region, be it Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Myanmar. China, sources added, is another important country on which both sides would exchange notes.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20091107/804/tnl-cia-chief-to-visit-india-let-afghani_1.html
Qaeda feels unsafe near Pakistan border - CIA chief
Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:58pm IST
By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leaders no longer feel safe in Afghan-Pakistan border areas, where they face heavy U.S. and Pakistani pressure and their local welcome has worn out, CIA chief Michael Hayden said on Thursday.
Hayden's comments to reporters as he prepares to leave his post underscored a growing Bush administration confidence that al Qaeda's leadership has been crippled, partly by a military campaign that Washington does not acknowledge.
Hayden also said in the wide-ranging discussion he believed Iran was nearing a decision on whether to proceed with development of a nuclear weapon.
He stood by his defense of CIA waterboarding and said that regardless of whether the agency's harsh interrogations will be judged worth the widespread condemnation, they worked.
"The agency did none of this out of enthusiasm. It did it out of duty, and it did it with the best legal advice," he said. "I am convinced that the program got the maximum amount of information. ... I just can't conceive of any other way."
Hayden said a disappointment of his 2 1/2-year term was that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was still at large. But he said bin Laden and top lieutenants were no longer secure in the Pakistan mountain hide-outs believed to be hiding them.
"The great danger was that -- I'm going to use a little euphemism here -- the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan was a safe haven for al Qaeda," Hayden said. "It is my belief that the senior leadership of al Qaeda today believes that it is neither safe, nor a haven. That is a big deal in defending the United States."
An audio message from bin Laden this week may have been intended in part simply to show he was still alive, Hayden suggested.
http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-37476020090116
CIA's Eye on South Asia
This book offers an insight into the working of the world's foremost spy agency through various reports presented to top US officials from 1951-2001.
These previously secret CIA reports have become available largely because of a recent Presidential Executive order which ushered in a golden era of declassification in the United States. Unlikely all other foreign intelligence agencies, the Central Intelligence Agency undertakes large-scale declassification. In about a decade, the Agency screened about 95 million records - mostly held in the Agency Archives and Records Center in Langley - and released 30 million of them. This treasure trove of information contains plenty of material on South Asia.
Reproduced in this book are the reports on India's policy through the Nehru-Shastri-Indira-Morarji-Rajiv-Gowda years, drifts in Pakistan's external outlook, the question of US military aid to Pakistan, India-China War of 1962, politics of undivided Communist Party of India, the Soviet policy toward Kashmir, the Bangladesh war, South Asia power matrix, nuclear proliferation in the region, Emergency in India, Islamic economy drive under Zia-ul-Haq, Rajiv Gandhi's handling of a major espionage scandal, the BJP's orientation - and numerious other dispatches.
Especially narrated by the author is the story of India's biggest spy scandal, which tarnished the image of no less than a former Prime Minister and two Deputy Prime Ministers. The author pieces together the account of how a cabinet minister, and a CIA operative, wrecked India's plan to annihilate Pakistan in 1971.
Contents:
1. Early Assessments (1951-1964)
2. India-China Relations
3. Crisis in Kashmir
4. Birth of Bangladesh
5. Nuclear Proliferation
6. Regional Politics
7. Later Assessments (1974-2001)
Author: Anuj Dhar
ISBN: 978-81-7049-3464
Pages: 492
http://www.lancerpublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=633
The Defence of the Realm, By Christopher Andrew
Reviewed by Susan Williams
Friday, 16 October 2009
The fact that this is not so much "a" history of MI5 as "the authorized history" is underlined by its sombre black jacket, which gives it the appearance of a British government document. In a very real sense, it is. For although the book has been commercially published and Christopher Andrew is an academic historian, it was commissioned by MI5. Once he had been appointed to the post of official historian, the book was written on MI5 premises.
This is a centenary history, starting with the founding of the security service in 1909. In the following year, MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) were created as separate services. Andrew engagingly charts the evolution of MI5 through two world wars, the Cold War, and now the war against fundamentalist terrorists.
Inevitably, the agency's focus has shifted from counter-espionage and counter-subversion to counter-terrorism. What hasn't changed is its clandestine nature. The existence of MI5 was not acknowledged officially until 1979, when Mrs Thatcher unmasked Sir Anthony Blunt as the Fourth Man in a statement to the Commons.
MI5 has to tread a wire: it needs to be secret to protect parliamentary democracy, but is under pressure to be as transparent as possible. This has led to an uneasy compromise. Andrew was given unrestricted access to almost 400,000 files, but most are referenced only as "Security Service Archives" and closed to the rest of us.
This puts him in a difficult position: if he can't share his key sources, he must ask his readers to take his analysis on trust. We have only limited means of evaluating MI5's official view, as transmitted by Andrew, on various critical issues – such as the "Wilson plot" of the 1970s or the "Death on the Rock" episode in Gibraltar in 1988.
Publicity material for the book has filled newspapers with stories of double agents and courageous derring-do. But what also emerges from these pages is a fascinating picture of MI5 as a tightly-knit institution, thriving on its atmosphere of secrecy. "No one, not even our own families, should be told where we worked or for whom," was the firm instruction to a new employee in 1931. Morale sank after the end of the Cold War and the Good Friday agreement of 1998, which led to massive cutbacks. But after 9/11, there was a rapid expansion of staff and a renewed sense of purpose.
The Service had a choral society, which takes its name "The Oberon Singers" from Oberon's words in A Midsummer Night's Dream – "We are invisible, we will o'er hear their conference." It also had a cricket team and cricket imagery frequently appears in correspondence. "So the first XI of MI5 is to play the Mau Mau," commented the head of the Overseas Division when MI5 officers were sent to Kenya in 1952.
The Service did not advertise openly for recruits before 1997: until then, recruitment was based on personal recommendation. This was a narrow social group, many of whom had served in India or elsewhere in the Empire.
Male officers listed their recreations as cricket and hunting, while women were graduates of elite schools and universities. Women have always played an important role in MI5 and two recent Director Generals have been female – Stella Rimington, one of the first women agent-runners, and Eliza Manningham-Buller.
Right up to the mid-1970s, the post-war Service refused to recruit Jews on the grounds that a dual loyalty to both Britain and Israel might create a conflict of interest. This was "inexcusable", Andrew rightly observes. So too was the attitude to black people of Guy Liddell, Deputy Director General. "It was true," he told the Joint Intelligence Committee in 1949, "that niggers coming here often went to the C[ommunist] P[arty]." There was no doubt in his mind that "West African natives are wholly unfitted for self-rule."
Shockingly, the Service carried out secret surveillance of the colonial delegations which came to London to discuss terms for independence in the 1950s and 1960s. Andrew gives a disturbing account of the stealthy gathering of intelligence on the delegates attending conferences which negotiated the independence of Cyprus and Kenya. The Home Secretary, Rab Butler, cynically condoned these operations on the grounds that "obviously the product was of great importance and of great value to the government negotiators".
In most of the Empire, claims Andrew, MI5 contributed to a smooth transfer of power through the work of its liaison officers. But Guyana, where Churchill wanted to "break the Communist teeth", was a shameful exception. Here, MI5 supported British and American covert action to oust the democratically-elected Cheddi Jagan from power. Andrew claims that the Service was not "directly" involved and that the dominant intelligence agency in the years leading up to independence in 1966 was the CIA. But neither point exculpates MI5 or, more pertinently, the British government.
The Service has had some remarkable achievements, notably the Double-Cross System of the Second World War, which fed disinformation to the Germans. For the most part, however, it is difficult to measure MI5's success, since it can only be judged by things which do not happen – like the prevention of sabotage.
But it seems astonishing that it was not until 1951, as the result of the decrypt of a KGB telegram, that any of the Cambridge Five – all MI5 or MI6 employees, recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s to become spies for the Soviet Union – were identified. The decrypt took the Service completely by surprise and began the most drawn-out investigation in its history, taking over 30 years to complete.
The thousand pages of this book are brimming with some wonderful details. But many could be pruned – like the fact that the first Director's garden contained "400 rose trees and a grass tennis court". This would make room, perhaps, for a fuller account of the human factor in spying.
What was the intellectual and psychological motivation of the staff of MI5? – not only of the spies, agent-runners, and codebreakers, but those who steamed open envelopes and eavesdropped on telephone conversations. How did they feel about deceit?
The Defence of the Realm is a valuable and important contribution to our understanding of the 20th century. But an official history can only do so much, especially of an organisation that is inherently secret. In this hazy world of smoke, mirrors and lies – where actual conspiracies are barely distinguishable from conspiracy theories – we also need the scrutiny of genuinely independent investigators, such as Robin Ramsay, the maverick editor of the journal Lobster, and of unofficial historians. It will be interesting to compare The Defence of the Realm with the authorised history of MI6, which is set to follow next year.
Susan Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Her latest book is 'Colour Bar' (Penguin)
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-defence-of-the-realm-by-christopher-andrew-1803266.html
November 4, 2009
CIA Clash: The Left Assaults Langley--Again
by Peter Brookes
You would think with hot wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and on Terror, the Left would rule out declaring war on the Central Intelligence Agency, too, one of this country's key intelligence collection and analysis organizations.
But, in fact, it has not.
The Left--led by the Obama White House and congressional Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi--has gone to general quarters with the shadowy agency, whose roots stretch back to the heroism of World War II's Office of Strategic Services.
This onslaught comes despite its negative impact on CIA morale, the agency's leadership and intelligence operations that bolster our national security, including senior-level decision-making and our brave war-fighters in the field.
This is not the first time the Left has gone to battle stations with the CIA, leading to disastrous consequences for our intelligence capabilities, especially human intelligence (HUMINT), not to mention our national interests.
But perhaps no days were darker than the 1970s.
Carter Cuts
Following an inquisition into CIA activities by the Democrat-led, congressional Church Commission (1975-1976), an effort that would have made Torquemada smile and the Soviet KGB titter, presidential candidate Jimmy Carter put Langley squarely in his sights.
Like President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who said gentlemen do not read others' mail, candidate Carter expressed concerns about the CIA's cloak-and-dagger past, especially covert action.
Once in office, Carter got busy. Working with his Annapolis classmate and new CIA chief, Adm. Stansfield Turner, he took a knife to the agency's HUMINT (or operations) directorate, its core competency--and the real reason the organization existed.
Dubbed the "Halloween Massacre," Turner gutted some 20 percent of the CIA's clandestine service (reportedly some 800 operatives), preferring instead to focus on high-tech intelligence collection such as satellites.
While high-tech is great, sometimes low-tech is what it takes.
For instance, while an imagery (photo) satellite can tell you a high-level meeting is taking place at a dacha in the Moscow countryside by the Soviet "luxury" Zil limousines parked on the compound, it will not tell you everything. Sure, Soviet leaders are huddling, but you will not know from those pictures what was said over dinner or endless shots of vodka. For that you need a spy--either to be there, get it second-hand from an asset or arrange the placement of a listening device.
But lacking human assets to steal state secrets, Carter and Turner almost assured Washington would be blindsided by international events that might otherwise have been foreseen. And that is exactly what happened.
Perhaps, most notably, was the 1979 Iranian revolution. The upheaval led not only to the overthrow of the pro-American Shah, replacing him with today's radical Islamic regime, but to the holding more than 50 Americans from the U.S. embassy hostage for 444 days.
Carter's cuts also came home to roost when the intelligence community was largely caught unawares by the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan the same year, potentially threatening the U.S. position in the Middle East and energy supplies.
Among some now-retired CIA operatives from the era, Carter and Turner evoke the same response as Jane Fonda does with some Vietnam vets, especially former POWs. Their sentiments certainly are not printable here.
Following a bolstering of agency HUMINT capabilities during the Reagan years for opposing the Soviets around the world, especially Afghanistan, the agency suffered cutbacks--again--under the next Democratic administration to take office.
ClintonComplacency
Believing we had earned a peace dividend with the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Clinton administration began redirecting and slimming U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
Beginning in 1993, looking to direct funding toward domestic programs such as universal health care, the Clinton White House cut the CIA's clandestine work force while closing overseas embassies, stations and bases.
According to the 9/11 Commission, which looked at intelligence shortcomings in the run-up to the horrific attack in its study, to meet emergency contingencies, CIA officers were shifted--temporarily--from one hot spot to another to fill shortages. These stop-gap measures did fill manpower holes, but not always with officers qualified in the language or with regional expertise.
Due to the complexity of the work, it usually takes five or more years of spy training, language and regional study, and street experience to qualify a newly recruited CIA operations officer for field work. The low-point came in 1995, when only 25 new case officers joined the spy service, ensuring continued shortages of qualified intelligence officers.
Because of these cuts, U.S. HUMINT also began to rely heavily on friendly (and previously unfriendly) intelligence services, including the former Soviet KGB and GRU (Russian military intelligence).
While this, in some cases, improved counter-intelligence, leading to the arrest of some Americans spying against their own country, it also left us reliant on the judgment of other governments for some foreign intelligence.
This is a risky proposition.
Intelligence officials will tell you there is really no such thing as a "friendly" intelligence service. No one tells you all of his secrets; some of it might even be purposefully misleading. It becomes your job to figure out what is fact and what is fiction.
In addition, smacking of the Carter-era human rights national security focus, the Clinton team injected a "holier-than-thou" attitude into the world's second-oldest profession. It called for a stable cleaning of any assets with a shady present or past in a move now referred to as the "Deutch Doctrine" after the then-Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutch.
Of course, this increased the difficulty of getting "privileged information" since a lot of spies were cut loose, making analysis more difficult. Agency officers began to wonder if they could actually recruit Mother Theresa-types to spy for the United States against their countries?
Believing a new dawn had broken, the White House also broadened the definition of national security to include environmental and economic issues, diverting already scarce resources from critical--and often on-the-boil--subject matters.
The intelligence community, including the CIA, was dinged for some earth-shaking events during the Clinton years such failing to predict the timing of India and Pakistan's nuclear breakout and the advanced stage of North Korea's long-range ballistic missile capabilities.
On the terror front, the U.S. missed the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed nearly 20 American servicemen, the al Qaeda bombing of the American embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole attack in Yemen, which cost the lives of almost 20 U.S. sailors.
Of course, worst of all, many judged that a shortage of CIA (and FBI) HUMINT capabilities and resources was central to events that led to the horrors of 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland since the strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Despite this, the Left still has the CIA in its crosshairs.
Left's Latest Lunges
The Left's newest assault on Langley came this year after Barack Obama won the White House. But while Obama expressed concerns about the CIA during the 2008 campaign, the first salvo actually came from Congress, not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
It started in May, with onedoozy of a case of "he said, she said." Speaker Pelosi and White House-appointed CIA Director Leon Panetta began a public tiff about "who told whom what when" regarding the interrogation of al Qaeda terrorists.
Pelosi claimed the CIA misled Congress about the use of coercive techniques (e.g., water-boarding) on senior al Qaeda operatives when it briefed the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence back in the War on Terror's early years.
The CIA--and a host of others--claimed that it was not so and that then-not-yet-Speaker Pelosi (and Congress) were advised of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques against top al Qaeda types as far back as 2002.
Defending the agency, Panetta said CIA briefers dealt with lawmakers honestly but ultimately it would be up to members of Congress to make their own judgments about what transpired at the classified briefings.
President Obama, the ostensible leader of the Democratic Party and a main consumer of CIA intelligence as commander in chief, said nothing about the matter, but he surely could not be pleased about the public dissension within his senior political ranks.
It gets worse. The next salvo came over the CIA's transom a few months later--this time from the Obama Justice Department.
In August, the Obama administration released a previously classified 2004 CIA Inspector General (IG) report on the interrogation activities of nearly a dozen employees and contractors for the period 2002-2003.
The report's release coincided with the decision of Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to look into possible misdeeds in the CIA's questioning of high-value terrorists such as 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
While Obama claimed he was unaware of the decision of his personal friend and attorney general, many believe that a decision of this magnitude and potential political controversy could not have been made without the Oval Office knowing. Others point out the president is the country's chief law enforcement official and should have known of such a decision.
But strangely enough, there is no new information in the IG's report to justify a re-look. In fact, the Bush Justice Department already prosecuted a contractor based on the IG account for the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan.
Moreover, the CIA's IG report was delivered to Congress in 2004, but Capitol Hill took no action on it. The only real change was the 2008 election, which left Democrats in power at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave.
Indeed, Director Panetta, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, said the DOJ's career prosecutors worked painstakingly for years to decide on whether to prosecute - and those employees that were not prosecuted often faced CIA disciplinary action.
But, perhaps, most bizarre of all regarding this Obama administration effort to re-open the past is that the coercive interrogation techniques, which are now being re-examined, worked.
In fact, the CIA IG report states: "[T]heir interrogation has provided intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists, warned of terrorist plots planned for the United States and around the world," concluding, "[T]here is no doubt that the Program has been effective."
Supporting that assertion, the Obama administration did release a few other previously classified CIA memos, showing the interrogation of some high-value terrorists yielded information that disrupted post-9/11 attacks.
Indeed, the heavily redacted 2004-2005 memos call the interrogations a "crucial pillar of U.S. counterterrorism efforts," helping foil 9/11-style attacks planned for Los Angeles' Library Tower and London's Heathrow Airport.
In another blow to the agency's ego, the White House decided to take the lead for the interrogation of high-value detainees away from the CIA and place it under FBI, which would report directly to the White House's National Security Council.
This move is not only a slap at the CIA, but it is another roundhouse to confidence in Panetta's leadership. (Some believe Panetta will not be around much longer, giving the already-rattled CIA its sixth leader since 9/11.)
The other concern is that by putting this task under the FBI, the Obama administration is reverting to the law enforcement mentality toward terrorism that existed during Clinton's term, which some experts and analysts believe contributed to 9/11.
Unfortunately, the attacks on the CIA will not be limited to just some epithets hurled from Capitol Hill, the possible prosecution of some CIA officers for transgressions committed six or seven years ago or the shifting of responsibilities.
Clandestine Consequences
The most troubling part of these events is the impact these Left-hooks to the CIA's jaw will have on the organization and its ability and, indeed, willingness to carry out its mission without questions.
Pelosi's charges of lying will certainly chill morale at the agency. Having an entire group's integrity publicly questioned cannot do anything but diminish an organization's espirit de corps and confidence. (There is also a rich irony in being called mendacious by the political class, well known for dissembling, spinning and parsing.)
The DOJ's investigation will not help boost the mood at the agency, either, especially after Obama had made it clear in a speech at CIA earlier this year that, while he had concerns about the past, it was time for the agency to look to the future. That sentiment was greeted positively by CIA employees, many of whom have been rattled by campaign rhetoric and worried about the possibility of a Carter-era witch hunt by the Obama administration.
Of course, after executing a one-eighty with the Justice Department decision, they have to be asking themselves: What will the next policy flip-flop be?
Even worse, it was reported in September that Holder never read the key memos on the cases against the CIA officers done by Bush's Justice Department before making the decision to re-open the investigation.
It has gotten so out of hand that in mid-September, seven former CIA directors called on Obama to end the investigation, citing the potential damage to the organization and its operations. Obama responded he would not interfere in Holder's probes.
The CIA director reportedly told his employees to ignore the political white noise swirling around them and to focus on the job at hand--and rightfully so. But it will be hard for them to do that, considering the controversy swirling about them.
All of this is also a major distraction to the CIA's embattled director, who seems to be drowning in a sea of inquiries pouring into his seventh-floor Langley office from his White House and the Democratic Congress. It would seem the director has more important things to look after, such as the Iraq and Afghan wars, catching Osama bin Laden, dealing with rising Russia and China, and Iranian and North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile programs, to name a few.
Also troubling is that the re-opening of the investigation into interrogations will leave officers in the field wondering whether they should be more concerned about getting the terrorists--or getting lawyers.
It may also make them risk averse if they feel that their well-intentioned efforts in support of our national security will, instead of getting them the praise of a grateful nation, get them a subpoena. Some are buying liability insurance.
Even worse, insiders say experienced officers are heading for the doors, worried about being hauled before a congressional committee or frog-marched before a grand jury. Some gray hair around the temples is helpful--especially when you are at war.
And what about young people: Will they still want to serve their country in the CIA?
Additionally, the public release of information on interrogations will also allow al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorists to use it for propaganda purposes, allowing them to recruit new members and raise funds for training and operations.
It will also give terrorists insights into our intelligence sources and methods, potentially allowing them to resist future interrogations, which may keep us from preventing terrorist attacks and winning on the battlefield.
And lastly, the discretionary publication of national security information by the Obama administration, though heavily redacted, will also give intelligence allies and sources who spy for the United States serious pause: Why share secrets with the Americans if it is going to end up on the front page of a newspaper and all over the Internet? It could lead to embarrassment for a government or, worse yet, a swing in the gallows for an undercover asset.
Leashing the Left
Unfortunately, the Left has been yanking the chain of the national-security establishment pretty hard lately, from the on-again-off-again release of detainee-abuse photos to the publication of interrogation memos to calls for a "truth commission" from some in Congress.
This is not helpful--or right.
These events have a distasteful political dimension, too. It helps Obama distract from the disastrous health care debate, skyrocketing deficit predictions and concerns over his energy and environment agenda, among others.
It also demonizes the George W. Bush administration--always a popular pastime for the Left--providing the White House with an opportunity to unify its base, which still has not gotten its pound of Bush's flesh and is increasingly unhappy with its own White House.
Brave Americans earn our national security one tough day at a time. We cannot allow some on the Left to kick around their efforts like a political football, distracting them from the important tasks at hand.
If we do, there is sure to be a price paid--in American lives.
In the end, it is not by chance that we have not been attacked in more than eight years. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said it best, pointing out that, instead of criticizing the agency, we owe the CIA a debt of gratitude for helping keep us safe.
It is also important to note: Intelligence collection and analysis is tough enough under the best circumstances - without anyone making it harder; it is also our first line of defense.
These are sentiments that those on the Left should really consider before it goes any further--or does any more damage--to the critical work the CIA and others are doing on behalf of our national security.
Peter Brookes is a Heritage Foundation senior fellow and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense.
First Appeared in Townhall Magazine
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed110409c.cfm
