Lindsey Graham Calls Raymond Davis an “Agent”

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AFP has a report (notably picked up by Pakistan’s Dawn) on the Senate’s hand-wringing over whether we should tie aid to Pakistan to the release of Raymond Davis, the “consulate employee” who shot two alleged Pakistani spies. Here’s what Lindsey Graham had to say:

But Senator Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on Leahy’s subcommittee, strongly warned against any rollback of assistance to Pakistan, citing the need for help in the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for suspected terrorists.

“Our relationship’s got to be bigger than this,” Graham said.

“This is a friction point, this is a troubling matter, it doesn’t play well in Afghanistan. We can’t throw this agent over, I don’t know all the details, but we cannot define the relationship based on one incident because it is too important at a time when we’re making progress in Afghanistan,” he said. [my emphasis]

Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey! Under Ben Cardin’s proposed law criminalizing leaks (and, frankly, under existing law), you could go to jail for such honesty. Good thing you have immunity as a member of Congress.

Though in the spirit of Bob Novak–who claimed to be thinking of a political professional running congressional campaigns in Dick Cheney’s state when he called Valerie Plame an “operative”–I suppose Graham could claim he just thought Davis serves some kind of service employee at the consulate, one of the “agents” that help with visas or some such nonsense.

Not that that’ll help the tensions over this incident in Pakistan at all.

Stuxnet: The Curious Incident of the Second Certificate

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“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle (Silver Blaze)

[From ew: William Ockham, who knows a whole lot more about coding than I, shared some interesting thoughts with me about the Stuxnet virus. I asked him to share those thoughts it into a post. Thanks to him for doing so!]

The key to unraveling the mystery of Stuxnet is understanding the meaning of a seemingly purposeless act by the attackers behind the malware. Stuxnet was first reported on June 17, 2010 by VirusBlokAda, an anti-virus company in Belarus. On June 24, VirusBlokAda noticed that two of the Stuxnet components, Windows drivers named MrxCls.sys and MrxNet.sys, were signed using the digital signature from a certificate issued to Realtek Semiconductor. VirusBlokAda immediately notified Realtek and on July 16, VeriSign revoked the Realtek certificate. The very next day, a new Stuxnet driver named jmidebs.sys appeared, but this one was signed with a certificate from JMicron Technology. This new Stuxnet driver had been compiled on July 14. On July 22, five days after the new driver was first reported, VeriSign revoked the JMicron certificate.

The question I want to explore is why the attackers rolled out a new version of their driver signed with the second certificate. This is a key question because this is the one action that we know the attackers took deliberately after the malware became public. It’s an action that they took at a time when there was a lot of information asymmetry in their favor. They knew exactly what they were up to and the rest of us had no clue. They knew that Stuxnet had been in the wild for more than a year, that it had already achieved its primary goal, and that it wasn’t a direct threat to any of the computers it was infecting in July 2010. Rolling out the new driver incurred a substantial cost, and not just in monetary terms. Taking this action gave away a lot of information. Understanding why they released a driver signed with a second certificate will help explain a lot of other curious things in the Stuxnet saga.

It’s easy to see why they signed their drivers the first time. Code signing is designed to prove that a piece of software comes from a known entity (using public key infrastructure) and that the software hasn’t been altered. A software developer obtains a digital certificate from a “trusted authority”. When the software is compiled, the certificate containing the developer’s unique private key is used to “sign” the code which attaches a hash to the software. When the code is executed, this hash can be used to verify with great certainty that the code was signed with that particular certificate and hasn’t changed since it was signed. Because drivers have very privileged access to the host operating system, the most recent releases of Microsoft Windows (Vista, Win7, Win2008, and Win2008 R2) won’t allow the silent installation of unsigned drivers. The Stuxnet attackers put a lot of effort into developing a completely silent infection process. Stuxnet checked which Windows version it was running on and which anti-virus software (if any) was running and tailored its infection process accordingly. The entire purpose of the Windows components of Stuxnet was to seek out installations of a specific industrial control system and infect that. To achieve that purpose, the Windows components were carefully designed to give infected users no sign that they were under attack.

The revocation of the first certificate by VeriSign didn’t change any of that. Windows will happily and silently install drivers with revoked signatures. Believe it or not, there are actually good reasons for Windows to install drivers with revoked signatures. For example, Realtek is an important manufacturer of various components for PCs. If Windows refused to install their drivers after the certificate was withdrawn, there would be a whole lot of unhappy customers.

The release of a Stuxnet driver signed with a new certificate was very curious for several reasons. As Symantec recently reported [link to large pdf], no one has recovered the delivery mechanism (the Trojan dropper, in antivirus lingo) for this driver. We don’t actually know how the driver showed up on the two machines (one in Kazakhstan and one in Russia) where it was found on July 17, 2010. This is significant because the driver is compiled into the Trojan dropper as resource. Without a new dropper, there’s no way for that version of the virus to have infected additional computers. And there is no evidence that I’m aware of that Stuxnet with the new driver ever spread to any other machines.

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Confirmed: Our Government Has Criminalized Beauty Products

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A year and a half ago, I warned that if you bought certain beauty supplies–hydrogen peroxide and acetone–you might be a terrorism suspect.

I’m going to make a wildarsed guess and suggest that the Federal Government is doing a nationwide search to find out everyone who is buying large amounts of certain kinds of beauty products. And those people are likely now under investigation as potential terrorism suspects.

Shortly thereafter, John Kyl basically confirmed that the government had been tracking certain people buying hydrogen peroxide.

Yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller did so in even more explicit terms.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller appeared to indicate for the first time Wednesday that his agency uses a provision of the PATRIOT Act to obtain information about purchases of hydrogren peroxide–a common household chemical hair bleach and antiseptic that can also be turned into an explosive.

The comment in passing by Mueller during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing was noteworthy because critics have suggested that the FBI is using a provision in the PATRIOT Act to conduct broad surveillance of sales of lawful products such as hydrogen peroxide and acetone.

“It’s been used over 380 times since 2001,” Mueller said of the so-called business records provision, also known as Section 215. “It provides us the ability to get records other than telephone toll records, which we can get through another provision of the statutes. It allows us to get records such as Fedex or UPS records….or records relating to the purchase of hydrogen peroxide, or license records—records that we would get automatically with a grand jury subpoena on the criminal side, the [Section] 215 process allows us to get on the national security side.” (Emphasis original)

Emptywheel: where you read today about the civil liberties infringements your government will confirm years from now.

What Mueller didn’t confirm, but what we can pretty much conclude at this point, is that they’ve used the 215 provision to investigate as terrorists perfectly innocent (and possibly Muslim) purchasers of beauty supplies.

Recall how I first figured out the government was using Section 215 to track beauty supplies. After DiFi blabbed that they had used Section 215 in the Najibullah Zazi case, I examined the detention motion on Zazi to see what kind of evidence they used to justify refusing him bail. It included this:

Evidence that “individuals associated with Zazi purchased unusual quantities of hydrogen and acetone products in July, August, and September 2009 from three different beauty supply stores in and around Aurora;” these purchases include:

  • Person one: a one-gallon container of a product containing 20% hydrogen peroxide and an 8-oz bottle of acetone
  • Person two: an acetone product
  • Person three: 32-oz bottles of Ion Sensitive Scalp Developer three different times

The federal government argued, in part, that Zazi had to be denied bail because three people “associated with him” bought beauty supplies “in and around Aurora.”

Last February, Zazi accepted a plea agreement and has been cooperating with investigators; the government has twice delayed his sentencing, suggesting he’s still fully cooperating. Since that time, the only people arrested for participating in the actual plot–as opposed to obstructing justice by trying to hide the evidence of Zazi’s bomb-making, with which both Zazi’s father and uncle were charged–are in NY or Pakistan.

That is, it appears that Zazi had no accomplices “in and around Aurora.”

That’s particularly interesting given that Zazi is reported to have had few close ties in the Denver area. He only moved there in January 2009, 8 months before his arrest. And both his employer and the other worshipers at his mosque describe him as keeping to himself.

Unlike most drivers at ABC, who drove eight- or nine-hour shifts, Zazi routinely worked 16-to-18-hour days, often putting in as many as 80 hours a week ferrying passengers to and from DIA. “He was a regular kind of guy, but he worked hard and he wanted money,” says Hicham Semmaml, a Moroccan-born ABC driver. “I would have never suspected any of this.”

[snip]

“He kept to himself pretty much, and he never gave any outward signs of being connected with anybody,” Gross said.

[snip]

Zazi would turn up for afternoon prayers each Friday — Islam’s holy day — parking the ABC van in the parking lot outside the sprawling brick complex with its black dome and narrow minaret. Other regular worshippers agreed that he never spoke to anyone and usually rushed off immediately once the service ended.

All the currently available evidence suggests that these three Zazi “associates” buying beauty supplies turned out to be completely innocent. That would mean that one of the reasons the government said Zazi should be held without bail (there were plenty of others) basically amounts to innocent people with some attenuated tie to Zazi buying beauty supplies.

But consider what their beauty supply purchase has exposed them to–particularly if the association involved amounts to membership in the same mosque as him. Their purchase of beauty supplies undoubtedly made them a target for further investigation, presumably FBI agents asking questions of their neighbors and employers, probably the use of other PATRIOT provisions to track their calls and emails, and possibly even a wiretap.

So these three people, because they worshiped at the same mosque as Zazi or drove an airport van but presumably in the absence of any evidence of actual friendship with him had their lives unpacked by our government because they bought a couple bottles of beauty supplies.

Themis Applies JSOC Techniques to Citizens “Extorting” from Corporate Clients

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I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of these posts, showing how Hunton & Williams asked “Themis” (the three firm team of HBGary, Palantir, and Berico Technologies) to apply counterterrorism approaches to combat First Amendment activities.

This particular installment comes from an early presentation and accompanying proposal Themis prepared for Hunton & Williams. These documents were attached to an email dated November 2, 2010 sent out by Berico Technologies’ Deputy Director. He explains that the presentation and proposal would be briefed to H&W the following day.

The Powerpoint includes a slide describing the purpose of Themis’ pitch to H&W.

Purpose: Develop a corporate information reconnaissance service to aid legal investigations through the open source collection of information on target groups and individuals that appear organized to extort specific concessions through online slander campaigns.

Now, this is in the period when H&W was only beginning to discuss the Chamber of Commerce project with Themis, long before the BoA pitch. That is, this is the period when they were discussing generalized opposition to Chamber of Commerce.

And of that they got “extortion”? “slander”?

Apparently the team members of Themis–several of whom, as veterans, would have sworn an oath to our Constitution–accepted the premise that union members and poorly financed liberals opposing the wholesale sellout of our politics to private corporations constituted “extortion” and “slander.”

These firms, two of which deny any ill will, were willing to describe political speech–the opposition of working people to the Chamber’s hijacking of our politics–as “extortion” and “slander.”

More shocking to me, though, is where the proposal uses a Special Operations model to describe what Themis planned to do for H&W. On a proposal bearing Berico Technologies’ document header, Themis places their proposed “Corporate Information Reconnaissance Cell” next to a Joint Special Operations Command F3EA “targeting cycle” with this explanation:

Team Themis will draw on our extensive operational and intelligence experience to rapidly make sense of the volumes of data we’ve collected through the application of proven analytical/targeting methodologies.  Drawing on the principles and processes developed and refined by JSOC in the “Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze” (F3EA) targeting cycle, we will develop and execute a tailored CIRC intelligence cycle suited to enable rapid identification/understanding, refined collection/detection, focused application of effects, exploitation, and analysis/assessment.

Mind you, this is just a fancy graphic for “analysis”–the kind of stuff civilians do all the time. But Themis–led by Berico Technologies in this case–decided to brand it as a JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) product, applying an American unconventional warfare model  to targeting political opponents engaging in free speech.

This is a bunch of veterans proposing to go to war against citizen activism on behalf the Chamber of Commerce and other corporations.

The proposal also highlights the JSOC experience of one Palantir team member.

He commanded multiple Joint Special Operations Command outstations in support of the global war on terror. Doug ran the foreign fighter campaign on the Syrian border in 2005 to stop the flow of suicide bombers into Baghdad and helped to ensure a successful Iraqi election. As a commander, Doug ran the entire intelligence cycle: identified high-level terrorists, planned missions to kill or capture them, led the missions personally, then exploited the intelligence and evidence gathered on target to defeat broader enemy networks.

Berico’s statement (from their CEO, Guy Filippelli, whose experience as Special Assistant to the Director of National Intelligence was also highlighted in the proposal) denied they would proactively target any Americans and spun the project itself as “consistent with industry standards for this type of work.”

Berico Technologies is a technical and analytic services firm that helps organizations better understand information critical to their core operating objectives. Our leadership does not condone or support any effort that proactively targets American firms, organizations or individuals.

[snip]

Late last year, we were asked to develop a proposal to support a law firm. Our corporate understanding was that Berico would support the firm’s efforts on behalf of American companies to help them analyze potential internal information security and public relations challenges. Consistent with industry standards for this type of work, we proposed analyzing publicly available information and identifying patterns and data flows relevant to our client’s information needs.

Yet it was Berico Technologies’ Deputy Director who sent out these documents adopting a military targeting approach for responding to citizens engaging in free speech.

Curveball: I Lied to Get Rid of Saddam

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Almost eight years after he helped start a war, the Iraqi behind the US claim that Iraq had mobile weapons labs admitted in an interview with the Guardian that he lied. (h/t Hissypit)

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

The article as a whole provides fascinating details of how the German intelligence, BND, service basically fed Curveball the details he’d need to fabricate his lies.

But I’m particularly interested in two new details he reveals. First, BND and British intelligence met with Curveball’s boss in mid-2000; the boss debunked Curveball’s claims.

Janabi claimed he was first exposed as a liar as early as mid-2000, when the BND travelled to a Gulf city, believed to be Dubai, to speak with his former boss at the Military Industries Commission in Iraq, Dr Bassil Latif.

The Guardian has learned separately that British intelligence officials were at that meeting, investigating a claim made by Janabi that Latif’s son, who was studying in Britain, was procuring weapons for Saddam.

That claim was proven false, and Latif strongly denied Janabi’s claim of mobile bioweapons trucks and another allegation that 12 people had died during an accident at a secret bioweapons facility in south-east Baghdad.

The German officials returned to confront him with Latif’s version. “He says, ‘There are no trucks,’ and I say, ‘OK, when [Latif says] there no trucks then [there are none],'” Janabi recalled.

So this is yet another well-placed Iraqi who warned western intelligence that the WMD evidence that would eventually lead to war was baseless (one George Tenet and others haven’t admitted in the past).

And Curveball describes how BND returned to his claims in 2002, then dropped it, then returned to it just before Colin Powell’s Feruary 5, 2003 speech at the UN.

We’ve known the outlines of these details before. But it sure adds to the picture of the US dialing up the intelligence it needed — however flimsy — to start a war.

The HBGary Scandal: Using Counterterrorism Tactics on Citizen Activism

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As I described on the Mike Malloy show on Friday and as Brad Friedman discusses in his post on being targeted by the Chamber of Commerce, the essence of the Chamber of Commerce/Bank of America/HBGary scandal is the use of intelligence techniques developed for use on terrorists deployed for use on citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

ThinkProgress has a post making it clear that the Chamber of Commerce’s nondenial denials don’t hold up. In this post, I’ll begin to show the close ties between the tactics HBGary’s Aaron Barr proposed to use against Wikileaks and anti-Chamber activists and those already used in counterterrorism.

Barr Says He’s Done this with Terrorists

I will get into what we know of Barr’s past intelligence work in future posts, but for the moment I wanted to look just at his reference to analysis he did on FARC. Barr’s HBGary coder, who sounds like the smartest cookie of the bunch was balking at his analysis of Anonymous for several reasons–some of them ethical, some of them cautionary, and some of them technical. In the middle of an argument over whether what Barr was doing had any technical validity (the coder said it did not), Barr explained.

The math is already working out. Based on analysis I did on the FARC I was able to determine that Tanja (the dutch girl that converted to the FARC is likely managing a host of propoganda profiles for top leaders. I was able to associate key supporters technically to the FARC propoganda effort.

He’s referring to Tanja Anamary Nijmeijer, a Dutch woman who has been an active FARC member for a number of years. And while it’s not proof that Barr did his analysis on Nijmeijer for the government, she was indicted in the kidnapping of some American contractors last December and the primary overt act the indictment alleged her to have committed was in a propaganda function.

On or about July 25, 2003, JOSE IGNACIO GONZALEZ PERDOMO, LUIS ALBERTO JIMENEZ MARTINEZ, and TANJA ANAMARY NIJMEIJER, and other conspirators, participated in making a proof of life video of the three American hostages. On the video, the FARC announced that the “three North American prisoners” will only be released by the FARC once the Colombian government agrees to release all FARC guerrillas in Colombian jails in a “prisoner exchange” to take place “in a large demilitarized area.” The proof of life video was then disseminated to media outlets in the United States.

In any case, Barr is referring to an ongoing investigation conducted by the Miami and Counterterrorism Section of DOJ, with assistance from the DNI.

His “proof” that this stuff works is that it has worked in the past (he claims) in an investigation of Colombian (and Dutch) terrorists.

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Senior Officials Wave Their SIGINT Around

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You’ve probably already read this story detailing how Hosni Mubarak used his 18 day delay in resigning to rob the Egyptian people. While the whole thing is worth a read, I wanted to point out how a senior Western intelligence official makes a point of revealing that we’ve been aware of conversations among Mubarak’s thieving family members.

But a senior Western intelligence source claimed that Mubarak had begun moving his fortune in recent weeks.

“We’re aware of some urgent conversations within the Mubarak family about how to save these assets,” said the source, “And we think their financial advisers have moved some of the money around. If he had real money in Zurich, it may be gone by now.” [my emphasis]

The reference to “urgent conversations” seems to suggest they were actually listening in on them. (It also raises the question of why we didn’t try to stop Mubarak from stealing the money, but I think we know the answer to that question.)

That’s similar to the way another senior official–this one identified as American–brags to CNN about the satellites we’re using to collect intelligence in Egypt. (h/t Tim Shorrock)

As the Obama administration reacted, Washington was using a variety of intelligence assets to see what was happening in Cairo and other Egyptian cities, CNN has learned.

The U.S. military and intelligence community are using “national technical means” in the sky over Egypt to gather information about the demonstrations and the deployment of Egyptian security forces.

The phrase “national technical means” is used by the U.S. government to generally refer to the use of reconnaissance satellites to gather imagery or signals intelligence.

A senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the operation confirmed the intelligence-gathering but declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

The official declined to say to what extent the Egyptian government is aware of the activity. The official would not say specifically which intelligence-gathering elements were being used but indicated that operations were being conducted in a manner that would not be visible to the Egyptian populace.

The official said the decision to use intelligence-gathering assets came in part after violence erupted in the early days of the Cairo demonstrations. [my emphasis]

Now, it should surprise no one to know that the US has been collecting signals intelligence from Egypt. We would be focusing on Egypt anyway because of our Israeli and counterterrorism interests. And SIGINT will undoubtedly be more important as our relationship with Omar Suleiman shifts along with his position in the government. But normally it’s considered polite not to admit to using SIGINT so blatantly.

What seems to be a key intent of these public admissions of our spying is to disclose to whom we were listening–Mubarak’s family (and presumably other top officials)–and why we shifted our normal focus away from counterterrorism targets–because of Egyptian security forces had used violence against protesters.

In other words, this seems to be a message to top officials in Egypt–both Mubarak and our partners in Egypt’s military–that we’ve shifted our gaze away from counterterrorism and onto the government itself.

I thought we weren’t supposed to tell the people we were eavesdropping on that we were doing so?

The CIA IG Report on Renditions

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There are a couple of details I want to return to in this AP story on what has happened to those responsible for CIA’s biggest fuck-ups and crimes.

One is this discussion of the CIA Inspector General’s report on “erroneous” renditions.

While the inspector general was investigating the mishandled el-Masri case, congressional investigators discovered several other CIA renditions that seemed to rest on bad legal footing, a U.S. intelligence official said. The CIA looked into them and conceded that, yes, the renditions had been based on faulty analysis.

But the agency said the renditions would have been approved even if the correct analysis had been used, so nobody was disciplined.

Now, we’ve heard of this investigation before. References to it (but no details) appear in a lot of the documents or Vaughn Indices released as part of the torture and ghost detainee FOIAs (often in the form of Congress nagging the CIA for the results of the study). The most detailed early description of the investigation comes from a 2005 Dana Priest article that was also one of the earliest detailed description of Khaled el-Masri’s treatment.

The CIA inspector general is investigating a growing number of what it calls “erroneous renditions,” according to several former and current intelligence officials.

One official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose identities were offered by al Qaeda figures during CIA interrogations, officials said. One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the al Qaeda member a bad grade, one official said.

“They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many, many cases there was only some vague association” with terrorism, one CIA officer said.

Priest reviews several of the people rendered by the CIA but ultimately dumped in Gitmo which served–one of Priest’s sources explains–as the dumping ground for CIA’s mistakes.

Among those released from Guantanamo is Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian citizen, apprehended by a CIA team in Pakistan in October 2001, then sent to Egypt for interrogation, according to court papers. He has alleged that he was burned by cigarettes, given electric shocks and beaten by Egyptian captors. After six months, he was flown to Guantanamo Bay and let go earlier this year without being charged.

Another CIA former captive, according to declassified testimony from military tribunals and other records, is Mohamedou Oulad Slahi, a Mauritanian and former Canada resident, who says he turned himself in to the Mauritanian police 18 days after the 9/11 attacks because he heard the Americans were looking for him. The CIA took him to Jordan, where he spent eight months undergoing interrogation, according to his testimony, before being taken to Guantanamo Bay.

Another is Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian imprisoned by Indonesia authorities in January 2002 after he was heard talking — he says jokingly — about a new shoe bomb technology. He was flown to Egypt for interrogation and returned to CIA hands four months later, according to one former intelligence official. After being held for 13 months in Afghanistan, he was taken to Guantanamo Bay, according to his testimony.

Note Habib is one of the former detainees whose treatment at the hand of Omar Suleiman has come under new scrutiny given Suleiman’s role in a post-Mubarak Egypt.

Now, the AP piece doesn’t provide many new details, but two are worthy of note.

First, apparently Congress identified the erroneous renditions, not the CIA. That suggests the CIA was not forthcoming in admitting its mistakes to Congress (which is about par for the course).

But I’m interested too in the conclusion:the renditions had been based “on faulty analysis” but they would have been approved even if “the correct analysis” was used.

That suggests Inspector General John Helgerson, not long after CIA had finagled a way to limit his conclusions about torture, focused on just the analysis–presumably, the approval process–that went into the rendition. I’m not sure what that means, but looking back at Priest’s description of the problem behind “erroneous” renditions–notably, its reliance on torture-induced evidence from al Qaeda detainees–I wonder whether Helgerson assessed the actual facts behind the rendition, or just whether the rendition, using those faulty facts, would have been approved according to the right decision process. That is, I wonder whether the CIA decided that the disappearances that even it considers were wrong didn’t matter so much because they didn’t evaluate the lies and misinformation their torture program had introduced into the process by which they chose people to disappear.

That is, it appears CIA has labeled its disappearances simply a matter of flawed bureaucracy rather than a clear example of the problems that result when you eliminate due process.

HBGary Fees: “Dam It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta”

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One of the more interesting documents on HBGary et al’s partnership with the Chamber of Commerce details the prices they wanted to charge. Now, other emails make it clear that the Chamber balked at what the team originally proposed would be $2 million of work–the Chamber didn’t pay these rates (indeed, they probably haven’t paid for any of this).

But I was particularly interested in what HBGary’s Aaron Barr proposed charging for the work of what they called a “Social Media SME.”

Social media sme ($250 per hour) – experienced in social media link analysis. Personna development. Content management. Social media exploitation techniques.

This is a social media consultant, someone we know from the team’s plans they intended to deploy on Facebook and Twitter in false personas ultimately aiming to destroy the credibility of anti-Chamber activists.

These are just reasonably skilled trolls.

And for that, they wanted to charge $2,000 a day.

To put it in even more stark perspective, consider one ultimate target of the campaign: the men and women SEIU organizes pushing back against the anti-worker policies of the Chamber. Many of these workers–the kind of people who keep your building clean or care for you when you’re sick—make as little $12/hour or less (though the wages for nurses and other skilled medical care providers are higher).

These corporate spook assholes–in addition to targeting Americans for political activism–also think they’re worth 20 times as much as the people who care for the sick.

As the Palantir employee working with Barr on these numbers put it, “Most of all that we are the best money can buy! Dam it feels good to be a gangsta…..”

Look Forward, and Promote the Torturers

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There’s Matt, who froze Gul Rahman to death in the Salt Pit. Paul, his boss and the CIA Station Chief of Afghanistan, who ignored Matt’s requests for more help at the prison. There’s Albert, who staged a mock execution of Rahim al-Nashiri, and his boss, Ron, the Station Chief in Poland, who witnessed the forbidden technique and did nothing to stop it. There’s Frances, the analyst who was certain that Khaled el-Masri had to be the terrorist with a similar name, and Elizabeth, the lawyer who approved Frances’ decision to have el-Masri rendered and tortured. There’s Steve, the CIA guy who interrogated Manadel al-Jamadi and, some say, effectively crucified him. There’s Gerry Meyer, the Baghdad station chief, and his deputy, Gordon, who permitted the ghost detainee system in Iraq. And of course, there’s Jennifer Matthews, the Khost station chief who ignored warnings about Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi that might have prevented his attack (and her own death).

These are the CIA officers responsible for the Agency’s biggest known fuck-ups and crimes since 9/11.

The AP has a story tracking what happened to those officers. And it finds that few were held accountable, particularly not senior officers, and even those who were reprimanded have continued to prosper in the agency.

In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, officers who committed serious mistakes that left people wrongly imprisoned or even dead have received only minor admonishments or no punishment at all, an Associated Press investigation has revealed.

[snip]

Though Obama has sought to put the CIA’s interrogation program behind him, the result of a decade of haphazard accountability is that many officers who made significant missteps are now the senior managers fighting the president’s spy wars.

The AP investigation of the CIA’s actions revealed a disciplinary system that takes years to make decisions, hands down reprimands inconsistently and is viewed inside the agency as prone to favoritism and manipulation. When people are disciplined, the punishment seems to roll downhill, sparing senior managers even when they were directly involved in operations that go awry.

Paul–the guy who let the inexperienced Matt freeze Gul Rahman to death–is now chief of the Near East Division.

Ron–who watched Albert stage a forbidden mock execution–now heads the Central European Division.

Albert–who staged the mock execution–was reprimanded, left the CIA, but returned to the CIA as a contractor involved in training officers.

Frances–who insisted Khaled el-Masri be rendered and tortured–was not disciplined and now heads the CIA’s “Global Jihad” unit.

Elizabeth–the lawyer who approved el-Masri’s rendition–was disciplined, but has since been promoted to the legal adviser to the Near East Division.

Steve was reprimanded–not for his interrogation of al-Janabi, but for not having him seen by a doctor. He retired and is back at CIA as a contractor.

Gordon–the Deputy at the Baghdad station at the time of the worst torture–was temporarily barred from working overseas and sent to training; he’s now in charge of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Department of the Counterterrorism Center.

And, as the AP notes, several of these people are now among Obama’s key counter-terrorism advisors. (Of course, John Brennan, who oversaw targeting for Dick Cheney’s illegal wiretap program, is his top counter-terrorism advisor.)

No wonder Obama has no problem pushing our Egyptian torturer, Omar Suleiman, to lead Egypt. It’s completely consistent with our own practice of promoting our own torturers.