LAT: The CIA Hasn't Yet Added al-Awlaki to its Kill List

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The most interesting thing about Greg Miller’s story on whether Anwar al-Awlaki has been added to the CIA’s list of assassination targets is how it differs from the two stories already written on this subject. Miller says that al-Awlaki has not yet been added to the list.

No U.S. citizen has ever been on the CIA’s target list, which mainly names Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, according to current and former U.S. officials. But that is expected to change as CIA analysts compile a case against a Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico but now resides in Yemen.

Anwar al Awlaki poses a dilemma for U.S. counter-terrorism officials. He is a U.S. citizen and until recently was mainly known as a preacher espousing radical Islamic views. But Awlaki’s ties to November’s shootings at Ft. Hood and the failed Christmas Day airline plot have helped convince CIA analysts that his role has changed.

That accords with what ABC reported on January 25.

White House lawyers are mulling the legality of proposed attempts to kill an American citizen, Anwar al Awlaki, who is believed to be part of the leadership of the al Qaeda group in Yemen behind a series of terror strikes, according to two people briefed by U.S. intelligence officials.

One of the people briefed said opportunities to “take out” Awlaki “may have been missed” because of the legal questions surrounding a lethal attack which would specifically target an American citizen.

But not with what Dana Priest wrote on January 27.

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called “High Value Targets” and “High Value Individuals,” whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi’s name has now been added. [Update, February 17, 2010: WaPo has since retracted the report that CIA had US citizens on its kill list.]

I’d suggest Priest’s initial focus on JSOC (though Miller, too, confirms that al-Awlaki is on JSOC’s list) may explain this flurry of articles describing the government’s ultra-secret kill list(s). That is, Priest’s focus on JSOC may suggest the long-brewing turf war between JSOC and CIA on such issues is bubbling up to the surface. That also might explain the spin of the other two article. ABC’s article seems designed to force someone’s hand by painting the CIA as incompetent for missing al-Awlaki in the past. And it might explain CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano’s snippiness about the public nature of this debate.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined to comment, saying that it is “remarkably foolish in a war of this kind to discuss publicly procedures used to identify the enemy, an enemy who wears no uniform and relies heavily on stealth and deception.”

Now, whatever the differences in the article Miller doesn’t appear to have asked some of the obvious questions any more than Priest or ABC. If we haven’t even tried indicting al-Awlaki yet (particularly with all the increased presence we’ve got in Yemen to pick him up), then how do we have enough information to assassinate him? And why didn’t our vaunted surveillance system pick up this apparently growing threat from al-Awlaki?

As to what new information has come up to merit al-Awlaki’s placement on the kill list (whether CIA’s or JSOC’s)?

But it was his involvement in the two recent cases that triggered new alarms. U.S. officials uncovered as many as 18 e-mails between Awlaki and Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major accused of killing 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas. Awlaki also has been tied to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to detonate a bomb on a Detroit-bound flight.

At least on first report, the emails were not sufficiently damning to concern the FBI. Has that changed? And the phrase “Awlaki has been tied”–you’re going to put someone on a kill list using a passive construction? Really?

OPR Report Altered To Cover Bush DOJ Malfeasance

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dbamericasafeMike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman put up a post about an hour ago letting the first blood for the Obama Administration’s intentional tanking of the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) Report. In light of Obama’s focused determination to sweep the acts of the Bush Administration, no matter how malevolent, under the rug and “move forward” the report is not unexpected. However, digesting the first leak in what would appear to be a staged rollout is painful:

…an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

The news broken in the Newsweek Declassified post is huge, assuming it is accurate, and the sense is that it is. In spite of the weight of the report, the report tucks the substantive content behind the deceptively benign title “Holder Under Fire”. The subject matter is far too significant though for it to have been casually thrown out. Consider this description of the OPR finding on the nature and quality of the critical August 1, 2002 Torture Memo:

The report, which is still going through declassification, will provide many new details about how waterboarding was adopted and the role that top White House officials played in the process, say two sources who have read the report but asked for anonymity to describe a sensitive document. Two of the most controversial sections of the 2002 memo—including one contending that the president, as commander in chief, can override a federal law banning torture—were not in the original draft of the memo, say the sources. But when Michael Chertoff, then-chief of Justice’s criminal division, refused the CIA’s request for a blanket pledge not to prosecute its officers for torture, Yoo met at the White House with David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief counsel, and then–White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. After that, Yoo inserted a section about the commander in chief’s wartime powers and another saying that agency officers accused of torturing Qaeda suspects could claim they were acting in “self-defense” to prevent future terror attacks, the sources say. Both legal claims have long since been rejected by Justice officials as overly broad and unsupported by legal precedent.

Hard to figure how this finding and conclusion could be determined by David Margolis to warrant the “softening” of the original finding of direct misconduct. Margolis is nearly 70 years old and has a long career at DOJ and is fairly well though of. Margolis was tasked by Jim Comey to shepherd Pat Fitzgerald’s Libby investigation. In short, the man has some bona fides.

Margolis is, however, also tied to the DOJ and its culture for over forty years, not to mention his service in upper management as Associate Attorney General during the Bush Administration when the overt acts of torture and justification by Margolis’ contemporaries and friends were committed. For one such filter to redraw the findings and conclusions of such a critical investigation in order to exculpate his colleagues is unimaginable.

One thing is for sure, with a leak like this being floated out on a late Friday night, the release of the full OPR Report, at least that which the Obama Administration will deem fit for the common public to see, is at hand. Mike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman have made sure the torturers and their enablers can have a comfortable weekend though. So we got that going for us.

ODNI Funded the Author of the "Penis Monologues" to Try to Interest Women in Spying

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As Lindsay reported the other day, the TeaBugger who used to work for a college-based intelligence program, Stan Dai, spoofed the Vagina Monologue in college.

In college, Stan Dai co-wrote a satirical work entitled The Penis Monologues, apparently a takeoff on the Vagina Monologues. Here’s a taste:

My Angry Penis

MY PENIS IS ANGRY!!!!!!! You want to know what happened to my penis? Joan happened to my penis! There I was, sleeping peacefully when Joan stormed in and dragged me out for “an educational program.” I thought was going to see Mr. Rogers! But nooooooo! It turned out to be the “Whine-gina Monologues!”

From angry penises to irregular warfare.

Meanwhile, Mark Hosenball has been investigating precisely what the college-based program was. Yesterday, Hosenball reported that the program for which Dai worked was completely funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Between August 2007 and October 2008, Stanley Dai served as assistant director of a program called the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence at Trinity Washington University, a small Catholic college in Washington D.C., according to a school official. The official, university vice president Ann Pauley, said that the program was completely funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

[snip]

Pauley said that she did not know what qualifications Dai had when he was hired to be the program’s assistant director, and she said that he left Trinity when the DNI grant that financed it ended. She said the program was entirely funded by money from the intelligence czar’s office.

And today, Hosenball adds more details about what the program was designed to do: to interest women and minorities into going into the intelligence field.

Ann Pauley, vice president of Trinity Washington University, acknowledged to NEWSWEEK that a key objective of the “Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence” at her school was to expose female and minority students to the kind of work spy agencies do and potentially interest them in becoming intelligence officers. Dai was associate director of the program between August 2007 and October 2008. “This program was set up to get minorities and women interested in intelligence careers,” said another person familiar with the program’s operations and goals, who asked for anonymity when discussing the subject because of controversy around the Louisiana case.

As Hosenball points out, it’s ironic that a movement conservative like Dai was involved in what was basically a program to encourage diversity. But I’m a little more shocked that ODNI, under Mike McConnell, was funding Mr. Angry Penis to help recruit women into the field of intelligence.

New ACLU Torture FOIA Docs Working Thread

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There are new documents in at the ACLU from their ongoing FOIA effort on the torture tape destruction matter. Here is the ACLU press release with link:

We’ve received some new documents in our DoD torture FOIA lawsuit, related to the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videotapes. They are posted here: http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-v-department-defense, at the end of the section titled Documents Relating to CIA Contempt, with the date of 01/08/2010.

One thing we found interesting – there are a number of documents that focus on “lessons for the future,” some of those from as early as 8/2002, as though the documents memorialize what the CIA is learning as its interrogation program marches on.

Jeff Kaye has already spotted this one:

I think this is first evidence of actual approval from HQ for tape

destruction. Compare this with previous ACLU timeline (as of 11/09):

http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/20091124_Chronology_of_Videotapes.pdf

We knew about the 11/8 request, but not that permission was granted on

that day. If I’m wrong about this, please set me straight.

China Google Attack and the Terrorist Surveillance Program

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thumb.phpAs you may know, there was quite a lot of buzz this week about Google potentially leaving China over the hacking of Google’s system. From MSNBC/Reuters:

Google, the world’s top search engine, said on Tuesday it might shut down its Chinese site, Google.cn, after an attack on its infrastructure it believed was primarily aimed at accessing the Google mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Unlike ordinary viruses that are released into cyberspace and quickly spread from computer to computer, the type of attack launched against Google and at least 20 other companies were likely handcrafted uniquely for each targeted organization.

It appears to be a problem that is quite deep according to an in depth article in MacWorld:

Google, by implying that Beijing had sponsored the attack, has placed itself in the center of an international controversy, exposing what appears to be a state-sponsored corporate espionage campaign that compromised more than 30 technology, financial and media companies, most of them global Fortune 500 enterprises.

The U.S. government is taking the attack seriously. Late Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement asking the Chinese government to explain itself, saying that Google’s allegations “raise very serious concerns and questions.”

But the Macworld article goes on to explain why the United States government may be taking this much more seriously than they let on:

“First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses – including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors – have been similarly targeted,” wrote Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond in a Tuesday blog posting.

“Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.”

Drummond said that the hackers never got into Gmail accounts via the Google hack, but they did manage to get some “account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line.”

That’s because they apparently were able to access a system used to help Google comply with search warrants by providing data on Google users, said a source familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press.

“Right before Christmas, it was, ‘Holy s***, this malware is accessing the internal intercept [systems],'” he said.

Uh, “account information”, “subject line”, “search warrants” and “intercept systems”. That ring a bell? This appears to indicate that the state-sponsored Chinese hackers have hacked into the portion of the Google infrastructure that deals with government warrants, intercepts, national security letters and other modalities pertinent to the Terrorist Surveillance Program. That, if true, could be very problematic, one would think.

Now, this is based upon information and belief, but it is my understanding that Google doesn’t store any gmail data in China, which means that this search warrant/intercept machine was located in the US, likely in Mountain View California

That is, if Google’s Mountain View HQ search warrant search interface/computer was hacked, we are probably talking about the same computer used by the Google Legal Department to perform queries in response to DOJ warrants, subpoenas, national security letters, and FISA orders.

Yeah, if that is the case it could be a problem.

Blackwater at Khost

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When news of the attack at the CIA based in Khost, I suggested that Blackwater contractors were likely among the victims (recall that Erik Prince boasted of being involved in such operating bases in his Vanity Fair interview).

Sure enough… (h/t Susie)

Jeremy Wise, the former Navy SEAL killed in a suicide bomber’s attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan last week, was working for Xe, the Moyock, N.C.-based security company previously known as Blackwater.

Wise’s Xe affiliation is disclosed in an obituary published in today’s Virginian-Pilot.

Wise was one of eight people killed in the Dec. 30 blast in Khost province. News reports Tuesday identified the suicide bomber as a Jordanian double agent and said seven of the victims were CIA-affiliated. The eighth was a Jordanian military officer.

CNN had reported earlier that two of the CIA casualties were Xe contractors. Asked about the report, a Xe spokeswoman declined to comment.

I’m curious whether we’ll ever find out how much of what Pat Lang calls “a dearth of tradecraft” can be attributed to the CIA, and how much to Blackwater.

Obama's New Classification Policy: the Good and the Bad

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Steven Aftergood reviews Obama’s new classification Executive Order and finds much to be happy about.

For the first time, each executive branch agency that classifies information will be required to perform “a comprehensive review” of its internal classification guides to validate them and “to identify classified information that no longer requires protection and can be declassified.”  The new requirement is one of the most potentially significant features of an Executive Order on national security classification policy that was signed by President Obama last week.

There are more than two thousand agency classification guides currently in use and they constitute the detailed operating instructions of the classification system.  If the so-called Fundamental Classification Guidance Review (set forth in section 1.9 of the new Order) is faithfully implemented by the agencies, it should eliminate numerous obsolete classification requirements and effectively rewrite the “software” of government secrecy.

Other outstanding features of the new Executive Order 13526 include the establishment of a National Declassification Center to coordinate and streamline the declassification process (section 3.7);  the adoption of the principle that “No information may remain classified indefinitely” (section 1.5d);  and the elimination of an intelligence community veto of declassification decisions made by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel. This veto authority had been granted by the Bush Administration in 2003.

But the Order contains many dozens of other changes in language that are subtle but important.  So, for example, section 3.1g states that “no information may be excluded from declassification… based solely on the type of document or record in which it is found.”  What this simple formulation does (or is expected to do) is to eliminate the permanent classification of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), the daily intelligence compilation that is delivered to the President each morning.  The CIA has long argued that by virtue of being presented to the President, the information contained in PDBs is inherently and permanently classified.  Now it’s not.

[snip]

Some of the changes suggest previously unsuspected problems or issues.  Section 4.1c states curiously that “An official or employee leaving agency service may not … direct that information be declassified in order to remove it from agency control.”  There may be a story behind that new provision, but I don’t know what it is.  Section 3.1h states for the first time that classified “artifacts” and other classified materials that are not in the form of records shall be declassified in the same way as classified records.

I wonder whether they’re considering “CIA officer’s classified identity” to be an artifact in that last bit?

But Aftergood notes some areas in which Obama’s EO supports more secrecy.

Not all of the changes are in the direction of increased disclosure.  Section 4.3 authorizes the Attorney General, as well as the Secretary of Homeland Security, to establish highly secured Special Access Programs, an authority reserved in the previous Executive Order to the Secretaries of Defense, State, Energy and the then-Director of Central Intelligence.  Sections 1.8c and 3.5g exclude material submitted for prepublication review from classification challenges and mandatory declassification review.

This one is actually quite concerning. Remember that a lot of Bush’s most secret–arguably illegal–programs (like his torture program, his domestic surveillance program, and his assassination program) may have had aspects that were SAPs. Letting DHS and DOJ institute them seems to increase the risk of domestic SAPs.

Also, while I could be misreading this, but this passage would seem to explicitly prevent someone–oh, say, the Vice President–from declassifying a CIA officer’s identity without either the assent of the CIA Director Read more →

All Charges Against Blackwater Guards in Nisour Killings Dismissed

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Judge Ricardo Urbina has dismissed all charges against the Blackwater guards involved in the Nisour Square killings. He explains he has dismissed the charges because the government violated the constitutional rights of the Blackwater guards by using compelled statements against them.

From this extensive presentation of evidence and argument, the following conclusions ineluctably emerge. In their zeal to bring charges against the defendant in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation. In so doing, the government’s trial team repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors, assigned to the case specifically to advise the trial team on Garrity and Kastigar issues, that this course of action threatened the viability of the prosecution. The government used the defendants’ compelled statements to guide its charging decisions, to formulate its theory of the case, to develop investigatory leads and, ultimately, to obtain the indictment in this case. The government’s key witnesses immersed themselves in the defendants’ compelled statements, and the evidence adduced at the Kastigar hearing plainly demonstrated that these compelled statements shaped portions of the witnesses’ testimony to the indicting grand jury.2 The explanations offered by the prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants’ compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.

In short, the government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants’ statements or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, the court must dismiss the indictment against all of the defendants.

Now, I look forward to what our resident defense attorney has to say about this–but my gut feel is that Urbina correctly judged that DOJ screwed up this prosecution.

Nevertheless, I have to wonder whether Erik Prince’s threat campaign had anything to do with this. Or whether the brothers Krongard had any role in making sure these guys couldn’t be prosecuted.

One thing is clear, though. The executive branch managed to screw this case up. Either State or DOJ used evidence improperly. And as a result, these alleged murderers will go free.

Obama Appoints Fox To Evaluate Terror Watchlist Henhouse

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fox-and-chicken-richardson-300x288Barack Obama, doing his best to make Dick Cheney’s questions about leadership look rational, has assigned John Brennan to conduct the Administration’s ballyhooed investigation into the claimed failure of the terrorist watchlist program in the Christmas Fruit Of The Loom Bomber incident.

What’s wrong with this picture? Throw a dart in any direction and you will find something.Politico gives the unsettling details:

President Barack Obama promised a “thorough review” of the government’s terrorist watch-list system after a Nigerian man reported to US government officials by his father to have radicalized and gone missing last month was allowed to board a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit that he later tried to blow up without any additional security screening.

Yet the individual Obama has chosen to lead the review, White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, served for 25 years in the CIA, helped design the current watch-list system and served as interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center, whose role is under review.

In the three years before joining the Obama administration, Brennan was president and CEO of The Analysis Corporation, an intelligence contracting firm that worked closely with the National Counterterrorism Center and other US government intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security agencies on developing terrorism watch-lists.

“Each and every day, TAC makes important contributions in the counterterrorism (CT) and national security realm by supporting national watchlisting activities as well as other CT requirements,” the company’s Web site states.

According to financial disclosures forms released by the White House, Brennan served as president and CEO of TAC from November 2005 until January 2009, when Obama named him to the White House terrorism and homeland security job. The disclosures show that Brennan reported earning a $783,000 annual salary from the Analysis Corporation in 2008. ….

One former senior intelligence official told POLITICO it is “unsavory to see Obama put Brennan in charge of a review of this matter since it is possible that NCTC or TAC could have failed in their responsibilities.”

Oy. “Unsavory”? Ya think? This is akin to a law school final exam where you try to identify all the conflicts of interest in the given situation. But there is not enough time to hit them all. Do not fret, the crack White House ethics team has looked at Brennan and determined Read more →

Brainstorming Future American Neo-Feudalism Today

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Picture 174See if this sounds familiar to you:

…governments and global elites pursue short-term economic gain above all else. Their aggressive focus on growth, efficient markets, and robust trade eventually causes financial volatility as a result of poorly organized uncoordinated responses to crises in global health, environmental change, and other international issues. The global economic system appears robust and successfully promotes prosperity, but this type of globalization has a dark side: trafficking of illicit goods, human rights violations, and a widening gap between rich and poor. Health and environmental disasters—some sudden and others slow-burning—frequently overwhelm domestic agencies, which are increasingly understaffed. Climate change becomes an acute concern, exacerbating resource scarcities and damaging coastal urban centers.

While it’s not an exact match, it sounds pretty close to what I was talking about in my post on health care as a significant step towards neo-feudalism, or Glenn Greenwald’s must-read piece on corporatism.

The piece is from an Office of Director of National Intelligence Scenario developed for the Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review. It is, ODNI seems to think, just one possible future–a future it places in 2025, 15 years away–though not the most likely one.

I raise it because Congress’ failure to pass health care reform that actually promises health care, and its upcoming failure to pass climate change legislation that actually fixes climate change (which was one of the things preventing Copenhagen from being more successful) show that key elements of this scenario are already in place. The reason Mary Landrieu and Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson (though Landrieu is the only one who will consistently admit this) refuse to pass legislation that will introduce competition in the health insurance industry is because they want to ensure that the health care industry remains at its 16% of the economy, if not grows. The profits of our corporations are effectively taking precedence over the urgent need to both give everyone health care and cut the amount of money we use doing it. And while the health care bill will put off the time when our failure to do what every other industrialized nation has managed to do causes a major crisis, it will not prevent it.

Now the interesting thing about this scenario are the things that it gets–in my opinion–wrong. For example, it suggests that citizens in this world would have the ability to demand privacy protections from the government; yet we have already ceded so much privacy to corporations, and the corporations have taken over governmental functions, I see little chance of demanding real privacy from our government, or even rolling back the surveillance the government has already put into place. (Though note the scenario’s fear that “profit motivated state actors dominate the information environment, limiting the Government’s access to critical data”–it seems the intelligence community’s big fear is that they won’t be able to continue collecting our data.) I also find it ludicrous that our IC (!) suggests that the time when terrorists and other criminals will exploit cross-border flows to further their causes lies 15 years in the future; do they really not know the degree to which this happens right now? And while the government is currently dumping stimulus dollars into our infrastructure–something this scenario envisions happening to stave off natural disasters–it’s not clear that we’re making substantive advances in our infrastructure, rather than just doing the maintenance that has been neglected for the last decade. And frankly, I think this scenario is far too placid about the types of organizations that average people will be forced to form in response to their increasing vulnerability.

It’s a weird thing, this scenario. While it recognizes the real threat of the rising neo-feudalist world, it seems more worried about whether the IC will be able to exert the power it does today than about what it means for people more generally.