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  • Mar
    20

    Scandal puts focus on how CIA polices itself

    Allegations of officers’ sex misdeeds leads to scrutiny from Congress
     
    ciaWASHINGTON – As a novice CIA case officer in the Middle East, Andrew Warren quickly learned the value of sex in recruiting spies. Colleagues say that he made an early habit of taking informants to strip clubs, and that he later began arranging out-of-town visits to brothels for his best recruits. Often Warren would travel with them, according to two colleagues who worked with him for years.

    His methods earned him promotions and notoriety over a lengthy career, until Warren, 41, became ensnared in a sex scandal. Two Algerian women have accused the Virginia native of drugging and sexually assaulting them, and, in one instance, videotaping the encounter.

    Six weeks after the allegations came to light, Warren has been formally notified by CIA Director Leon E. Panetta of his impending dismissal, according to U.S. government officials familiar with the case. But the episode — one of three sex-related scandals to shake the CIA this year — has drawn harsh questions from Congress about whether the agency adequately polices its far-flung workforce or takes sufficient steps to root out corrupt behavior.

    ‘An organization of professional liars’
    The CIA says that these problems involve a tiny fraction of its workforce, and that those found to have breached rules are punished or fired. But former officers say the cases underscore a perennial challenge: guarding against scandal in a workforce — the size of which is classified but is generally estimated to be 20,000 — that prides itself on secrecy and deception.

    “You have an organization of professional liars,” said Tyler Drumheller, who oversaw hundreds of officers as chief of the agency’s European division. Experienced field managers are needed, he said, because inevitably “some people will try to take advantage of the system . . . and it’s a system that can be taken advantage of.”

    The allegations against Warren drew an angry blast from the Senate panel that oversees the CIA. “The alleged activities are completely unacceptable,” committee leaders Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) said in a joint statement last month. Feinstein also criticized the CIA for what she said was not promptly informing Congress about the case, given its potential to damage U.S. relations with Algeria.

    Repeated attempts in recent weeks to contact Warren through relatives were unsuccessful.

    Misuses of money
    The recent string of embarrassing revelations started with the CIA’s former No. 3 officer, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, who was indicted on corruption charges two years ago. Court documents released in recent weeks depict Foggo as bullying the office of the agency’s general counsel into giving a job to his mistress, whose subsequent performance reviews were subpar.

    Last month, agency officials confirmed the firing of Steve Levan, a 16-year veteran who pleaded guilty to misusing CIA credit cards. Levan, an analyst, worked at the agency’s headquarters for the No. 2 official, Stephen R. Kappes. As part of his plea agreement, Levan acknowledged obtaining credit card numbers assigned to undercover operatives and using them to run up bills surpassing $115,000. Much of the money was spent on hotel rooms and gifts for a mistress, according to two agency officials familiar with the case. He is awaiting sentencing this spring.

    Michael S. Nachmanoff, Levan’s attorney, declined to comment on the case. In a pre-sentencing motion filed last week, Nachmanoff said the judge should consider his client’s strong record of service for the CIA — a record the agency had declined to release, he said.

    Rapid ascent halted
    But the most damaging revelations involved Warren, an Arabic speaker and Middle East specialist who was on a rapid ascent after CIA postings in Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt and Algeria. He most recently served as Algiers station chief. But the State Department ordered him home in October after two Algerian nationals alleged that he assaulted them in separate incidents at his apartment.

    The women told State Department investigators that Warren assaulted them after giving them drug-laced drinks that made them pass out. State referred the matter to the Justice Department, where an investigation is ongoing. Warren has not been charged.

    While looking into the allegations, U.S. officials discovered in Warren’s apartment more than two dozen video recordings that he apparently made of his sexual encounters, according to news accounts and two U.S. officials familiar with the investigation. One of the women behind the rape allegations appears in one of the videos, the officials said.

    Current and former agency officials say that Warren and Levan were considered competent professionals with stellar work records, qualities that perhaps explain why their alleged misdeeds would have gone undetected.

    “The fact of the matter is that the thousands of people who work at CIA are exceptionally dedicated, and cases of impropriety are extremely rare,” agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said. When there are such cases, he said, the CIA “looks into the allegations, follows up on them and cooperates fully with law enforcement authorities.”

    Warning signs?
    Several colleagues of Warren’s, though, spoke of warning signs that might have alerted the CIA sooner. Some who worked with him over several years said they were particularly concerned about the frequency of Warren’s use of strip clubs and other sex-related establishments for recruiting. The former officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the agency does not allow them to discuss their CIA work publicly, said they were not surprised by the assault allegations.

    As CIA case officers attempt to recruit a foreign spy, they often offer personal inducements, ranging from cash to medical care. In some cases, a potential recruit may be taken to a strip club or even to a prostitute if it is deemed critical to cementing the relationship, longtime officers say. But for Warren, “it was a lifestyle thing,” costing the agency thousands of dollars, said one former co-worker who describes himself as a friend. The bills were routinely paid, he said.

    “As long as you were doing good work, it was okay,” he said.

    Mostly a ‘self-regulating system’
    A. John Radsan, a former CIA assistant general counsel, said there are internal guidelines and structures — including the CIA inspector general’s office and a separate review board that oversees clandestine operations — that are intended to guard against scandal. In reality, he said, it is a self-regulating system with few incentives for reporting bad behavior.

    “You want a culture that values innovation and creativity and doesn’t mind violating the laws of other countries, but at the same time, you want a culture of compliance and honesty,” Radsan said. “It is a built-in contradiction.”

    The agency’s internal management practices were also called into question last month during court proceedings for Foggo, who served as the top CIA administrator from November 2004 to May 2006.

    A lengthy prosecution memo, made public over the objections of Foggo’s attorneys, listed a series of ethical alarms that did not prevent his reaching the agency’s highest ranks. Two personnel reports in 1989, for example, noted that Foggo “takes a very liberal and self-serving position regarding the interpretation of Agency rules and regulations” and warned that “he is likely to remain a potential threat to security through his poor judgment.”

    In a court filing last month, Foggo’s attorneys said that their client has “committed his life to public service” and that his dedication and skills justified his promotions. They declined to comment further yesterday.

    “Foggo was never a truly honest public servant” during his 24 years in the CIA, three prosecutors wrote in their memo to a federal judge in Alexandria shortly before Foggo was sentenced to 37 months in prison for corrupting the agency’s contracts. “He spent years defrauding the country.”

    When Foggo manipulated agency contracts in 2003 and 2005, his colleagues and subordinates did not act on their suspicions of wrongdoing, the prosecutors said. Instead, they demonstrated a persistent reluctance to challenge authority that seems at odds with the climate of dissent and debate that the agency says it encourages.

    After a former colleague of Foggo’s who had become his mistress was turned down for a job in the general counsel’s office, Foggo, who was the CIA’s executive director, called an associate general counsel into his office and “grew increasingly loud in tone and condescending,” according to a memo the counsel placed in her files. “[S]peaking in the third person, [Foggo] said, among other things, that when the EXDIR has an interest in a candidate for employment that I had better respect the EXDIR’s interest.”

    The mistress was subsequently hired after an accelerated security check, because her paperwork was tagged “ExDir interest.” When her failure to perform required duties provoked her supervisor’s complaints, Foggo arranged for the supervisor — a 20-year veteran who had won many performance awards — to be ousted and moved to the Defense Department. The supervisor alleged in a court affidavit that her ouster was retaliatory.

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  • Feb
    6

    Spies flock to Siberia

    spiesThe counter intelligence service of Novosibirsk region has recently noticed an increase in activity by Asian-Pacific countries in Siberia. Dozens of foreign spies and agents have been discovered in the region in 2008, according to the FSB.

    The FSB press service refused to go into precise details of any espionage, but announced that due to the efficient work of Russian counter intelligence dozens of professional state-secret hunters had been detected in Siberia in the past year.

    The head of the regional FSB, Sergey Savchenkov, said some of the spies had been seeking top secret information throughout the region and had used all possible means to get confidential data from Novosibirsk scientists.

    The high level of interest from foreign secret services may have been caused by the successful work of Siberian researchers. Speaking on Thursday, the deputy envoy of the President in Novosibirsk underlined their potential.

    “Dozens of scientific centres are working on hundreds of scientific developments for all branches of the economy, which have huge potential in the social, economic and intellectual development of Siberia”, he said.

    The head of the Siberian department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Aleksandr Aseyev, says the past year was a successful one. Notable results were achieved in the field of oil and gas geology, nanotechnology, the creation of new materials and hi-tech equipment, chemical biology and other spheres of scientific research.

    Scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of Novosibirsk played an important role in construction of the Large Hadron Collider in the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva. Huge magnets for the underground ring of the LHC were made in Europe with the participation of the institute.

    “The security service’s main objective is to know when a spy has arrived. But he may not necessarily reveal himself so that his activity could be stopped. Our problem is to find and register foreign agents and spies before they transfer secret data abroad,” said Savchenkov.

    He added that some of the foreign agents had been deported from Russia and some refused entry visas.


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  • Feb
    6

    Panetta: No charges will be laid for CIA interrogators

    Obama pick for agency director says foreign detainee transfers to continue

    panetta4WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will not prosecute CIA officers who participated in harsh interrogations that critics say crossed the line into torture, CIA Director-nominee Leon Panetta said Friday. Asked by The Associated Press if that was official policy, Panetta said, “That is the case.”

    It was the clearest statement yet on what Panetta and other Democratic officials had only strongly suggested: CIA officers who acted on legal orders from the Bush administration would not be held responsible for those policies. On Thursday, he told senators that the Obama administration had no intention of seeking prosecutions for that reason.

    Panetta, in an interview with the AP after a second day of confirmation hearings with the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he arrived at that conclusion even before he began meeting with CIA officials.

    “It was my opinion we just can’t operate if people feel even if they are following the legal opinions of the Justice Department” they could be in danger of prosecution, he said.

    Panetta demurred on saying whether the Obama administration would take legal action against those who authorized or wrote the legal opinions that, for a time, set an extremely high legal bar for an action to constitute torture. “I’ll leave that for others,” Panetta said.

    Easy confirmation expected

    Panetta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration and an ex-congressman from California, is expected to be confirmed by a wide margin next week.

    Panetta told the committee that the Obama administration will continue to hand foreign detainees over to other countries for questioning, but only if it is confident the prisoners will not be tortured in the process.

    That has long been U.S. policy, but some former prisoners subjected to the process — known as “extraordinary rendition” — during the Bush administration’s anti-terror war contend they were tortured. Proving that in court has proven difficult, as evidence they are trying to use has been protected by the president’s state secret privilege.

    “I will seek the same kind of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely,” Panetta said during his second day before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I intend to use the State Department to be sure those assurances are implemented and stood by, by those countries.” Some critics worry that any gray area in delineating policy on renditions could allow for abuses.

    A detainee could be handed over to another country for reasons other than harsh or coercive questioning. Some prisoners may not have intelligence of value to the United States in its effort to break up global terrorist groups, but they might yield intelligence valuable to another government’s more localized security problems.

    How such renditions work and what happens after prisoners are handed over are secrets, and it is unclear that the Obama administration would have any more tools to assure humane treatment than its predecessor.

    The options are limited: refuse to transfer prisoners to governments that have a history of torture or human rights abuses; require prisoners be allowed regular visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross; or demand that U.S. officials have access to the prisoners after the transfer. Each option carries with it the potential of harming or complicating relationships with foreign intelligence agencies.

    ‘I think they made mistakes’

    Panetta formally retracted a statement he made Thursday that the Bush administration transferred prisoners for the purpose of torture. “I am not aware of the validity of those claims,” he said.

    Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., chastised Panetta for careless words. “You cannot be making statements or making judgments based on rumors and news stories,” he said.

    Because he has not yet been confirmed, Panetta has not been briefed on the details of the secret program. Panetta said he believed the Bush administration was trying to protect the country from terrorists with its use of secret prisons, renditions and harsh interrogations.

    “I think they made some wrong decisions, I think they made mistakes,” he said. “I think sometimes they believe the ends justifies the means, and that’s where people sometimes go wrong.” Panetta said he thinks that in the fear of another Sept. 11-style attack, Bush administration officials thought, “We can’t be bothered with legalisms.”

    Panetta said, however, that he believes the greatest weapon the United States has against terrorists is its moral authority and commitment to the rule of law. “The sense that we were willing to set that aside did damage our security,” he said.

    Panetta said the Obama administration will no longer move detainees to secret CIA prisons for interrogation, because the so-called “black sites” have been ordered closed. But it will move prisoners to other countries for prosecution, he said.

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  • Feb
    6

    Panetta takes back remarks on prisoner torture

    CIA chief-designee will continue to hand detainees over to other countries

    panetta3WASHINGTON – The United States will continue to hand foreign detainees over to other countries for questioning, but only with assurances they will not be tortured, Leon Panetta told a Senate committee considering his confirmation as CIA director.

    That has long been U.S. policy, but some former prisoners subjected to the process — known as extraordinary rendition — during the Bush administration’s anti-terror war say they were tortured.

    “I will seek the same kind of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely,” Panetta said Friday in his second day before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I intend to use the State Department to be sure those assurances are implemented and stood by, by those countries.”

    Panetta formally retracted a statement he made Thursday that the Bush administration transferred prisoners for the purpose of torture. “I am not aware of the validity of those claims,” he said. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., chastised Panetta for careless words. “You cannot be making statements or making judgments based on rumors and news stories,” he said.

    Because he has not yet been confirmed, Panetta has not been briefed on the details of the secret program. Panetta said he believed the Bush administration was trying to protect the country from terrorists with its use of secret prisons, renditions and harsh interrogations.

    “I think they made some wrong decisions, I think they made mistakes,” he said. “I think sometimes they believe the ends justifies the means, and that’s where people sometimes go wrong.” He said he thinks that in the fear of another 9/11-style attack, Bush administration officials thought, “We can’t be bothered with legalisms.”

    Panetta said, however, he believes the greatest weapon the United States has against terrorists is its moral authority and commitment to the rule of law. “The sense that we were willing to set that aside did damage our security,” Panetta said.

    Panetta said the Obama administration will no longer move detainees to secret CIA prisons for interrogation, because the so-called “black sites” have been ordered closed. But it will move prisoners to other countries for prosecution, he said.

    Panetta told senators it’s time for the agency to move ahead, rather than dwell on the harsh treatment of foreign detainees in the previous administration.

    Panetta will oversee the end of “enhanced” interrogation and the closure of secret CIA jails. But he says the Obama administration will not prosecute those who participated, because they were acting on the legal authority of the Justice Department.

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  • Feb
    5

    New head of CIA – same old techniques?

    panetta2President Obama has nominated Leon Panetta, a former democratic congressman with no intelligence experience, to be director of the CIA. But will it actually bring changes to the agency’s harsh interrogation techniques?

    In choosing Panetta, Obama has passed over current and former CIA officials with impressive credentials. The other candidates had worked in Intelligence when Bush’s government was interrogating terror suspects and even before 9/11.

    Panetta, a former congressman and White House chief of staff to then-President Bill Clinton, is no stranger to Washington.

    Even though critics say he lacks experience in security matters, Leon Panetta might bring a new attitude to the CIA. A strong supporter of Obama’s ideas, he opposes torture and is very critical over the former administration’s tactics.

    In his first few days in office, President Obama has ordered the controversial Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility in Cuba and secret CIA prisons to be closed.

    He is also going to continue carrying out the practise of renditions – extracting a person from one country and transferring to another in order to try them for supposed crimes.

    Renditions were made notorious by the Bush administration because of their use of torture when trying alleged terrorists. That caused a lot of criticism and anger around the world and in the US itself.

    The former president, however, had his own explanation to the issue: “This government does not torture people,” said Bush.

    “We stick to US law and our international obligations. There are highly trained professionals questioning these extremists and terrorists. In other words, we got professionals who are trained in this kind of work to get information that will protect the American people. And by the way, we have gotten information from these high-value detainees that have helped protect you.”

    No wonder that now, when President Obama uses the same rhetoric commenting on the same topic, some people get nervous.

    “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world,” Obama said.

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