Controversies involving the Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been the subject of a number of controversies, both in and outside of the United States. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner accuses the CIA of covert actions and human rights abuses.[1]Jeffrey T. Richelson of the National Security Archive has been critical of its claims.[2] Intelligence expert David Wise faulted Weiner for portraying Allen Dulles as "a doddering old man" rather than the "shrewd professional spy" he knew and for refusing "to concede that the agency's leaders may have acted from patriotic motives or that the CIA ever did anything right", but concluded: "Legacy of Ashes succeeds as both journalism and history, and it is must reading for anyone interested in the CIA or American intelligence since World War II."[3] The CIA itself has responded to the claims made in Weiner's book, and has described it as "a 600-page op-ed piece masquerading as serious history."[4]
In 1969, at the height of the antiwar movement in the US, CIA Director Helms received a message from Henry Kissinger ordering him to spy on the leaders of the groups requesting a moratorium on Vietnam. "Since 1962, three successive presidents had ordered the director of central intelligence to spy on Americans."[5]
Extraordinary rendition is the apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another.[6]
The term "torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the CIA[7][8][9][10] and other US agencies have transferred suspected terrorists to countries known to employ torture, whether they meant to enable torture or not. It has been claimed, though, that torture has been employed with the knowledge or acquiescence of US agencies (a transfer of anyone to anywhere for the purpose of torture is a violation of US law), although Condoleezza Rice (then the United States Secretary of State) stated that:
the United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured.[11]
Whilst the Obama administration has tried to distance itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques, it has also said that at least some forms of renditions will continue.[12] The administration continued to allow rendition only "to a country with jurisdiction over that individual (for prosecution of that individual)" when there is a diplomatic assurance "that they will not be treated inhumanely."[13][14]
The US program has also prompted several official investigations in Europe into alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states. A June 2006 report from the Council of Europe estimated 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA on EU territory (with the cooperation of Council of Europe members), and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centres ("black sites") used by the CIA, some located in Europe. According to the separate European Parliament report of February 2007, the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.[15]
Following the September 11 attacks the United States, in particular the CIA, has been accused of rendering hundreds of people suspected by the government of being terrorists—or of aiding and abetting terrorist organisations—to third-party states such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Uzbekistan. Such "ghost detainees" are kept outside judicial oversight, often without ever entering US territory, and may or may not ultimately be devolved to the custody of the United States.[16]
On October 4, 2001, a secret arrangement was made in Brussels, by all members of NATO. Lord George Robertson, British defence secretary and later NATO's secretary-general, would later explain that NATO members agree to provide "blanket overflight clearances for the United States and other allies' aircraft for military flights related to operations against terrorism."[17]
On December 30, 2009, a suicide attack occurred in the Forward Operating Base Chapman attack in the province of Khost, Afghanistan. Seven CIA officers, including the chief of the base, were killed and six others seriously wounded in the attack.[18]
The September 11th attacks have been viewed by some as an example of shortcomings for the United States' various intelligence agencies. George W Bush's administration has openly stated they did not foresee the possibility of airliners being used as weapons.[19] Despite regular briefings from intelligence agencies and prior incidents of airliners being hijacked domestically and abroad.[20]
Counterintelligence failures
Perhaps the most disruptive incident involving counterintelligence was CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton's search for a mole or moles,[21] based on GRU Colonel Pyotr Popov's allegedly having told his Russia-born CIA handler, George Kisevalter in April of 1958 that he had recently heard a drunken GRU colonel brag that the Kremlin knew all about the Lockheed U-2 spy plane,[22] and the December 1961-on statements of a Soviet defector, KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn. A second defector, putative KGB officer Yuri Nosenko, who contacted the CIA in Geneva six months after Golitsyn's defection, challenged Golitsyn's claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents.[23] Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, which also were damaged by molehunts.[24]
Edward Lee Howard, David Henry Barnett, both field operations officers, sold secrets to Russia. William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center, sold the Soviets a detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.[25]
The CIA has been called into question for, at times, using torture, funding and training of groups and organizations that would later participate in killing of civilians and other non-combatants and would try or succeed in overthrowing democratically elected governments, human experimentation, and targeted killings and assassinations. The CIA has also been accused of a lack of financial and whistleblower controls which has led to waste and fraud.[26]
During Bush's year in charge of the CIA, the U.S. national security apparatus actively supported Operation Condor operations and right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America.[27][28] According to John Dinges, author of The Condor Years (The New Press 2003), documents released in 2015 revealed a CIA report dated April 28, 1978 that showed the agency by then had knowledge that U.S.-backed Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a leading political opponent living in exile in the United States.[29]
The Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the non-profit organization Open Society Foundations reviewed public records into the medical professions alleging complicity in the abuse of prisoners suspected of terrorism who were held in U.S. custody during the years after 9/11."[30][31] The reports found that health professionals "Aided cruel and degrading interrogations; Helped devise and implement practices designed to maximize disorientation and anxiety so as to make detainees more malleable for interrogation; and Participated in the application of excruciatingly painful methods of force-feeding of mentally competent detainees carrying out hunger strikes" are not all that surprising.[30] Medical professionals were sometimes used at black sites to monitor detainee health.[32] Whether or not the physicians were compelled is an open question.
Other human rights issues that are controversial include the case of Edward Snowden.[33][34][35] However, the significance of human right does not fall into this case regarding whether Snowden received his fair trial or not. Rather, the human rights associated with the Snowden leaks are regarding the types of document Snowden released. Snowden released a significant amount of information on the U.S. government's surveillance program of its citizens[36][37][38][39] to The Washington Post as well as foreign news reporters.
Particularly, "between on or about June 5, 2013, and June 9, 2013, classified information was published on the internet and in print by multiple newspapers, including The Washington Post and The Guardian. The articles and internet postings by The Washington Post and The Guardian included classified documents that were marked TOP SECRET. The Washington Post and The Guardian later revealed that SNOWDEN was the principal source for the classified information on or about June 9, 2013, in a videotaped interview with The Guardian, admitted that he was the person who illegally provided those documents to reporters. Evidence indicates that SNOWDEN had access to the classified documents in question; accessed those documents; and, subsequently, provided those documents to media outlets without authorization and in violation of U.S. law."[33]
Furthermore, the leaks included documents at many levels of the National Security Agency (NSA) electronic surveillance activities. "The Snowden leaks have generated broad public debate over issues of security, privacy, and legality inherent in the NSA's surveillance of communications by American citizens. The records include: White House and ODNI efforts to explain, justify, and defend the programs; Correspondence between outside critics and executive branch officials; Fact sheets and white papers distributed (and sometimes later withdrawn) by the government; Key laws and court decisions (both Supreme Court and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court); Documents on the Total Information Awareness (later Terrorist Information Awareness, or TIA) program, an earlier proposal for massive data collection Manuals on how to exploit the Internet for intelligence."[40]
Several investigations led by the Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission and Pike Committee have been conducted about the CIA, and many documents have been declassified.[41]
The CIA sometimes finds itself in conflict with other parts of the government when there is disagreement over the legality of specific covert programs. There is always the risk that one part of the government may make the covert operations of another part of the government public.[42]
CIA's recruitment of Nazis
Aleksandras Lileikis, a Nazi unit commander who oversaw the murder of 60,000 Jews in Lithuania, later worked for the CIA.
In 2014, The New York Times reported that "In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government's ties to some still living in America, newly disclosed records and interviews show."[44]
According to Timothy Naftali, "The CIA's central concern [in recruiting former Nazi collaborators] was not so much the extent of the criminal's guilt as the likelihood that the agent's criminal past could remain a secret."[45]:365
Two offices of the CIA Directorate of Analysis have analytical responsibilities in this area. The Office of Transnational Issues[46] applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to U.S. national security and provides the most senior U.S. policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.
Another part of CIA, the Directorate of Operations, collects human intelligence (HUMINT) in these areas.
Research by Dr. Alfred W. McCoy, Gary Webb, and others has pointed to CIA involvement in narcotics trafficking across the globe, although the CIA officially denies such allegations.[48][40]
Lying to Congress
Nancy Pelosi has stated that the CIA repeatedly misled Congress since 2001 about waterboarding and other torture, though Pelosi admitted to being told about the programs.[49][50] Six members of Congress have claimed that Director of the CIA Leon Panetta admitted that over a period of several years since 2001 the CIA deceived Congress, including affirmatively lying to Congress.[51] Some Members of Congress believe that these lies to Congress are similar to CIA lies to Congress from earlier periods.[52]
In the early 1990s Richard Barlow asked his managers to correct the record when blatantly false statements had been made to Congress. The official mendacity only became public after Barlow sued the US Department of Defense for wrongful termination.[53]
Wikipedia editing
In 2007, the now defunct database Wikiscanner revealed that computers from the CIA had been used to edit articles on the English Wikipedia, including the Iraq War article in 2003, and the article on former CIA executive directorWilliam Colby. A spokeswoman for Wikipedia said in response that the changes may violate the encyclopedia's conflict-of-interest guidelines. CIA spokesman George Little said that he could not confirm if CIA computers were used to make the changes, claiming that "the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly."[54]
Covert programs hidden from Congress
On July 10, 2009, House Intelligence subcommittee Chairwoman Representative Jan Schakowsky (D, IL) announced the termination of an unnamed CIA covert program described as "very serious" in nature which had been kept secret from Congress for eight years.[55]
It is not as if this was an oversight and over the years it just got buried. There was a decision under several directors of the CIA and administration not to tell the Congress.
Jan Schakowsky, Chairwoman, U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Subcommittee
CIA Director Panetta had ordered an internal investigation to determine why Congress had not been informed about the covert program. Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Representative Silvestre Reyes announced that he is considering an investigation into alleged CIA violations of the National Security Act, which requires with limited exception that Congress be informed of covert activities. Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee Chairwoman Schakowsky indicated that she would forward a request for congressional investigation to HPSCI Chairman Silvestre Reyes.
Director Panetta did brief us two weeks ago—I believe it was on the 24th of June—... and, as had been reported, did tell us that he was told that the vice president had ordered that the program not be briefed to the Congress.
Dianne Feinstein, Chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
As mandated by Title 50 of the United States Code Chapter 15, Subchapter III, when it becomes necessary to limit access to covert operations findings that could affect vital interests of the U.S., as soon as possible the President must report at a minimum to the Gang of Eight (the leaders of each of the two parties from both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the chairs and ranking members of both the Senate Committee and House Committee for intelligence).[56] At the time the House was expected to support the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill including a provision that would require the President to inform more than 40 members of Congress about covert operations.[citation needed] The Obama administration threatened to veto the final version of a bill that included such a provision.[57] On July 16, 2008, the fiscal 2009 Intelligence Authorization Bill was approved by House majority containing stipulations that 75% of money sought for covert actions would be held until all members of the House Intelligence panel were briefed on sensitive covert actions. Under the George W. Bush administration, senior advisers to the President issued a statement indicating that if a bill containing this provision reached the President, they would recommend that he veto the bill.[58]
The program was rumored vis-à-vis leaks made by anonymous government officials on July 23, to be an assassinations program,[59][60] but this remains unconfirmed. "The whole committee was stunned. I think this is as serious as it gets," stated Anna Eshoo, Chairman, Subcommittee on Intelligence Community Management, U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).
Allegations by Director Panetta indicate that details of a secret counterterrorism program were withheld from Congress under orders from former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. This prompted Senators Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to insist that no one should go outside the law.[61] "The agency has not discussed publicly the nature of the effort, which remains classified," said agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano.[62]
The Wall Street Journal reported, citing former intelligence officials familiar with the matter, that the program was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al-Qaeda operatives.[63]
Intelligence Committee investigation
On July 17, 2009, the House Intelligence Committee said it was launching a formal investigation into the secret program.[64] Representative Silvestre Reyes announced the probe will look into "whether there was any past decision or direction to withhold information from the committee".
"Is giving your kid a test in school an inhibition on his free learning?" Holt said. "Sure, there are some people who are happy to let intelligence agencies go about their business unexamined. But I think most people when they think about it will say that you will get better intelligence if the intelligence agencies don't operate in an unexamined fashion."
Rush Holt, Chairman, House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, Committee on Appropriations[65]
Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D, IL), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, who called for the investigation, stated that the investigation was intended to address CIA failures to inform Congress fully or accurately about four issues: C.I.A. involvement in the downing of a missionary plane mistaken for a narcotics flight in Peru in 2001, and two "matters that remain classified", as well as the rumored-assassinations question. In addition, the inquiry is likely to look at the Bush administration's program of eavesdropping without warrants and its detention and interrogation program.[66] U.S. Intelligence Chief Dennis Blair testified before the House Intelligence Committee on February 3, 2010, that the U.S. intelligence community is prepared to kill U.S. citizens if they threaten other Americans or the United States.[67] The American Civil Liberties Union has said this policy is "particularly troubling" because U.S. citizens "retain their constitutional right to due process even when abroad." The ACLU also "expressed serious concern about the lack of public information about the policy and the potential for abuse of unchecked executive power."[68]
Use of vaccination program in hunt for Osama bin Laden
The agency attracted widespread criticism after it used a local doctor in Pakistan to set up a hepatitis B vaccination program in Abbottabad in 2011 to obtain DNA samples from the occupants of a compound where it was suspected bin Laden was living, hoping to obtain samples from bin Laden or his children in order to confirm his presence. It is unknown whether any useful DNA was acquired from the program, but it was deemed not successful. The doctor was later arrested and sentenced to a lengthy prison term on allegedly unrelated charges.[69]Médecins Sans Frontières criticized the CIA for endangering and undermining trust in medical workers[70] and The New York Times reported that the CIA's action had increased resistance to vaccination programs in Pakistan.[71]
Improper search of computers used by Senate investigators
In July 2014 CIA Director John O. Brennan had to apologize to lawmakers because five CIA employees (two lawyers and three computer specialists) had surreptitiously searched Senate Intelligence Committee files and reviewed some committee staff members' e-mail on computers that were supposed to be exclusively for congressional investigators. Brennan ordered the creation of an internal personnel board, led by former senator Evan Bayh, to review the agency employees' conduct and determine "potential disciplinary measures."[72] However, according to some reports, Brennan didn't apologize for spying or doing anything wrong at all, even though his agency had been improperly accessing computers of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) and then, in the words of investigative reporter Dan Froomkin, "speaking a lie". This accusation was based on the CIA Director's earlier denials of Senator Dianne Feinstein's claims that the surreptitious CIA search of the SSCI computers occurred, was inappropriate, or "violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution, including the Speech and Debate clause" or other laws.[73][74][75]
Resignation of officials and agents who would not work for Donald Trump
In February 2017, reports emerged that key experts within the CIA were resigning because they would not work for U.S. President Donald Trump.[76] The Middle East Eye reported that two agents, Americans, who operated spy-rings within ISIS had resigned, because they "...did not want to see the contacts who worked for them sacrificed due to incompetence and anti-Muslim prejudice from within Trump's inner circle." Ned Price, a CIA official since 2006, stirred controversy when he published an op-ed in The Washington Post, explaining why he surprised himself by resigning, after he perceived Trump using his visit to CIA HQ for partisan political posturing.[77][78][79][80][81][82][83]
In March 2017, WikiLeaks published more than 8,000 documents on the CIA. The confidential documents, codenamed Vault 7, dated from 2013 to 2016, included details on the CIA's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs,[84] and web browsers, including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Opera,[85][86] as well as the operating systems of most smartphones including Apple's iOS and Google's Android, and other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux.[87] WikiLeaks did not name the source, but said that the files had "circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive."[84]
In a 2017 speech addressing CSIS, CIA Director Mike Pompeo referred to WikiLeaks as "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia". He also said: "To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now."[88]
↑ Naftali, Timothy (2005). "The CIA and Eichmann's Associates". U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge University Press. pp.337–374. ISBN978-0-521-61794-9.
↑ Hearst, David (February 23, 2017). "CIA 'terrorist hunters' to quit in opposition to US president". Middle East Eye. Retrieved February 24, 2017. Contracted agents, some of whom run networks of sources within al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group have either quit or threatened to quit amid frustration in the intelligence services since Trump took office last month.
↑ Millstein, Seth (February 20, 2017). "Who Is Edward Price? The CIA Agent Quit Because Of The Trump Administration". Bustle. Archived from the original on February 24, 2017. Retrieved February 24, 2017. Price joined the CIA in 2006 and most recently worked as a spokesman for the National Security Council, yet Trump's actions over his first month in office caused Price to conclude that he "cannot in good faith serve this administration as an intelligence professional."
↑ Sharman, Jon (February 21, 2017). "CIA analyst quits after 11 years because of Donald Trump's 'disturbing' behaviour". The Independent. Archived from the original on February 23, 2017. Retrieved February 24, 2017. Edward Price joined up in 2006 and was "convinced that it was the ideal place to serve my country". He became a terrorism expert and worked under the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations, recently serving on the staff of the National Security Council, and believed he would never leave.
↑ Kelly, Mary Louise (February 20, 2017). "Disgusted By Trump, A CIA Officer Quits. How Many More Could Follow?". NPR. Retrieved February 24, 2017. Now Price is 34. And it was another vivid image that led him to quit: that of President Trump on Jan. 21, his first full day in office, delivering a speech at CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia. Trump chose to speak in front of the CIA's wall of stars — stars that honor CIA officers who died in the line of duty.
Leon Edward Panetta is an American retired politician and government official who has served under several Democratic administrations as Secretary of Defense (2011–2013), director of the CIA (2009–2011), White House Chief of Staff (1994–1997), director of the Office of Management and Budget (1993–1994), and as a U.S. Representative from California (1977–1993).
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of the United States that provide information and analysis for leaders of the executive and legislative branches. The Committee was established in 1976 by the 94th Congress.
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored kidnapping in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpose of circumventing the source country's laws on interrogation, detention, extradition and/or torture. Extraordinary rendition is a type of extraterritorial abduction, but not all extraterritorial abductions include transfer to a third country.
The Church Committee was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID), the committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence", including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission. The committee's efforts led to the establishment of the permanent US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Stephen R. Kappes was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DDCIA), until his resignation on April 14, 2010. He had served in the CIA since 1981, with a two-year hiatus. A career clandestine operations professional, Kappes supervised the extraordinary rendition program, a non-judicial system of rendering persons suspected of terrorism to secret locations where most of them were interrogated. Kappes also helped persuade Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi to abandon his nuclear weapons program in 2003. In 2009, Kappes was convicted in absentia by an Italian court for his headquarters-based role in the rendition and torture of an Egyptian citizen who was kidnapped from Italian soil by the CIA.
The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), also known as the House Intelligence Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Mike Turner. It is the primary committee in the U.S. House of Representatives charged with the oversight of the United States Intelligence Community, though it does share some jurisdiction with other committees in the House, including the Armed Services Committee for some matters dealing with the Department of Defense and the various branches of the U.S. military.
Michael Vincent Hayden is a retired United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also serves as a professor at the George Mason University – Schar School of Policy and Government. Hayden currently co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center's Electric Grid Cyber Security Initiative.
The Central Intelligence Agency, known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. Following the dissolution of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947.
John Owen Brennan is a former American intelligence officer who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from March 2013 to January 2017. He served as chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama, with the title Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President. Previously, he advised Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues during the 2008 election campaign and presidential transition.
James Robert Clapper Jr. is a retired lieutenant general in the United States Air Force and former Director of National Intelligence. Clapper has held several key positions within the United States Intelligence Community. He served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 1992 until 1995. He was the first director of defense intelligence within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and simultaneously the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. He served as the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from September 2001 until June 2006.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
Michael Joseph Morell is an American former career intelligence analyst. He served as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2013 and twice as its acting director, first in 2011 and then from 2012 to 2013. He also serves as a professor at the George Mason University - Schar School of Policy and Government.
John Chris Kiriakou is an American author, journalist and former intelligence officer. Kiriakou is a columnist with Reader Supported News and co-host of Political Misfits on Sputnik Radio.
CIA activities in Syria since the agency's inception in 1947 have included coup attempts and assassination plots, and in more recent years, extraordinary renditions, a paramilitary strike, and funding and military training of forces opposed to the current government.
Edward Joseph Snowden is an American and naturalized Russian citizen who was a computer intelligence consultant and whistleblower who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was an employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
The Panetta Review was a secret internal review conducted by Leon Panetta, then the Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, of the CIA's torture of detainees during the administration of George W. Bush. The review led to a series of memoranda that, as of March 2014, remained classified. According to The New York Times, the memoranda "cast a particularly harsh light" on the Bush-era interrogation program, and people who have read them have said parts of the memos are "particularly scorching" of techniques such as waterboarding, which the memos describe as providing little valuable intelligence.
The United States is widely considered to have one of the most extensive and sophisticated intelligence network of any nation in the world, with organizations including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, amongst others. It has conducted numerous espionage operations against foreign countries, including both allies and rivals. Its operations have included the use of industrial espionage, cyber espionage. and mass surveillance.
Gina Cheri Walker Haspel is an American intelligence officer who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from May 21, 2018, to January 20, 2021. She was the agency's deputy director from 2017 to 2018 under Mike Pompeo, and became acting director on April 26, 2018, after Pompeo became U.S. secretary of state. She was later nominated and confirmed to the role, making her the first woman to become CIA director on a permanent basis.
The Report is a 2019 American historical political drama film written and directed by Scott Z. Burns that stars Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm, Ted Levine, Michael C. Hall, Tim Blake Nelson, Corey Stoll, and Maura Tierney. It depicts the efforts of staffer Daniel Jones as he led the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture following the September 11th attacks, covering more than a decade's worth of real-life political intrigue related to the contents, creation, and release of the 6,700-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
The CIA controls black sites used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain people deemed to be enemy combatants.
Dujmovic, Nicholas, "Drastic Actions Short of War: The Origins and Application of CIA's Covert Paramilitary Function in the Early Cold War," Journal of Military History, 76 (July 2012), 775–808
Gibson, Bryan R. (2015). Sold Out? US Foreign Policy, Iraq, the Kurds, and the Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN978-1-137-48711-7.
Jones, Milo; Silberzahn, Philippe (2013). Constructing Cassandra, Reframing Intelligence Failure at the CIA, 1947–2001. Stanford University Press. ISBN978-0-8047-9336-0.
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