A blog for all seasons; A blog for one; A blog for all. As the 11th most informative blog on the planet, I have a seared memory of throwing my Time 2006 Man of the Year Award over the railing at Time Warner Center.
Justice. Only Justice Shall Thou Pursue
Well, as I suspected yesterday, the foiled underwear bomb plot and the UAV raid that killed a major al Qaeda figure (and who was linked to the USS Cole bombing) were connected.
"I was told by the White House that they are connected, that they are part of the same operation," Representative Peter King told CNN a day after news of the intercepted bomb that authorities said was intended to make its way to an airplane bound for the United States or other Western country.
King and U.S. security officials did not say what happened to the suspected suicide bomber or if he was killed in the strike.
"The person who actually had the bomb is no longer a threat," King said.
John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top counter terrorism adviser and a former CIA official, told ABC's "Good Morning America" program that authorities are "confident that neither the device nor the intended user of this device pose a threat to us."
On Monday, the Obama administration said Middle East authorities had seized an improved underwear bomb within the last 10 days that they said shows al Qaeda's determination to build bombs that can pass through airport security systems.
A day earlier, two Yemeni members of al Qaeda were killed by a missile strike on their car, although Washington and Yemen do not acknowledge U.S. drone attacks on militants in the country.
News of the foiled plot was embargoed by the Administration until after the UAV airstrike, which is a smart move since letting on that the plot was busted might have tipped off those involved in the plot that they were being followed closely by US and foreign intel services.
UPDATE:
The same person who passed along the information necessary to thwart the newest underwear bombing plot is responsible for the intel that led to the UAV airstrike killing Fahd al-Quso. Quso was involved in the attack on the USS Cole.
The officials also said that a successful Predator attack that killed Fahd al-Quso over the weekend was related to the plot and was a “part of a 1-2 blow against Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),” the north African affiliate of the al-Qaida terrorist network. Al Quso, described as director of external operations at AQAP, was “involved (in the bomb plot) in an intimate fashion,” said the senior administration official.
What makes the newest iteration of the underwear bomb so dangerous is that it uses far less metal, making it even more difficult for metal detectors and scanners to pick up the device.
The CIA apparently ran a vaccination ruse to obtain DNA information. But perhaps more importantly, the fallout from the bin Laden raid continues to affect the security situation in Afghanistan and the frontier provinces in Pakistan. The drone program and military aid programs to Pakistan are in doubt as the Pakistanis continue to seethe over the raid:
The vaccination program was set up as the C.I.A. was struggling to learn whether Bin Laden was hiding in the compound, and adds a new twist to the months of spy games that preceded the nighttime raid in early May that killed the Qaeda chief.
It has also aggravated already strained tensions between the United States and Pakistan. The operation was run by a Pakistan doctor, Shakil Afridi, whom Pakistani spies have since arrested for his suspected collaboration with the Americans. Dr. Afridi remains in Pakistani custody, the American official said.
Getting DNA evidence from the people hiding in the Abbottabad compound would have been a significant coup, because it would have allowed the C.I.A. to match the samples with DNA from other members of the Bin Laden family that are on file at the C.I.A. — providing the first hard evidence in years of his whereabouts.
The American official said that the doctor managed to temporarily gain access to the compound, but that he never saw Bin Laden and was not successful in getting DNA samples from any Bin Laden family members. Obama administration officials have said publicly they were not sure whether Bin Laden was in Abbottabad when dozens of Navy Seals commandos stormed the house in May.
The existence of the vaccination program was first reported by a British newspaper, The Guardian. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.
It is unclear how the C.I.A. first recruited Dr. Afridi to work for the United States. The Guardian reported that he used a team of nurses and other health workers to administer Hepatitis B vaccinations throughout Abbottabad, even starting the program on poor fringes of the town to maintain a low profile.
Pakistani military and intelligence operatives were furious about the American raid that killed Bin Laden, and relations between the United States and Pakistan have only plummeted since. Pakistani officials have suggested that they might use troops to repel another incursion into Pakistan, and many American officials believe that Pakistan seems more concerned with hunting C.I.A. informants than with finding Qaeda operatives.
American officials said they planned to suspend as much as $800 million worth of military aid to Pakistan — a move partly designed to chasten Islamabad for expelling American military trainers — and several influential American lawmakers have suggested attaching more strings to the billions of dollars sent each year to Pakistan.
Also at stake is the C.I.A.’s armed drone program, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Pakistan in recent years and has killed several senior operatives from Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan has threatened to expel C.I.A. operatives working on the drone program from a base in southern Pakistan, and the C.I.A. has set up contingency plans to run more flights from a base in eastern Afghanistan.
It is interesting that the Pakistanis seem to be more interested in catching those who may have provided intel to the CIA in the hunt for Osama bin Laden than they are in going after other terrorists hiding in their midst.
Drone airstrikes continue, including one that killed 38 people, and the Pakistanis continue to express their displeasure about those ongoing airstrikes. They threaten to stop US operations from airbases inside Pakistan, and the CIA and US military are contemplating carrying those operations from bases inside Afghanistan.
Pakistan is seeking to preserve ties with the Taliban and other militants that it has used for decades to gain political influence in Afghanistan, according to Imtiaz Gul, director of Islamabad’s Center for Research and Security Studies.
The reliance on guerrillas to project power across Pakistan’s borders is part of an effort to compensate for its smaller size compared with arch-foe India, against which it has fought three wars since the countries separated at independence from the U.K.
Any army offensive “is not going to give satisfaction to the Americans, because Pakistan wants to keep a relationship with some of the groups there,” including the one led by Afghan tribal leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, said Gul.
The U.S., which is withdrawing some troops and planning to end its combat role in Afghanistan by 2014, is pushing Pakistan to crush the Taliban in its territory while helping bring its leaders to peace talks. The U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan describe Haqqani as a major enemy.
Things in South Asia are getting a whole lot more dangerous because Pakistan's ongoing limited actions to deal with the Islamists and Taliban who seek to destabilize the region results from the refusal to cut longstanding ties with those elements.
Now that al Qaeda has itself admitted that yes, Osama bin Laden is dead, the deathers (aka those who don't believe President Obama when he says that bin Laden is dead) will relent and admit that bin Laden is indeed dead as President Obama says? Any takers on that? I'll even give odds.
No? Good. Because some people will never admit that bin Laden was killed in that raid.
In any event, bin Laden was quite busy while lounging in that Abbottabad compound all these years (his wife says she never left in all that time) plotting and planning further attacks. That he was focusing on railways around the world, and particularly in the US is quite troublesome because rail security particularly in the US has always lagged that of the airlines.
A suspected CIA drone strike targeted a hotel Thursday in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan’s borderlands, killing eight people, according to Pakistani news reports.
A series of missiles pounded the town of Datta Khel, near what U.S. officials believe is the headquarters of the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent force that has staged deadly bombings in Afghan cities and regularly attacks NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, as details continue to leak about the raid that killed bin Laden, we're learning about the efforts that came up short to get bin Laden in the past.
“We thought we had ‘No. 1’ on this side of the border,” said a senior American military officer involved in planning the operation. “It was the best intelligence we’d had on him in a long time.”
The military set into motion one of the largest strike missions of its kind, with long-range bombers, attack helicopters, artillery and commandos all ready to pummel the rugged mountain valley along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, according to military officers and former government officials.
But just as the half dozen B-2 Stealth bombers were halfway on the 3,000-mile flight to their target, commanders ordered them to return to their secret base in the Indian Ocean, because of doubts about the intelligence on Bin Laden and concerns about civilian casualties from the bombs.
A smaller, more precise raid was carried out by commandos and attack helicopters, killing several dozen militants in the episode, which has not been previously disclosed.
But the founder and formative figure of Al Qaeda was not there.
Inside the White House, the disappointment was palpable, according to senior aides to former President George W. Bush. What might have been Mr. Bush’s last chance at redeeming his administration’s failure to capture or kill Bin Laden after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, when he was cornered in the same Tora Bora region but escaped into Pakistan, did not materialize.
Amid the national relief over the killing of Bin Laden by a Navy Seal team in Abbottabad, Pakistan, this secret chapter in the hunt for the world’s most famous fugitive is a reminder of the years of frustration and false hopes government officials endured in trying to pick up his trail.
It also shows that the CIA was still not on the ball when it came to bin Laden and al Qaeda's operational hierarchy. After all, the CIA was stating at that time that:
The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.
The US focus had shifted towards going after al Qaeda's mid level terror network, perhaps hoping to lead to the high value targets in the process. That too may have led them to carry out the 2007 attack in the hopes of capturing or killing bin Laden.
Another report indicates that the US informed the Pakistanis that they were carrying out this mission - while the mission was already underway. Details may or may not be accurate that the Pakistanis had scrambled jets to deal with the inbound flight of US helicopters and were sent away once notification reached the Pakistani military. The lede on that report was that the US could have been close to having a disastrous run-in with the Pakistani military during the mission inside Pakistan's borders with disastrous consequences for both sides.
If the Pakistanis are now scrambling to make more arrests, that intel could come one of four different paths: (1) directly from the people who the US left behind at Abbottabad, (2) the US could have sent them the necessary intel; (3) gathered from independent sources completely; (4) combination of sources. No way to know for sure.
It's the same deal about today's UAV airstrike - there's no way to know if it is connected with the OBL mission raid intel cache, or whether it was planned separately.
UPDATE:
It appears that the CIA was tracking the Abbottabad compound from a house nearby. They used a variety of electronic eavesdropping methods, but the agency refuses to comment on those reports. Some means and methods should not be revealed, lest they reveal too much about tactics and capabilities that the US uses to track down al Qaeda and other high value targets around the world.
UPDATE:
Further evidence of Pakistani duplicity - based on statements being released from the Pakistanis themselves. It raises still more troubling details in the bin Laden search over the years - particularly in how the Pakistanis were involved, especially as it relates to bin Laden's wife who is now in Pakistani custody.
A few key points from the story: She’s now in Pakistani custody, recovering from the gunshot wound; U.S. intelligence officials are unlikely to get the chance to speak with her. After 9/11 when the Afghan campaign began, Pakistan’s government reportedly gave her haven and helped her return to Yemen. She later reentered Pakistan to join her husband, which, as McGirk writes, points out a potentially major intelligence lapse in hindsight: Why take years deciphering courier aliases when bin Laden’s wife could have led them right to him?
On top of that, there’s this detail of further alleged Pakistani duplicity, which will only further inflame tensions at a delicate moment:
Says [an] Arab woman formerly connected to al-Qaeda: “There was an understanding with the Pakistani army. We would get a tip-off that the army planned to raid one of our houses in the tribal area. We would flee but leave some ‘evidence’ behind so that the army could show to the Americans that we’d been there.”
I have no doubt that the latter may help explain the former. If the CIA believed that the Pakistanis were laying down a false trail or were coopted by al Qaeda, then trying to track down bin Laden based on his wife's whereabouts could have been seen as a false trail. This reinforces the notion that the Pakistanis were apparently left in the dark about the operation because the US didn't trust elements within the Pakistani government to not tip off al Qaeda and bin Laden. It also explains, in part, why the Pakistanis aren't going to let the CIA and US officials anywhere near her. On top of cultural and religious misgivings over such interrogations, bin Laden's wife would likely reveal much about bin Laden and al Qaeda's relationship with those within the security services and military.
To allay both domestic and international anger and dismay over the presence of Osama bin Laden in a military cantonment town close to the capital, senior Pakistani officials have told The Daily Beast they recognize that an important head has to roll and soon. They say the most likely candidate to be the fall guy is Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of the country’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. In a last ditch effort to control the damage and to assure the US that the ISI was not harboring him and was unaware of his presence in Pakistan, Pasha reportedly flew to Washington today. But these high-level sources who refused to be quoted or named say his resignation is only a matter of time.
US Special Forces from SEAL Team Six carried out a daring raid last night and killed Osama bin Laden in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan last night, which is located 30 miles north of the capital of Islamabad and 120 miles from the Afghan border. The news hits hard here in the New York City metro area where al Qaeda carried out the deadliest terror attack in history, murdering more than 3,000 people and destroying the World Trade Center. For the families of those killed or injured in the attacks, this is a bittersweet moment since they will never get closure - they will always be lacking their loved ones who were so cruelly taken from them on the orders of bin Laden.
Once the news was broadcast following President Obama's official announcement last night, the area around Ground Zero was one of jubilation and reflection (more here). This morning, broadcasters and hundreds of police were controlling the gathered crowds and those trying to make their way to jobs in and around Lower Manhattan.
A trusted courier of Osama bin Laden’s whom American spies had been hunting for years was finally located in a compound 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital, close to one of the hubs of American counterterrorism operations. The property was so secure, so large, that American officials guessed it was built to hide someone far more important than a mere courier.
What followed was eight months of painstaking intelligence work, culminating in a helicopter assault by American military and intelligence operatives that ended in the death of Bin Laden on Sunday and concluded one of history’s most extensive and frustrating manhunts.
American officials said that Bin Laden was shot in the head after he tried to resist the assault force, and that one of his sons died with him.
For nearly a decade, American military and intelligence forces had chased the specter of Bin Laden through Pakistan and Afghanistan, once coming agonizingly close and losing him in a pitched battle at Tora Bora, in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. As Obama administration officials described it, the real breakthrough came when they finally figured out the name and location of Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, whom the Qaeda chief appeared to rely on to maintain contacts with the outside world.
Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had given the courier’s pseudonym to American interrogators and said that the man was a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
American intelligence officials said Sunday night that they finally learned the courier’s real name four years ago, but that it took another two years for them to learn the general region where he operated.
Still, it was not until August when they tracked him to the compound in Abbottabad, a medium-sized city about an hour’s drive north of Islamabad, the capital.
C.I.A. analysts spent the next several weeks examining satellite photos and intelligence reports to determine who might be living at the compound, and a senior administration official said that by September the C.I.A. had determined there was a “strong possibility” that Bin Laden himself was hiding there.
It was hardly the spartan cave in the mountains where many had envisioned Bin Laden to be hiding. Rather, it was a mansion on the outskirts of the town’s center, set on an imposing hilltop and ringed by 12-foot-high concrete walls topped with barbed wire.
The property was valued at $1 million, but it had neither a telephone nor an Internet connection. Its residents were so concerned about security that they burned their trash rather putting it on the street for collection like their neighbors.
American officials believed that the compound, built in 2005, was designed for the specific purpose of hiding Bin Laden.
Months more of intelligence work would follow before American spies felt highly confident that it was indeed Bin Laden and his family who were hiding in there — and before President Obama determined that the intelligence was solid enough to begin planning a mission to go after the Qaeda leader.
Bin Laden, however would not come quietly, and he returned fire. Members of the team killed bin Laden and extracted his body to a base in Afghanistan where he was positively identified with facial recognition software and other means. From there, his body was buried at sea.
Now, there was speculation that no country would accept his remains as being the reason that his body was buried at sea, but I think the more likely explanation is that the US simply didn't want his burial location to turn into a rallying cry for al Qaeda and those loyal to the jihad. A burial at sea wipes eliminates that possibility, but the ideology lives on.
Al Qaeda has been seriously damaged by the attack and death of bin Laden, but the group is far from defanged. Ayman al Zawahiri is still at large, and the terror group continues to receive shelter from Taliban and utilizes the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan as a base of operations.
The terror group will continue to attempt further attacks, and it's important to note that while bin Laden was the face and major fundraiser for the group and pressed home the notion of jihad, Zawahiri and others have been the more public figures in the past several years. Expect Zawahiri to take a more active role in leading al Qaeda and spreading the jihadist rhetoric and ideology, along with Anwar al-Awlaki. Both men have been spreading jihadi ideology online and rallying others to their cause.
As noted above, the US didn't let Pakistan's government know about the mission until it was completed. There's damned good reasons for that - the Pakistani government is far from reliable and the ISI is likely harboring further Taliban and al Qaeda within the country and not acting against the terror group whose leader lived in comfort just yards from Pakistan's army military academy where the country's army trains its cadre of leaders and in a city where many in the army go to retire. A Pakistani army division headquarters is located there as well, making this a major center for the Pakistani military.
Bin Laden's death doesn't mean the end of the conflict against al Qaeda and the Islamic extremists who justify attacks against the US and the West. It just means that there will be a new face associated with terror attacks to come. That doesn't mean that his death shouldn't be lauded for eliminating a scourge of humanity whose actions set in motion the worst terror attacks in history and tremendous bloodshed and misery for many throughout the world.
The successful raid also raises new questions about what the Pakistani intel service (ISI) knew, and how the Pakistanis were unable to located bin Laden when he was living so openly and so close to major Pakistani military installations.
Finally, I want to personally thank all those who stuggle to keep us safe and go after these terrorists, along with President Obama for green-lighting the mission and enabling the military and intel services to coordinate and execute the mission with precision and professionalism.
UPDATE:
Here's a map showing the final location of where bin Laden lived before the raid:
UPDATE:
This is perhaps the most poignant of all the photos taken in the past 48 hours and was captured by a NYT cameraman:
UPDATE: Pakistanis are both stunned by the news, and many are angered over the attack on bin Laden. Former Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf is angered at the violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. Considering that Pakistan's own ISI routinely ignores Afghanistan's sovereignty by providing aid and comfort to Taliban and al Qaeda, and refuses to deal with embedded Taliban and al Qaeda within Pakistan's own territory, they government in Islamabad is going to be on the hot seat to explain how they completely missed the fact that bin Laden was living large just yards from the Pakistani military academy.
Clearly, this is going to lead to a re-evaluation of US-Pakistani relations - both the public declarations and the private behind the scenes level discussions. Pakistan's ISI and military simply can't be trusted, especially with time sensitive information to maintain operational security, and that was a major reason that President Obama kept the mission close to the vest and didn't inform any US allies, lest any information leak before the mission was carried out.
This also means that the Islamists in Pakistan may carry out additional attacks against the US/NATO/ISAF supply lines, and perhaps the Pakistani military may no longer give NATO/US/ISAF forces the logistical support they have had in the past (although the Pakistani military hasn't exactly done a great job protecting those convoys in the past). President Obama must have weighed the potential repercussions of taking this action versus informing Pakistan, etc., and found that the benefits outweighed the potential fallout/blowback. I think that was the right move.
After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap -- boom, boom -- to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.
So, who was captured along with who else was killed in the raid? That's going to make for some interesting reading down the line.
The New York Times is reporting that investigations are moving forward on whether a Defense Department official, Michael Furlong, operated his own rogue paramilitary/intel unit in Afghanistan and Pakistan to track down and kill al Qaeda and Taliban units without proper authorizations from higher in the chain of command.
The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said.
While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are attacking operatives of Al Qaeda and others through unmanned, remote-controlled drone strikes, some American officials say they became troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. The officials say they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work.
It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. Officials said Mr. Furlong’s secret network might have been improperly financed by diverting money from a program designed to merely gather information about the region.
Moreover, in Pakistan, where Qaeda and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding, the secret use of private contractors may be seen as an attempt to get around the Pakistani government’s prohibition of American military personnel’s operating in the country.
Officials say Mr. Furlong’s operation seems to have been shut down, and he is now is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Defense Department for a number of possible offenses, including contract fraud.
It isn't clear when Furlong began these operations, but they accelerated in pace during the summer of 2009, which caught the attention of investigators. The AP reports that the Penatagon put Furlong in charge of a program to use private companies to gather information about Afghanistan's political and tribal culture.
Part of the original $22 million contract that Furlong was directing remains intact, the official told the AP, because it provides the funding for nine workers involved in information-gathering, translation and similar work. Those workers are employed by International Media Ventures with offices in Florida, Texas and elsewhere.
Nine employees from International Media Ventures were hired by the U.S. military to serve as information analysts and in other administrative jobs at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters operations center in Kabul, said Maj. Steven Cole, a spokesman for the international military coalition in Afghanistan.
No one is clear whether he was authorized to run this operation, and it isn't clear whether the information he gathered was actually used by the military or CIA to engage terrorists although sources do claim that the intel was acted upon. Intel gathered by these private contractors appears to have found its way into Defense Department and CIA hands. A contractor working for Furlong claims that millions of dollars that were supposed to go to the Web site run by Eason Jordan was redirected by Mr. Furlong toward intelligence gathering for the purpose of attacking militants, in violation of his contractual obligations and orders.
If Furlong operated outside the chain of command and exceeded his authority, then these investigations should find him in violation of the applicable law. The problem becomes whether he was authorized to do so (and who issued the authorizations) and whether the program was successful or not - and those in the Times article seems to lean towards it being not successful. If it was successful, then outing the program could lead to problems down the road and ends a potentially successful intel operation.
The Defense Department can't account for about $15 million provided Furlong for his operations.
While no one is saying for sure whether the latest arrest of two more Taliban leaders was the result of the capture of Mullah Baradar, the hits keep coming for the Taliban struggling from a multi-pronged attack by the US, Afghan, and Pakistani forces on multiple fronts, including intel operations, UAV airstrikes, and direct assaults on Taliban-infested territories.
Afghan officials said the Taliban’s “shadow governors” for two provinces in northern Afghanistan had been detained in Pakistan by officials there. Mullah Abdul Salam, the Taliban’s leader in Kunduz, was detained in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad, and Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan Province was also captured in an undisclosed Pakistani city, they said.
The arrests come on the heels of the capture of Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s military commander and the deputy to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the movement’s founder. Mr. Baradar was arrested in a joint operation by the C.I.A. and the ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.
The arrests were made by Pakistani officials, the Afghans said, but it seemed probable that C.I.A. officers accompanied them, as they did in the arrest of Mr. Baradar. Pakistani officials declined to comment.
Together, the three arrests mark the most significant blow to the Taliban’s leadership since the American-backed war began eight years ago. They also demonstrate the extent to which the Taliban’s senior leaders have been able to use Pakistan as a sanctuary to plan and mount attacks in Afghanistan.
It was not immediately clear if the arrests of the Taliban shadow governors were made possible by intelligence taken from Mr. Baradar. But it seemed likely. In the days after Mr. Baradar’s arrest, American officials said they managed to keep his detention a secret from many Taliban leaders, and that they were determined to roll up as much of the Taliban’s leadership as they could.
The Pakistanis arrested nine al Qaeda affiliated thugs in Karachi. Officials in that instance say the arrests were not related to Baradar's capture, but the report indicates that one among those captured was identified as "...Ameer Muawiya, who the officials said was in charge of foreign al-Qaida militants operating in Pakistan's tribal regions near Afghanistan and was an associate of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden."
If that pans out, that is a major hit against al Qaeda operations in the region, and could lead to additional arrests and airstrikes on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistani border.
While the Taliban continue to claim that this is all a ruse and their military commander is still free, US and Pakistani officials say that Taliban thug Bahadar is providing useful information:
The captured No. 2 Taliban commander, in the hands of none-too-gentle Pakistani intelligence agents, is already giving up "useful information," U.S. and Afghan sources said Tuesday.
"It's certainly a breakthrough and I think it could be a turning point" in the Afghan war, James Dobbins, former U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, said of last week's arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Pakistan.
"This is a major terrorist who has been at the core of Taliban operations for years" as a friend since boyhood of Taliban chieftain Mullah Mohammed Omar, a U.S. counterterror official said of Baradar, who also oversaw the Taliban's drug and protection rackets.
The importance of his capture, in a joint operation by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and the CIA, was underlined by the Taliban's insistence it never happened.
"We totally deny this rumor," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press by telephone.
The Pakistani military confirms that he was captured and The Dawn reports that several other people were captured and are being interrogated. With the ISI in the lead, it is quite possible that they are using harsh interrogation techniques to obtain that information. It is also important to note that some information that Baradar has is of a time sensitive nature; whereabouts of key individuals, plans for terror operations and military operations, etc. as well as long term strategic objectives and doctrinal goals. Getting at the time sensitive information in a prompt fashion - and relaying that information to those who can act on that information is key to disrupting Taliban operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet, capturing a major commander like Baradar doesn't mean that others can't take his place or that terror operations could continue without interruption in Pakistan or Afghanistan. We've seen the Mehsud clan continue terror operations despite the targeted airstrikes that first took out Baitullah and later Hakimullah Mehsud. Taliban operations will continue, but the more insight we have into the inner workings of the group, the more we can build on prior successes and take out the group and its capabilities to strike. As the Washington Post notes, Taliban thugs are still trying to carry out attacks, and one Taliban thug was captured this week and admitted to recruiting a new class of suicide bombers - young girls.
UPDATE: Bill Roggio reports that Taliban leaders in Afghanistan admit that Baradar was captured, but that he was captured in Helmand Province and not in Karachi as had been claimed by the US/Pakistani sources. They say he and several of his cohorts were picked up in the course of operations in Marja.
That makes some sense for the Taliban to make that claim. They have a vested interest in trying to show that their leaders are actually leading the battle from the front, rather than exhorting on their minions from the cozy confines of a Pakistani city where they can live in relative luxury compared to the hardships faced on the battlefield where they face death from all angles.
Yet a major Pakistani leader threw some cold water on claims that Baradar was captured in a joint CIA/ISI operation.
The Pakistani government has denied that the Afghan Taliban are based in Pakistan, and said the Quetta Shura does not exist. Baradar's capture in Karachi has cast further doubts on the Pakistani government's claims.
Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, has called the report of Baradar's capture "propaganda" and said no joint operation between the ISI and the CIA took place. He stopped short of denying that Baradar was in Pakistani custody, however.
"We are verifying all those we have arrested," Malik told Dawn. If there is any big target, I will show the nation."
"If the New York Times gives information, it is not a divine truth, it can be wrong," Malik continued. The New York Times broke the story of Baradar's capture.
Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.
It was unclear whether he was talking, but the officials said his capture had provided a window into the Taliban and could lead to other senior officials. Most immediately, they hope he will provide the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who is the group’s spiritual leader.
Disclosure of Mullah Baradar’s capture came as American and Afghan forces were in the midst of a major offensive in southern Afghanistan.
His capture could cripple the Taliban’s military operations, at least in the short term, said Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer who last spring led the Obama administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan policy review.
Details of the raid remain murky, but officials said that it had been carried out by Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and that C.I.A. operatives had accompanied the Pakistanis.
The New York Times learned of the operation on Thursday, but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials, who contended that making it public would end a hugely successful intelligence-gathering effort. The officials said that the group’s leaders had been unaware of Mullah Baradar’s capture and that if it became public they might cover their tracks and become more careful about communicating with each other.
The Times is publishing the news now because White House officials acknowledged that the capture of Mullah Baradar was becoming widely known in the region.
Several American government officials gave details about the raid on the condition that they not be named, because the operation was classified.
American officials believe that besides running the Taliban’s military operations, Mullah Baradar runs the group’s leadership council, often called the Quetta Shura because its leaders for years have been thought to be hiding near Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in Pakistan.
The ISI appears to be the lead on this, and it is more than likely that the ISI had known where he'd been for years and only recently decided to put the screws to the Taliban and its various factions.
A Taliban spokesman denied on Tuesday that the insurgents’ second-most important leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been captured in Pakistan.
Reached by cellphone, the spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said that Mullah Baradar was not under arrest. “He is safe and free, and he is in Afghanistan,” he claimed.
United States officials confirmed the arrest to The New York Times last Thursday but asked the newspaper to withhold the information until Monday because it would impede intelligence operations. They described him as the most significant Taliban figure yet arrested, head of their military operations and second in importance only to the Taliban “emir of Afghanistan,” Mullah Omar. Mullah Baradar was arrested in a joint raid by Pakistani intelligence agents with C.I.A. agents accompanying them, U.S. officials said.
“He is safe and free, and he leads the command and he is in Afghanistan,” Mr. Mujahid claimed. “This is a false rumor spread by foreigners in order to weaken the morale of the Taliban because they are facing big problems in Marja.”
There's no word on whether Baradar is talking or not, and we can only speculate as to whether harsh interrogation techniques are being used. If the ISI is in the lead, it is quite likely harsh interrogation methods are being used, even if the CIA is in the room; President Obama's executive order restricting such methods doesn't extend to other governments (which can prove quite convenient in such joint operations).
Well, we've always been threatened by international terrorists for more than two decades, but this is a particularly worrisome report; Congress was warned that we should expect a terror attack within the US within the next six months from an al Qaeda or an affiliate:
The assessment by Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, was much starker than his view last year, when he emphasized the considerable progress in the campaign to debilitate Al Qaeda and said that the global economic meltdown, rather than the prospect of a major terrorist attack, was the “primary near-term security concern of the United States.”
Citing a recent wave of terrorist plots, including the failed Dec. 25 attempt to blow up an airliner as it approached Detroit, Mr. Blair and other intelligence officials told a Senate panel that Al Qaeda had adjusted its tactics to more effectively strike American targets domestically and abroad.
“The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11,” said Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director. “It is that Al Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect.”
As the C.I.A. continues its campaign of drone attacks aimed at Qaeda operatives in the mountains of Pakistan, the officials also said that the network’s splinter groups in Yemen and Somalia were taking on more importance.
But Mr. Blair began his annual threat testimony before Congress by saying that the threat of a crippling attack on telecommunications and other computer networks was growing as an increasingly sophisticated group of enemies had “severely threatened” the sometimes fragile systems undergirding the country’s information infrastructure.
It is highly unusual that the CIA and national security establishment would provide such a specific timeframe for their analysis.
Yet, the DHS advisory system is unchanged: it's yellow generally and orange for flights. It would behoove DHS to increase the threat levels so as to increase scrutiny on those areas it considers to be possible targets if they're really contemplating that a terror attack would be attempted within the next six months.
At the same time, the intel services are concerned that there may be a cyberattack that could result in crippling damage of some form.
Meanwhile, there are reports that the underwear bombing suspect Abdul Mutallab is talking to investigators and giving valuable intel. That could be part of the reason that the intel services believe that al Qaeda is threatening an attack within the next six months.
In recent days, two law enforcement sources said, Abdulmutallab has told authorities more about where he trained overseas and others he met there -- leads that the FBI has shared with other members of the U.S. intelligence community. Investigators are following up to corroborate the information.
U.S. investigators flew members of Abdulmutallab's family from Nigeria to the United States on Jan. 17, the senior administration official said. The family members have proved vital in getting Abdulmutallab to talk, he said -- indicating that it would have been counterproductive to interrogate him under military rules, as some have suggested.
The president is getting briefings on the interrogations of Abdulmutallab, the official said.
All three sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Officials are continuing to flesh out Abdulmutallab's contacts with radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, who allegedly met with the suspect before the bombing, one source said.
No plea deal between Justice Department lawyers and federal public defender Miriam Siefer is imminent, the sources said, but both sides began negotiating last week, as reported by The Washington Post.
If convicted, Abdulmutallab faces a virtual life sentence on six criminal charges, including using a plane as a weapon of mass destruction. In exchange for his renewed cooperation, authorities could recommend that a federal judge reduce any prison sentence Abdulmutallab might face, a common occurrence in the criminal justice system.
The best advice is to remain vigilant and to watch for unusual behavior and items that seem out of place.
The suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan last week was carried out by a Jordanian doctor who was an al-Qaida double agent, Western intelligence officials told NBC News.
Initial reports said that the attack, which killed seven CIA officers, was carried out by a member of the Afghan National Army.
According to Western intelligence officials, the perpetrator was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, 36, an al-Qaida sympathizer from the town of Zarqa, which is also the hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant Islamist responsible for several devastating attacks in Iraq.
Al-Balawi was arrested by Jordanian intelligence more than a year ago. However, the Jordanians believed that al-Balawi had been successfully reformed and brought over to the American and Jordanian side, setting him up as an agent and sending him off to Afghanistan and Pakistan to infiltrate al-Qaida.
His specific mission, according to officials, was to find and meet Ayman al Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s No. 2, also a physician.
However, the Al-Jazeera Web site quoted a Taliban spokesman who said al-Balawi misled Jordanian and U.S. intelligence services for a year. The spokesman, Al-Hajj Ya'qub, promised to release a video confirming his account of the attack.
The Jordanian intel officer happens to be a relative to Jordan's King Abdullah and the Jordanians responded to his death with a state funeral.
Jordan's official news agency, Petra, said bin Zeid was killed "on Wednesday evening as a martyr while performing the sacred duty of the Jordanian forces in Afghanistan" and provided no further details about his death. Local news reports quoted family members as saying bin Zeid had been in Afghanistan for 20 days and had been scheduled to travel home on the day of the bombing.
His coffin's arrival in Amman on Saturday was handled with unusual pomp, with Jordan's King Abdullah II and his wife, Rania, personally presiding over a funeral and burial in a military cemetery.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the special relationship with Jordan dates back at least three decades and has recently progressed to the point that the CIA liaison officer in Amman enjoys full, unescorted access to the GID's fortress-like headquarters. The close ties helped disrupt several known terrorist plots, including the thwarted 2000 "millennium" conspiracy to attack tourists at hotels and other sites. Jordanians also provided U.S. officials with communications intercepts in summer 2001 that warned of terrorist plans to carry out a major attack on the United States.
I fear we may see more of these kinds of attacks as the US and other intel services attempt to cultivate agents and associations with those with access to al Qaeda's hierarchy and some of them turn out to be double agents. It puts the CIA and other intel agencies at risk, not only with dubious intel, but puts their agents on the front lines at risk of suicide bombings and other attacks.
It also shows the difficulties in trying to infiltrate these terror organizations, and the lengths to which we and our allies have gone to make the attempt.
None of this should be shocking any more, but the body count for Islamic terrorists continue to rise - and the vast majority continue to be fellow Muslims. A suicide bomber took his truck laden with 550 pounds of explosive and blew up a gathering of people for a volleyball tournament.
The blast occurred near Pakistan's tribal belt, and was the latest bloodshed to rattle the country since the army launched a military offensive against Taliban fighters in the. The operation has scattered insurgents but provoked apparent reprisal attacks that have killed more than 500 people since October.
Police said Friday's bombing in Lakki Marwat city, not far from South Waziristan, was possible retaliation for local residents' efforts to keep militants out of the area.
"The locality has been a hub of militants. Locals set up a militia and expelled the militants from this area. This attack seems to be reaction to their expulsion," local police chief Ayub Khan told reporters.
He said the bomber drove a vehicle loaded with 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of high-intensity explosives onto the field, which lies in a congested neighborhood, during the volleyball contest.
Some nearby houses collapsed, and "we fear that some 10 or so people might have been trapped in the rubble," Khan said.
In addition, a group of local tribal elders were holding a meeting at a mosque nearby. The mosque was damaged and some people there died, he said.
That's on the heels of another devastating bombing that killed 44 in Karachi last week.
Also, this past Wednesday, the Taliban managed to infiltrate a US military base and carried out a successful suicide bombing in Afghanistan where seven CIA agents, including a station chief, were killed - a significant loss in the war on terror given their collective experience and contacts.
The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for the bombing, which was carried out by suicide bomber wearing an Afghan National Army uniform. Some senior officials think the bomber may have been given access to the base because he was believed to be an informant, said two former intelligence officials.
Several former intelligence officials described the attack in Afghanistan as "devastating" to the agency. A number of the officers killed had been counterterrorism operatives since before the 9/11 attacks. The base played a critical role in the CIA's significant operations in the country, including helping with drone attacks and informant networks in Pakistan.
The loss of seven officers is significant for a relatively small agency whose workforce is estimated to be 10,000 or more, but it's all the more damaging because those lost represented so much collective experience.
The CIA has been heavily involved in the UAV airstrike campaign against high value targets, including most notably al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The loss of those CIA agents could hamper efforts to go after those high value targets although Bill Roggio reports that a senior adviser to Mullah Omar was killed on New Year's eve.
Far from being a partisan split, we're finding that there's bipartisan anger over the Obama Administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and four other al Qaeda terrorists in New York City less than a mile from Ground Zero.
The latest person to slam the Administration? That would be New York State Governor David Paterson (D) who said that this was not a decision he would have made had he been in a position to do so.
"This is not a decision that I would have made. I think terrorism isn't just attack, it's anxiety and I think you feel the anxiety and frustration of New Yorkers who took the bullet for the rest of the country," he said.
Paterson's comments break with Democrats, who generally support the President's decision.
"Our country was attacked on its own soil on September 11, 2001 and New York was very much the epicenter of that attack. Over 2,700 lives were lost," he said. "It's very painful. We're still having trouble getting over it. We still have been unable to rebuild that site and having those terrorists so close to the attack is gonna be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers."
Paterson also said that the White House warned him six months ago this very situation would happen. He said while he disagrees with the decision, he will do everything in his power to make sure that the state's Department of Homeland Security will keep New Yorkers as safe as possible.
Republicans, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, have said the group should be tried in a different location under military tribunal because the attacks are considered an act of war.
The fact is that the Obama Administration is tying itself in knots over this needless decision because of one salient fact.
There's no way that the Administration is going to release Khalid Sheikh Mohammad if a jury somehow acquits him or results in a hung jury. Moreover, the government is going to do all it can to tailor the charges and the evidence to result in a conviction, which is tantamount to being a show trial. Patterico delves into that issue more deeply, and it is a serious read.
Moreover, the President himself believed that the 9/11 terrorists in custody were prisoners of war, which makes me wonder why they're getting access to civilian courts, given that under the Geneva Conventions, a military tribunal would be the appropriate venue.
The Obama Administration is clearly picking and choosing its position based not on sound legal reasoning, but political expediency, which in this case is to satisfy a political need to show that the Administration is closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
Of course, those detainees aren't going anywhere. They're not going to get released, but shifted to other facilities. It's so that President Obama can differentiate itself from President Bush's policies.
Then, there's the damage that will be done to the US intel establishment as a result of a trial. It's unconscionable for the Administration to proceed on this basis alone. After all, the Administration knows that military tribunals were acceptable for some of the terrorists in custody, so the legal groundwork was there to avoid allowing the release of methods and techniques that the US uses to gather intel on al Qaeda.
Josh Marshall wonders why people are upset with the idea of civilian trials and the possibility of acquittals when the government could reserve charges that could be tried in military tribunals. That's just it; there's no need to expose that information in the first place if the tribunals can handle it just as well.
I actually agree with Marshall that New York City could handle the trial, but that doesn't mean that it's the best venue or one that should have been chosen in the first place. The City remains a high profile target for al Qaeda, and they will surely try further attacks.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, a federal law enforcement official said early on Friday.
But Obama the administration will prosecute Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — the detainee accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen — and several other detainees before a military commission, the official said.
The decisions to give civilian prosecutors detainees accused of the 2001 terrorist attacks and keep the case of the Cole attack within the military system are expected to be announced at the Department of Justice later on Friday by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because that news conference has not yet taken place.
The decision about how to try several of the most high-profile detainees at Guantánamo marks a milestone in the administration’s efforts to close the facility, a policy that President Obama announced shortly after taking office but which has proven more difficult than his team anticipated.
Mr. Obama, asked about the decision during a news conference on his week-long trip to Asia, declined to comment directly, but said that Mr. Mohammed would face justice.
“I’m absolutely convinced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice,” Mr. Obama said. “The American people insist on it and my administration insists on it.”
No detainee is being moved right away. Under a law Congress enacted earlier this year, lawmakers must be given 45 days advance notice before the executive branch moves a Guantánamo detainee onto United States soil.
The decisions about how to prosecute Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Nashiri have been particularly difficult because their defense lawyers are expected to argue that they were illegally tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency during their confinement, tainting any evidence gathered from their interrogations.
I find the reason for the split to be thoroughly unpersuasive. al Qaeda struck at military and civilian targets on 9/11, and the fourth plane that crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside was meant to hit the heart of our democracy - striking at the White House or Capitol building. The terror attacks were not mere criminal acts, but acts of war - jihad.
By giving the terrorists access to civil courts, they are going down a path in which the terrorists will be capable of commandeering the proceedings and turn them into a circus on which they can spout off on how they were tortured and other wrongs heaped upon them, all while ignoring the heinousness of the mass murder they and their minions committed in the name of Islam.
The Obama Administration froze the military tribunals in the case of Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Waleed bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and it isn't clear what charges they'd face in a civilian court.
It appears to be an arbitrary decision to try some of the terrorists in civilian courts while others would go through military tribunals. Now, some will claim that a civilian court in New York should have jurisdiction on those who attacked targets in New York on 9/11, but they just as surely could have been conducted by the military tribunals without the fanfare and circus atmosphere that such a trial is bound to create.
It is a feel good proposition that does not address the fact that we'd still be detaining these terrorists indefinitely in some fashion, and while claiming shuttering Guantanamo Bay is a good thing, the Obama Administration would merely be shuffling these terrorists to other facilities around the US.
UPDATE: So why did the Administration single out some for civilian courts while others were left in the military tribunal? It could be that the Administration put those cases that are most likely to result in guilty charges (the slam dunk cases) were put in civilian court, while the ones that were on shaky ground were left to the military tribunals. I think that's a poor rationale, but the Administration is going to have to provide a solid argument in favor of this bifurcation or else find itself attacked on procedural grounds by detainees handled in either fashion. This opens up a can of worms for the Administration that is needless and may result in further delays in trials for the detainees.
Pardon me while I stop laughing at all those who breathlessly wondered when US Attorney General Eric Holder would start filing indictments against Bush Administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney.
A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.
The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn’t clear, and the CIA won’t comment on its substance.
According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn’t become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.
In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. It isn’t clear whether they were an early part of the CIA initiative that Mr. Panetta stopped.
So why exactly did CIA Director Panetta stop this program? What exactly was he uncomfortable about? More to the point, why was this program not fully operational when Panetta ended it? Could it be that this program was ended because it wasn't an efficient use of CIA limited resources at a time when other efforts, such as UAV airstrikes, have been shown to be quite effective?
The takeaway from this is that the Bush Administration was contemplating a secret initiative that would have worked towards a goal of eliminating top al Qaeda terrorists like Zawahiri and bin Laden. Seeing how a President's foremost goal is to provide and maintain the security of the United States, eliminating the terrorists responsible for the grievous loss of life on 9/11 would be a priority.
Democrats will claim that this proposal somehow broke the law because Congressional leaders were not kept apprised of the CIA proposal, but given how this plan fizzled out before it got to the operational stage, and was superseded by other programs like the UAV airstrikes that have killed dozens of al Qaeda and Taliban thugs, including several high profile targets, this is much ado about nothing. It's part of an ongoing attempt by Democrats to politicize and criminalize policy differences.
He talked tough on the campaign trail, saying that he would attack targets in Pakistan, risking war with a nominal ally in the war on terror.
He's been busy in just the first three days of his Administration. Two airstrikes have killed at least 17 people (AP reports 18), and at least five are believed to be foreign fighters, which is to say al Qaeda.
So, while he's on the one hand claiming that he wants to bring about improved relations with the rest of the world and particularly the Arab/Muslim world, he's busy bombing the terrorists who are busy plotting against the US. Where exactly does he expect new intel to come from going forward if his policies thwart detaining such terrorists or open up the courts to lawfare on behalf of jihadis whose intent is to cause murder and mayhem around the world?
At the minimum, Obama isn't exactly going to bring about improved relations with Pakistan (population 172 million, 97% of whom are Muslim) if he continues bombing al Qaeda and Taliban there, not that I find anything wrong with going after al Qaeda wherever they are located. Taking that option off the table would further enable al Qaeda to plot and carry out attacks against the US and our interests worldwide.
This once again highlights the difficulty of saying one thing on the campaign trail, and realizing that national security requires something else entirely. Obama isn't president of the world, despite the press, but is responsible for protecting the United States from further terror attacks. Carrying out those airstrikes are vital to ensuring that al Qaeda cannot plot further attacks and are necessary to disrupting al Qaeda operations from a safe haven - even one that is nominally under control of an ally.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey also wonders where Obama stands on hot pursuit of al Qaeda into Pakistan, covert attacks on al Qaeda all over the world, and other related operations. President Bush backtracked on raids into Pakistan, but maintained covert ops elsewhere. At the same time, the Left is already trying to find nonmilitary solutions for Afghanistan.
Of all the people that President elect Barack Obama could choose to be Director of Central Intelligence, he picked a guy who has absolutely no intelligence experience, no military experience, and is strictly a numbers guy: Leon Panetta.
What does this say about Obama and the intel community from which he had choices?
Admiral Dennis Blair was also named to be national intelligence director, according to officials.
Panetta is qualified to be DCI why? How? What are his qualifications?
Admiral Blair is more qualified to be DCI than Panetta. Then again, according to Blair's wiki, he's got himself a thing for not following orders and odd relationships with defense contractors.
Is it an admission that there's no one qualified to run the intel business in the nation, so we've got to get a numbers guy to do it? Or just no one qualified that is a Democrat? Or that Obama couldn't find someone who wasn't associated with current intel policy that the far left could find satisfactory (aka opposed aggressive tactics to uncover terror plots, waterboarding, and other tactics used since 9/11 to prevent further terror attacks inside the US), or a combination of the above?
UPDATE: Sen. Diane Feinstein is not a happy camper with the choice. The California Democrat wasn't informed of the choice. That's a polite way of saying, you never bothered to ask my opinion. She's not alone either. Sen. Jay Rockefeller echoes those sentiments; couldn't Obama have found someone with experience who opposed the aggressive interrogations, which the left construed as torture? Steve Kappes was apparently their choice; someone who had experience and opposed waterboarding.
I further disagree with Instapundit's take relying on Angelo Cordvilla about Panetta being a good choice to fight Obama's turf battles with the CIA to avoid the problems that dogged President Bush from 2001 onwards.
The CIA is a massive bureaucracy with its own inertia. It will do what it must to survive those who pass through. That means that there will always be people who oppose the President, regardless of which side of the aisle is in charge. There are partisans who think that they know better than the President or that they are the ones who make the decisions. They are the ones who leak information to the press, which often reports it regardless of the potential for undermining national security.
Panetta's selection wont fix any of that. If anything, it will make the problem worse since he has no understanding of the culture at CIA and no experience in intel matters. He's a bean counter, and a bad one at that given that he opted to cut the intel budget during the 1990s when al Qaeda was an emerging threat.
It's wishful thinking to believe that Panetta will fix the problems at CIA or will allow Obama to avoid the pitfalls that befell Bush. The reality is that bureaucracies the size, scope and nature of CIA are creatures unto themselves.
The thing is that someone has to get the CIA under control and to ensure that the nation gets the best intel possible from all sources - human and signal. It means dealing with unsavory characters. It means getting your hands dirty from time to time, but the end result should be an organization that is free of politics and puts the national interest first and foremost. Having opposing viewpoints proffered isn't a bad thing either, but it should be free of politics.
The Panetta choice does nothing to solve the problems, and shows that Obama is putting politics ahead of the best person for the job.
This isn't quite the same thing as the Anbar Awakening, but the outcome might be just the same. Apparently the CIA has hit upon a strategy that might entice local warlords to fight against the Taliban and assist the NATO and US efforts to eliminate the Taliban and al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan.
In an effort to win over fickle warlords and chieftains in Afghanistan and get information from them, CIA officials are handing out Viagra pills in exchange for their cooperation, the Washington Post reports.
"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people - whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra," an agency operative, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Post.
The growing Taliban insurgency has forced the agency to get creative in how they obtain certain information from Afghan warlords and tribal leaders, including Taliban movements and supply routes.
CIA operatives use everything from toys and school equipment to tooth extractions to their advantage and note that if Americans don't offer incentives, others, including Taliban commanders, will.
Afghan veterans told the Post that the usual bribes of choice - cash and weapons - aren't always the best options because they can garner unwanted attention and fall into the wrong hands.
"If you give an asset $1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone," Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan, told the Post.
Sex sells, and apparently the warlords have a need for the little blue pill as much as any other group. The CIA has apparently hit upon a winning combination that improves its access and contacts while avoiding the problems associated with other methods such as cash, weapons, or equipment that can bring unwarranted attention.
CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, a U.S. official said, a disclosure that could touch off new resistance to the administration's plan to ease sanctions on Pyongyang.
The CIA officials will tell lawmakers that they believe the reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons but was destroyed before it could do so, the U.S. official said, apparently referring to a suspicious installation in Syria that was bombed last year by Israeli warplanes.
The CIA officials also will say that though U.S. officials have had concerns for years about ties between North Korea and Syria, it was not until last year that new intelligence convinced them that the suspicious facility under construction in a remote area of Syria was a nuclear reactor, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing plans for the briefing.
By holding closed, classified briefings for members of several congressional committees, the administration will break a long silence on North Korean-Syrian nuclear cooperation and on what it knows about last year's destruction of the Syrian facility. Nonetheless, it has been widely assumed for months that many in the administration considered the site a nuclear installation.
It was not clear Tuesday how recently North Korea may have been aiding Syria. But disclosure of the relationship to the committees is likely to bring criticism from conservative lawmakers who already believe that U.S. overtures to North Korea have offered the government in Pyongyang too many benefits without assurances that it will disclose the extent of its nuclear arms effort or ultimately surrender its weapons.
No surprises here, and it's been suspected that the Israelis struck something of tremendous importance based on the resounding silence from the Syrians following the raid.
The fact that the Syrians didn't want anyone to know what happened in the September 6, 2007 raid was highly suggestive that they didn't want any attention on what was going on at the area that was bombed. I also suspected that the North Koreans or Iranians didn't want their hand tipped either, and may have leaned on Assad not to squawk because it would lead to repercussions in IAEA investigations into both countries' nuclear programs. It was even more plausible that the North Koreans were involved because the structure looked quite similar to one found in North Korea - sharing technical expertise.
A videotape taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced both the Israeli government and the Bush administration that it was modeled after a North Korean reactor that produced plutonium for nuclear weapons, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers tomorrow.
The videotape of the interior of the site, code named Al Kibar by the Syrians, also showed North Koreans working inside the facility, the officials said. It played a pivotal role in Israel's decision to bomb the facility last September, a move that was publicly denounced by Syria but not by Washington.
Sources familiar with its contents say the video shows the design of the Syrian reactor core is the same as the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical physical configuration and number of holes for the fuel rods. It shows "remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon," said a U.S. intelligence official. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video "very, very damning."
Of course, there are critics both inside the US and the Syrians who are busy throwing up a whole lot of smoke about the evidence to be proffered.
The biggest piece of evidence is that the Syrians didn't scream bloody murder when the Israelis struck the reactor on September 6 and have bulldozed the entire site to prevent anyone from getting a closer look at what could have been there. Their silence over the Israeli attack is quite telling that whatever was hit, it was so sensitive to the Syrian government that they couldn't risk anyone knowing what exactly was hit. Their cover story that it wasn't an important military facility doesn't wash since Israel essentially launched an attack that could rightfully be considered an act of war. Syria didn't even go to the UN.
The New York Times broke this story last night, and gave it prominence on their front page of the paper edition today. They note that the CIA purposefully destroyed two videotapes showing harsh interrogations of high value targets.
It doesn't look good for the CIA and the Administration. Someone had the bright idea of destroying tapes of harsh interrogations at a time when Congress was looking into the detention program.
Well, I was right. It really doesn't look good for the Administration. There's a firestorm brewing - and it's bipartisan in nature. That said, some of the hyperventilating on the Left is just out of control.
This morning, Michelle Malkin provides some context missing from the Times piece:
So, how bad is it? The Left is going bananas–with one its most unhinged bloggers now dubbing America a “Banana Republic.” It is bad. Center and right-leaning bloggers are weighing in. James Joyner points out that “People have gone to jail for obstruction of justice for actions much, much less brazen than this.” Ed Morrissey believes the tape destruction “looks a lot more like destroying evidence than tightening security.” Rick Moran concludes “Any way you slice it, someone needs to be held accountable for the tape’s destruction.”
It is worth noting that the CIA actually informed members of Congress about the tapes four years ago and also informed them in advance about their intention to ultimately destroy the tapes. One leading Democrat admits he knew about the destruction of the tapes last fall.
So, Democrats have known about this for a year and voiced their concern to the CIA. Nice.
This looks real bad for former DCI Porter Goss, who headed up the CIA for the relevant timeframe. The Democrats in Congress knew for a year that the tapes were going to be destroyed and did nothing. So, why did the Times release this now? Does it have anything to do with the ongoing legal wranglings with GitMo detainees?
I'm with both Ed, James, and Rick on this - not only does someone need to be held accountable, but it would appear that this was the destruction of evidence, and not simply tightening security to ensure that the identities of those CIA involved in the interrogations would ever become known.
DCI Hayden has much explaining to do about the situation, but he's going to take the heat for a practice of his predecessor.
The US certainly appears incapable of penetrating various terrorist groups around the world, but it would appear that a Hizbullah sympathizer didn't have any problem having someone penetrate both the CIA and FBI.
A Lebanese-born C.I.A. officer who had previously worked as an F.B.I. agent pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges that she illegally sought classified information from government computers about the radical Islamic group Hezbollah.
The plea agreement by the defendant, Nada Nadim Prouty, appeared to expose grave flaws in the methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct background checks on its investigators.
Ms. Prouty, 37, who also confessed that she had fraudulently obtained American citizenship, faces up to 16 years in prison.
Court papers do not specifically say why Ms. Prouty sought information about Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that is based in southern Lebanon, from the F.B.I.’s computer case files in June 2003, the month she left the bureau to join the C.I.A.
There is no accusation in the documents that she passed information on to Hezbollah or any other extremist group.
Just because the accusation was not included in the deal doesn't mean that she didn't engage in such behavior. It is possible that the investigators simply didn't have evidence that could be proffered in court that would show her to have passed such information on.
Note also that she was an illegal alien who managed to obtain the relevant documentation to appear as a legal citizen.
At a hearing in Detroit before the U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn, Prouty entered a plea of guilty to counts one, two and three of a second superseding information. Count one of the information charges conspiracy, for which the maximum penalty is five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Count two charges unauthorized computer access, for which the maximum penalty is one year imprisonment and a $100,000 fine. Count three charges naturalization fraud, for which the maximum penalty is 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, and requires the court to de-naturalize the defendant.
“This case highlights the importance of conducting stringent and thorough background investigations,” said U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy. “It’s hard to imagine a greater threat than the situation where a foreign national uses fraud to attain citizenship and then, based on that fraud insinuates herself into a sensitive position in the U.S. government. I applaud the excellent investigative work of the FBI, ICE and DHS, which led to the successful prosecution today.”
And you wonder why Gov. Spitzer had his prized illegal alien drivers license scheme killed and/or put down?
Prouty isn't the only one being sought either. One of Prouty's former employers, Talal Khalil Chahine, is currently a fugitive believed to be in Lebanon. He, along with Prouty’s sister, Elfat El Aouar, and others were charged in 2006 in the Eastern District of Michigan with tax evasion in connection with a scheme to conceal more than $20 million in cash received by La Shish restaurants and to route funds to persons in Lebanon. Chahine has also been charged, along with a senior ICE official in Detroit, in a bribery and extortion conspiracy in which federal immigration benefits were allegedly awarded to illegal aliens in exchange for money.
Prouty's status should have been discovered not once, but twice. The first time was when she was hired at the FBI and the second when hired at the CIA. Both background checks failed to catch the significant problem - she wasn't a valid US citizen.
UPDATE: According to the NY Post, Prouty faces the following criminal sanctions:
Under the most serious charge she pleaded to, naturalization fraud, she could have faced 10 years in jail. The agreement calls for her to serve six to 12 months and be stripped of her citizenship.
I'd call that a slap on the wrist, considering who she worked with and for - especially Chahine.
UPDATE: Wizbang notes that Prouty also managed to become a CPA in Virginia after the FBI discovered her shenanigans.
One interesting note is that seven months after the FBI discovered her espionage Prouty was able to sit for and pass the Virginia CPA exam and she's now a fully licensed CPA by the Commonwealth of Virginia. One would imagine that being a fraud and a spy might be enough to have your CPA license revoked, wouldn't you?
Current and former intelligence officials tell NBC News that Nada Nadim Prouty had a much bigger role than officials at the FBI and CIA first acknowledged. In fact, Prouty was assigned to the CIA’s most sensitive post, Baghdad, and participated in the debriefings of high-ranking al- Qaida detainees.
A former colleague called Prouty “among the best and the brightest” CIA officers in Baghdad. She was so exceptional, agree officials of both agencies, the CIA recruited her from the FBI to work for the agency’s clandestine service at Langley, Va., in June 2003. She then went to Iraq for the agency to work with the U.S. military on the debriefings.
Best and brightest was often a phrase used in reference to Robert Hanssen, who is now serving life in prison for espionage.
