Tag Archives ⇒ U.S. intelligence

Torture for Ideology

April 22, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Reports are in that link up the US tor­ture pro­gram and the hunt for the non-existent weapons of mass destruc­tion. Jonathan S Lan­day in McClatchy News quotes a “for­mer senior U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial famil­iar with the inter­ro­ga­tion issue”:

“The main [rea­son for the tor­ture] is that every­one was wor­ried about some kind of
follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003,
Cheney and Rums­feld, espe­cial­ly, were also demand­ing proof of the links
between al Qai­da and Iraq that (for­mer Iraqi exile leader Ahmed)
Cha­l­abi and oth­ers had told them were there.”

“There was constant
pres­sure on the intel­li­gence agen­cies and the inter­roga­tors to do
what­ev­er it took to get that infor­ma­tion out of the detainees,
espe­cial­ly the few high-value ones we had, and when peo­ple kept coming
up emp­ty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rums­feld’s peo­ple to push
hard­er,” he continued.

All this is not real­ly a sur­prise; I cov­ered it in real time over on Non​vi​o​lence​.org. There were numer­ous reports that the Vice Pres­i­dent and Sec­re­tary of Defense were push­ing the intel­li­gence agen­cies to come up with evi­dence that would back their flawed theories. 

The Unit­ed States is sup­posed to be the cham­pi­on of free­dom but we resort­ed to the most bru­tal of communist-era tor­ture tech­niques because our high­est offi­cials were more inter­est­ed in their car­toon view of the world than the com­plex real­i­ty (and not so com­plex: any­one who’s tak­en an “Intro to Islam” class would know that an alliance between Sad­dam Hus­sein and Osama bin Laden would be have been very unlike­ly). When facts and ide­o­log­i­cal the­o­ries don’t match up, it’s time to dig for more facts and revis­it the ideologies. 

The long life of 1950s sci-fi

July 2, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Part of the play­book for Amer­i­can tor­ture in Iraq and Guan­tá­namo comes from Chi­nese inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods used against cap­tured Amer­i­cans dur­ing the Cold War.

What the train­ers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied ver­ba­tim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chi­nese Com­mu­nist tech­niques used dur­ing the Kore­an War to obtain con­fes­sions, many of them false, from Amer­i­can prisoners.
The recy­cled chart is the lat­est and most vivid evi­dence of the way Com­mu­nist inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods that the Unit­ed States long described as tor­ture became the basis for inter­ro­ga­tions both by the mil­i­tary at the base at Guan­tá­namo Bay, Cuba, and by the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. 

It sounds like some­thing out of the 1962 thriller film The Manchuri­an Can­di­date. And in a way it is: the idea that Chi­nese Com­mu­nists had used inhu­man ruth­less­ness to unlock the secrets of the brain to cre­ate the per­fect truth tech­nique would be a charm­ing arti­fact of 1950s Amer­i­can cul­ture, some­thing to show along­side the hula hoop and the Jetson-like hov­er cars we’re all sup­posed to be dri­ving in the year 2000. Instead it’s yet anoth­er exhib­it in Pen­ta­gon amnesia.

Does­n’t any­one do any fact check­ing at the Pen­ta­gon? “Offi­cials who drew on the SERE pro­gram [in 2002 to design Amer­i­can intel­li­gence adap­ta­tion] appear to have been unaware that it had been cre­at­ed as a result of con­cern about false con­fes­sions by Amer­i­can pris­on­ers.” And yet… it’s clear that Pres­i­dents Bush and Cheney want­ed false infor­ma­tion in 2002 to launch the war against Iraq. What­ev­er “con­fes­sions” can be wrung from the Bagh­dad taxi dri­vers who got caught up in the arrest sweeps can cer­tain­ly be used to bul­ly the grow­ing num­ber who oppose the war.

But what do we want, jus­ti­fi­ca­tions or the truth? Peace in the region or pro­tec­tion from sins of the past? For­get that tor­ture is inhu­man: it’s also just an unre­li­able way of get­ting accu­rate infor­ma­tion. It’s hard to imag­ine a real­is­tic sce­nario where the hor­ri­ble events of 9/11 could have been stopped by acts of tor­ture by U.S. intel­li­gence or mil­i­tary per­son­nel but it’s could have been stopped if thought­ful ana­lysts had been allowed to share infor­ma­tion across agency lines and been focused on true knowl­edge and understanding.

U.S. taking on Hussein Strongman Role

August 24, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It should­n’t be a sur­prise but it makes me sick any­way. The _Washington Post_ reports that the “U.S. occu­pa­tion is hir­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein’s ex-spies”:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37331-2003Aug23.html.
It must be a good job mar­ket for mid-level Sad­dam Hus­sein loy­al­ists. Back in June, we learned that the U.S. had put “ex-Iraqi gen­er­als in charge of many Iraq cities”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000027.php (at the same time the U.S. can­celed promised elec­tions). The U.S. trum­pets cap­ture of big-name Iraqi lead­ers like “Chem­i­cal Ali”:www.msnbc.com/news/955391.asp?vts=082120030615 but then qui­et­ly hires their assis­tants. The major­i­ty of the new U.S. intel­li­gence recruits come from Sad­dam Hus­sein’s Mukhabarat, an agency whose name is said to inspire dread among Iraqis.
The infra­struc­ture of Sad­dam Hus­sein’s repres­sion appa­ra­tus is being rebuilt as a U.S. repres­sion appa­ra­tus. The stat­ues of Sad­dam Hus­sein go down, the “play­ing card” Iraqi fig­ure­heads get caught, but not much changes.
The arti­cle says that the new spy hir­ing is “covert” but it’s appar­ent­ly no secret in Iraq. even the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil, a dum­my rep­re­sen­ta­tive body hand­picked by U.S. forces, has expressed “adamant objec­tions” to the recruit­ment campaign:
bq. “We’ve always crit­i­cized the pro­ce­dure of recruit­ing from the old regime’s offi­cers. We think it is a mis­take,” Mah­di said. “We’ve told them you have some bad peo­ple in your secu­ri­ty apparatus.”
No, the “covert” audi­ence is the U.S. pub­lic, who might start feel­ing quesy about the Iraq War if they knew how eas­i­ly the U.S. was slip­ping into Sad­dam Hus­sein’s shoes.

Manufactured terrorist threat

August 14, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The big news this week has been the foil­ing of a plot to smug­gle ground-to-air mis­sile from Rus­sia into the Unit­ed States. ABC News claims there’s “less in mis­sile plot than meets the eye”:abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/missile030813_sting.html and goes so far as to call it a set-up. From start to fin­ish, the plot was orches­trat­ed as a sting oper­a­tion by U.S. and Russ­ian agents. The accused mas­ter­mind Hemant Lakhani had no Russ­ian con­tacts and no his­to­ry of arms smug­gling. The ABC arti­cle paints him as a small-time black mar­ket importer down on his luck who thought this would be a good way of mak­ing easy mon­ey and pay­ing off debts.
This does­n’t excuse his actions but it does change the way this we think about this whole plot. There was no arms sell­er. There was no ter­ror­ist user. No weapon made it by U.S. or Russ­ian intel­li­gence (for they were the ones who shipped it). What we do have is a two-bit mid­dle­man who talked trash abou the U.S. and offered to be a link of the arms trade. Like an idiot, Lakhani fol­lowed the bread crumbs of oppor­tu­ni­ty left for him by U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies. We now know there are peo­ple desparate enough to sel­ll any­thing if the price is right (did­n’t we already know that?) and that sales­men will talk­ing trash about a poten­tial buy­er’s com­peti­tors to close a deal.
That there’s some­one will­ing to sell mis­siles is indeed fright­en­ing, but it’s not worth this sort of media cov­er­age. No ter­ror­ist was involved in all this and the only ones talk­ing about using these weapons were U.S. agents! One has to to won­der if this is the lat­est “threat” all “cooked up by some White House insider”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000116.php. “Lets pose as Al Qae­da, wave lots of mon­ey in front of a desparate idiot, nail him when he grabs for it and declare it as a Al Qua­da plot foiled.”

Classifying Intelligence Blunders

July 15, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment might be throw­ing out its pros­e­cu­tion of sus­pect­ed Al Qae­da ter­ror­ist Zacarias Mous­saoui because it does­n’t want to allow him to ques­tion anoth­er Al Qae­da detainee in court. With­out the tes­ti­mo­ny of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the judge might throw out the entire indict­ment against Mous­saoui. What’s the Jus­tice Department’s ratio­nale? It says any tes­ti­mo­ny “would nec­es­sar­i­ly result in the unau­tho­rized dis­clo­sure of clas­si­fied information.”

Almost three years lat­er, what kind of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion could Mous­saoui pos­si­bly have? Sure­ly noth­ing that future ter­ror­ists could use. The only thing he could talk about is con­di­tions in the pris­ons. Bin al-Shibh is being held in a secret loca­tion under mil­i­tary law but has report­ed­ly con­fessed to being part of the 9/11 attacks. Sure­ly all the infor­ma­tion he knows about the attacks is also known by dozens of oth­er Al Qae­da mem­bers still at large. Why is U.S.Attorney John Ashcroft’s Jus­tice Depart­ment so ner­vous about let­ting bin al-Shibh speak in public?

A gov­ern­ment will clas­si­fy a piece of infor­ma­tion if it feels that its dis­clo­sure would threat­en nation­al secu­ri­ty: that with it, its ene­mies could use it to launch some new attack. But every­thing that Mous­saoui and bin al-Shibh know is already known by our ene­mies. Gov­ern­ments some­times will abuse their pow­er and declare some­thing clas­si­fied if it con­tatins infor­ma­tion that would be embar­rass­ing to its rep­u­ta­tion or its polit­i­cal leaders.

It’s a big deal to risk throw­ing away a case like this, and it seems like­ly that Ashcroft is try­ing to keep some piece of infor­ma­tion from the Amer­i­can peo­ple. He could be try­ing to keep skele­tons of past U.S. mis­deeds safe­ly in the clos­et, using “nation­al secu­ri­ty” as the blan­ket to cov­er up the truth. The two sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists might know quite a bit about U.S. intel­li­gence coop­er­a­tion with Afghani ter­ror­ists dur­ing the 1980s (when they were aim­ing their attacks at the Sovi­et Union). They might know about U.S. intel­li­gence mis­takes that could have pre­vent­ed 9/11. They sure­ly know about con­di­tions in the secret pris­ons were even detainees’ names and loca­tions are con­sid­ered “clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion.” Who’s secu­ri­ty would be threat­ened if this kind of infor­ma­tion got published?

American Spies and Blood for Oil

January 15, 1999
· Martin Kelley

Sad­dam Hus­sein was right: the U.N. teams inspect­ing Iraq did con­tain U.S. spies. His expul­sion of the teams was legit­i­mate, and the U.S. bomb­ing that fol­lowed was farce.

Karl Marx once wrote: “Hegel remarks some­where that all facts and per­son­ages of great impor­tance in world his­to­ry occur, as it were, twice. He for­got to add: the first time as tragedy, the sec­ond as farce.” We’re see­ing that today, with each suc­ces­sive mil­i­tary action by the U.S. against Iraq becom­ing ever more trans­par­ent and ridiculous.

Per­haps you haven’t heard the news. It was con­ve­nient­ly released the day before Pres­i­dent Clin­ton’s Sen­ate impeach­ment tri­al was to begin and the major Amer­i­can news net­works did­n’t give it much atten­tion. They were too busy with seg­ments on how the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice designed his own robes. With hooks like fash­ion and sex attend­ing the impeach­ment tri­al, how could they be blamed for under-reporting more Iraq news.

But on Jan­u­ary 7th, the New York Times con­firmed rumors that Unit­ed States plant­ed spies on the Unit­ed Nations: “Unit­ed States offi­cials said on Wednes­day that Amer­i­can spies had worked under­cov­er on teams of Unit­ed Nations arms inspec­tors fer­ret­ing out secret Iraqi weapons pro­grams.” The Wash­ing­ton Post and Boston Globe fur­ther report­ed that the oper­a­tion was aimed at Sad­dam Hus­sein him­self. NBC News report­ed that U.N. com­mu­ni­ca­tion equip­ment was used by U.S. intel­li­gence to pass along inter­cept­ed Iraqi messages.

This is exact­ly what Sad­dam Hus­sein has been charg­ing the U.N. teams with. He has long claimed that the teams, run by the Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Com­mis­sion or UNSCOM, were full of “Amer­i­can spies and agents.” It was for this rea­son that he denied the inspec­tors access to sen­si­tive sites. And it was this refusal that prompt­ed Pres­i­dent Clin­ton to attack Iraq last month.

So what’s going on here? Senior U.S. offi­cials told NBC News that the main tar­gets of last mon­th’s attack weren’t mil­i­tary but eco­nom­ic. The cruise mis­siles weren’t aimed at any alleged nuclear or bio­log­i­cal weapons fac­to­ries but instead at the oil fields. Specif­i­cal­ly, one of the main tar­gets was the Bas­ra oil refin­ing facil­i­ties in south­ern Iraq.

In a sep­a­rate arti­cle, NBC quot­ed Fad­hil Cha­l­abi, an oil indus­try ana­lyst at the Cen­ter for Glob­al Ener­gy Stud­ies in Lon­don, as say­ing Iraq’s oil pro­duc­ing neight­bors are “hop­ing that Iraq’s oil instal­la­tions will be destroyed as a result of Amer­i­can air strikes. Then the [U.N.-mandated] oil-for food pro­gram would be par­a­lyzed and the mar­ket would improve by the dis­ap­pear­ance of Iraqi oil altogether.”

Since the start of the Gulf War, Iraq has pro­duced relatively-little oil because of a com­bi­na­tion of the U.N. sanc­tions and an infra­struc­ture destroyed by years of war. A report by the Unit­ed States Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion back in the sum­mer of 1997 stat­ed Iraq’s per cap­i­tal Gross Nation­al Prod­uct was at lev­els not seen since the 1940s.

Sau­di Ara­bia and Kuwait have picked up this slack in pro­duc­tion and made out like ban­dits. Before the Gulf War, Sau­di Ara­bia was only allowed to pump 5.4 mil­lions bar­rels a day under it’s OPEC quo­ta. Today it pro­duces 8 mil­lion bar­rels a day, a fifty per­cent increase that trans­lates into bil­lions of dol­lars a year in prof­it. If the sanc­tions against Iraq were lift­ed, Sau­di pro­duc­tion would once more have to be lim­it­ed and the Anglo-American oil com­pa­nies run­ning the fields would lose ten bil­lion dol­lars a year in revenue.

t’s time to stop kid­ding our­selves. This is a war over mon­ey. The U.S. and Britain are get­ting rich off of Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s increased oil pro­duc­tion and don’t want any­one muscling in on their oil prof­its. It is in the eco­nom­ic inter­est of the U.S. and Britain to main­tain Iraqi sanc­tions indef­i­nite­ly and their for­eign pol­i­cy seems to be to set off peri­od­ic crises with Iraq. France and Rus­sia mean­while both stand to get lucra­tive oil con­tracts with a post-sanctions Iraq so they rou­tine­ly denounce any bomb­ing raids and just as rou­tine­ly call for a lift­ing of sanctions.

Sad­dam Hus­sein is also mak­ing out in the cur­rent state of affairs. A economically-healthy Iraqi pop­u­la­tion would­n’t put up with his tyran­ny. He cur­rent­ly rules Iraq like a mob boss, siphon­ing off what oil prof­its there are to pay for fan­cy cars and pres­i­den­tial palaces. He gets to look tough in front of the TV cam­eras and then retreats to safe under­ground bunkers when the bombs start falling on the Iraqi people.

It is time to stop all of the hypocrisy. It is esti­mat­ed that over a mil­lion Iraqis have died as a results of the post-Gulf War sanc­tions. These oil prof­its are blood mon­ey and it is long past time that they end.