All Hail Our CIA/Blackwater Overlords

Not like it's anything new I guess, but still:

In 2004, the CIA sent a team from the private security firm Blackwater, now Xe, to Hamburg to kill an alleged al Qaeda financier who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al Qaeda, according to a little-highlighted element in a Vanity Fair article to be published this month.

This is related to the illegal assassination program born under the Bush administration in 2001 and revealed to Congress only in June 2009.

Cheney's Secret CIA Program: The Cover Story

The story we've been hearing since yesterday is that the secret and possibly illegal CIA program recently killed by chief Leon Panetta has to do with assassinations attempts on Al Qaeda leaders.

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.

Bull. Shit. Or, at least, there is much, much more to this story. But we'll hear this "assassinating Al Qaeda operatives" aspect of it shouted from Right Wing mountain tops, along with choruses of "They're terrorists! We're supposed to kill them! Dems are soft on terror!" in order to distract from the programs alleged illegality, and whatever else it involved.

I wouldn't be surprised, given that “the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans," to find out that the program involved something as gruesome as kidnapping and threatening family members of suspected terrorists.

Suskind Is Releasing Transcripts

Wow. Journalist Ron Suskind recently released the book The Way of the World, in it making the explosive charge that the Bush White House ordered the CIA to make a fraudulent letter making it look like Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and the attacks of 9/11.

Two CIA men he uses as sources in the book quickly came out and, basically, called Suskind a liar.

Suskind has tapes. And he's released transcripts already, and will be coming out with more.

This posting is contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist. But the issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way.

--Ron Suskind

"CIA agent who helped kill Che Guevara to sell icon's hair"

I haven't finished counting how many things are wrong with this story. But it's a whole lot.

Forget for the moment your political position and how you feel about Che Guevara. What we're talking about with this auction is that this guy was an employee of the U.S. government when he killed, or helped kill, someone deemed an enemy by the U.S. Imagine a CIA operative today - auctioning off body parts of Iraqis he killed.

This is truly sick.

Update: Sold.

Governance under George W. Bush

Where the investigated get to investigate the investigators:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.

A small team working for General Hayden is looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.

[...]

Any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would be unusual, if not unprecedented, and would threaten to undermine the independence of the office, some current and former officials say.

"Anxiety and Anger." Yeah. That's what investigators and juries in mob cases felt too.

Disappearing People

Human Rights Watch on the status of 39 people the U.S. government reportedly took prisoner, and will not disclose the location of.

This is after President Bush publicly stated in September, 2006, that, after 14 prisoners were transferred from secret prisons to Guantanamo, there were no prisoners left in CIA custody.