LOU SABOTER-- being an archivist at heart I wanted to make sure these stories are preserved so that the public might better understand current events. The video is for further consideration ;)
NCS stuff
http://newsmine.org/content.php?ol=security/legislation/cia/new-clandestine-service-has-secret-director-named-jose.txt
Posted on Thu, Oct. 13, 2005
Negroponte creates new clandestine service
BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - National intelligence director John Negroponte on Thursday created the National Clandestine Service within the CIA to coordinate U.S. spying efforts overseas.
The change, one of the most significant restructurings of American spying since Congress created Negroponte's office last year, is intended to improve cooperation among the 15 U.S. spy agencies and streamline the flow of information to elected officials.
Under the plan, CIA Director Porter Goss will also become national human intelligence manager while the day-to-day operations of the clandestine service will be handled by an undercover officer. That officer publicly is referred to simply as "Jose."
The creation of the spy coordination unit and Goss' role in heading it are certain to boost morale at the Central Intelligence Agency, which came in for heavy criticism following intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq war. The CIA has lost a number of senior personnel since the arrival of Goss, a former Florida congressman and one-time CIA officer, who took over in September 2004.
"For the CIA, this is a big deal," said one senior intelligence official. "It's really a recognition of their expertise."
Intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the change would primarily affect the efforts of the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense intelligence units to recruit and run spies. The question was never whether the CIA would direct human intelligence gathering operations, they said, but how best to reorganize the efforts of the other agencies to make them compatible with what the CIA was already doing.
The lack of effective spies within terrorist cells was cited as a critical lapse in reviews following the Sept. 11 attacks. Several studies, including one by the independent 9-11 Commission, recommended naming a director of national intelligence and reorganizing the network of U.S. spy agencies.
President Bush and Congress endorsed most of the recommended changes and Bush named Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the first intelligence director.
Negroponte's creation of the clandestine service drew praise from the two leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Director Negroponte has made the right decision to designate the director of the CIA as the national human intelligence manager," Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said in a statement. "This decision reaffirms the agency's status as the nation's premier human intelligence organization and gives the director of the CIA the tools he needs to ensure an effective and coordinated effort."
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the committee's chairman, also applauded the change, but registered some reservations.
"I am pleased to see that (Negroponte) and the various intelligence agencies have reached a negotiated settlement on who will manage and coordinate one of the nation's most important sources of intelligence," he said, but added, "I have a number of questions in regards to this latest reorganization."
Roberts said he would raise those concerns when Goss appears before the committee to explain the new clandestine service in a few weeks.
Under the plan, the overall goals for those intelligence efforts will be spelled out by Negroponte. But his office's involvement, the officials said, would be limited to setting the intelligence agenda, not directing tactical spy operations.
---
© 2005, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Negroponte creates new clandestine service
BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - National intelligence director John Negroponte on Thursday created the National Clandestine Service within the CIA to coordinate U.S. spying efforts overseas.
The change, one of the most significant restructurings of American spying since Congress created Negroponte's office last year, is intended to improve cooperation among the 15 U.S. spy agencies and streamline the flow of information to elected officials.
Under the plan, CIA Director Porter Goss will also become national human intelligence manager while the day-to-day operations of the clandestine service will be handled by an undercover officer. That officer publicly is referred to simply as "Jose."
The creation of the spy coordination unit and Goss' role in heading it are certain to boost morale at the Central Intelligence Agency, which came in for heavy criticism following intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq war. The CIA has lost a number of senior personnel since the arrival of Goss, a former Florida congressman and one-time CIA officer, who took over in September 2004.
"For the CIA, this is a big deal," said one senior intelligence official. "It's really a recognition of their expertise."
Intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the change would primarily affect the efforts of the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense intelligence units to recruit and run spies. The question was never whether the CIA would direct human intelligence gathering operations, they said, but how best to reorganize the efforts of the other agencies to make them compatible with what the CIA was already doing.
The lack of effective spies within terrorist cells was cited as a critical lapse in reviews following the Sept. 11 attacks. Several studies, including one by the independent 9-11 Commission, recommended naming a director of national intelligence and reorganizing the network of U.S. spy agencies.
President Bush and Congress endorsed most of the recommended changes and Bush named Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the first intelligence director.
Negroponte's creation of the clandestine service drew praise from the two leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Director Negroponte has made the right decision to designate the director of the CIA as the national human intelligence manager," Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said in a statement. "This decision reaffirms the agency's status as the nation's premier human intelligence organization and gives the director of the CIA the tools he needs to ensure an effective and coordinated effort."
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the committee's chairman, also applauded the change, but registered some reservations.
"I am pleased to see that (Negroponte) and the various intelligence agencies have reached a negotiated settlement on who will manage and coordinate one of the nation's most important sources of intelligence," he said, but added, "I have a number of questions in regards to this latest reorganization."
Roberts said he would raise those concerns when Goss appears before the committee to explain the new clandestine service in a few weeks.
Under the plan, the overall goals for those intelligence efforts will be spelled out by Negroponte. But his office's involvement, the officials said, would be limited to setting the intelligence agenda, not directing tactical spy operations.
---
© 2005, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Secret U.S. Court OK'd 934 Warrants
Tue Apr 30, 2:25 PM ET
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite the war on terrorism, the government said Tuesday it requested and won approval for fewer warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies.
The government received court approval for 934 of the secret warrants in 2001 under a powerful U.S. surveillance law, down from 1,003 in 2000. Experts puzzled over the slight decline in one a measure of the war on terrorism inside the United States.
They said the decline probably reflects warrants that covered many surveillance requests under a single investigation — plus increased use by the FBI (news - web sites) of tools other than these warrants, such as subpoenas for a suspect's financial records.
"There's no question the number of investigations went up in 2001 — it's unthinkable it would be otherwise," said Steven Aftergood of the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.
A brief statement from Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson did not refer to any investigations. But experts believe many of the warrants approved last year under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were driven by the Sept. 11 attacks and by changes to the law by Congress in the aftermath making it more powerful.
The FBI often uses these specialized warrants to record the telephone calls and e-mails of citizens and immigrants believed to be agents of a foreign power, frequently targets of terrorism or espionage investigations. Authorities also can plant eavesdropping devices in a suspect's home or office or secretly search a suspect's property or luggage.
In one rare case where details have emerged of FBI surveillance under the 1978 law, authorities for more than 18 months secretly tapped the telephones — and planted bugs in the bedroom — of a husband and wife who were convicted in 1998 on espionage charges. An appeals court upheld the FBI's actions.
The government said it asked for 932 warrants for electronic surveillance and physical searches that the court approved in 2001 along with two requests made in December 2000. It said judges modified two warrants and two orders.
The judges have never denied a request outright. But in an unusual flap that became public after Sept. 11, the FBI was unable to gain approval in the weeks before the terror attacks for a surveillance warrant against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person so far to be indicted as a conspirator in attacks.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has expressed frustration at how well the hijackers managed to evade authorities.
"The hijackers had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind," Mueller said in a speech this month. "They used hundreds of different pay phones and cell phones, often with prepaid calling cards that are extremely difficult to trace. And they made sure that all the money sent to them to fund their attacks was wired in small amounts to avoid detection."
While some experts said the figures offered an unusual glimpse of the scope of the war on terrorism, others said the numbers were too vague to be meaningful.
"It's really difficult to read too much into these figures," said David Sobel of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, urging more detailed disclosure about how the warrants were sought and used.
Court records suggest the FBI used the special warrants last year in its espionage investigation of a retired Air Force master sergeant accused of offering to spy for Iraq, China and Libya. U.S. spy-catchers, for example, quietly searched the luggage of Brian Patrick Regan when he flew to Germany from Dulles International Airport last June and said they found glue and packing tape inside.
The Patriot Act, which became law on Oct. 26, broadened the 1978 surveillance law by allowing the FBI to request warrants in investigations that aren't mostly focused on foreign intelligence.
The Patriot Act also expanded the number of U.S. judges who may approve the warrants from seven to 11; at least three of those judges now must live within 20 miles of Washington. All are appointed by the chief justice of the United States for staggered, seven-year terms, and they serve rotating shifts every few weeks to work in a vault-like room inside the Justice Department (news - web sites).
The chief justice has not yet appointed the four judges permitted under the Patriot Act.
The seven U.S. district judges on the court are: Presiding Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Washington; William H. Stafford Jr. of northern Florida; Stanley S. Brotman of New Jersey; Harold A. Baker of central Illinois; Michael J. Davis of Minnesota; Claude M. Hilton of eastern Virginia and Nathaniel M. Gorton of Massachusetts. Lamberth's term expires May 18.
Tue Apr 30, 2:25 PM ET
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite the war on terrorism, the government said Tuesday it requested and won approval for fewer warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies.
The government received court approval for 934 of the secret warrants in 2001 under a powerful U.S. surveillance law, down from 1,003 in 2000. Experts puzzled over the slight decline in one a measure of the war on terrorism inside the United States.
They said the decline probably reflects warrants that covered many surveillance requests under a single investigation — plus increased use by the FBI (news - web sites) of tools other than these warrants, such as subpoenas for a suspect's financial records.
"There's no question the number of investigations went up in 2001 — it's unthinkable it would be otherwise," said Steven Aftergood of the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.
A brief statement from Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson did not refer to any investigations. But experts believe many of the warrants approved last year under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were driven by the Sept. 11 attacks and by changes to the law by Congress in the aftermath making it more powerful.
The FBI often uses these specialized warrants to record the telephone calls and e-mails of citizens and immigrants believed to be agents of a foreign power, frequently targets of terrorism or espionage investigations. Authorities also can plant eavesdropping devices in a suspect's home or office or secretly search a suspect's property or luggage.
In one rare case where details have emerged of FBI surveillance under the 1978 law, authorities for more than 18 months secretly tapped the telephones — and planted bugs in the bedroom — of a husband and wife who were convicted in 1998 on espionage charges. An appeals court upheld the FBI's actions.
The government said it asked for 932 warrants for electronic surveillance and physical searches that the court approved in 2001 along with two requests made in December 2000. It said judges modified two warrants and two orders.
The judges have never denied a request outright. But in an unusual flap that became public after Sept. 11, the FBI was unable to gain approval in the weeks before the terror attacks for a surveillance warrant against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person so far to be indicted as a conspirator in attacks.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has expressed frustration at how well the hijackers managed to evade authorities.
"The hijackers had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind," Mueller said in a speech this month. "They used hundreds of different pay phones and cell phones, often with prepaid calling cards that are extremely difficult to trace. And they made sure that all the money sent to them to fund their attacks was wired in small amounts to avoid detection."
While some experts said the figures offered an unusual glimpse of the scope of the war on terrorism, others said the numbers were too vague to be meaningful.
"It's really difficult to read too much into these figures," said David Sobel of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, urging more detailed disclosure about how the warrants were sought and used.
Court records suggest the FBI used the special warrants last year in its espionage investigation of a retired Air Force master sergeant accused of offering to spy for Iraq, China and Libya. U.S. spy-catchers, for example, quietly searched the luggage of Brian Patrick Regan when he flew to Germany from Dulles International Airport last June and said they found glue and packing tape inside.
The Patriot Act, which became law on Oct. 26, broadened the 1978 surveillance law by allowing the FBI to request warrants in investigations that aren't mostly focused on foreign intelligence.
The Patriot Act also expanded the number of U.S. judges who may approve the warrants from seven to 11; at least three of those judges now must live within 20 miles of Washington. All are appointed by the chief justice of the United States for staggered, seven-year terms, and they serve rotating shifts every few weeks to work in a vault-like room inside the Justice Department (news - web sites).
The chief justice has not yet appointed the four judges permitted under the Patriot Act.
The seven U.S. district judges on the court are: Presiding Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Washington; William H. Stafford Jr. of northern Florida; Stanley S. Brotman of New Jersey; Harold A. Baker of central Illinois; Michael J. Davis of Minnesota; Claude M. Hilton of eastern Virginia and Nathaniel M. Gorton of Massachusetts. Lamberth's term expires May 18.
THE NATION
FBI to Shift Agents to Terror War
Intelligence: The agency will redeploy 518 people and move some offices to the nation's capital.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
TIMES STAFF WRITER
May 29 2002
WASHINGTON -- The FBI, under fire for its failure to link possible terrorist threats in the weeks before Sept. 11, is planning to redeploy more than 500 additional agents to counterterrorism activities and to consolidate those operations in Washington, officials said Tuesday.
The reorganization plan, expected to be announced today by Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, seeks to avoid the breakdowns in coordination that plagued FBI terrorism investigations in Phoenix and Minneapolis last summer.
Mueller's plan would create a new layer of supervisors, analysts and "flying squads" in Washington responsible for overseeing and more aggressively pursuing terrorism leads and trends around the world, according to officials familiar with the plan. It would also move the FBI further from its traditional responsibilities of fighting narcotics, white-collar crime and violent crime by reassigning 518 agents in those areas to counterterrorism operations, officials said.
In all, the plan put together by Mueller and senior aides over the last few months would increase by about 70% the number of federal, state and local law enforcement agents detailed to the FBI's fight against terrorism, officials said.
But even before the plan is officially announced, some congressional critics are complaining that it doesn't go far enough.
"Making technology and intelligence analysis priorities are no-brainers, but a new organization chart alone won't work," Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said Tuesday.
Officials inside and out of the FBI have been awaiting Mueller's reorganization plan for weeks, and their anticipation has only been intensified by the recent barrage of questions about whether FBI supervisors in Washington ignored terrorist suspicions of agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis before Sept. 11.
In a blistering letter sent to Mueller last week, Coleen Rowley, general counsel in the bureau's Minneapolis office, accused officials at headquarters of putting up roadblocks in August that prevented field agents from pursuing evidence that flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui was part of a broader terrorist plot. Moussaoui, now suspected of being the intended 20th hijacker, is the only person charged with any crime in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
FBI officials already have a significant amount of centralized power to oversee terrorism investigations in field offices. In her letter, Rowley said plans to consolidate those operations in Washington further would "simply fly in the face of an honest appraisal of the FBI's pre-September 11th failures."
Rowley said field offices in Minneapolis and, separately, in Phoenix, where an agent warned last July that Middle Easterners enrolled in flight schools could be planning an attack, performed admirably in picking up on threats before Sept. 11. "The same cannot be said for the FBI Headquarters' bureaucracy and you want to expand that?!" she wrote.
Mueller's plan to create an Office of Intelligence to track terrorist leads would rely on about 50 CIA officials to help beef up the bureau's operation. It would also commit more resources to technology, including an overhaul of the FBI's computer system, and would seek to train more agents in Arabic and Farsi, officials said.
"Certainly the outlook is to have everything concentrated in Washington," said an FBI official who asked not to be identified. "That doesn't mean the field offices, specifically New York, won't have a significant role. They certainly will."
Historically, the Manhattan FBI and U.S. attorney's offices have been the national hub for terrorism investigations. Their teams of specialists played central roles in investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other high-profile cases.
Ashcroft has already undercut New York's influence by shifting responsibility for the Sept. 11 prosecutions to federal authorities in Washington and northern Virginia, and Mueller's plan would further erode New York's preeminence, threatening to exacerbate tensions, officials said.
A Justice Department official who asked not to be identified said Ashcroft, who oversees the FBI, believes it is important to centralize counterterrorism operations in Washington, despite the growing questions about how headquarters handled pre-Sept. 11 leads.
Currently, agents around the country "are collecting the intelligence out in the field, but it's never being looked at [in Washington] comprehensively. If you're collecting this stuff in Phoenix, it's not being put together with the stuff in Minnesota unless there's some known connection," the official said.
"The structure isn't there. [Mueller's plan] brings in expert analysts who can better analyze that information and look at it in a more comprehensive way," the official added.
That effort would rely in part on what the FBI calls "flying squads" of counterterrorism experts based in Washington. Mueller "views them as being able to fly out to areas that are doing important counterterrorism work and help them, and bring the knowledge back to headquarters to supplement these cases," according to a congressional official familiar with the closed-door briefings that the FBI has given members of Congress in recent days.
Ronald Kessler, the author of "The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI," said he thinks the move is a positive step.
The planned consolidation "will make a lot of difference.... Less is going to fall between the cracks. Before Sept. 11, they were inundated with leads that were just not being followed," said Kessler, who blames many of the FBI's problems on the failure to upgrade computer systems under former Director Louis J. Freeh.
In the weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI deployed about 6,000 of its 11,000 agents to counterterrorism investigations in an effort to reconstruct the events of Sept. 11 and prevent future attacks.
That number has dwindled substantially in the last 8 1/2 months, although officials would not say exactly how many agents are now assigned to counterterrorism operations.
Mueller's plan would create a permanent counterterrorism work force of at least 3,718 federal, state and local law enforcement agents, an increase of about 70% from the 2,178 people working on counterterrorism before Sept. 11, officials said.
Some members of Congress are likely to push for an even greater deployment.
"The FBI is the lead agency for counterterrorism, and less than a quarter of its agents, from what we've been told, are going to be doing counterterrorism," said a congressional aide who asked not to be identified. "We don't think it goes far enough."
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article, go to www.lats.com/rights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FBI to Shift Agents to Terror War
Intelligence: The agency will redeploy 518 people and move some offices to the nation's capital.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
TIMES STAFF WRITER
May 29 2002
WASHINGTON -- The FBI, under fire for its failure to link possible terrorist threats in the weeks before Sept. 11, is planning to redeploy more than 500 additional agents to counterterrorism activities and to consolidate those operations in Washington, officials said Tuesday.
The reorganization plan, expected to be announced today by Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, seeks to avoid the breakdowns in coordination that plagued FBI terrorism investigations in Phoenix and Minneapolis last summer.
Mueller's plan would create a new layer of supervisors, analysts and "flying squads" in Washington responsible for overseeing and more aggressively pursuing terrorism leads and trends around the world, according to officials familiar with the plan. It would also move the FBI further from its traditional responsibilities of fighting narcotics, white-collar crime and violent crime by reassigning 518 agents in those areas to counterterrorism operations, officials said.
In all, the plan put together by Mueller and senior aides over the last few months would increase by about 70% the number of federal, state and local law enforcement agents detailed to the FBI's fight against terrorism, officials said.
But even before the plan is officially announced, some congressional critics are complaining that it doesn't go far enough.
"Making technology and intelligence analysis priorities are no-brainers, but a new organization chart alone won't work," Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said Tuesday.
Officials inside and out of the FBI have been awaiting Mueller's reorganization plan for weeks, and their anticipation has only been intensified by the recent barrage of questions about whether FBI supervisors in Washington ignored terrorist suspicions of agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis before Sept. 11.
In a blistering letter sent to Mueller last week, Coleen Rowley, general counsel in the bureau's Minneapolis office, accused officials at headquarters of putting up roadblocks in August that prevented field agents from pursuing evidence that flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui was part of a broader terrorist plot. Moussaoui, now suspected of being the intended 20th hijacker, is the only person charged with any crime in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
FBI officials already have a significant amount of centralized power to oversee terrorism investigations in field offices. In her letter, Rowley said plans to consolidate those operations in Washington further would "simply fly in the face of an honest appraisal of the FBI's pre-September 11th failures."
Rowley said field offices in Minneapolis and, separately, in Phoenix, where an agent warned last July that Middle Easterners enrolled in flight schools could be planning an attack, performed admirably in picking up on threats before Sept. 11. "The same cannot be said for the FBI Headquarters' bureaucracy and you want to expand that?!" she wrote.
Mueller's plan to create an Office of Intelligence to track terrorist leads would rely on about 50 CIA officials to help beef up the bureau's operation. It would also commit more resources to technology, including an overhaul of the FBI's computer system, and would seek to train more agents in Arabic and Farsi, officials said.
"Certainly the outlook is to have everything concentrated in Washington," said an FBI official who asked not to be identified. "That doesn't mean the field offices, specifically New York, won't have a significant role. They certainly will."
Historically, the Manhattan FBI and U.S. attorney's offices have been the national hub for terrorism investigations. Their teams of specialists played central roles in investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other high-profile cases.
Ashcroft has already undercut New York's influence by shifting responsibility for the Sept. 11 prosecutions to federal authorities in Washington and northern Virginia, and Mueller's plan would further erode New York's preeminence, threatening to exacerbate tensions, officials said.
A Justice Department official who asked not to be identified said Ashcroft, who oversees the FBI, believes it is important to centralize counterterrorism operations in Washington, despite the growing questions about how headquarters handled pre-Sept. 11 leads.
Currently, agents around the country "are collecting the intelligence out in the field, but it's never being looked at [in Washington] comprehensively. If you're collecting this stuff in Phoenix, it's not being put together with the stuff in Minnesota unless there's some known connection," the official said.
"The structure isn't there. [Mueller's plan] brings in expert analysts who can better analyze that information and look at it in a more comprehensive way," the official added.
That effort would rely in part on what the FBI calls "flying squads" of counterterrorism experts based in Washington. Mueller "views them as being able to fly out to areas that are doing important counterterrorism work and help them, and bring the knowledge back to headquarters to supplement these cases," according to a congressional official familiar with the closed-door briefings that the FBI has given members of Congress in recent days.
Ronald Kessler, the author of "The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI," said he thinks the move is a positive step.
The planned consolidation "will make a lot of difference.... Less is going to fall between the cracks. Before Sept. 11, they were inundated with leads that were just not being followed," said Kessler, who blames many of the FBI's problems on the failure to upgrade computer systems under former Director Louis J. Freeh.
In the weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI deployed about 6,000 of its 11,000 agents to counterterrorism investigations in an effort to reconstruct the events of Sept. 11 and prevent future attacks.
That number has dwindled substantially in the last 8 1/2 months, although officials would not say exactly how many agents are now assigned to counterterrorism operations.
Mueller's plan would create a permanent counterterrorism work force of at least 3,718 federal, state and local law enforcement agents, an increase of about 70% from the 2,178 people working on counterterrorism before Sept. 11, officials said.
Some members of Congress are likely to push for an even greater deployment.
"The FBI is the lead agency for counterterrorism, and less than a quarter of its agents, from what we've been told, are going to be doing counterterrorism," said a congressional aide who asked not to be identified. "We don't think it goes far enough."
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article, go to www.lats.com/rights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FBI Eyes Torture
>
>By Alexander Cockburn
>
>"FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by
>the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
>network, and some are beginning to that say that traditional civil
>liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information
>about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist plans."
>
>Thus began a piece by Walter Pincus on page 6 of The Washington Post on
>Sunday, and if you suspect that this is the overture to an argument for
>torture, you are right. The FBI interrogators have been getting nowhere
>with the four key suspects, held in New York's Metropolitan Correctional
>Center. None of these men have talked, and Pincus quotes an FBI man
>involved in the interrogation as saying that "it could get to that spot
>where we could go to pressure...where we won't have a choice, and we are
>probably getting there."
>
>Pincus reports that "among the alternative strategies under discussion are
>using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by
>Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another idea is extraditing
>the suspects to allied countries where security services sometimes employ
>threats to family members or resort to torture."
>
>Some FBI interrogators are thinking longingly of drugs like the so-called
>"truth serum," sodium pentothal; others the "pressure tactics," i.e.,
>straightforward tortures, used by Shin Bet in Israel, banned after savage
>public debate a few years ago, which included sensory deprivation (an old
>favorite of British interrogators in Northern Ireland), plus many
>agonizing physical torments. Another idea is to send the suspects to other
>countries for torture by seasoned experts. Israel is not mentioned; nor
>are the British. Extradition of Moussaoui to France or Morocco is
>apparently a possibility.
>
>CounterPunch was astounded to find David Cole, noted liberal professor at
>Georgetown University Law Center, being quoted by Pincus as saying that
>"the use of force to extract information could happen" in cases where
>investigators believe suspects have information on an upcoming attack. "If
>there is a ticking bomb, it is not an easy issue, it's tough," he said. Of
>course it's tough. As Cole surely knows, the "ticking bomb" rationale has
>been used by Israel's torture lobby for years, long after it had become
>clear that it had simply become a routine way of dealing with suspects.
>Right now the disposition of the FBI, intent on interrogating every Arab
>American male (some 200,000) in this country, is doubtless to assume that
>they might have knowledge of a ticking bomb.
>
>The FBI claims it is hampered by its present codes of gentility. If so,
>there's no need to eye Morocco or France as subcontracting torturers. As a
>practical matter torture is far from unknown in the interrogation rooms of
>U.S. law enforcement, with Abner Louima the best-known recent example.
>
>The most infamous disclosure of consistent torture by a police department
>in recent years concerned cops in Chicago in the mid-70s through early 80s
>who used electroshock, oxygen deprivation, hanging on hooks, the bastinado
>and beatings of the testicles. The torturers were white and their victims
>black or brown. A prisoner in California's Pelican Bay State Prison was
>thrown into boiling water. Others get 50,000-volt shocks from stun guns.
>Many states have so-called "secure housing units" where prisoners are kept
>in solitary in tiny concrete cells for years on end, many of them going
>mad in the process. Amnesty International has denounced U.S. police forces
>for "a pattern of unchecked excessive force amounting to torture."
>
>Last year the UN delivered a severe public rebuke to the United States for
>its record on preventing torture and degrading punishment. A 10-strong
>panel of experts highlighted what it said were Washington's breaches of
>the agreement ratified by the United States in 1994. The UN Committee
>Against Torture, which monitors international compliance with the UN
>Convention Against Torture, has called for the abolition of electric-shock
>stun belts (1000 in use in the U.S.) and restraint chairs on prisoners, as
>well as an end to holding children in adult jails. It also said female
>detainees are "very often held in humiliating and degrading circumstances"
>and expressed concern over alleged cases of sexual assault by police and
>prison officers. The panel criticized the excessively harsh regime in
>maximum security prisons, the use of chain gangs in which prisoners
>perform manual labor while shackled together, and the number of cases of
>police brutality against racial minorities.
>
>So far as rape is concerned, because of the rape factories more
>conventionally known as the U.S. prison system, there are estimates that
>twice as many men as women are raped in the U.S. each year. A Human Rights
>Watch report in April of this year cited a December 2000 Prison Journal
>study based on a survey of inmates in seven men's prison facilities in
>four states. The results showed that 21 percent of the inmates had
>experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sexual contact
>since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their
>facilities. A 1996 study of the Nebraska prison system produced similar
>findings, with 22 percent of male inmates reporting that they had been
>pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while
>incarcerated. Of these, more than 50 percent had submitted to forced anal
>sex at least once. Extrapolating these findings to the national level
>gives a total of at least 140,000 inmates who have been raped.
>
>Since its inception the CIA has taken a keen interest in torture, avidly
>studying Nazi techniques and protecting their exponents such as Klaus
>Barbie. The FBI could ship the four key suspects to plenty of countries
>taught torture by CIA technicians, including El Salvador. Robert Fisk
>reported in the London Independent in 1998 that after the 1979 revolution
>Iranians found a CIA film made for the SAVAK, the Shah's political police,
>on how to torture women. William Blum, whose Rogue State (Common Courage,
>2000) gives a useful overview of the United States' relationship to
>torture, cites a 1970 story in Brazil's extremely respectable Jornal do
>Brasil, quoting the former Urugayan chief of police intelligence,
>Alejandro Otero, as saying that U.S. advisers, particularly Dan Mitrione,
>had instituted torture in Uruguay on a routine basis, with scientific
>refinement in technique (such as the precise upper limits of electric
>voltage before death intervened) and psychological pressure, such as a
>tape in the next room of women and children screaming, telling the
>prisoner that his family was being tortured.
>
>The CIA's official line is that torture is wrong and is ineffective. It is
>indeed wrong. On countless occasions it has been appallingly effective. CP
>
>By Alexander Cockburn
>
>"FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by
>the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
>network, and some are beginning to that say that traditional civil
>liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information
>about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist plans."
>
>Thus began a piece by Walter Pincus on page 6 of The Washington Post on
>Sunday, and if you suspect that this is the overture to an argument for
>torture, you are right. The FBI interrogators have been getting nowhere
>with the four key suspects, held in New York's Metropolitan Correctional
>Center. None of these men have talked, and Pincus quotes an FBI man
>involved in the interrogation as saying that "it could get to that spot
>where we could go to pressure...where we won't have a choice, and we are
>probably getting there."
>
>Pincus reports that "among the alternative strategies under discussion are
>using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by
>Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another idea is extraditing
>the suspects to allied countries where security services sometimes employ
>threats to family members or resort to torture."
>
>Some FBI interrogators are thinking longingly of drugs like the so-called
>"truth serum," sodium pentothal; others the "pressure tactics," i.e.,
>straightforward tortures, used by Shin Bet in Israel, banned after savage
>public debate a few years ago, which included sensory deprivation (an old
>favorite of British interrogators in Northern Ireland), plus many
>agonizing physical torments. Another idea is to send the suspects to other
>countries for torture by seasoned experts. Israel is not mentioned; nor
>are the British. Extradition of Moussaoui to France or Morocco is
>apparently a possibility.
>
>CounterPunch was astounded to find David Cole, noted liberal professor at
>Georgetown University Law Center, being quoted by Pincus as saying that
>"the use of force to extract information could happen" in cases where
>investigators believe suspects have information on an upcoming attack. "If
>there is a ticking bomb, it is not an easy issue, it's tough," he said. Of
>course it's tough. As Cole surely knows, the "ticking bomb" rationale has
>been used by Israel's torture lobby for years, long after it had become
>clear that it had simply become a routine way of dealing with suspects.
>Right now the disposition of the FBI, intent on interrogating every Arab
>American male (some 200,000) in this country, is doubtless to assume that
>they might have knowledge of a ticking bomb.
>
>The FBI claims it is hampered by its present codes of gentility. If so,
>there's no need to eye Morocco or France as subcontracting torturers. As a
>practical matter torture is far from unknown in the interrogation rooms of
>U.S. law enforcement, with Abner Louima the best-known recent example.
>
>The most infamous disclosure of consistent torture by a police department
>in recent years concerned cops in Chicago in the mid-70s through early 80s
>who used electroshock, oxygen deprivation, hanging on hooks, the bastinado
>and beatings of the testicles. The torturers were white and their victims
>black or brown. A prisoner in California's Pelican Bay State Prison was
>thrown into boiling water. Others get 50,000-volt shocks from stun guns.
>Many states have so-called "secure housing units" where prisoners are kept
>in solitary in tiny concrete cells for years on end, many of them going
>mad in the process. Amnesty International has denounced U.S. police forces
>for "a pattern of unchecked excessive force amounting to torture."
>
>Last year the UN delivered a severe public rebuke to the United States for
>its record on preventing torture and degrading punishment. A 10-strong
>panel of experts highlighted what it said were Washington's breaches of
>the agreement ratified by the United States in 1994. The UN Committee
>Against Torture, which monitors international compliance with the UN
>Convention Against Torture, has called for the abolition of electric-shock
>stun belts (1000 in use in the U.S.) and restraint chairs on prisoners, as
>well as an end to holding children in adult jails. It also said female
>detainees are "very often held in humiliating and degrading circumstances"
>and expressed concern over alleged cases of sexual assault by police and
>prison officers. The panel criticized the excessively harsh regime in
>maximum security prisons, the use of chain gangs in which prisoners
>perform manual labor while shackled together, and the number of cases of
>police brutality against racial minorities.
>
>So far as rape is concerned, because of the rape factories more
>conventionally known as the U.S. prison system, there are estimates that
>twice as many men as women are raped in the U.S. each year. A Human Rights
>Watch report in April of this year cited a December 2000 Prison Journal
>study based on a survey of inmates in seven men's prison facilities in
>four states. The results showed that 21 percent of the inmates had
>experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sexual contact
>since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their
>facilities. A 1996 study of the Nebraska prison system produced similar
>findings, with 22 percent of male inmates reporting that they had been
>pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while
>incarcerated. Of these, more than 50 percent had submitted to forced anal
>sex at least once. Extrapolating these findings to the national level
>gives a total of at least 140,000 inmates who have been raped.
>
>Since its inception the CIA has taken a keen interest in torture, avidly
>studying Nazi techniques and protecting their exponents such as Klaus
>Barbie. The FBI could ship the four key suspects to plenty of countries
>taught torture by CIA technicians, including El Salvador. Robert Fisk
>reported in the London Independent in 1998 that after the 1979 revolution
>Iranians found a CIA film made for the SAVAK, the Shah's political police,
>on how to torture women. William Blum, whose Rogue State (Common Courage,
>2000) gives a useful overview of the United States' relationship to
>torture, cites a 1970 story in Brazil's extremely respectable Jornal do
>Brasil, quoting the former Urugayan chief of police intelligence,
>Alejandro Otero, as saying that U.S. advisers, particularly Dan Mitrione,
>had instituted torture in Uruguay on a routine basis, with scientific
>refinement in technique (such as the precise upper limits of electric
>voltage before death intervened) and psychological pressure, such as a
>tape in the next room of women and children screaming, telling the
>prisoner that his family was being tortured.
>
>The CIA's official line is that torture is wrong and is ineffective. It is
>indeed wrong. On countless occasions it has been appallingly effective. CP
FBI Director to Propose 'Super Squad' for Terror
Special D.C. Unit Would Lead Investigations Worldwide
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 15, 2002; Page A01
A new FBI "super squad," headquartered in Washington, would lead all major terrorism investigations worldwide under FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III's plan to remake the agency in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said yesterday.
The proposed shift would include the hiring of hundreds of agents and analysts as well as the creation of an Office of Intelligence, headed by a former CIA official, that would serve as a national clearinghouse for classified terrorism information, according to those familiar with Mueller's plans.
The changes are part of a broad reorganization in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Robert P. Hanssen spy scandal. They highlight a dramatic decline in clout for the FBI's Manhattan field office, which until Sept. 11 served as the hub of the bureau's terrorism cases.
It also underscores the extent to which Mueller intends to remake the FBI and consolidate power in the Washington headquarters, whose administrators have traditionally allowed field agents and their bosses to maintain control over their own investigations.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft last fall took similar steps to limit the influence of the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office. He based a Sept. 11 task force in Washington and opened two key cases in Northern Virginia instead of in New York.
Mueller's proposals would require congressional approval, and officials said he hopes to present a formal version of the reorganization, including the "super squad," to Congress next month.
The proposals follow recent criticism on Capitol Hill over an apparent lack of coordination within the FBI on terrorism cases. Mueller came under fire last week from several Senate Democrats, who said the FBI did not respond aggressively enough to possible warning signs of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The FBI creates what it terms "super squads" to lead large-scale operations. Mueller and other top FBI officials believe that creating a specialized team in Washington will help the bureau spot patterns and connections among terrorist associates that might otherwise get lost within the bureaucracy, officials said.
For example, Mueller testified last week, the FBI never considered whether the case of alleged terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August at a Minnesota flight school, was connected to warnings from the Phoenix field office in July about Middle Easterners enrolled in flight training academies.
"It is really kind of anachronistic to believe that we should be handling terrorism cases the same way we handle narcotics or public corruption," one senior U.S. official said. "This requires a very specialized body of expertise, supported by an abundance of analytic capability. It is impractical to have that sprinkled all over the place."
Officials concede a restructuring is not foolproof. For example, Hanssen spied for Moscow beneath the FBI's roof, undetected for nearly two decades even with a somewhat centralized counterintelligence operation.
But the plan already is creating concern among some of the FBI's powerful special agents-in-charge, or SACs, who command most of the FBI's 56 field offices, and some of the 11,000 agents, who fear that traditional crime-fighting will be overshadowed by counterintelligence and counterterrorism goals.
"A lot of agents are concerned that they'll start hacking and hewing on our programs, and in the end we won't be as effective," said Nancy L. Savage, a Eugene, Ore., agent who serves as president of the FBI Agents Association. "There are still good reasons why we do these kinds of criminal investigations."
Mueller and other FBI officials have stressed in recent months that nonterrorism investigations will continue to be pursued by the FBI, although not at the level that they have in the past.
"We must refocus our mission and our priorities, and new technologies must be put in place to support new and different operational practices," Mueller testified last week. "But we must do these things right, not simply fast. Refashioning a large organization takes not only a reformer's zeal, but also a craftsman's patience."
The plan to centralize terrorism investigations would further heighten the stature of Dale Watson, the former counterterrorism chief who now oversees terrorism and intelligence operations within the FBI.
The FBI's New York City field office has been the bureau's preeminent terror unit. It ran investigations into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, among many other cases, and has been the incubator for top officials such as Pat D'Amuro, the FBI's new counterterrorism chief.A field office spokesman could not be reached to comment yesterday.
Mueller is meeting in Northern Virginia this week with the nation's SACs and representatives of the agent corps, both to sell his reorganization plans and to refine them, officials said.
Mueller has spoken with senators and other officials about the outlines of his proposed reorganization, but has not publicly divulged many details. The former prosecutor and Justice Department official has already replaced one-fourth of the FBI's senior executives since September and has dramatically restructured the top echelons of the bureau.
About 2,100 agents and 2,000 other employees are dedicated to counterterrorism cases, down from a peak of about 7,000 after the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said yesterday.
More than 1,600 new employees are expected to be hired over the next 18 months, most of whom will be dedicated to counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases, authorities said. The FBI is aggressively recruiting applicants fluent in Arabic and other Middle Eastern and South Asian languages.
Special D.C. Unit Would Lead Investigations Worldwide
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 15, 2002; Page A01
A new FBI "super squad," headquartered in Washington, would lead all major terrorism investigations worldwide under FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III's plan to remake the agency in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said yesterday.
The proposed shift would include the hiring of hundreds of agents and analysts as well as the creation of an Office of Intelligence, headed by a former CIA official, that would serve as a national clearinghouse for classified terrorism information, according to those familiar with Mueller's plans.
The changes are part of a broad reorganization in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Robert P. Hanssen spy scandal. They highlight a dramatic decline in clout for the FBI's Manhattan field office, which until Sept. 11 served as the hub of the bureau's terrorism cases.
It also underscores the extent to which Mueller intends to remake the FBI and consolidate power in the Washington headquarters, whose administrators have traditionally allowed field agents and their bosses to maintain control over their own investigations.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft last fall took similar steps to limit the influence of the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office. He based a Sept. 11 task force in Washington and opened two key cases in Northern Virginia instead of in New York.
Mueller's proposals would require congressional approval, and officials said he hopes to present a formal version of the reorganization, including the "super squad," to Congress next month.
The proposals follow recent criticism on Capitol Hill over an apparent lack of coordination within the FBI on terrorism cases. Mueller came under fire last week from several Senate Democrats, who said the FBI did not respond aggressively enough to possible warning signs of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The FBI creates what it terms "super squads" to lead large-scale operations. Mueller and other top FBI officials believe that creating a specialized team in Washington will help the bureau spot patterns and connections among terrorist associates that might otherwise get lost within the bureaucracy, officials said.
For example, Mueller testified last week, the FBI never considered whether the case of alleged terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August at a Minnesota flight school, was connected to warnings from the Phoenix field office in July about Middle Easterners enrolled in flight training academies.
"It is really kind of anachronistic to believe that we should be handling terrorism cases the same way we handle narcotics or public corruption," one senior U.S. official said. "This requires a very specialized body of expertise, supported by an abundance of analytic capability. It is impractical to have that sprinkled all over the place."
Officials concede a restructuring is not foolproof. For example, Hanssen spied for Moscow beneath the FBI's roof, undetected for nearly two decades even with a somewhat centralized counterintelligence operation.
But the plan already is creating concern among some of the FBI's powerful special agents-in-charge, or SACs, who command most of the FBI's 56 field offices, and some of the 11,000 agents, who fear that traditional crime-fighting will be overshadowed by counterintelligence and counterterrorism goals.
"A lot of agents are concerned that they'll start hacking and hewing on our programs, and in the end we won't be as effective," said Nancy L. Savage, a Eugene, Ore., agent who serves as president of the FBI Agents Association. "There are still good reasons why we do these kinds of criminal investigations."
Mueller and other FBI officials have stressed in recent months that nonterrorism investigations will continue to be pursued by the FBI, although not at the level that they have in the past.
"We must refocus our mission and our priorities, and new technologies must be put in place to support new and different operational practices," Mueller testified last week. "But we must do these things right, not simply fast. Refashioning a large organization takes not only a reformer's zeal, but also a craftsman's patience."
The plan to centralize terrorism investigations would further heighten the stature of Dale Watson, the former counterterrorism chief who now oversees terrorism and intelligence operations within the FBI.
The FBI's New York City field office has been the bureau's preeminent terror unit. It ran investigations into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, among many other cases, and has been the incubator for top officials such as Pat D'Amuro, the FBI's new counterterrorism chief.A field office spokesman could not be reached to comment yesterday.
Mueller is meeting in Northern Virginia this week with the nation's SACs and representatives of the agent corps, both to sell his reorganization plans and to refine them, officials said.
Mueller has spoken with senators and other officials about the outlines of his proposed reorganization, but has not publicly divulged many details. The former prosecutor and Justice Department official has already replaced one-fourth of the FBI's senior executives since September and has dramatically restructured the top echelons of the bureau.
About 2,100 agents and 2,000 other employees are dedicated to counterterrorism cases, down from a peak of about 7,000 after the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said yesterday.
More than 1,600 new employees are expected to be hired over the next 18 months, most of whom will be dedicated to counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases, authorities said. The FBI is aggressively recruiting applicants fluent in Arabic and other Middle Eastern and South Asian languages.
White House Drafts Intel Reform Orders
Aug 26, 9:24 PM (ET)
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House has drafted executive orders aimed at implementing the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations for a more powerful intelligence director and a new national counterterrorism center.
Bush administration and congressional officials said Thursday drafts of executive orders are circulating among an interagency group for approval. One of the officials said the White House is floating three proposals, and asking for feedback by Friday. The orders would:
- Enhance the powers of the government's intelligence chief and create a national intelligence director.
- Form a national counterterrorism center, putting that office under the new intelligence director and giving the director the power to decide who runs it.
- Improve information sharing with directions aimed at facilitating the exchange information among intelligence agencies.
One congressional official said an executive order being circulated would give the CIA director the title of national intelligence director, a position recommended by the 9/11 commission. The CIA director currently oversees all 15 of the nation's intelligence agencies.
The official also said the White House has asked for the quick feedback with the hopes of making an announcement before the start of Republican National Convention on Monday, perhaps as soon as this week.
Debate over how to reshape the intelligence community in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and flawed prewar intelligence on Iraq picked up steam following the release of the 9/11 commission's 567-page report, which detailed events surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and more than 40 recommendations to reform the government.
Relevant congressional committees have been working through the August recess to draft legislation to implement intelligence reforms. Even with the president's actions, Congress is expected to continue its work on legislation to overhaul U.S. intelligence.
Two senators working on such legislation said Thursday a new intelligence chief should have significant and clear power over the budget. The powers given to that chief - both over policy and the purse - has been an area of significant debate in Congress.
"My support for providing significant budget authority for the new national intelligence director has been strengthened," said Sen. Susan Collins, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. The Maine Republican spoke after a closed hearing with senior officials from the Pentagon, CIA and FBI.
Added the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut: "A strong case was made that if you are going to create a national intelligence director, it can't be a phony, it can't be cosmetic. It's got to be real and the way to make it real in this town is with budget authority."
Collins and Lieberman, at the request of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Democratic leader Tom Daschle, are working to present the full Senate with an intelligence bill by the end of September. Lieberman said the goal was to win passage before Congress leaves for the November elections.
Both senators said they welcomed ideas proposed from other lawmakers about how best to overhaul intelligence operations. That includes a plan by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., that would break up the CIA and remove several intelligence agencies from the Pentagon.
---
White House correspondent Terence Hunt contributed to this report.
Aug 26, 9:24 PM (ET)
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House has drafted executive orders aimed at implementing the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations for a more powerful intelligence director and a new national counterterrorism center.
Bush administration and congressional officials said Thursday drafts of executive orders are circulating among an interagency group for approval. One of the officials said the White House is floating three proposals, and asking for feedback by Friday. The orders would:
- Enhance the powers of the government's intelligence chief and create a national intelligence director.
- Form a national counterterrorism center, putting that office under the new intelligence director and giving the director the power to decide who runs it.
- Improve information sharing with directions aimed at facilitating the exchange information among intelligence agencies.
One congressional official said an executive order being circulated would give the CIA director the title of national intelligence director, a position recommended by the 9/11 commission. The CIA director currently oversees all 15 of the nation's intelligence agencies.
The official also said the White House has asked for the quick feedback with the hopes of making an announcement before the start of Republican National Convention on Monday, perhaps as soon as this week.
Debate over how to reshape the intelligence community in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and flawed prewar intelligence on Iraq picked up steam following the release of the 9/11 commission's 567-page report, which detailed events surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and more than 40 recommendations to reform the government.
Relevant congressional committees have been working through the August recess to draft legislation to implement intelligence reforms. Even with the president's actions, Congress is expected to continue its work on legislation to overhaul U.S. intelligence.
Two senators working on such legislation said Thursday a new intelligence chief should have significant and clear power over the budget. The powers given to that chief - both over policy and the purse - has been an area of significant debate in Congress.
"My support for providing significant budget authority for the new national intelligence director has been strengthened," said Sen. Susan Collins, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. The Maine Republican spoke after a closed hearing with senior officials from the Pentagon, CIA and FBI.
Added the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut: "A strong case was made that if you are going to create a national intelligence director, it can't be a phony, it can't be cosmetic. It's got to be real and the way to make it real in this town is with budget authority."
Collins and Lieberman, at the request of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Democratic leader Tom Daschle, are working to present the full Senate with an intelligence bill by the end of September. Lieberman said the goal was to win passage before Congress leaves for the November elections.
Both senators said they welcomed ideas proposed from other lawmakers about how best to overhaul intelligence operations. That includes a plan by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., that would break up the CIA and remove several intelligence agencies from the Pentagon.
---
White House correspondent Terence Hunt contributed to this report.
Senator Urges CIA Breakup in Reform Plan
Pat Roberts of Kansas, head of the Intelligence Committee, says the panel's GOP members back splitting the spy agency into three parts.
By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer
August 23, 2004
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee proposed sweeping reforms Sunday that would dismantle the CIA and remove several of the nation's largest intelligence agencies from the control of the Pentagon.
The restructuring outlined by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) is the most aggressive intelligence reform plan offered since the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks released its final report last month. The commission offered a blueprint for overhauling the nation's spy services, but Roberts' plan goes beyond it — and further than the positions taken thus far by President Bush and Democratic challenger Sen. John F. Kerry.
Roberts' plan would break the CIA into three pieces, with each reporting to a separate branch of a new, overarching National Intelligence Service. That agency would be led by a director with "complete budget and personnel authority" over all components of the nation's spy community, including major programs that for decades have been run by the Department of Defense.
"We didn't pay any attention to turf or agencies or boxes," Roberts said in a television interview on CBS' "Face the Nation," describing legislation that he said already has the support of every Republican on his committee and would be shared with the White House for the first time today.
"I'm trying to build consensus around something that is very different. It's very measured. It's very bold," he said.
By offering proposals that go far beyond the reforms Bush has so far endorsed, Roberts is likely to put new pressure on a White House that has had to fend off criticism it is not acting swiftly enough to fix systemic intelligence problems highlighted by the 2001 attacks and the failure to find evidence of banned weapons in Iraq.
"We look forward to reviewing the details of Sen. Roberts' proposal," White House spokesman Brian Besanceney said Sunday. "We have taken nothing off the table."
Roberts has been a loyal Republican in the Senate, but he is not seen as a particularly close ally of the White House, unlike Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who headed the House Intelligence Committee until Bush nominated him this month to become director of the CIA.
Roberts' proposals also exceed changes envisioned by the Sept. 11 commission, which recommended the creation of a national intelligence director but did not suggest splitting up the CIA.
Kerry has endorsed all the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. Like Bush, he has not called for breaking up the CIA.
Rand Beers, Kerry's national security advisor, said in a statement Sunday, "Sen. Roberts' proposal is welcome and is very similar to the reforms offered by John Kerry but needs to become bipartisan to be fully successful."
Beers said the president should "clarify the many positions coming out of his administration."
Roberts' plan met immediate resistance from the leading Democrat on his committee, Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller of West Virginia. "Sen. Roberts' proposal departs significantly from the 9/11 Commission's blueprint for reform," he said in a statement.
"It evidently would do away with the Central Intelligence Agency as we know it at a time when the agency is leading a global fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Having not seen the details of the Roberts proposal, my reaction is that disbanding and scattering the Central Intelligence Agency at such a crucial time would be a severe mistake."
Rockefeller also complained that "Sen. Roberts did not afford me or any Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee an opportunity to work with him in drafting the proposal."
Another Democrat on the committee, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said during the CBS program that he had not seen the bill but that "it's a mistake to begin with a partisan bill no matter what is in it."
The bill, which Roberts called the 9/11 National Security Protection Act, is also certain to face opposition from the CIA.
"This proposal makes no sense at all," said a U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Rather than eliminating stove pipes, it would create more of them," the official said, using a term that refers to divisions among agencies that inhibit information sharing.
"And rather than bringing disciplines together, it smashes them apart," the official added.
In an indication of how fiercely the agency might fight such a proposal, the official said of the Roberts plan: "It's headed nowhere fast."
In recent testimony, acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin has urged caution in remaking the nation's spying community and stressed that the CIA has made major strides since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Roberts' plan is a surprisingly aggressive proposal from a Republican lawmaker who was seen as a staunch defender of the CIA when he became chairman of the intelligence panel in 2003.
But Roberts has become increasingly critical of the agency over the last year. His committee issued a report last month that was scathing in its criticism of the CIA's prewar assertions that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear program.
That report cited a "broken" culture at the CIA, and an aide to Roberts said Sunday that the senator had become convinced that aggressive steps were required to repair it. "How do you adjust a broken corporate culture? You realign the corporation and give it a new culture."
In a statement released Sunday, Roberts said his bill represents "real reform and it's the right thing to do. We cannot allow turf battles to define this debate. No one agency, no matter how distinguished its history, is more important than U.S. national security."
Roberts appeared to be referring to the CIA, an agency with more than 17,000 employees that was created in the aftermath of World War II. For more than half a century, the CIA has played the leading role in collecting and analyzing intelligence, and the White House has given no indication that it is prepared to dismantle the agency.
Under Roberts' plan, the CIA and the other 14 U.S. intelligence agencies would report to a single director. Four deputies would have authority over branches managing collection, analysis, research and technology, and military support.
The CIA would be split into its three main components: the clandestine service that recruits spies overseas; the intelligence directorate that analyzes information; and the science directorate responsible for applying technology to the practice of espionage. Each would be assigned to one of the new national branches.
The FBI would remain intact, although its intelligence and counterintelligence divisions would report to the national intelligence director. The Pentagon would relinquish control over several of the nation's largest spy agencies, including the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic eavesdropping and code-breaking.
The proposal to create an "assistant national intelligence director for military support" appears designed to address Pentagon concerns that a major reshuffling would weaken intelligence support for battlefield commanders. Roberts would also install a four-star general as director of military intelligence.
It was not clear whether this step would satisfy the Pentagon — which stands to lose control over billions of dollars in intelligence spending — or even key members of Congress.
Although Roberts said he had the support of the other eight Republicans on his committee, had not discussed the bill with Sen. John W. Warner, who serves on the intelligence panel and chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to a spokesman for Warner.
The Virginia Republican "certainly has not signed off on it," the spokesman said. In recent hearings, Warner has been skeptical of major overhaul proposals.
Roberts said the bill would be shared this week with the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which has the lead role in drafting legislation to reform the nation's intelligence community.
The Senate is expected to consider reform legislation in the fall.
Pat Roberts of Kansas, head of the Intelligence Committee, says the panel's GOP members back splitting the spy agency into three parts.
By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer
August 23, 2004
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee proposed sweeping reforms Sunday that would dismantle the CIA and remove several of the nation's largest intelligence agencies from the control of the Pentagon.
The restructuring outlined by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) is the most aggressive intelligence reform plan offered since the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks released its final report last month. The commission offered a blueprint for overhauling the nation's spy services, but Roberts' plan goes beyond it — and further than the positions taken thus far by President Bush and Democratic challenger Sen. John F. Kerry.
Roberts' plan would break the CIA into three pieces, with each reporting to a separate branch of a new, overarching National Intelligence Service. That agency would be led by a director with "complete budget and personnel authority" over all components of the nation's spy community, including major programs that for decades have been run by the Department of Defense.
"We didn't pay any attention to turf or agencies or boxes," Roberts said in a television interview on CBS' "Face the Nation," describing legislation that he said already has the support of every Republican on his committee and would be shared with the White House for the first time today.
"I'm trying to build consensus around something that is very different. It's very measured. It's very bold," he said.
By offering proposals that go far beyond the reforms Bush has so far endorsed, Roberts is likely to put new pressure on a White House that has had to fend off criticism it is not acting swiftly enough to fix systemic intelligence problems highlighted by the 2001 attacks and the failure to find evidence of banned weapons in Iraq.
"We look forward to reviewing the details of Sen. Roberts' proposal," White House spokesman Brian Besanceney said Sunday. "We have taken nothing off the table."
Roberts has been a loyal Republican in the Senate, but he is not seen as a particularly close ally of the White House, unlike Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who headed the House Intelligence Committee until Bush nominated him this month to become director of the CIA.
Roberts' proposals also exceed changes envisioned by the Sept. 11 commission, which recommended the creation of a national intelligence director but did not suggest splitting up the CIA.
Kerry has endorsed all the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. Like Bush, he has not called for breaking up the CIA.
Rand Beers, Kerry's national security advisor, said in a statement Sunday, "Sen. Roberts' proposal is welcome and is very similar to the reforms offered by John Kerry but needs to become bipartisan to be fully successful."
Beers said the president should "clarify the many positions coming out of his administration."
Roberts' plan met immediate resistance from the leading Democrat on his committee, Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller of West Virginia. "Sen. Roberts' proposal departs significantly from the 9/11 Commission's blueprint for reform," he said in a statement.
"It evidently would do away with the Central Intelligence Agency as we know it at a time when the agency is leading a global fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Having not seen the details of the Roberts proposal, my reaction is that disbanding and scattering the Central Intelligence Agency at such a crucial time would be a severe mistake."
Rockefeller also complained that "Sen. Roberts did not afford me or any Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee an opportunity to work with him in drafting the proposal."
Another Democrat on the committee, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said during the CBS program that he had not seen the bill but that "it's a mistake to begin with a partisan bill no matter what is in it."
The bill, which Roberts called the 9/11 National Security Protection Act, is also certain to face opposition from the CIA.
"This proposal makes no sense at all," said a U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Rather than eliminating stove pipes, it would create more of them," the official said, using a term that refers to divisions among agencies that inhibit information sharing.
"And rather than bringing disciplines together, it smashes them apart," the official added.
In an indication of how fiercely the agency might fight such a proposal, the official said of the Roberts plan: "It's headed nowhere fast."
In recent testimony, acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin has urged caution in remaking the nation's spying community and stressed that the CIA has made major strides since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Roberts' plan is a surprisingly aggressive proposal from a Republican lawmaker who was seen as a staunch defender of the CIA when he became chairman of the intelligence panel in 2003.
But Roberts has become increasingly critical of the agency over the last year. His committee issued a report last month that was scathing in its criticism of the CIA's prewar assertions that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear program.
That report cited a "broken" culture at the CIA, and an aide to Roberts said Sunday that the senator had become convinced that aggressive steps were required to repair it. "How do you adjust a broken corporate culture? You realign the corporation and give it a new culture."
In a statement released Sunday, Roberts said his bill represents "real reform and it's the right thing to do. We cannot allow turf battles to define this debate. No one agency, no matter how distinguished its history, is more important than U.S. national security."
Roberts appeared to be referring to the CIA, an agency with more than 17,000 employees that was created in the aftermath of World War II. For more than half a century, the CIA has played the leading role in collecting and analyzing intelligence, and the White House has given no indication that it is prepared to dismantle the agency.
Under Roberts' plan, the CIA and the other 14 U.S. intelligence agencies would report to a single director. Four deputies would have authority over branches managing collection, analysis, research and technology, and military support.
The CIA would be split into its three main components: the clandestine service that recruits spies overseas; the intelligence directorate that analyzes information; and the science directorate responsible for applying technology to the practice of espionage. Each would be assigned to one of the new national branches.
The FBI would remain intact, although its intelligence and counterintelligence divisions would report to the national intelligence director. The Pentagon would relinquish control over several of the nation's largest spy agencies, including the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic eavesdropping and code-breaking.
The proposal to create an "assistant national intelligence director for military support" appears designed to address Pentagon concerns that a major reshuffling would weaken intelligence support for battlefield commanders. Roberts would also install a four-star general as director of military intelligence.
It was not clear whether this step would satisfy the Pentagon — which stands to lose control over billions of dollars in intelligence spending — or even key members of Congress.
Although Roberts said he had the support of the other eight Republicans on his committee, had not discussed the bill with Sen. John W. Warner, who serves on the intelligence panel and chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to a spokesman for Warner.
The Virginia Republican "certainly has not signed off on it," the spokesman said. In recent hearings, Warner has been skeptical of major overhaul proposals.
Roberts said the bill would be shared this week with the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which has the lead role in drafting legislation to reform the nation's intelligence community.
The Senate is expected to consider reform legislation in the fall.
CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations
More Offices, More Agents With FBI
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A02
The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its domestic presence, placing agents with nearly all of the FBI's 56 terrorism task forces in U.S. cities, a step that law enforcement and intelligence officials say will help overcome some of the communications obstacles between the two agencies that existed before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In many cities, according to local FBI special agents, the CIA employees help plan daily operations and set priorities, as well as share information about suspected foreigners and groups. They do not, however, take part in operations or make arrests.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recently described the new arrangement as his answer to MI5, Britain's internal security service. Unlike the CIA, MI5 is empowered to collect intelligence within Britain and to act to disrupt domestic threats to British national security. "It goes some distance to accomplishing what the MI5 does," Mueller told a House-Senate intelligence panel last week in describing the new CIA role in the FBI task forces.
Separately, the CIA is undertaking what one intelligence official called a "concerted effort" to increase the number of case officers working in the agency's domestic field offices. Those offices, directed by the National Resources Division, are staffed by officers from the clandestine service.
The CIA's domestic field offices recruit foreigners living temporarily in the United States -- for example, scientists at universities, diplomats at embassies and business executives -- to work as agents for the CIA when they return home. They also conduct voluntary debriefings of Americans, mainly business executives and academics, who have recently returned from abroad. The division also is responsible for handling some defectors and for limited counterintelligence targeting.
In the mid-1980s, the agency maintained close to 35 field stations in the United States. But over the last decade, budget cuts and operational restrictions reduced the agency's domestic effort by about 30 percent, according to one former high-ranking CIA official. "They were in bad shape."
Since Sept. 11, the National Resources Division has been given more money and some of its domestic offices have been reopened to bring the number close to 30. "There is a concerted effort to enhance that," said one administration official said.
The CIA's domestic division was created in 1963 to conduct clandestine operations within the United States against foreign targets, usually foreign spies and organizations. But the CIA no longer conducts clandestine operations at home, in part because of the 1973 intelligence overhaul that curbed spying on U.S. citizens and enacted stricter oversight of covert operations. Since then, too, the FBI has strictly limited the information it accepts from the CIA, for fear of "tainting" ongoing domestic investigations with information it is not allowed to use or, in some cases, even possess.
While the new growth in the CIA's domestic work does not involving spying, it does represent a significant step in integrating the CIA's analytical capabilities with U.S. law enforcement efforts to find and apprehend terrorist suspects.
"We are stepping into an area that is fraught with peril," said Frederick Hitz, a former inspector general at the CIA. But Hitz and other analysts applauded the effort.
The CIA's work on the FBI task forces "is a sign of the times," said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. "The idea is to get all the intel and law enforcement agencies that might be able to contribute to a coherent and comprehensive plan against terrorist activities."
None of the growth in the CIA's domestic work has required changes in law.
Under Executive Order 12333, signed by President Ronald Reagan, the CIA is permitted to secretly collect "significant" foreign intelligence within the United States if the collection effort is not aimed at the domestic activities of U.S. citizens and corporations.
Ellen Knowlton, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Las Vegas field office, called the CIA officers in her office "full and active participants" in day-to-day operations. The exchange of ideas among the FBI, the CIA and local law enforcement "is very interactive," she said.
"You balance how you use them" with the potential for compromising officers still under cover, said Joseph Billy Jr., special agent in charge of the FBI's New York field office. "We reserve the right for the CIA to make that call."
For this reason, the identities of CIA officers are often not shared with local law enforcement officials who are detailed, part-time, to work on the task forces. The CIA officers also usually work in special parts of the larger task force building, behind walls impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping.
In Oregon, Portland Police Chief Mark Kroeger said there remains a deep distrust toward giving law enforcement or the CIA expanded powers. Although he approves of the CIA presence, he said he purposefully stays clear of the CIA officers.
"I know very little about them and I chose to keep it that way," he said. "The CIA is not a dirty word," he said. "They have roles and responsibilities that certainly have shifted. I have a lot of admiration for the organization."
While the CIA presence is new in many cities, the agency has worked with local police departments for years in New York, New Jersey and a handful of other locations. The New York joint terrorism task force of 300 people from 21 agencies has had more a dozen CIA officers for years.
The CIA is reluctant to talk about its new task force role, or its domestic field offices. "This increased cooperation is critical in the fight against terrorism," said CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield. "It's critical to establish more and better linkages."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
More Offices, More Agents With FBI
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A02
The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its domestic presence, placing agents with nearly all of the FBI's 56 terrorism task forces in U.S. cities, a step that law enforcement and intelligence officials say will help overcome some of the communications obstacles between the two agencies that existed before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In many cities, according to local FBI special agents, the CIA employees help plan daily operations and set priorities, as well as share information about suspected foreigners and groups. They do not, however, take part in operations or make arrests.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recently described the new arrangement as his answer to MI5, Britain's internal security service. Unlike the CIA, MI5 is empowered to collect intelligence within Britain and to act to disrupt domestic threats to British national security. "It goes some distance to accomplishing what the MI5 does," Mueller told a House-Senate intelligence panel last week in describing the new CIA role in the FBI task forces.
Separately, the CIA is undertaking what one intelligence official called a "concerted effort" to increase the number of case officers working in the agency's domestic field offices. Those offices, directed by the National Resources Division, are staffed by officers from the clandestine service.
The CIA's domestic field offices recruit foreigners living temporarily in the United States -- for example, scientists at universities, diplomats at embassies and business executives -- to work as agents for the CIA when they return home. They also conduct voluntary debriefings of Americans, mainly business executives and academics, who have recently returned from abroad. The division also is responsible for handling some defectors and for limited counterintelligence targeting.
In the mid-1980s, the agency maintained close to 35 field stations in the United States. But over the last decade, budget cuts and operational restrictions reduced the agency's domestic effort by about 30 percent, according to one former high-ranking CIA official. "They were in bad shape."
Since Sept. 11, the National Resources Division has been given more money and some of its domestic offices have been reopened to bring the number close to 30. "There is a concerted effort to enhance that," said one administration official said.
The CIA's domestic division was created in 1963 to conduct clandestine operations within the United States against foreign targets, usually foreign spies and organizations. But the CIA no longer conducts clandestine operations at home, in part because of the 1973 intelligence overhaul that curbed spying on U.S. citizens and enacted stricter oversight of covert operations. Since then, too, the FBI has strictly limited the information it accepts from the CIA, for fear of "tainting" ongoing domestic investigations with information it is not allowed to use or, in some cases, even possess.
While the new growth in the CIA's domestic work does not involving spying, it does represent a significant step in integrating the CIA's analytical capabilities with U.S. law enforcement efforts to find and apprehend terrorist suspects.
"We are stepping into an area that is fraught with peril," said Frederick Hitz, a former inspector general at the CIA. But Hitz and other analysts applauded the effort.
The CIA's work on the FBI task forces "is a sign of the times," said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. "The idea is to get all the intel and law enforcement agencies that might be able to contribute to a coherent and comprehensive plan against terrorist activities."
None of the growth in the CIA's domestic work has required changes in law.
Under Executive Order 12333, signed by President Ronald Reagan, the CIA is permitted to secretly collect "significant" foreign intelligence within the United States if the collection effort is not aimed at the domestic activities of U.S. citizens and corporations.
Ellen Knowlton, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Las Vegas field office, called the CIA officers in her office "full and active participants" in day-to-day operations. The exchange of ideas among the FBI, the CIA and local law enforcement "is very interactive," she said.
"You balance how you use them" with the potential for compromising officers still under cover, said Joseph Billy Jr., special agent in charge of the FBI's New York field office. "We reserve the right for the CIA to make that call."
For this reason, the identities of CIA officers are often not shared with local law enforcement officials who are detailed, part-time, to work on the task forces. The CIA officers also usually work in special parts of the larger task force building, behind walls impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping.
In Oregon, Portland Police Chief Mark Kroeger said there remains a deep distrust toward giving law enforcement or the CIA expanded powers. Although he approves of the CIA presence, he said he purposefully stays clear of the CIA officers.
"I know very little about them and I chose to keep it that way," he said. "The CIA is not a dirty word," he said. "They have roles and responsibilities that certainly have shifted. I have a lot of admiration for the organization."
While the CIA presence is new in many cities, the agency has worked with local police departments for years in New York, New Jersey and a handful of other locations. The New York joint terrorism task force of 300 people from 21 agencies has had more a dozen CIA officers for years.
The CIA is reluctant to talk about its new task force role, or its domestic field offices. "This increased cooperation is critical in the fight against terrorism," said CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield. "It's critical to establish more and better linkages."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
Bush widens authority of CIA to kill terrorists
New York Times
Published Dec. 15, 2002 TERR15
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Bush administration has prepared a list of about two dozen terrorist leaders whom the CIA is authorized to kill if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be minimized, senior military and intelligence officials said.
The previously undisclosed CIA list of targets includes Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other principal figures from Al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups, the officials said.
"It's the worst of the worst," one official said.
President Bush has provided written legal authority to the CIA to hunt down and kill the terrorists without seeking further approval each time the agency is about to launch an operation.
A White House spokesman declined to discuss the list or issues involving the use of lethal force against terrorists. A CIA spokesman also declined to comment.
Despite the authority given to the CIA, Bush has not waived the executive order banning assassinations, officials said. The presidential authority to kill terrorists defines operatives of Al-Qaida as enemy combatants and thus legitimate targets.
Bush issued a presidential finding last year, after the Sept. 11 attacks, providing the basic executive and legal authority for the CIA to kill or capture terrorist leaders. Initially, the CIA used that authority to search for Al-Qaida leaders in Afghanistan.
That authority was the basis for the CIA and military effort to kill Bin Laden and other Al-Qaida leaders and several Taliban leaders. The newer list represents an expanded CIA effort against a larger number of Al-Qaida operatives outside of Afghanistan in countries such as Yemen.
The president is not legally required to approve each name added to the list, nor is the CIA required to obtain presidential approval for specific attacks, although officials said Bush has been kept informed about the CIA's operations.
On the list
In November, the CIA killed an Al-Qaida leader in a remote region of Yemen. A pilotless Predator aircraft operated by the CIA fired an antitank missile at a car in which Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, also known as Abu Ali, was riding. Harethi and five other people, including one suspected Al-Qaida operative with U.S. citizenship, were killed.
Harethi is believed to have been on the list of Al-Qaida leaders that the CIA had been authorized to kill. After the operation in Yemen, U.S. officials said Bush was not required to approve the mission immediately before the attack was launched, nor was he specifically consulted.
Intelligence officials said the presidential finding authorizing the CIA to use lethal force against terrorists was not limited to those included on the list. Bush has given broad authority to the CIA to kill or capture operatives of Al-Qaida around the world, the officials said. But officials said the group's most senior leaders on the list are the primary focus of the agency's efforts.
Officials said the CIA, working with the FBI, the military and foreign governments, will seek to capture terrorists when possible and then bring them into the custody of the United States or another nation willing to work with the United States in the campaign against terrorism.
Counterterrorism officials prefer to capture Al-Qaida leaders for interrogation. They regard killing as a last resort in cases in which the location of an Al-Qaida operative is known but capture would be too dangerous or logistically impossible, the officials said.
Highly formalized
Under intelligence law dating back to the mid-1970s, the president must sign a finding to provide the legal basis for CIA covert actions. In response to past abuses, the decisionmaking process has grown into a highly formalized review in which the White House, Justice Department, Pentagon and CIA take part.
The administration must notify congressional leaders of any covert-action finding signed by the president. In past cases of lethal force against members of Al-Qaida, congressional leaders have been notified as required, the officials said.
The new emphasis on covert action is an outgrowth of more aggressive attitudes regarding the use of lethal force in the campaign against terrorism. Such operations have become easier to launch because of technological advances such as the development of the Predator, which has evolved from a camera-carrying surveillance drone into an armed plane controlled by operators safely stationed thousands of miles from any attack.
The development of the armed Predator has made it much easier for the CIA to pursue and kill terrorists in ways that would almost certainly have not been tried in the past for fear of U.S. casualties. In the strike in Yemen, Harethi was living in a remote, lawless region where the Yemeni government has little control. Just weeks earlier, Yemeni forces attacked Al-Qaida operatives in that area and were beaten back with many casualties.
CIA Director George Tenet said in a speech last week that more than one-third of the leadership of Al-Qaida identified before the war in Afghanistan had since been killed or captured.
One recent success, he said, came with the capture of Al-Qaida's operations chief for the Persian Gulf region who had been involved in the planning of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa as well as the bombing of the destroyer Cole in 2000. Since September 2001, Tenet said, more than 3,000 suspected Al-Qaida operatives or their associates have been detained in more than 100 countries.
The Bush administration's decision to kill people suspected of being terrorists threatens to thrust it into a murky area of national security and international law that is almost never debated in public, because the covert operations at issue are known only to a small circle of executive branch and congressional officials.
In the past, the Bush administration has criticized the targeting of Palestinian leaders by Israeli forces. But one former senior official said that such criticism had diminished as the administration had sought to move aggressively against Al-Qaida.
Still, some national security lawyers said the practice of drawing up lists of people who are subject to lethal force might blur the lines drawn by the government's ban on assassinations. That prohibition was first ordered by President Gerald Ford, and in the view of some lawyers, it applies not only to foreign leaders but also to civilians. (U.S. officials have said that Saddam Hussein would be a legitimate target in a war, because he is a military commander as well as Iraq's president.)
New York Times
Published Dec. 15, 2002 TERR15
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Bush administration has prepared a list of about two dozen terrorist leaders whom the CIA is authorized to kill if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be minimized, senior military and intelligence officials said.
The previously undisclosed CIA list of targets includes Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other principal figures from Al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups, the officials said.
"It's the worst of the worst," one official said.
President Bush has provided written legal authority to the CIA to hunt down and kill the terrorists without seeking further approval each time the agency is about to launch an operation.
A White House spokesman declined to discuss the list or issues involving the use of lethal force against terrorists. A CIA spokesman also declined to comment.
Despite the authority given to the CIA, Bush has not waived the executive order banning assassinations, officials said. The presidential authority to kill terrorists defines operatives of Al-Qaida as enemy combatants and thus legitimate targets.
Bush issued a presidential finding last year, after the Sept. 11 attacks, providing the basic executive and legal authority for the CIA to kill or capture terrorist leaders. Initially, the CIA used that authority to search for Al-Qaida leaders in Afghanistan.
That authority was the basis for the CIA and military effort to kill Bin Laden and other Al-Qaida leaders and several Taliban leaders. The newer list represents an expanded CIA effort against a larger number of Al-Qaida operatives outside of Afghanistan in countries such as Yemen.
The president is not legally required to approve each name added to the list, nor is the CIA required to obtain presidential approval for specific attacks, although officials said Bush has been kept informed about the CIA's operations.
On the list
In November, the CIA killed an Al-Qaida leader in a remote region of Yemen. A pilotless Predator aircraft operated by the CIA fired an antitank missile at a car in which Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, also known as Abu Ali, was riding. Harethi and five other people, including one suspected Al-Qaida operative with U.S. citizenship, were killed.
Harethi is believed to have been on the list of Al-Qaida leaders that the CIA had been authorized to kill. After the operation in Yemen, U.S. officials said Bush was not required to approve the mission immediately before the attack was launched, nor was he specifically consulted.
Intelligence officials said the presidential finding authorizing the CIA to use lethal force against terrorists was not limited to those included on the list. Bush has given broad authority to the CIA to kill or capture operatives of Al-Qaida around the world, the officials said. But officials said the group's most senior leaders on the list are the primary focus of the agency's efforts.
Officials said the CIA, working with the FBI, the military and foreign governments, will seek to capture terrorists when possible and then bring them into the custody of the United States or another nation willing to work with the United States in the campaign against terrorism.
Counterterrorism officials prefer to capture Al-Qaida leaders for interrogation. They regard killing as a last resort in cases in which the location of an Al-Qaida operative is known but capture would be too dangerous or logistically impossible, the officials said.
Highly formalized
Under intelligence law dating back to the mid-1970s, the president must sign a finding to provide the legal basis for CIA covert actions. In response to past abuses, the decisionmaking process has grown into a highly formalized review in which the White House, Justice Department, Pentagon and CIA take part.
The administration must notify congressional leaders of any covert-action finding signed by the president. In past cases of lethal force against members of Al-Qaida, congressional leaders have been notified as required, the officials said.
The new emphasis on covert action is an outgrowth of more aggressive attitudes regarding the use of lethal force in the campaign against terrorism. Such operations have become easier to launch because of technological advances such as the development of the Predator, which has evolved from a camera-carrying surveillance drone into an armed plane controlled by operators safely stationed thousands of miles from any attack.
The development of the armed Predator has made it much easier for the CIA to pursue and kill terrorists in ways that would almost certainly have not been tried in the past for fear of U.S. casualties. In the strike in Yemen, Harethi was living in a remote, lawless region where the Yemeni government has little control. Just weeks earlier, Yemeni forces attacked Al-Qaida operatives in that area and were beaten back with many casualties.
CIA Director George Tenet said in a speech last week that more than one-third of the leadership of Al-Qaida identified before the war in Afghanistan had since been killed or captured.
One recent success, he said, came with the capture of Al-Qaida's operations chief for the Persian Gulf region who had been involved in the planning of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa as well as the bombing of the destroyer Cole in 2000. Since September 2001, Tenet said, more than 3,000 suspected Al-Qaida operatives or their associates have been detained in more than 100 countries.
The Bush administration's decision to kill people suspected of being terrorists threatens to thrust it into a murky area of national security and international law that is almost never debated in public, because the covert operations at issue are known only to a small circle of executive branch and congressional officials.
In the past, the Bush administration has criticized the targeting of Palestinian leaders by Israeli forces. But one former senior official said that such criticism had diminished as the administration had sought to move aggressively against Al-Qaida.
Still, some national security lawyers said the practice of drawing up lists of people who are subject to lethal force might blur the lines drawn by the government's ban on assassinations. That prohibition was first ordered by President Gerald Ford, and in the view of some lawyers, it applies not only to foreign leaders but also to civilians. (U.S. officials have said that Saddam Hussein would be a legitimate target in a war, because he is a military commander as well as Iraq's president.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50108-2003Aug26.html
Classified Spending On the Rise
Report: Defense to Get $23.2 Billion
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2003; Page A23
"Black," or classified, programs requested in President Bush's 2004 defense budget are at the highest level since 1988, according to a report prepared by the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The center concluded that classified spending next fiscal year will reach about $23.2 billion of the Pentagon's total request for procurement and research funding. When adjusted for inflation, that is the largest dollar figure since the peak reached during President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup 16 years ago. The amount in 1988 was $19.7 billion, or $26.7 billion if adjusted for inflation, according to the center.
"It's puzzling. It sets the mind to wondering where the money's going and what sort of politically controversial things the administration is doing because they're not telling anybody," said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria that has been critical of the administration's defense priorities.
Pike said part of the surge in the classified budget probably can be explained by increases for the Central Intelligence Agency's covert action programs, which are central to the war on terrorism. Traditionally, Pike said, much of the funding for the CIA is hidden in Air Force weapons procurement accounts.
But unlike the 1980s, when it was widely known that the "black" budget was going to the development of stealth aircraft such as the B-2 bomber and F-117 fighter, the uses of the classified accounts today are far murkier, Pike said.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is a Washington research group that analyzes many aspects of the defense budget. Steven Kosiak, who prepared the report on classified spending, said he reached his conclusions by comparing sums requested for "open," or nonclassified, programs with the total Defense Department request for fiscal 2004.
Some black spending in the Pentagon budget is designated for code-named programs such as the Army's "Tractor Rose" and the Navy's "Retract Larch." But sources said some names may be accounting fictions that do not stand for actual programs.
Other classified spending is accounted for under such bland headings as "special activities."
Officials at the Pentagon and in Congress declined to comment on the center's report, which was compiled earlier this summer. Key congressional defense committees will meet in the next several weeks to resolve differences over the 2004 Pentagon spending plan, including those involving classified programs.
According to the Kosiak analysis, the Air Force's classified weapons procurement budget has jumped from $7 billion in 2001 to almost $11 billion as requested for 2004. In dollar terms, total classified spending in the Pentagon budget request has almost doubled since the mid-1990s, according to tables provided by Kosiak.
Kosiak said in his report that performance in the classified programs has been mixed. He noted that highly successful weapons systems such as the F-117 and the B-2 were initially developed within the classified budget. But so was the Navy's A-12 medium attack plane, which was canceled in 1991 after a series of technical problems and cost increases.
After it was canceled, manufacturers complained that secrecy in the program kept them from acquiring critical data needed to head off some of the problems.
"Restrictions placed on access to classified funding have meant that the Defense Department and Congress typically exercise less oversight over classified programs than unclassified ones," Kosiak wrote.
In the case of the new defense budget, it is anybody's guess where most of the classified money is going, Pike said. But he said it is a good bet that some of it is going to programs that the administration is known to strongly favor, such as missile defense and the development of hypersonic planes that can fly beyond Earth's atmosphere.
"This is an administration that likes to play I've got a secret," he said. "The growth of the classified budget appears to be part of a larger pattern of this administration being secretive."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Classified Spending On the Rise
Report: Defense to Get $23.2 Billion
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2003; Page A23
"Black," or classified, programs requested in President Bush's 2004 defense budget are at the highest level since 1988, according to a report prepared by the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The center concluded that classified spending next fiscal year will reach about $23.2 billion of the Pentagon's total request for procurement and research funding. When adjusted for inflation, that is the largest dollar figure since the peak reached during President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup 16 years ago. The amount in 1988 was $19.7 billion, or $26.7 billion if adjusted for inflation, according to the center.
"It's puzzling. It sets the mind to wondering where the money's going and what sort of politically controversial things the administration is doing because they're not telling anybody," said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria that has been critical of the administration's defense priorities.
Pike said part of the surge in the classified budget probably can be explained by increases for the Central Intelligence Agency's covert action programs, which are central to the war on terrorism. Traditionally, Pike said, much of the funding for the CIA is hidden in Air Force weapons procurement accounts.
But unlike the 1980s, when it was widely known that the "black" budget was going to the development of stealth aircraft such as the B-2 bomber and F-117 fighter, the uses of the classified accounts today are far murkier, Pike said.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is a Washington research group that analyzes many aspects of the defense budget. Steven Kosiak, who prepared the report on classified spending, said he reached his conclusions by comparing sums requested for "open," or nonclassified, programs with the total Defense Department request for fiscal 2004.
Some black spending in the Pentagon budget is designated for code-named programs such as the Army's "Tractor Rose" and the Navy's "Retract Larch." But sources said some names may be accounting fictions that do not stand for actual programs.
Other classified spending is accounted for under such bland headings as "special activities."
Officials at the Pentagon and in Congress declined to comment on the center's report, which was compiled earlier this summer. Key congressional defense committees will meet in the next several weeks to resolve differences over the 2004 Pentagon spending plan, including those involving classified programs.
According to the Kosiak analysis, the Air Force's classified weapons procurement budget has jumped from $7 billion in 2001 to almost $11 billion as requested for 2004. In dollar terms, total classified spending in the Pentagon budget request has almost doubled since the mid-1990s, according to tables provided by Kosiak.
Kosiak said in his report that performance in the classified programs has been mixed. He noted that highly successful weapons systems such as the F-117 and the B-2 were initially developed within the classified budget. But so was the Navy's A-12 medium attack plane, which was canceled in 1991 after a series of technical problems and cost increases.
After it was canceled, manufacturers complained that secrecy in the program kept them from acquiring critical data needed to head off some of the problems.
"Restrictions placed on access to classified funding have meant that the Defense Department and Congress typically exercise less oversight over classified programs than unclassified ones," Kosiak wrote.
In the case of the new defense budget, it is anybody's guess where most of the classified money is going, Pike said. But he said it is a good bet that some of it is going to programs that the administration is known to strongly favor, such as missile defense and the development of hypersonic planes that can fly beyond Earth's atmosphere.
"This is an administration that likes to play I've got a secret," he said. "The growth of the classified budget appears to be part of a larger pattern of this administration being secretive."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/worldspecial/02TERR.html
May 2, 2003
Broad Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, May 1 — The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.
The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas — known as "national security letters" — requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.
After raising objections, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other Democrats succeeded in getting the provision pulled from the authorization bill, at least temporarily, Congressional officials said.
In a closed vote, the committee passed the bill unanimously without the proposal. But Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated to panel members that he wanted to hold further hearings on the idea, officials said.
There was some disagreement over exactly how the provision originated. Several Senate aides active in the debate said that Senator Roberts had included it in the authorization bill. But a senior Congressional official said the Bush administration had initiated the proposal and that Senator Roberts had not objected.
A C.I.A. official said the provision had come from the Bush administration, after the White House's Office of Management and Budget signed off on it.
The official said that Congressional leaders had asked the Bush administration whether there were any additional powers needed to help combat terrorism. The administration responded with the proposal to give the C.I.A. and military the power to use the national security letters, the official said. Another Congressional official said the move came at the urging of the C.I.A. The White House had no comment last night.
Because the F.B.I. now has primary responsibility for domestic intelligence operations, the C.I.A. and the military must currently go to the F.B.I. to request that it issue a national security letter to get access to financial and electronic records.
The Bush administration believes that giving the C.I.A. and the military direct authority to demand the records would cut down on the lag time in the process and give those organizations more flexibility to combat terrorism, according to the senior Congressional official.
Administration officials played down the significance of the proposal, maintaining that it would not give the C.I.A. or the military access to any information that they cannot already get through the F.B.I.
But Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were alarmed by the idea that the C.I.A. and the military could begin prying into Americans' personal and financial records.
They said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight.
Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American."
Mr. Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens."
A Congressional Democratic aide said the measure appeared to go well beyond even hotly debated antiterrorism measures that the Justice Department has been considering in past months. "This is a very odd and very far-reaching idea that came out of nowhere," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It raises a whole series of questions about what the C.I.A.'s mission has really become."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. and the military have assumed greater authority overseas over what were once law enforcement terrorism investigations, and the traditional lines between domestic and overseas operations have become increasingly blurred. A new terrorism center, led by the C.I.A., started operation today in an effort to better coordinate the activities of different federal agencies. Civil liberties groups said they were worried it would give the C.I.A. authority to conduct domestic operations.
The proposal to allow the C.I.A. and the Pentagon authority to demand domestic records comes at a time when both Democrats and Republicans have voiced growing concerns about the government's expanded powers to fight terrorism.
New figures released today also showed that the Justice Department is relying with increasing frequency on secret warrants that allow the officials to go to a secret court to get approval for surveillance and bugging warrants in terrorism and espionage investigations without notifying the target.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an annual report that the Justice Department used secret warrants a record 1,228 times last year, — an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before. The court that governs the warrants did not turn down any of the Justice Department's applications, officials said.
May 2, 2003
Broad Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, May 1 — The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.
The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas — known as "national security letters" — requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.
After raising objections, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other Democrats succeeded in getting the provision pulled from the authorization bill, at least temporarily, Congressional officials said.
In a closed vote, the committee passed the bill unanimously without the proposal. But Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated to panel members that he wanted to hold further hearings on the idea, officials said.
There was some disagreement over exactly how the provision originated. Several Senate aides active in the debate said that Senator Roberts had included it in the authorization bill. But a senior Congressional official said the Bush administration had initiated the proposal and that Senator Roberts had not objected.
A C.I.A. official said the provision had come from the Bush administration, after the White House's Office of Management and Budget signed off on it.
The official said that Congressional leaders had asked the Bush administration whether there were any additional powers needed to help combat terrorism. The administration responded with the proposal to give the C.I.A. and military the power to use the national security letters, the official said. Another Congressional official said the move came at the urging of the C.I.A. The White House had no comment last night.
Because the F.B.I. now has primary responsibility for domestic intelligence operations, the C.I.A. and the military must currently go to the F.B.I. to request that it issue a national security letter to get access to financial and electronic records.
The Bush administration believes that giving the C.I.A. and the military direct authority to demand the records would cut down on the lag time in the process and give those organizations more flexibility to combat terrorism, according to the senior Congressional official.
Administration officials played down the significance of the proposal, maintaining that it would not give the C.I.A. or the military access to any information that they cannot already get through the F.B.I.
But Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were alarmed by the idea that the C.I.A. and the military could begin prying into Americans' personal and financial records.
They said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight.
Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American."
Mr. Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens."
A Congressional Democratic aide said the measure appeared to go well beyond even hotly debated antiterrorism measures that the Justice Department has been considering in past months. "This is a very odd and very far-reaching idea that came out of nowhere," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It raises a whole series of questions about what the C.I.A.'s mission has really become."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. and the military have assumed greater authority overseas over what were once law enforcement terrorism investigations, and the traditional lines between domestic and overseas operations have become increasingly blurred. A new terrorism center, led by the C.I.A., started operation today in an effort to better coordinate the activities of different federal agencies. Civil liberties groups said they were worried it would give the C.I.A. authority to conduct domestic operations.
The proposal to allow the C.I.A. and the Pentagon authority to demand domestic records comes at a time when both Democrats and Republicans have voiced growing concerns about the government's expanded powers to fight terrorism.
New figures released today also showed that the Justice Department is relying with increasing frequency on secret warrants that allow the officials to go to a secret court to get approval for surveillance and bugging warrants in terrorism and espionage investigations without notifying the target.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an annual report that the Justice Department used secret warrants a record 1,228 times last year, — an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before. The court that governs the warrants did not turn down any of the Justice Department's applications, officials said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/worldspecial/02TERR.html
May 2, 2003
Broad Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, May 1 — The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.
The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas — known as "national security letters" — requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.
After raising objections, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other Democrats succeeded in getting the provision pulled from the authorization bill, at least temporarily, Congressional officials said.
In a closed vote, the committee passed the bill unanimously without the proposal. But Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated to panel members that he wanted to hold further hearings on the idea, officials said.
There was some disagreement over exactly how the provision originated. Several Senate aides active in the debate said that Senator Roberts had included it in the authorization bill. But a senior Congressional official said the Bush administration had initiated the proposal and that Senator Roberts had not objected.
A C.I.A. official said the provision had come from the Bush administration, after the White House's Office of Management and Budget signed off on it.
The official said that Congressional leaders had asked the Bush administration whether there were any additional powers needed to help combat terrorism. The administration responded with the proposal to give the C.I.A. and military the power to use the national security letters, the official said. Another Congressional official said the move came at the urging of the C.I.A. The White House had no comment last night.
Because the F.B.I. now has primary responsibility for domestic intelligence operations, the C.I.A. and the military must currently go to the F.B.I. to request that it issue a national security letter to get access to financial and electronic records.
The Bush administration believes that giving the C.I.A. and the military direct authority to demand the records would cut down on the lag time in the process and give those organizations more flexibility to combat terrorism, according to the senior Congressional official.
Administration officials played down the significance of the proposal, maintaining that it would not give the C.I.A. or the military access to any information that they cannot already get through the F.B.I.
But Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were alarmed by the idea that the C.I.A. and the military could begin prying into Americans' personal and financial records.
They said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight.
Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American."
Mr. Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens."
A Congressional Democratic aide said the measure appeared to go well beyond even hotly debated antiterrorism measures that the Justice Department has been considering in past months. "This is a very odd and very far-reaching idea that came out of nowhere," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It raises a whole series of questions about what the C.I.A.'s mission has really become."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. and the military have assumed greater authority overseas over what were once law enforcement terrorism investigations, and the traditional lines between domestic and overseas operations have become increasingly blurred. A new terrorism center, led by the C.I.A., started operation today in an effort to better coordinate the activities of different federal agencies. Civil liberties groups said they were worried it would give the C.I.A. authority to conduct domestic operations.
The proposal to allow the C.I.A. and the Pentagon authority to demand domestic records comes at a time when both Democrats and Republicans have voiced growing concerns about the government's expanded powers to fight terrorism.
New figures released today also showed that the Justice Department is relying with increasing frequency on secret warrants that allow the officials to go to a secret court to get approval for surveillance and bugging warrants in terrorism and espionage investigations without notifying the target.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an annual report that the Justice Department used secret warrants a record 1,228 times last year, — an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before. The court that governs the warrants did not turn down any of the Justice Department's applications, officials said.
May 2, 2003
Broad Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, May 1 — The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.
The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas — known as "national security letters" — requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.
After raising objections, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other Democrats succeeded in getting the provision pulled from the authorization bill, at least temporarily, Congressional officials said.
In a closed vote, the committee passed the bill unanimously without the proposal. But Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated to panel members that he wanted to hold further hearings on the idea, officials said.
There was some disagreement over exactly how the provision originated. Several Senate aides active in the debate said that Senator Roberts had included it in the authorization bill. But a senior Congressional official said the Bush administration had initiated the proposal and that Senator Roberts had not objected.
A C.I.A. official said the provision had come from the Bush administration, after the White House's Office of Management and Budget signed off on it.
The official said that Congressional leaders had asked the Bush administration whether there were any additional powers needed to help combat terrorism. The administration responded with the proposal to give the C.I.A. and military the power to use the national security letters, the official said. Another Congressional official said the move came at the urging of the C.I.A. The White House had no comment last night.
Because the F.B.I. now has primary responsibility for domestic intelligence operations, the C.I.A. and the military must currently go to the F.B.I. to request that it issue a national security letter to get access to financial and electronic records.
The Bush administration believes that giving the C.I.A. and the military direct authority to demand the records would cut down on the lag time in the process and give those organizations more flexibility to combat terrorism, according to the senior Congressional official.
Administration officials played down the significance of the proposal, maintaining that it would not give the C.I.A. or the military access to any information that they cannot already get through the F.B.I.
But Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were alarmed by the idea that the C.I.A. and the military could begin prying into Americans' personal and financial records.
They said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight.
Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American."
Mr. Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens."
A Congressional Democratic aide said the measure appeared to go well beyond even hotly debated antiterrorism measures that the Justice Department has been considering in past months. "This is a very odd and very far-reaching idea that came out of nowhere," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It raises a whole series of questions about what the C.I.A.'s mission has really become."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. and the military have assumed greater authority overseas over what were once law enforcement terrorism investigations, and the traditional lines between domestic and overseas operations have become increasingly blurred. A new terrorism center, led by the C.I.A., started operation today in an effort to better coordinate the activities of different federal agencies. Civil liberties groups said they were worried it would give the C.I.A. authority to conduct domestic operations.
The proposal to allow the C.I.A. and the Pentagon authority to demand domestic records comes at a time when both Democrats and Republicans have voiced growing concerns about the government's expanded powers to fight terrorism.
New figures released today also showed that the Justice Department is relying with increasing frequency on secret warrants that allow the officials to go to a secret court to get approval for surveillance and bugging warrants in terrorism and espionage investigations without notifying the target.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an annual report that the Justice Department used secret warrants a record 1,228 times last year, — an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before. The court that governs the warrants did not turn down any of the Justice Department's applications, officials said.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12896441.htm
Posted on Thu, Oct. 13, 2005
Negroponte creates new clandestine service
BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - National intelligence director John Negroponte on Thursday created the National Clandestine Service within the CIA to coordinate U.S. spying efforts overseas.
The change, one of the most significant restructurings of American spying since Congress created Negroponte's office last year, is intended to improve cooperation among the 15 U.S. spy agencies and streamline the flow of information to elected officials.
Under the plan, CIA Director Porter Goss will also become national human intelligence manager while the day-to-day operations of the clandestine service will be handled by an undercover officer. That officer publicly is referred to simply as "Jose."
The creation of the spy coordination unit and Goss' role in heading it are certain to boost morale at the Central Intelligence Agency, which came in for heavy criticism following intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq war. The CIA has lost a number of senior personnel since the arrival of Goss, a former Florida congressman and one-time CIA officer, who took over in September 2004.
"For the CIA, this is a big deal," said one senior intelligence official. "It's really a recognition of their expertise."
Intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the change would primarily affect the efforts of the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense intelligence units to recruit and run spies. The question was never whether the CIA would direct human intelligence gathering operations, they said, but how best to reorganize the efforts of the other agencies to make them compatible with what the CIA was already doing.
The lack of effective spies within terrorist cells was cited as a critical lapse in reviews following the Sept. 11 attacks. Several studies, including one by the independent 9-11 Commission, recommended naming a director of national intelligence and reorganizing the network of U.S. spy agencies.
President Bush and Congress endorsed most of the recommended changes and Bush named Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the first intelligence director.
Negroponte's creation of the clandestine service drew praise from the two leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Director Negroponte has made the right decision to designate the director of the CIA as the national human intelligence manager," Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said in a statement. "This decision reaffirms the agency's status as the nation's premier human intelligence organization and gives the director of the CIA the tools he needs to ensure an effective and coordinated effort."
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the committee's chairman, also applauded the change, but registered some reservations.
"I am pleased to see that (Negroponte) and the various intelligence agencies have reached a negotiated settlement on who will manage and coordinate one of the nation's most important sources of intelligence," he said, but added, "I have a number of questions in regards to this latest reorganization."
Roberts said he would raise those concerns when Goss appears before the committee to explain the new clandestine service in a few weeks.
Under the plan, the overall goals for those intelligence efforts will be spelled out by Negroponte. But his office's involvement, the officials said, would be limited to setting the intelligence agenda, not directing tactical spy operations.
---
© 2005, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Posted on Thu, Oct. 13, 2005
Negroponte creates new clandestine service
BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - National intelligence director John Negroponte on Thursday created the National Clandestine Service within the CIA to coordinate U.S. spying efforts overseas.
The change, one of the most significant restructurings of American spying since Congress created Negroponte's office last year, is intended to improve cooperation among the 15 U.S. spy agencies and streamline the flow of information to elected officials.
Under the plan, CIA Director Porter Goss will also become national human intelligence manager while the day-to-day operations of the clandestine service will be handled by an undercover officer. That officer publicly is referred to simply as "Jose."
The creation of the spy coordination unit and Goss' role in heading it are certain to boost morale at the Central Intelligence Agency, which came in for heavy criticism following intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq war. The CIA has lost a number of senior personnel since the arrival of Goss, a former Florida congressman and one-time CIA officer, who took over in September 2004.
"For the CIA, this is a big deal," said one senior intelligence official. "It's really a recognition of their expertise."
Intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the change would primarily affect the efforts of the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense intelligence units to recruit and run spies. The question was never whether the CIA would direct human intelligence gathering operations, they said, but how best to reorganize the efforts of the other agencies to make them compatible with what the CIA was already doing.
The lack of effective spies within terrorist cells was cited as a critical lapse in reviews following the Sept. 11 attacks. Several studies, including one by the independent 9-11 Commission, recommended naming a director of national intelligence and reorganizing the network of U.S. spy agencies.
President Bush and Congress endorsed most of the recommended changes and Bush named Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the first intelligence director.
Negroponte's creation of the clandestine service drew praise from the two leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Director Negroponte has made the right decision to designate the director of the CIA as the national human intelligence manager," Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said in a statement. "This decision reaffirms the agency's status as the nation's premier human intelligence organization and gives the director of the CIA the tools he needs to ensure an effective and coordinated effort."
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the committee's chairman, also applauded the change, but registered some reservations.
"I am pleased to see that (Negroponte) and the various intelligence agencies have reached a negotiated settlement on who will manage and coordinate one of the nation's most important sources of intelligence," he said, but added, "I have a number of questions in regards to this latest reorganization."
Roberts said he would raise those concerns when Goss appears before the committee to explain the new clandestine service in a few weeks.
Under the plan, the overall goals for those intelligence efforts will be spelled out by Negroponte. But his office's involvement, the officials said, would be limited to setting the intelligence agenda, not directing tactical spy operations.
---
© 2005, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
FBI Web Monitoring Debated
By John Schwartz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 21, 2000; 1:02 PM
Federal Bureau of Investigation officials today gave the news media a look at "Carnivore," the controversial new system it uses to wiretap the Internet.
Carnivore looks like just about any system that Internet Service Providers use to monitor activity of their networks. The modified "packet sniffer" program sifts through the stream of data from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to find the senders and recipients of the suspect's e-mail.
FBI officials will testify Monday about Carnivore at a hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution chaired by Rep. Charles Canady (R-Fla.).
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, argued that the recent controversy surrounding the technology focuses on a misunderstanding about how it is used. Although the rack-mounted computer that runs the Carnivore program can sample the data stream running through an ISP, it only records those "packets" – the bundles of information that computers break communications into for shuttling around the Internet – that are identified as e-mail to and from the suspect.
The fruits of conventional surveillance have to undergo "minimization," so that investigators do not receive information that they are not entitled to. "We believe this is better minimization than we do with headphones on a telephone tap," one official said, because so much of the extra information is excluded before human eyes get to see it.
The technology has become necessary, the officials said, because some smaller ISP's do not have the capability to provide the data that law enforcement needs quickly. And even though grabbing standard electronic mail is relatively simple, newer methods of sending and receiving messages, including Web-based mail services like Hotmail and Yahoo mail, present challenges that Carnivore can meet.
The system has come under heated attack from Republican leadership in Congress. "Nobody can dispute the fact that this is not legal . . . within the context of any current wiretap law," said House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.).
Civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have attacked Carnivore on many grounds. In a July 11 letter to Canady, ACLU officials wrote that "the Carnivore system gives law enforcement e-mail interception capabilities that were never contemplated" in the key e-mail wiretap statute, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Carnivore, the ACLU wrote, "raises new legal issues that cry out for congressional attention if we are to preserve Fourth Amendment rights in the digital age."
Carnivore's opponents have argued that the technology, once it is attached to the an ISP's network, could tap all messages – from the suspect and anyone else in the data stream. The ACLU called for the FBI to do away with much of the secrecy that shrouds the program and how it works by releasing the "source code," or original software, that runs it; the groups say that only then can the groups feel that the software does what the FBI says it does. One of the FBI officials said that wouldn't happen, in part because some of the software used is owned by private companies, and also because "people might go to work on how to beat the system – we're not interested in getting into that race."
The officials stressed that full wiretaps can only be used after a valid court order, and that even the limited amount of data that the FBI seeks with Carnivore requires a degree of judicial review and a statment by law enforcement that the information is relevant to an ongoing investigation. Abuse of wiretap authority, the official noted, is subject to criminal and civil penalties, and "none of us wants to be part of a conpiracy to misuse these capabilities – this is our job, and not the way we want to leave the FBI."
The officials did say, however, that they planned to present the software for examination by a third party, perhaps academic computer science experts, who could judge the system independently.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
By John Schwartz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 21, 2000; 1:02 PM
Federal Bureau of Investigation officials today gave the news media a look at "Carnivore," the controversial new system it uses to wiretap the Internet.
Carnivore looks like just about any system that Internet Service Providers use to monitor activity of their networks. The modified "packet sniffer" program sifts through the stream of data from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to find the senders and recipients of the suspect's e-mail.
FBI officials will testify Monday about Carnivore at a hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution chaired by Rep. Charles Canady (R-Fla.).
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, argued that the recent controversy surrounding the technology focuses on a misunderstanding about how it is used. Although the rack-mounted computer that runs the Carnivore program can sample the data stream running through an ISP, it only records those "packets" – the bundles of information that computers break communications into for shuttling around the Internet – that are identified as e-mail to and from the suspect.
The fruits of conventional surveillance have to undergo "minimization," so that investigators do not receive information that they are not entitled to. "We believe this is better minimization than we do with headphones on a telephone tap," one official said, because so much of the extra information is excluded before human eyes get to see it.
The technology has become necessary, the officials said, because some smaller ISP's do not have the capability to provide the data that law enforcement needs quickly. And even though grabbing standard electronic mail is relatively simple, newer methods of sending and receiving messages, including Web-based mail services like Hotmail and Yahoo mail, present challenges that Carnivore can meet.
The system has come under heated attack from Republican leadership in Congress. "Nobody can dispute the fact that this is not legal . . . within the context of any current wiretap law," said House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.).
Civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have attacked Carnivore on many grounds. In a July 11 letter to Canady, ACLU officials wrote that "the Carnivore system gives law enforcement e-mail interception capabilities that were never contemplated" in the key e-mail wiretap statute, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Carnivore, the ACLU wrote, "raises new legal issues that cry out for congressional attention if we are to preserve Fourth Amendment rights in the digital age."
Carnivore's opponents have argued that the technology, once it is attached to the an ISP's network, could tap all messages – from the suspect and anyone else in the data stream. The ACLU called for the FBI to do away with much of the secrecy that shrouds the program and how it works by releasing the "source code," or original software, that runs it; the groups say that only then can the groups feel that the software does what the FBI says it does. One of the FBI officials said that wouldn't happen, in part because some of the software used is owned by private companies, and also because "people might go to work on how to beat the system – we're not interested in getting into that race."
The officials stressed that full wiretaps can only be used after a valid court order, and that even the limited amount of data that the FBI seeks with Carnivore requires a degree of judicial review and a statment by law enforcement that the information is relevant to an ongoing investigation. Abuse of wiretap authority, the official noted, is subject to criminal and civil penalties, and "none of us wants to be part of a conpiracy to misuse these capabilities – this is our job, and not the way we want to leave the FBI."
The officials did say, however, that they planned to present the software for examination by a third party, perhaps academic computer science experts, who could judge the system independently.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/alert_hoax030106.html
Fake Infiltration
Sources Say Informant Made Up Men Who Slipped Into U.S.
Jan. 6 Ñ The FBI has concluded the information that led to a nationwide hunt for five men suspected of infiltrating the United States on Christmas Eve was fabricated by the informant, sources told ABCNEWS.
The informant, identified as Michael Hamdani, who was arrested in Canada in late October 2002, created the story about 19 men who were seeking false passports in an attempt to get himself off the hook on criminal charges he was facing in the United States, sources said.
Based on Hamdani's information, the FBI issued an alert that launched an all-out effort by law enforcement officials, who feared terrorists might be seeking to attack Americans during New Year's celebrations.
The FBI posted pictures of five of the men on its Web site, prompting calls and sightings of the men from around the country. One of the men later turned up in Pakistan, and said he had no idea how the FBI got his picture.
According to the story investigators originally got, the men entered the United States from Canada using phony British passports forged by a Pakistani smuggling ring.
The FBI discovered that the information about the infiltrators was a hoax during an interrogation of one of the members of the document ring in Pakistan, sources said.
Alert Sparked Lockdown
The alert was part of information that led officials to shut down New York's harbor to all ships except emergency vessels from New Year's Eve through New Year's Day, and to ban vehicles from roads alongside the harbor.
Investigators also raided six locations in Brooklyn and Queens on Dec. 30 as part of an ongoing investigation into the ring. The FBI had released pictures of five men, and President Bush authorized an all-points bulletin to find them.
"We need to know why they have been smuggled into the country and what they're doing in the country," Bush told reporters at the time.
The FBI had warned that the names and ages of the men could be fictitious. They were identified as Abid Noraiz Ali, 25; Mustafa Khan Owasi, 33; Iftikhar Khozmai Ali, 21; Adil Pervez, 19 and Akbar Jamal, 28.
The man pictured as Owasi later came forward in Pakistan and said he had once tried to get a fake passport, but had been caught and remained in his country. His real name was Mohammed Asghar.
The informant, Hamdani, 44, was already facing fraud charges in Canada, after an October raid near Toronto uncovered hundreds of fake passports, immigration documents, and counterfeit traveler's checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There are outstanding fraud warrants for Hamdani from the FBI in New York and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It was unclear whether he would face any additional charges.
Fake Infiltration
Sources Say Informant Made Up Men Who Slipped Into U.S.
Jan. 6 Ñ The FBI has concluded the information that led to a nationwide hunt for five men suspected of infiltrating the United States on Christmas Eve was fabricated by the informant, sources told ABCNEWS.
The informant, identified as Michael Hamdani, who was arrested in Canada in late October 2002, created the story about 19 men who were seeking false passports in an attempt to get himself off the hook on criminal charges he was facing in the United States, sources said.
Based on Hamdani's information, the FBI issued an alert that launched an all-out effort by law enforcement officials, who feared terrorists might be seeking to attack Americans during New Year's celebrations.
The FBI posted pictures of five of the men on its Web site, prompting calls and sightings of the men from around the country. One of the men later turned up in Pakistan, and said he had no idea how the FBI got his picture.
According to the story investigators originally got, the men entered the United States from Canada using phony British passports forged by a Pakistani smuggling ring.
The FBI discovered that the information about the infiltrators was a hoax during an interrogation of one of the members of the document ring in Pakistan, sources said.
Alert Sparked Lockdown
The alert was part of information that led officials to shut down New York's harbor to all ships except emergency vessels from New Year's Eve through New Year's Day, and to ban vehicles from roads alongside the harbor.
Investigators also raided six locations in Brooklyn and Queens on Dec. 30 as part of an ongoing investigation into the ring. The FBI had released pictures of five men, and President Bush authorized an all-points bulletin to find them.
"We need to know why they have been smuggled into the country and what they're doing in the country," Bush told reporters at the time.
The FBI had warned that the names and ages of the men could be fictitious. They were identified as Abid Noraiz Ali, 25; Mustafa Khan Owasi, 33; Iftikhar Khozmai Ali, 21; Adil Pervez, 19 and Akbar Jamal, 28.
The man pictured as Owasi later came forward in Pakistan and said he had once tried to get a fake passport, but had been caught and remained in his country. His real name was Mohammed Asghar.
The informant, Hamdani, 44, was already facing fraud charges in Canada, after an October raid near Toronto uncovered hundreds of fake passports, immigration documents, and counterfeit traveler's checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There are outstanding fraud warrants for Hamdani from the FBI in New York and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It was unclear whether he would face any additional charges.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/7312314.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Thu, Nov. 20, 2003
FBI Handling of Mob Informants Condemned
LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - While probing organized crime in New England since the 1960s, the FBI used killers as informants, shielded them from prosecution and knowingly sent innocent people to jail, House investigators said Thursday in concluding a two-year inquiry.
The bureau's conduct "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement," according to the final report from the House Government Reform Committee.
"Federal law enforcement personnel tolerated and probably encouraged false testimony in a state death penalty case just to protect their criminal informants," said Rep. Dan Burton, who started the investigation when he was committee chairman.
"False testimony sent four innocent men to jail. They were made scapegoats in order to shield criminals," said Burton, R-Ind.
The FBI came under criticism for trying to stonewall investigators. Lawmakers complained that the bureau delayed giving them access to audio recordings and logs of conversations involving New England crime boss Raymond Patriarca that provided vital information on the 1965 murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan.
"The Justice Department made it very difficult for this committee to conduct timely and effective oversight," the report said. "The FBI must improve management of its informant programs to ensure that agents are not corrupted. The committee will examine the current FBI's management, security, and discipline to prevent similar events in the future."
Lawmakers are pressing for more House hearings on the FBI's failure to cooperate.
"This is an unfinished project and I think the report acknowledges that," said one committee member, Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass.
"I would like to continue to investigate why the Justice Department was so recalcitrant in getting us the information. We should not tolerate that kind of behavior," he said.
The FBI said in a statement that it has taken "significant steps" to improve the use of informants, who are vital to many investigations.
A senior FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the bureau was not always as forthcoming as committee members wanted. The official said some information was withheld or delayed because it related to a court case involving FBI Agent John Connolly Jr., who was convicted last year of protecting his gangster informants.
The report concluded there is not enough evidence to find that former Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger used his political authority to punish those who investigated his brother, mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger.
Whitey Bulger, a former FBI informant who worked with Connolly, fled in 1995 and is on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list. He is being sought in connection with 21 murders.
The report said there were some inconsistencies in William Bulger's testimony. His lawyer, Thomas Kiley, said the report exonerates his client, who was given immunity to testify.
"For any thinking person, this should end it," said Kiley. "But there is a cadre of Bulger bashers here who have spread these street legends for years and I don't harbor any illusion they're going to stop."
The report, while broadly condemning the FBI's practices, focuses on the Deegan murder and law enforcement efforts to protect informants, including Jimmy "The Bear" Flemmi and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi.
Four men were wrongly convicted of Deegan's murder - two died in prison and two served more than 30 years in prison - all due to what officials concluded was false testimony and the FBI's efforts to protect informants.
Jimmy Flemmi died in prison while serving time for a different murder. Stephen Flemmi recently pleaded guilty to racketeering charges involving 10 murders. Former FBI agent H. Paul Rico, 78, was arrested near Miami last month on murder charges. He has denied he helped frame innocent men for the Deegan murder.
ON THE NET
House Government Reform Committee report: http://reform.house.gov/GovReform/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID1885
Posted on Thu, Nov. 20, 2003
FBI Handling of Mob Informants Condemned
LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - While probing organized crime in New England since the 1960s, the FBI used killers as informants, shielded them from prosecution and knowingly sent innocent people to jail, House investigators said Thursday in concluding a two-year inquiry.
The bureau's conduct "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement," according to the final report from the House Government Reform Committee.
"Federal law enforcement personnel tolerated and probably encouraged false testimony in a state death penalty case just to protect their criminal informants," said Rep. Dan Burton, who started the investigation when he was committee chairman.
"False testimony sent four innocent men to jail. They were made scapegoats in order to shield criminals," said Burton, R-Ind.
The FBI came under criticism for trying to stonewall investigators. Lawmakers complained that the bureau delayed giving them access to audio recordings and logs of conversations involving New England crime boss Raymond Patriarca that provided vital information on the 1965 murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan.
"The Justice Department made it very difficult for this committee to conduct timely and effective oversight," the report said. "The FBI must improve management of its informant programs to ensure that agents are not corrupted. The committee will examine the current FBI's management, security, and discipline to prevent similar events in the future."
Lawmakers are pressing for more House hearings on the FBI's failure to cooperate.
"This is an unfinished project and I think the report acknowledges that," said one committee member, Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass.
"I would like to continue to investigate why the Justice Department was so recalcitrant in getting us the information. We should not tolerate that kind of behavior," he said.
The FBI said in a statement that it has taken "significant steps" to improve the use of informants, who are vital to many investigations.
A senior FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the bureau was not always as forthcoming as committee members wanted. The official said some information was withheld or delayed because it related to a court case involving FBI Agent John Connolly Jr., who was convicted last year of protecting his gangster informants.
The report concluded there is not enough evidence to find that former Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger used his political authority to punish those who investigated his brother, mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger.
Whitey Bulger, a former FBI informant who worked with Connolly, fled in 1995 and is on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list. He is being sought in connection with 21 murders.
The report said there were some inconsistencies in William Bulger's testimony. His lawyer, Thomas Kiley, said the report exonerates his client, who was given immunity to testify.
"For any thinking person, this should end it," said Kiley. "But there is a cadre of Bulger bashers here who have spread these street legends for years and I don't harbor any illusion they're going to stop."
The report, while broadly condemning the FBI's practices, focuses on the Deegan murder and law enforcement efforts to protect informants, including Jimmy "The Bear" Flemmi and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi.
Four men were wrongly convicted of Deegan's murder - two died in prison and two served more than 30 years in prison - all due to what officials concluded was false testimony and the FBI's efforts to protect informants.
Jimmy Flemmi died in prison while serving time for a different murder. Stephen Flemmi recently pleaded guilty to racketeering charges involving 10 murders. Former FBI agent H. Paul Rico, 78, was arrested near Miami last month on murder charges. He has denied he helped frame innocent men for the Deegan murder.
ON THE NET
House Government Reform Committee report: http://reform.house.gov/GovReform/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID1885
FBI Director to Propose 'Super Squad' for Terror
Special D.C. Unit Would Lead Investigations Worldwide
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 15, 2002; Page A01
A new FBI "super squad," headquartered in Washington, would lead all major terrorism investigations worldwide under FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III's plan to remake the agency in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said yesterday.
The proposed shift would include the hiring of hundreds of agents and analysts as well as the creation of an Office of Intelligence, headed by a former CIA official, that would serve as a national clearinghouse for classified terrorism information, according to those familiar with Mueller's plans.
The changes are part of a broad reorganization in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Robert P. Hanssen spy scandal. They highlight a dramatic decline in clout for the FBI's Manhattan field office, which until Sept. 11 served as the hub of the bureau's terrorism cases.
It also underscores the extent to which Mueller intends to remake the FBI and consolidate power in the Washington headquarters, whose administrators have traditionally allowed field agents and their bosses to maintain control over their own investigations.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft last fall took similar steps to limit the influence of the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office. He based a Sept. 11 task force in Washington and opened two key cases in Northern Virginia instead of in New York.
Mueller's proposals would require congressional approval, and officials said he hopes to present a formal version of the reorganization, including the "super squad," to Congress next month.
The proposals follow recent criticism on Capitol Hill over an apparent lack of coordination within the FBI on terrorism cases. Mueller came under fire last week from several Senate Democrats, who said the FBI did not respond aggressively enough to possible warning signs of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The FBI creates what it terms "super squads" to lead large-scale operations. Mueller and other top FBI officials believe that creating a specialized team in Washington will help the bureau spot patterns and connections among terrorist associates that might otherwise get lost within the bureaucracy, officials said.
For example, Mueller testified last week, the FBI never considered whether the case of alleged terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August at a Minnesota flight school, was connected to warnings from the Phoenix field office in July about Middle Easterners enrolled in flight training academies.
"It is really kind of anachronistic to believe that we should be handling terrorism cases the same way we handle narcotics or public corruption," one senior U.S. official said. "This requires a very specialized body of expertise, supported by an abundance of analytic capability. It is impractical to have that sprinkled all over the place."
Officials concede a restructuring is not foolproof. For example, Hanssen spied for Moscow beneath the FBI's roof, undetected for nearly two decades even with a somewhat centralized counterintelligence operation.
But the plan already is creating concern among some of the FBI's powerful special agents-in-charge, or SACs, who command most of the FBI's 56 field offices, and some of the 11,000 agents, who fear that traditional crime-fighting will be overshadowed by counterintelligence and counterterrorism goals.
"A lot of agents are concerned that they'll start hacking and hewing on our programs, and in the end we won't be as effective," said Nancy L. Savage, a Eugene, Ore., agent who serves as president of the FBI Agents Association. "There are still good reasons why we do these kinds of criminal investigations."
Mueller and other FBI officials have stressed in recent months that nonterrorism investigations will continue to be pursued by the FBI, although not at the level that they have in the past.
"We must refocus our mission and our priorities, and new technologies must be put in place to support new and different operational practices," Mueller testified last week. "But we must do these things right, not simply fast. Refashioning a large organization takes not only a reformer's zeal, but also a craftsman's patience."
The plan to centralize terrorism investigations would further heighten the stature of Dale Watson, the former counterterrorism chief who now oversees terrorism and intelligence operations within the FBI.
The FBI's New York City field office has been the bureau's preeminent terror unit. It ran investigations into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, among many other cases, and has been the incubator for top officials such as Pat D'Amuro, the FBI's new counterterrorism chief.A field office spokesman could not be reached to comment yesterday.
Mueller is meeting in Northern Virginia this week with the nation's SACs and representatives of the agent corps, both to sell his reorganization plans and to refine them, officials said.
Mueller has spoken with senators and other officials about the outlines of his proposed reorganization, but has not publicly divulged many details. The former prosecutor and Justice Department official has already replaced one-fourth of the FBI's senior executives since September and has dramatically restructured the top echelons of the bureau.
About 2,100 agents and 2,000 other employees are dedicated to counterterrorism cases, down from a peak of about 7,000 after the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said yesterday.
More than 1,600 new employees are expected to be hired over the next 18 months, most of whom will be dedicated to counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases, authorities said. The FBI is aggressively recruiting applicants fluent in Arabic and other Middle Eastern and South Asian languages.
Special D.C. Unit Would Lead Investigations Worldwide
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 15, 2002; Page A01
A new FBI "super squad," headquartered in Washington, would lead all major terrorism investigations worldwide under FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III's plan to remake the agency in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said yesterday.
The proposed shift would include the hiring of hundreds of agents and analysts as well as the creation of an Office of Intelligence, headed by a former CIA official, that would serve as a national clearinghouse for classified terrorism information, according to those familiar with Mueller's plans.
The changes are part of a broad reorganization in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Robert P. Hanssen spy scandal. They highlight a dramatic decline in clout for the FBI's Manhattan field office, which until Sept. 11 served as the hub of the bureau's terrorism cases.
It also underscores the extent to which Mueller intends to remake the FBI and consolidate power in the Washington headquarters, whose administrators have traditionally allowed field agents and their bosses to maintain control over their own investigations.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft last fall took similar steps to limit the influence of the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office. He based a Sept. 11 task force in Washington and opened two key cases in Northern Virginia instead of in New York.
Mueller's proposals would require congressional approval, and officials said he hopes to present a formal version of the reorganization, including the "super squad," to Congress next month.
The proposals follow recent criticism on Capitol Hill over an apparent lack of coordination within the FBI on terrorism cases. Mueller came under fire last week from several Senate Democrats, who said the FBI did not respond aggressively enough to possible warning signs of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The FBI creates what it terms "super squads" to lead large-scale operations. Mueller and other top FBI officials believe that creating a specialized team in Washington will help the bureau spot patterns and connections among terrorist associates that might otherwise get lost within the bureaucracy, officials said.
For example, Mueller testified last week, the FBI never considered whether the case of alleged terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August at a Minnesota flight school, was connected to warnings from the Phoenix field office in July about Middle Easterners enrolled in flight training academies.
"It is really kind of anachronistic to believe that we should be handling terrorism cases the same way we handle narcotics or public corruption," one senior U.S. official said. "This requires a very specialized body of expertise, supported by an abundance of analytic capability. It is impractical to have that sprinkled all over the place."
Officials concede a restructuring is not foolproof. For example, Hanssen spied for Moscow beneath the FBI's roof, undetected for nearly two decades even with a somewhat centralized counterintelligence operation.
But the plan already is creating concern among some of the FBI's powerful special agents-in-charge, or SACs, who command most of the FBI's 56 field offices, and some of the 11,000 agents, who fear that traditional crime-fighting will be overshadowed by counterintelligence and counterterrorism goals.
"A lot of agents are concerned that they'll start hacking and hewing on our programs, and in the end we won't be as effective," said Nancy L. Savage, a Eugene, Ore., agent who serves as president of the FBI Agents Association. "There are still good reasons why we do these kinds of criminal investigations."
Mueller and other FBI officials have stressed in recent months that nonterrorism investigations will continue to be pursued by the FBI, although not at the level that they have in the past.
"We must refocus our mission and our priorities, and new technologies must be put in place to support new and different operational practices," Mueller testified last week. "But we must do these things right, not simply fast. Refashioning a large organization takes not only a reformer's zeal, but also a craftsman's patience."
The plan to centralize terrorism investigations would further heighten the stature of Dale Watson, the former counterterrorism chief who now oversees terrorism and intelligence operations within the FBI.
The FBI's New York City field office has been the bureau's preeminent terror unit. It ran investigations into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, among many other cases, and has been the incubator for top officials such as Pat D'Amuro, the FBI's new counterterrorism chief.A field office spokesman could not be reached to comment yesterday.
Mueller is meeting in Northern Virginia this week with the nation's SACs and representatives of the agent corps, both to sell his reorganization plans and to refine them, officials said.
Mueller has spoken with senators and other officials about the outlines of his proposed reorganization, but has not publicly divulged many details. The former prosecutor and Justice Department official has already replaced one-fourth of the FBI's senior executives since September and has dramatically restructured the top echelons of the bureau.
About 2,100 agents and 2,000 other employees are dedicated to counterterrorism cases, down from a peak of about 7,000 after the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said yesterday.
More than 1,600 new employees are expected to be hired over the next 18 months, most of whom will be dedicated to counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases, authorities said. The FBI is aggressively recruiting applicants fluent in Arabic and other Middle Eastern and South Asian languages.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/014/nation/Panel_finds_shielding_of_FBI_wrongs+.shtml
Panel finds shielding of FBI wrongs
Justice Dept. allegedly kept key witness under wraps
By Shelley Murphy and Robert Schlesinger, Globe Staff, 1/14/2003
As a congressional committee was exposing the FBI's recruitment and protection of murderous informants in Boston, the Justice Department was frustrating the committee's efforts by trying to keep a lid on a key witness, according to a draft copy of the committee's report obtained by the Globe.
Last April, Justice Department officials insisted they needed more information before they could identify a witness, Robert Daddieco, being sought for questioning by the Committee on Government Reform. At the same time, a Justice Department official warned Daddieco - who had been relocated under the federal witness protection program 30 years ago - that the committee wanted to talk to him, according to the draft.
A few days before Daddieco was interviewed by the committee, which was investigating the FBI's handling of informants in Boston, the FBI offered him $15,000, according to the report. The report references the timing of the payment just before committee staff interviewed Daddieco about alleged misconduct by FBI agents, but does not indicate why the money was offered or whether it was accepted.
Also, Daddieco said he was paid $500 by a local prosecutor who allegedly attempted to coach him to lie in a 1968 attempted murder trial.
''Beginning in the mid-1960s, the Justice Department began a course of conduct in New England that must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement,'' says the draft report, accusing the FBI and federal prosecutors of making a decision to use murderers as informants beginning in the 1960s.
The probe, spearheaded by former committee chairman Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, focused primarily on allegations that the FBI and federal prosecutors withheld evidence, allowing a mob hit-man-turned-government-witness to send four men to prison for a 1965 gangland murder they didn't commit.
Although the committee wanted to delve further into FBI handling of two other controversial informants, fugitive gangster James ''Whitey'' Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, it agreed to delay its investigation because of an ongoing federal corruption probe by a special Justice Department task force.
A spokesman for the Justice Department in Washington and a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston declined to comment on the report, which is currently being revised and has yet to be officially released, although it has been distributed among members of the Committee on Government Reform.
The minority Democrats on the House committee do not have a substantive problem with the report, a congressional aide said.
Representative William D. Delahunt, a former Norfolk district attorney and a Democrat from Quincy, was invited by Burton to participate in the hearings. Although not a member of the committee, Delahunt said of the report: ''There's substantial evidence, overwhelming evidence, not just from the efforts of this particular committee, that the FBI is in need of radical reform.''
Citing a ''culture of concealment'' that allowed FBI informants to kill with impunity and innocent men to go to jail for crimes they didn't commit, Delahunt said: ''The irony is, it hasn't changed in 40 years. From the decades of the '60s ... to most recently, when there was resistance to providing the documents to the House Committee on Government Reform.''
And the culture remains so ingrained, Delahunt said, ''that most likely it's going to require legislation to make the necessary changes, to effect the kind of fundamental reform people are demanding.''
In December 2001, President Bush invoked executive privilege to withhold from the committee 10 memos about the 1965 gangland murder of Edward ''Teddy'' Deegan, the case in which four men went to prison for a murder they did not commit.
Two of the men died in prison and two were later freed.
In a signed order to US Attorney General John Ashcroft, Bush wrote that making public ''confidential recommendations to Department of Justice officials'' would chill the candid exchange of ideas ''necessary to the effectiveness of the deliberative process by which the department makes prosecutorial decisions.''
That decision prompted an ongoing battle between the committee and the Justice Department, outlined in bitter words in the Committee on Government Reform's draft report.
''The Justice Department failed to take its responsibilities to assist Congress as seriously as it should have,'' the report said, citing three instances in which ''critical documents had been withheld from Congress.''
In one instance, the Justice Department held onto a damning memo about the Deegan murder until after the committee could no longer use it to ask questions at its hearings.
''The fact that this document was not provided to the Committee earlier leads to the concern that there are other significant documents that have been withheld,'' the report said.
The report cited overwhelming evidence that hit man Joseph ''The Animal'' Barboza lied about who participated in the 1965 slaying of Deegan in Chelsea, after striking a deal with the FBI to testify against local Mafia leaders.
A state judge overturned the convictions of Joseph Salvati and Peter Limone in 2000 after FBI reports that were never turned over to defense lawyers revealed that Barboza may have framed the pair, along with two other men who died in prison.
Salvati and Limone, who both spent more than 30 years in prison, have filed lawsuits against the FBI.
The long-secret FBI reports revealed that Barboza had told agents that he'd never testify against his close friend Vincent Flemmi, a man who was recruited by the FBI as an informant on the very same day that Deegan was killed - even though Flemmi was a suspect in the murder, according to the report.
Flemmi, who died in 1979 of a drug overdose, was the brother of Stephen Flemmi, another longtime FBI informant.
Regarding Daddieco, the draft report says the Justice Department claimed it needed more information from the committee before it could locate Daddieco, even though in the last few years Daddieco had been in personal contact with the FBI's former number two official.
The Justice Department's ''failure to produce this information in a timely fashion is inexcusable,'' and ''particularly curious,'' the report said.
Daddieco also provided the committee with a copy of a check from a local prosecutor for $500, which was allegedly given to him when the FBI was seeking his assistance in an ongoing investigation, according to a footnote in the report. Daddieco claimed the prosecutor ''once attempted to coach him'' to give false testimony in the trial for the 1968 car bombing of Everett attorney John Fitzgerald, the report says.
While the report doesn't offer any other details about the state trial, former New England Mafia boss Francis ''Cadillac Frank'' Salemme was convicted of trying to kill Fitzgerald, who represented Barboza, and spent 15 years in jail, while Stephen Flemmi, his alleged accomplice, was never tried after Daddieco recanted earlier claims about Flemmi's involvement.
In another case, federal prosecutors withheld handwritten FBI surveillance logs for more than 18 months after the committee requested them. The records were of surveillance in the 1960s of then-New England Mafia boss Raymond L. S. Patriarca, who was recorded by the FBI ordering the Deegan murder.
US Representative Martin Meehan, a Lowell Democrat who also participated in the Burton committee hearings, said they revealed ''a history of serious mistakes in the use of criminal informants by members of the Boston FBI office,'' and the need for reform.
''In addition, this validates that the inquiries into the FBI's practices should continue until the families of the victims, who have been wronged by the bureau in these cases, believe that justice is not being subverted,'' Meehan said. ''Congress needs to continue to find the truth for these families.''
Susan Milligan and Thanassis Cambanis of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 1/14/2003.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
Panel finds shielding of FBI wrongs
Justice Dept. allegedly kept key witness under wraps
By Shelley Murphy and Robert Schlesinger, Globe Staff, 1/14/2003
As a congressional committee was exposing the FBI's recruitment and protection of murderous informants in Boston, the Justice Department was frustrating the committee's efforts by trying to keep a lid on a key witness, according to a draft copy of the committee's report obtained by the Globe.
Last April, Justice Department officials insisted they needed more information before they could identify a witness, Robert Daddieco, being sought for questioning by the Committee on Government Reform. At the same time, a Justice Department official warned Daddieco - who had been relocated under the federal witness protection program 30 years ago - that the committee wanted to talk to him, according to the draft.
A few days before Daddieco was interviewed by the committee, which was investigating the FBI's handling of informants in Boston, the FBI offered him $15,000, according to the report. The report references the timing of the payment just before committee staff interviewed Daddieco about alleged misconduct by FBI agents, but does not indicate why the money was offered or whether it was accepted.
Also, Daddieco said he was paid $500 by a local prosecutor who allegedly attempted to coach him to lie in a 1968 attempted murder trial.
''Beginning in the mid-1960s, the Justice Department began a course of conduct in New England that must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement,'' says the draft report, accusing the FBI and federal prosecutors of making a decision to use murderers as informants beginning in the 1960s.
The probe, spearheaded by former committee chairman Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, focused primarily on allegations that the FBI and federal prosecutors withheld evidence, allowing a mob hit-man-turned-government-witness to send four men to prison for a 1965 gangland murder they didn't commit.
Although the committee wanted to delve further into FBI handling of two other controversial informants, fugitive gangster James ''Whitey'' Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, it agreed to delay its investigation because of an ongoing federal corruption probe by a special Justice Department task force.
A spokesman for the Justice Department in Washington and a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston declined to comment on the report, which is currently being revised and has yet to be officially released, although it has been distributed among members of the Committee on Government Reform.
The minority Democrats on the House committee do not have a substantive problem with the report, a congressional aide said.
Representative William D. Delahunt, a former Norfolk district attorney and a Democrat from Quincy, was invited by Burton to participate in the hearings. Although not a member of the committee, Delahunt said of the report: ''There's substantial evidence, overwhelming evidence, not just from the efforts of this particular committee, that the FBI is in need of radical reform.''
Citing a ''culture of concealment'' that allowed FBI informants to kill with impunity and innocent men to go to jail for crimes they didn't commit, Delahunt said: ''The irony is, it hasn't changed in 40 years. From the decades of the '60s ... to most recently, when there was resistance to providing the documents to the House Committee on Government Reform.''
And the culture remains so ingrained, Delahunt said, ''that most likely it's going to require legislation to make the necessary changes, to effect the kind of fundamental reform people are demanding.''
In December 2001, President Bush invoked executive privilege to withhold from the committee 10 memos about the 1965 gangland murder of Edward ''Teddy'' Deegan, the case in which four men went to prison for a murder they did not commit.
Two of the men died in prison and two were later freed.
In a signed order to US Attorney General John Ashcroft, Bush wrote that making public ''confidential recommendations to Department of Justice officials'' would chill the candid exchange of ideas ''necessary to the effectiveness of the deliberative process by which the department makes prosecutorial decisions.''
That decision prompted an ongoing battle between the committee and the Justice Department, outlined in bitter words in the Committee on Government Reform's draft report.
''The Justice Department failed to take its responsibilities to assist Congress as seriously as it should have,'' the report said, citing three instances in which ''critical documents had been withheld from Congress.''
In one instance, the Justice Department held onto a damning memo about the Deegan murder until after the committee could no longer use it to ask questions at its hearings.
''The fact that this document was not provided to the Committee earlier leads to the concern that there are other significant documents that have been withheld,'' the report said.
The report cited overwhelming evidence that hit man Joseph ''The Animal'' Barboza lied about who participated in the 1965 slaying of Deegan in Chelsea, after striking a deal with the FBI to testify against local Mafia leaders.
A state judge overturned the convictions of Joseph Salvati and Peter Limone in 2000 after FBI reports that were never turned over to defense lawyers revealed that Barboza may have framed the pair, along with two other men who died in prison.
Salvati and Limone, who both spent more than 30 years in prison, have filed lawsuits against the FBI.
The long-secret FBI reports revealed that Barboza had told agents that he'd never testify against his close friend Vincent Flemmi, a man who was recruited by the FBI as an informant on the very same day that Deegan was killed - even though Flemmi was a suspect in the murder, according to the report.
Flemmi, who died in 1979 of a drug overdose, was the brother of Stephen Flemmi, another longtime FBI informant.
Regarding Daddieco, the draft report says the Justice Department claimed it needed more information from the committee before it could locate Daddieco, even though in the last few years Daddieco had been in personal contact with the FBI's former number two official.
The Justice Department's ''failure to produce this information in a timely fashion is inexcusable,'' and ''particularly curious,'' the report said.
Daddieco also provided the committee with a copy of a check from a local prosecutor for $500, which was allegedly given to him when the FBI was seeking his assistance in an ongoing investigation, according to a footnote in the report. Daddieco claimed the prosecutor ''once attempted to coach him'' to give false testimony in the trial for the 1968 car bombing of Everett attorney John Fitzgerald, the report says.
While the report doesn't offer any other details about the state trial, former New England Mafia boss Francis ''Cadillac Frank'' Salemme was convicted of trying to kill Fitzgerald, who represented Barboza, and spent 15 years in jail, while Stephen Flemmi, his alleged accomplice, was never tried after Daddieco recanted earlier claims about Flemmi's involvement.
In another case, federal prosecutors withheld handwritten FBI surveillance logs for more than 18 months after the committee requested them. The records were of surveillance in the 1960s of then-New England Mafia boss Raymond L. S. Patriarca, who was recorded by the FBI ordering the Deegan murder.
US Representative Martin Meehan, a Lowell Democrat who also participated in the Burton committee hearings, said they revealed ''a history of serious mistakes in the use of criminal informants by members of the Boston FBI office,'' and the need for reform.
''In addition, this validates that the inquiries into the FBI's practices should continue until the families of the victims, who have been wronged by the bureau in these cases, believe that justice is not being subverted,'' Meehan said. ''Congress needs to continue to find the truth for these families.''
Susan Milligan and Thanassis Cambanis of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 1/14/2003.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/opinion/15SAFI.html
November 15, 2001
Seizing Dictatorial Power
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
ASHINGTON -- Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a
president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power
to jail or execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice,
we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law
with military kangaroo courts.
In his infamous emergency order, Bush admits to dismissing "the principles of law and the
rules of evidence" that undergird America's system of justice. He seizes the power to
circumvent the courts and set up his own drumhead tribunals — panels of officers who will
sit in judgment of non-citizens who the president need only claim "reason to believe" are
members of terrorist organizations.
Not content with his previous decision to permit police to eavesdrop on a suspect's
conversations with an attorney, Bush now strips the alien accused of even the limited rights
afforded by a court-martial.
His kangaroo court can conceal evidence by citing national security, make up its own rules,
find a defendant guilty even if a third of the officers disagree, and execute the alien with no
review by any civilian court.
No longer does the judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government
and the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system,
non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or
executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination "a full and
fair trial."
On what legal meat does this our Caesar feed? One precedent the White House cites is a
military court after Lincoln's assassination. (During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeas
corpus; does our war on terror require illegal imprisonment next?) Another is a military
court's hanging, approved by the Supreme Court, of German saboteurs landed by submarine
in World War II.
Proponents of Bush's kangaroo court say: Don't you soft-on-terror, due-process types know
there's a war on? Have you forgotten our 5,000 civilian dead? In an emergency like this,
aren't extraordinary security measures needed to save citizens' lives? If we step on a few
toes, we can apologize to the civil libertarians later.
Those are the arguments of the phony-tough. At a time when even liberals are debating the
ethics of torture of suspects — weighing the distaste for barbarism against the need to save
innocent lives — it's time for conservative iconoclasts and card-carrying hard-liners to stand
up for American values.
To meet a terrorist emergency, of course some rules should be stretched and new laws
passed. An ethnic dragnet rounding up visa-skippers or questioning foreign students, if
short-term, is borderline tolerable. Congress's new law permitting warranted roving wiretaps
is understandable.
But let's get to the target that this blunderbuss order is intended to hit. Here's the big worry in
Washington now: What do we do if Osama bin Laden gives himself up? A proper trial like
that Israel afforded Adolf Eichmann, it is feared, would give the terrorist a global propaganda
platform. Worse, it would be likely to result in widespread hostage-taking by his followers to
protect him from the punishment he deserves.
The solution is not to corrupt our judicial tradition by making bin Laden the star of a new
Star Chamber. The solution is to turn his cave into his crypt. When fleeing Taliban reveal his
whereabouts, our bombers should promptly bid him farewell with 15,000-pound
daisy-cutters and 5,000-pound rock-penetrators.
But what if he broadcasts his intent to surrender, and walks toward us under a white flag? It
is not in our tradition to shoot prisoners. Rather, President Bush should now set forth a policy
of "universal surrender": all of Al Qaeda or none. Selective surrender of one or a dozen
leaders — which would leave cells in Afghanistan and elsewhere free to fight on — is
unacceptable. We should continue our bombardment of bin Laden's hideouts until he agrees
to identify and surrender his entire terrorist force.
If he does, our criminal courts can handle them expeditiously. If, as more likely, the primary
terrorist prefers what he thinks of as martyrdom, that suicidal choice would be his — and
Americans would have no need of kangaroo courts to betray our principles of justice.
November 15, 2001
Seizing Dictatorial Power
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
ASHINGTON -- Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a
president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power
to jail or execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice,
we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law
with military kangaroo courts.
In his infamous emergency order, Bush admits to dismissing "the principles of law and the
rules of evidence" that undergird America's system of justice. He seizes the power to
circumvent the courts and set up his own drumhead tribunals — panels of officers who will
sit in judgment of non-citizens who the president need only claim "reason to believe" are
members of terrorist organizations.
Not content with his previous decision to permit police to eavesdrop on a suspect's
conversations with an attorney, Bush now strips the alien accused of even the limited rights
afforded by a court-martial.
His kangaroo court can conceal evidence by citing national security, make up its own rules,
find a defendant guilty even if a third of the officers disagree, and execute the alien with no
review by any civilian court.
No longer does the judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government
and the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system,
non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or
executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination "a full and
fair trial."
On what legal meat does this our Caesar feed? One precedent the White House cites is a
military court after Lincoln's assassination. (During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeas
corpus; does our war on terror require illegal imprisonment next?) Another is a military
court's hanging, approved by the Supreme Court, of German saboteurs landed by submarine
in World War II.
Proponents of Bush's kangaroo court say: Don't you soft-on-terror, due-process types know
there's a war on? Have you forgotten our 5,000 civilian dead? In an emergency like this,
aren't extraordinary security measures needed to save citizens' lives? If we step on a few
toes, we can apologize to the civil libertarians later.
Those are the arguments of the phony-tough. At a time when even liberals are debating the
ethics of torture of suspects — weighing the distaste for barbarism against the need to save
innocent lives — it's time for conservative iconoclasts and card-carrying hard-liners to stand
up for American values.
To meet a terrorist emergency, of course some rules should be stretched and new laws
passed. An ethnic dragnet rounding up visa-skippers or questioning foreign students, if
short-term, is borderline tolerable. Congress's new law permitting warranted roving wiretaps
is understandable.
But let's get to the target that this blunderbuss order is intended to hit. Here's the big worry in
Washington now: What do we do if Osama bin Laden gives himself up? A proper trial like
that Israel afforded Adolf Eichmann, it is feared, would give the terrorist a global propaganda
platform. Worse, it would be likely to result in widespread hostage-taking by his followers to
protect him from the punishment he deserves.
The solution is not to corrupt our judicial tradition by making bin Laden the star of a new
Star Chamber. The solution is to turn his cave into his crypt. When fleeing Taliban reveal his
whereabouts, our bombers should promptly bid him farewell with 15,000-pound
daisy-cutters and 5,000-pound rock-penetrators.
But what if he broadcasts his intent to surrender, and walks toward us under a white flag? It
is not in our tradition to shoot prisoners. Rather, President Bush should now set forth a policy
of "universal surrender": all of Al Qaeda or none. Selective surrender of one or a dozen
leaders — which would leave cells in Afghanistan and elsewhere free to fight on — is
unacceptable. We should continue our bombardment of bin Laden's hideouts until he agrees
to identify and surrender his entire terrorist force.
If he does, our criminal courts can handle them expeditiously. If, as more likely, the primary
terrorist prefers what he thinks of as martyrdom, that suicidal choice would be his — and
Americans would have no need of kangaroo courts to betray our principles of justice.
Facility Holding Terrorism Inmates Limits Communication
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 25, 2007; A07
The Justice Department has quietly opened a new prison unit in Indiana that houses a hodgepodge of second-tier terrorism inmates, most of them Arab Muslims, whose ability to communicate with the outside world has been tightly restricted.
At the Communications Management Unit, or CMU, in Terre Haute, Ind., all telephone calls and mail are monitored, the number of phone calls limited and visits are restricted to a total of four hours per month, according to special rules enforced by the Justice Department's U.S. Bureau of Prisons. All inmate conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated.
The unit appears to be a less restrictive version of the "supermax" facility in Florence, Colo., which holds some of the United States' most notorious terrorists, including al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui and Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski.
The Indiana unit, by contrast, is part of a medium-security facility and includes inmates set to be released in as little as two years. Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said the unit's population will not be limited to inmates convicted of terrorism-related cases, though all of the prisoners fit that definition.
Prison officials said they already seek to fully monitor the mail and other communications of all 213 "terrorist inmates" in the system. "By concentrating resources in this fashion, it will greatly enhance the agency's capabilities for language translation, content analysis and intelligence sharing," the bureau said in a summary of the CMU.
The unit, in Terre Haute's former death row, has received 17 inmates since it was launched in December and eventually will hold five times that number, officials said.
Defense lawyers and prisoner advocates complain that the unit's communication restrictions are unduly harsh for inmates not considered high security risks. They also say that the ethnic makeup of the CMU's population may indicate racial profiling. "If they really believed these people are serious terrorists, they wouldn't be in this unit," said David Fathi, staff counsel for the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "They'd be in Colorado with [Atlanta Olympics bomber] Eric Rudolph and the Unabomber and the rest of the people that the Bureau of Prisons thinks are serious threats."
The prison bureau has come under sharp criticism in recent months for failing to adequately monitor terrorist inmates' communications. The Justice Department's inspector general reported in October that three terrorists imprisoned for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had sent nearly 100 letters to alleged terrorists overseas from the maximum-security facility in Colorado.
"The inclusion of this unit is one of the many things we're doing to improve our monitoring capabilities," Billingsley said.
According to prison records, current residents at Terre Haute include five members of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni natives from Upstate New York who attended an al-Qaeda training camp. The unit also houses Randall Royer, a defendant prosecuted as part of the "Virginia jihad" case in Alexandria, and Enaam M. Arnaout, an Islamic charity director who pleaded guilty to diverting money to Islamic military groups in Bosnia and Chechnya.
The only non-Muslim inmates are an unidentified Colombian militant and Zvonko Busic, 61, former leader of a Croatian extremist group that hijacked a jetliner and set off a bomb that killed a police officer in 1976, according to prison records and defense lawyers.
Another CMU resident is Rafil Dhafir, 58, an Iraqi-born physician from Syracuse, N.Y., who was sentenced to 22 years for defrauding charity donors and conspiring to violate U.S. economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein's government.
In a recent letter to supporters, Dhafir recounted his abrupt, heavily guarded transfer to Terre Haute in December and described it as part of "a nationwide operation to put Muslims/Arabs in one place so that we can be closely monitored regarding our communications."
"We are all concerned about the close intrusion on our communications," Dhafir wrote. "We knew all along that our calls, mail and visits were monitored, but with the new system we will have absolutely no privacy including our visits. This is causing a great deal of anxiety and resentment especially among those whose families speak no English."
Dhafir wrote that prison officials "are allowing us total freedom for our religious activities" and appear to be working with inmates to improve conditions.
Prisoner advocates and prisons officials generally agree that the bureau is within its rights to monitor prisoners' mail, phone calls and visits. They differ on whether the intensive use of these tactics is justified for these inmates.
Some lawyers and prison advocates said there are important problems with the CMU, including a lack of public notice about its formation and a lack of clarity about how inmates are chosen to be sent there.
Washington lawyer Carmen Hernandez, who represents Busic and is president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, noted that being sent to the unit is not considered a punitive measure by prisons officials. As a result, authorities do not have to provide hearings and other procedures that are required when punishments are to be administered.
"They claim it's not a punitive measure, but when you start restricting access, it certainly would appear to be punitive," Hernandez said. "If you're going to restrict people's liberties beyond what they already are, it ought to be for a good, particularized reason, and there does not appear to be one here."
Howard Kieffer, a Santa Ana, Calif., defense lawyer who runs a Web site focused on federal prisons, also argues that the unit "screams racial profiling."
"It's highly suspect that basically all of the people in this program are of Middle Eastern descent," Kieffer said.
Billingsley said inmates are not placed in the unit based on ethnicity or religion. She said the facility will eventually house a variety of prisoners, including sex offenders who attempt to communicate with victims and others who have abused mail or phone privileges.
"What they all have in common is a demonstrated need to more closely monitor their communications," Billingsley said.
During a tour of the Colorado prison last week, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the monitoring problems there had been solved, although prison guards say the facility remains understaffed.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
© 2007 The Washington Post Company
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 25, 2007; A07
The Justice Department has quietly opened a new prison unit in Indiana that houses a hodgepodge of second-tier terrorism inmates, most of them Arab Muslims, whose ability to communicate with the outside world has been tightly restricted.
At the Communications Management Unit, or CMU, in Terre Haute, Ind., all telephone calls and mail are monitored, the number of phone calls limited and visits are restricted to a total of four hours per month, according to special rules enforced by the Justice Department's U.S. Bureau of Prisons. All inmate conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated.
The unit appears to be a less restrictive version of the "supermax" facility in Florence, Colo., which holds some of the United States' most notorious terrorists, including al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui and Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski.
The Indiana unit, by contrast, is part of a medium-security facility and includes inmates set to be released in as little as two years. Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said the unit's population will not be limited to inmates convicted of terrorism-related cases, though all of the prisoners fit that definition.
Prison officials said they already seek to fully monitor the mail and other communications of all 213 "terrorist inmates" in the system. "By concentrating resources in this fashion, it will greatly enhance the agency's capabilities for language translation, content analysis and intelligence sharing," the bureau said in a summary of the CMU.
The unit, in Terre Haute's former death row, has received 17 inmates since it was launched in December and eventually will hold five times that number, officials said.
Defense lawyers and prisoner advocates complain that the unit's communication restrictions are unduly harsh for inmates not considered high security risks. They also say that the ethnic makeup of the CMU's population may indicate racial profiling. "If they really believed these people are serious terrorists, they wouldn't be in this unit," said David Fathi, staff counsel for the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "They'd be in Colorado with [Atlanta Olympics bomber] Eric Rudolph and the Unabomber and the rest of the people that the Bureau of Prisons thinks are serious threats."
The prison bureau has come under sharp criticism in recent months for failing to adequately monitor terrorist inmates' communications. The Justice Department's inspector general reported in October that three terrorists imprisoned for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had sent nearly 100 letters to alleged terrorists overseas from the maximum-security facility in Colorado.
"The inclusion of this unit is one of the many things we're doing to improve our monitoring capabilities," Billingsley said.
According to prison records, current residents at Terre Haute include five members of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni natives from Upstate New York who attended an al-Qaeda training camp. The unit also houses Randall Royer, a defendant prosecuted as part of the "Virginia jihad" case in Alexandria, and Enaam M. Arnaout, an Islamic charity director who pleaded guilty to diverting money to Islamic military groups in Bosnia and Chechnya.
The only non-Muslim inmates are an unidentified Colombian militant and Zvonko Busic, 61, former leader of a Croatian extremist group that hijacked a jetliner and set off a bomb that killed a police officer in 1976, according to prison records and defense lawyers.
Another CMU resident is Rafil Dhafir, 58, an Iraqi-born physician from Syracuse, N.Y., who was sentenced to 22 years for defrauding charity donors and conspiring to violate U.S. economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein's government.
In a recent letter to supporters, Dhafir recounted his abrupt, heavily guarded transfer to Terre Haute in December and described it as part of "a nationwide operation to put Muslims/Arabs in one place so that we can be closely monitored regarding our communications."
"We are all concerned about the close intrusion on our communications," Dhafir wrote. "We knew all along that our calls, mail and visits were monitored, but with the new system we will have absolutely no privacy including our visits. This is causing a great deal of anxiety and resentment especially among those whose families speak no English."
Dhafir wrote that prison officials "are allowing us total freedom for our religious activities" and appear to be working with inmates to improve conditions.
Prisoner advocates and prisons officials generally agree that the bureau is within its rights to monitor prisoners' mail, phone calls and visits. They differ on whether the intensive use of these tactics is justified for these inmates.
Some lawyers and prison advocates said there are important problems with the CMU, including a lack of public notice about its formation and a lack of clarity about how inmates are chosen to be sent there.
Washington lawyer Carmen Hernandez, who represents Busic and is president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, noted that being sent to the unit is not considered a punitive measure by prisons officials. As a result, authorities do not have to provide hearings and other procedures that are required when punishments are to be administered.
"They claim it's not a punitive measure, but when you start restricting access, it certainly would appear to be punitive," Hernandez said. "If you're going to restrict people's liberties beyond what they already are, it ought to be for a good, particularized reason, and there does not appear to be one here."
Howard Kieffer, a Santa Ana, Calif., defense lawyer who runs a Web site focused on federal prisons, also argues that the unit "screams racial profiling."
"It's highly suspect that basically all of the people in this program are of Middle Eastern descent," Kieffer said.
Billingsley said inmates are not placed in the unit based on ethnicity or religion. She said the facility will eventually house a variety of prisoners, including sex offenders who attempt to communicate with victims and others who have abused mail or phone privileges.
"What they all have in common is a demonstrated need to more closely monitor their communications," Billingsley said.
During a tour of the Colorado prison last week, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the monitoring problems there had been solved, although prison guards say the facility remains understaffed.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
© 2007 The Washington Post Company
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