History > 2007 > USA > Surveillance agencies

CIA, NI, NSA, IARPA (II)

$43.5 Billion Spying Budget for Year,

Not Including Military

October 31, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Congress authorized spending of $43.5 billion over the past year to operate spy satellites, remote surveillance stations and C.I.A. outposts overseas, according to a budget figure released Tuesday by Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence.

Government officials have refused for years to disclose the intelligence budget, citing risks to national security if the United States’ adversaries learned what it spent annually on spy services.

But lawmakers, acting on a recommendation by the Sept. 11 commission, pushed a law through Congress this summer requiring that the director of national intelligence reveal the spending authorization figure within 30 days after the close of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

The number released Tuesday does not include the billions of dollars that military services spend annually on intelligence operations. The total spying budget for the last fiscal year, including this Pentagon spending, is said to have been in excess of $50 billion.

The figure Mr. McConnell released, known as the National Intelligence Program, covers some of the most expensive spy programs, including the fleet of satellites run by the National Reconnaissance Office. It also includes the budgets for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, charged with electronic eavesdropping.

Last year, John D. Negroponte, then the director of national intelligence, revealed another secret of the spy world that was once closely guarded: he announced that the work force in the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies numbered nearly 100,000.

The intelligence budget has twice before been made public: in 1997 and 1998, the C.I.A. disclosed that its budget was $26.6 billion and $26.7 billion, respectively. But since the Sept. 11 attacks the Bush administration has refused to make similar disclosures, fighting legal challenges from several advocacy groups.

In late 2005, a senior intelligence official attending a public conference in San Antonio revealed, apparently by accident, that the intelligence budget for that year was $44 billion.

In a press release on Tuesday, Mr. McConnell’s office said no further details about the annual intelligence budget would be revealed “because such disclosures could harm national security.”

Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said, “The American people have a right to know how and where the government is spending their money.”

$43.5 Billion Spying Budget for Year, Not Including Military, NYT, 31.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/washington/31intel.html

CIA Head Defends Interrogation Practices

October 30, 2007
Filed at 11:09 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CHICAGO (AP) -- CIA Director Michael Hayden defended his agency's interrogation practices Tuesday as political pressure mounted on President Bush's attorney general nominee to reject a technique that allegedly was part of the CIA's interrogation program.

''Our programs are as lawful as they are valuable,'' Hayden said to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. ''The best sources of information on terrorists and their plans are the terrorists themselves.''

Hayden said ''the irreplaceable nature of that intelligence is the sole reason we have rendition, detention and interrogation programs.''

Several senior Senate Democrats had vowed to vote against the president's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, unless he stated unequivocally that the practice of ''waterboarding'' is torture. That would render the practice illegal. The U.S. military already forbids it.

In September ABC News reported that Hayden had banned waterboarding in CIA interrogations in 2006. Agency officials have neither confirmed nor denied waterboarding prisoners in the past, and they would not confirm the reported ban.

After his remarks in Chicago, an audience member asked Hayden: ''Is waterboarding torture and will you continue to waterboard? Yes or no.''

In his answer, Hayden briefly discussed constitutional law, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Convention before ending: ''Judge Mukasey cannot nor can I answer your question in the abstract. I need to understand the totality of the circumstances in which this question is being posed before I can give you an answer.''

It is believed that fewer than five high-value detainees have been subjected to waterboarding, and the technique has not been used since 2003.

Waterboarding simulates drowning by immobilizing a prisoner with his head lower than his feet and pouring water over his face. Hayden said harsher interrogation techniques are used in ''small, carefully run operations'' that have been applied to fewer than 35 prisoners since 2002.

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats late Tuesday, Mukasey called waterboarding ''repugnant'' but said he didn't know if it is illegal because he hasn't been cleared to receive a classified briefing on it. If after further study he finds that it is, he would rescind any federal legal opinion that allows its use, he wrote.

------

Associated Press writer Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.

    CIA Head Defends Interrogation Practices, NYT, 30.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Hayden.html

Watchdog of C.I.A. Is Subject of C.I.A. Inquiry

October 11, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

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

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

The review is particularly focused on complaints that Mr. Helgerson’s office has not acted as a fair and impartial judge of agency operations but instead has begun a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs.

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

Frederick P. Hitz, who served as C.I.A. inspector general from 1990 to 1998, said he had no first-hand information about current conflicts inside the agency. But Mr. Hitz said any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would “not be proper.”

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Mr. Hitz, who now teaches at the University of Virginia. “Under the statute, the inspector general has the right to investigate the director. How can you do that and have the director turn around and investigate the I.G.?”

A C.I.A. spokesman strongly defended the inquiry on Thursday, saying General Hayden supported the work of the inspector general’s office and had “accepted the vast majority of its findings.”

“His only goal is to help this office, like any office at the agency, do its vital work even better,” said Paul Gimigliano, the spokesman.

Current and former intelligence officials said the inquiry had involved formal interviews with at least some of the inspector general’s staff and was perceived by some agency employees as an “investigation,” a label Mr. Gimigliano rejected.

Several current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the inquiry.

The officials said the inquiry was being overseen by Robert L. Deitz, a trusted aide to the C.I.A. director and a lawyer who served as general counsel at the National Security Agency when General Hayden ran it. Michael Morrell, the agency’s associate deputy director, is another member of the group, officials said.

Reached by phone Thursday, both Mr. Helgerson and Mr. Dietz declined to comment.

In his role as the agency’s inspector general since 2002, Mr. Helgerson has investigated some of the most controversial programs the C.I.A. has begun since the Sept. 11 attacks, including its secret program to detain and interrogate high value terrorist suspects.

Under federal procedures, agency heads who are unhappy with the conduct of their inspectors general have at least two places to file complaints. One is the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which oversees all the inspectors general. The aggrieved agency head can also go directly to the White House.

If serious accusations against an inspector general are sustained by evidence, the president can dismiss him.

Both those routes avoid the awkward situation officials describe at the C.I.A. and preserve the independence of the inspector general.

But one intelligence official who supports General Hayden’s decision to begin an internal inquiry said that going outside the agency would “blow things way out of proportion.”

A report by Mr. Helgerson’s office completed in the spring of 2004 warned that some C.I.A.-approved interrogation procedures appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as defined by the international Convention Against Torture.

Some of the inspector general’s work on detention issues was conducted by Mary O. McCarthy, who was fired from the agency last year after being accused of leaking classified information. Officials said Mr. Helgerson’s office was nearing completion on a number of inquiries into C.I.A. detention, interrogation, and “renditions” — the practice of seizing suspects and delivering them to the authorities in other nations.

The inspector general’s office also rankled agency officials when it completed a withering report about the C.I.A’s missteps before the Sept. 11 attack — a report that recommended “accountability boards” to consider disciplinary action against a handful of senior officials.

When the report was made public in August, General Hayden took the rare step of pointing up criticisms of the report by the former intelligence director, George J. Tenet and his senior aides, saying many officials “took strong exception to its focus, methodology and conclusions.”

Some agency officers believe the aggressive investigations by Mr. Helgerson amount to unfair second guessing of intelligence officers who are often risking their lives in the field.

“These are good people who thought they were doing the right thing,” said one former agency official. “And now they are getting beat up pretty bad and they have to go out an hire a lawyer.”

Agency officials have also criticized the length of the inspector general’s investigations, some lasting more than five years, which have derailed careers and generated steep legal bills for officers under scrutiny.

The former agency official called General Hayden’s review of the inspector general “a smart move.”

Since taking over at the C.I.A. in 2006, General Hayden has taken several steps to soothe anger within the agency’s clandestine service, which has been buffeted in recent years by a string of prolonged investigations.

He has brought back two veteran agency operatives, Steven R. Kappes and Michael J. Sulick, both of whom angrily left during the tenure of Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, to assume top posts at the spy agency. He also supported the president’s nomination of John A. Rizzo, a career agency lawyer and someone well-respected by covert operatives, to become the C.I.A’s general counsel.

Mr. Rizzo withdrew his nomination to the post last month in the midst of intense opposition from Senate Democrats.

“Director Hayden has done a lot of things to convince the operators that he’s looking out for them, and putting the I.G. back in its place is part of this,” said John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer from 2002 to 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law.

Mr. Hitz and other former C.I.A. officials said tensions between the inspector general and the rest of the agency were natural. Conflicts most often arise when the inspector general reviews the actions of the agency’s directorate of operations, now known as the National Clandestine Service, which recruits agents and hunts terrorists overseas.

“The perception is like in a police department between street cops and internal affairs,” said A. B. Krongard, the agency’s executive director from 2001 to 2004.

Resentment of the inspector general’s work has also at times extended to the agency’s general counsel’s office, whose legal judgment is sometimes second-guessed by after-the-fact investigations. “In some of our reports, we were quite critical of the advice given by the general counsel,” Mr. Hitz said.

The C.I.A., created in 1947, had an in-house inspector general selected by the director starting in 1952 who investigated failed operations like the Bay of Pigs invasion against Cuba in 1961.

But that position was viewed as lacking clout and independence, and in 1989, partly in response to the Iran-contra affair, Congress created an independent inspector general at the agency, appointed by the president and reporting to both the director and to Congress.

    Watchdog of C.I.A. Is Subject of C.I.A. Inquiry, NYT, 11.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/washington/12intel.html?hp

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

October 9, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — A German citizen who said he was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency and tortured in a prison in Afghanistan lost his last chance to seek redress in court today when the Supreme Court declined to consider his case.

The justices’ refusal to take the case of Khaled el-Masri let stand a March 2 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. That court upheld a 2006 decision by a federal district judge, who dismissed Mr. Masri’s lawsuit on grounds that trying the case could expose state secrets.

“We recognize the gravity of our conclusions that el-Masri must be denied a judicial forum for his complaint,” Judge Robert B. King wrote in March for a unanimous three-judge panel. “The inquiry is a difficult one, for it pits the judiciary’s search for truth against the executive’s duty to maintain the nation’s security.”

The ordeal of Mr. Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, was the most extensively documented case of the C.I.A.’s controversial practice of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are abducted and sent for interrogation to other countries, including some in which torture is practiced. The episode caused hard feelings between the United States and Germany, whose diplomatic ties were already frayed because of differences over the war in Iraq.

Mr. Masri contended in his suit that he was seized by local law enforcement officials while vacationing in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003. At the time, he was 41 years old and an unemployed car salesman.

“They asked a lot of questions — if I have relations with Al Qaeda, Al Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood,” Mr. Masri said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. “I kept saying no, but they did not believe me.”

After 23 days, he said, he was turned over to C.I.A. operatives, who flew him to a secret C.I.A. prison in Kabul. There, Mr. Masri said, he was kept in a small, filthy cell and shackled, drugged and beaten while being interrogated about his supposed ties to terrorist organizations. At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri said, he was released in a remote part of Albania without ever having been charged with a crime.

The C.I.A. has never acknowledged any role in Mr. Masri’s detention.

When the Fourth Circuit dismissed Mr. Masri’s suit, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the action “truly unbelievable” and “reminiscent of third-world countries.”

The Supreme Court issued no comment in declining to hear the appeal.

In May, Mr. Masri was arrested on suspicion of setting a fire in a market in a town in Bavaria that caused $675,000 in damage. His lawyer said he had had a dispute with the store, and that his action was the result of not receiving psychological counseling that he had sought. A German judge ordered him held in a psychiatric ward.

    Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal, NYT, 9.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/washington/09cnd-scotus.html?hp

Bush Says Interrogation Methods Aren’t Torture

October 6, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — President Bush, reacting to a Congressional uproar over the disclosure of secret Justice Department legal opinions permitting the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, defended the methods on Friday, declaring, “This government does not torture people.”

The remarks, Mr. Bush’s first public comments on the memorandums, came at a hastily arranged Oval Office appearance before reporters. It was billed as a talk on the economy, but after heralding new job statistics, Mr. Bush shifted course to a subject he does not often publicly discuss: a once-secret Central Intelligence Agency program to detain and interrogate high-profile terror suspects.

“I have put this program in place for a reason, and that is to better protect the American people,” the president said, without mentioning the C.I.A. by name. “And when we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you bet we’re going to detain them, and you bet we’re going to question them, because the American people expect us to find out information — actionable intelligence so we can help protect them. That’s our job.”

Without confirming the existence of the memorandums or discussing the explicit techniques they authorized, Mr. Bush said the interrogation methods had been “fully disclosed to appropriate members of Congress.”

But his comments only provoked another round of recriminations on Capitol Hill, as Democrats ratcheted up their demands to see the classified memorandums, first reported Thursday by The New York Times.

“The administration can’t have it both ways,” Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement after the president’s remarks. “I’m tired of these games. They can’t say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program.”

In two separate legal opinions written in 2005, the Justice Department authorized the C.I.A. to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

The memorandums were written just months after a Justice Department opinion in December 2004 declared torture “abhorrent.”

Administration officials have confirmed the existence of the classified opinions, but will not make them public, saying only that they approved techniques that were “tough, safe, necessary and lawful.”

On Friday, the deputy White House press secretary, Tony Fratto, took The Times to task for publishing the information, saying the newspaper had compromised America’s security.

“I’ve had the awful responsibility to have to work with The New York Times and other news organizations on stories that involve the release of classified information,” Mr. Fratto said. “And I could tell you that every time I’ve dealt with any of these stories, I have felt that we have chipped away at the safety and security of America with the publication of this kind of information.”

The memorandums, and the ensuing debate over them, go to the core of a central theme of the Bush administration: the expansive use of executive power in pursuit of terror suspects.

That theme has been a running controversy on Capitol Hill, where Democrats, and some Republicans, have been furious at the way the administration has kept them out of the loop.

The clash colored Congressional relations with Alberto R. Gonzales, the former attorney general. And by Friday, it was clear that the controversy would now spill over into the confirmation hearings for Michael B. Mukasey, the retired federal judge whom Mr. Bush has nominated to succeed Mr. Gonzales in running the Justice Department.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Mr. Mukasey asking him whether, if confirmed, he would provide lawmakers with the Justice Department memorandums.

And Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat and Judiciary Committee member, said he expected the memorandums would become a central point in the Mukasey confirmation debate.

“When the president says the Justice Department says it’s O.K., he means Alberto Gonzales said it was O.K.,” Mr. Schumer, who has been a vocal backer of Mr. Mukasey, said in an interview.

“Very few people are going to have much faith in that, and we do need to explore that.”

The administration has been extremely careful with information about the C.I.A. program, which had been reported in the news media but was, officially at least, a secret until Mr. Bush himself publicly disclosed its existence in September 2006.

At the time, the president confirmed that the C.I.A. had held 14 high-profile terrorism suspects — including the man thought to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — in secret prisons, but said the detainees had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The 2005 Justice Department opinions form the legal underpinning for the program. On Friday, the director of the C.I.A., Gen. Michael V. Hayden also defended the program, in an e-mail message to agency employees.

“The story has sparked considerable comment,” General Hayden wrote, referring to the account in The Times, “including claims that the opinion opened the door to more harsh interrogation tactics and that information about the interrogation methods we actually have used has been withheld from our oversight committees in Congress. Neither assertion is true.”

    Bush Says Interrogation Methods Aren’t Torture, NYT, 6.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/us/nationalspecial3/06interrogate.html

Spy Chief Seeks More Eavesdropping Power

September 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:54 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- No Americans' telephones have been tapped without a court order since at least February, the top U.S. intelligence official told Congress Tuesday.

But National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell could not say how many Americans' phone conversations have been overheard because of U.S. wiretaps on foreign phone lines.

''I don't have the exact number ... considering there are billions of transactions every day,'' McConnell told the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing on the law governing federal surveillance of phone calls and e-mails.

McConnell said he could only speak authoritatively about the seven months since he became DNI.

In a newspaper interview last month, he said the government had tapped fewer than 100 Americans' phones and e-mails under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants from a secret intelligence court.

McConnell is seeking additional changes to the law, which Congress hastily modified just before going on vacation in August based in part on the intelligence chief's warnings of a dire gap in U.S. intelligence.

The new law eased some of the restrictions on government eavesdropping contained in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to let the government more efficiently intercept foreign communications.

Under the new law, the government can eavesdrop, without a court order, on communications conducted by a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States, even if an American is on one end of the conversation -- so long as that American is not the intended focus or target of the surveillance.

Such surveillance was generally prohibited under the original FISA law unless a court approved it. Bypassing court approval is one of the most controversial aspects of the new Protect America Act, which will expire in January unless Congress extends it.

Before McConnell can convince Congress to make the Protect America Act permanent -- and agree to even more changes easing the provisions of FISA -- he first has to allay concerns that the law passed so hastily earlier this year does not subject Americans to unwarranted government surveillance.

''The right to privacy is too important to be sacrificed in a last-minute rush before a congressional recess, which is what happened,'' said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the panel's chairman.

Democrats worry that the law could be interpreted to open business records, library files, personal mail, and homes to searches by intelligence and law enforcement officers without a court order.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein said the new surveillance powers granted by the Protect America Act apply only when the assistance of a communications company is needed to conduct the surveillance. Therefore, he said, the government could not use the law to search homes, open mail or collect business records because no communications provider would be involved in such a transaction.

Many Democrats in Congress are now seeking to narrow what they consider to be overly broad language by rewriting the law. Wainstein warned that inserting specific prohibitions on government surveillance to protect civil liberties could have unintended consequences.

''Anytime you put in limiting language, you've got to make sure it doesn't have unintended limiting consequences,'' Wainstein said.

McConnell said that as long as his office can examine every word of the new language to scrub it for unintended consequences, he would be open to the changes.

However, Bush administration officials say concern about the new powers is unfounded. They contend the Protect America Act only allows the government to target foreigners for surveillance without a warrant, a change that was needed because of changes in communications technology.

Addressing the controversy over the law, the Justice Department and the White House Tuesday issued a ''myth and facts'' paper meant to ease the concerns of civil liberties advocates and privacy groups that believe it gives the government broader powers than intended.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, chairman of the subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, called the effort a troubling ''charm offensive.''

''Let's have some truth in advertising. The act gives the president almost unfettered power to spy without judicial approval -- not only on foreigners but on Americans,'' Nadler said.

McConnell said the new eavesdropping powers are needed not just to spy on terrorists but also to defend against more traditional potential adversaries.

He told the panel that China and Russia are aggressively spying on sensitive U.S. facilities, intelligence systems and development projects, and that their efforts are approaching Cold War levels.

McConnell and Wainstein pushed for other changes in the law, including granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies which may have helped the government conduct surveillance prior to January 2007 without a court order under the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. Wainstein said there are 40 to 50 lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies that are now pending in U.S. courts.

    Spy Chief Seeks More Eavesdropping Power, NYT, 18.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-McConnell-Eavesdropping.html

Ex-Official Returns to Key Post at the C.I.A.

September 15, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — Michael J. Sulick, a longtime operations officer of the Central Intelligence Agency who angrily retired in 2004, is returning to lead the agency’s clandestine service, the agency announced on Friday.

Mr. Sulick, 59, has had a storied career at the agency, working in Japan, Peru, Poland and Russia over more than 20 years. In 2004, he rose to the second-highest position in the clandestine service, but chose to retire three months into the job after repeated clashes with the staff of the director at the time, Porter J. Goss.

Mr. Sulick’s return is another prominent move by the current director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, to fill the top ranks with officials who left under Mr. Goss.

Mr. Sulick is the second top official who departed in the Goss era to return. General Hayden has been trying to build support among the rank and file of the clandestine service after Mr. Goss purged several top officers.

Stephen R. Kappes, who returned to become deputy director, was Mr. Sulick’s supervisor in 2004, leaving when Mr. Sulick did. Mr. Kappes chose to leave rather than accede to demands by members of Mr. Goss’s staff, who came to be known in the agency as Gosslings, that Mr. Sulick be disciplined for insubordination.

In his new position, Mr. Sulick will have a role that extends beyond the agency to include broad oversight of human intelligence operations in other agencies, including the military and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

His direct responsibility is to head the agency directorate that includes most of its covert officers and foreign posts. The directorate’s primary challenge in recent years has been to disrupt suspected terrorist operations.

The announcement of Mr. Sulick’s return was for the most part greeted positively by several former agency operatives and Congressional officials.

Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairmain of the House Intelligence Committee, called Mr. Sulick “a man of high integrity, beloved by the work force and someone who understands the unique challenges of human intelligence collection.”

Mr. Sulick takes over as the clandestine service is trying to rebuild after being gutted in the 1990s and continues to have difficulty penetrating closed societies like Iran and North Korea.

In addition to Mr. Sulick and Mr. Kappes, other senior officers left the service under Mr. Goss, including some with years of experience in counterterrorism. Most have not returned.

Intelligence officials say it could be years before the agency meets the goals of a presidential directive, announced in 2004, to increase the number of case officers by 50 percent.

Mr. Sulick, a former marine who served in Vietnam, grew up in the Bronx and earned a degree in Russian language and literature from Fordham University and a doctorate from the City University of New York.He joined the agency in 1980, working at its headquarters in Virginia as head of counterintelligence and in clandestine posts overseas.

He had two tours in Moscow, the second as chief of station, and he is fluent in Russian, Polish and Spanish.

In a message to agency employees on Friday, General Hayden said Mr. Sulick had a reputation for “superior tradecraft and sound judgment.”

Intelligence officials said Mr. Sulick had never been posted in the Islamic world, the primary focus of intelligence collection now.

He takes over the service from Jose Rodriguez, an officer who spent most of his agency career carrying out espionage in Latin America.

    Ex-Official Returns to Key Post at the C.I.A., NYT, 15.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/washington/15cia.html

Bin Laden Releases Video as C.I.A. Issues Warning

September 8, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

A videotaped message by Osama bin Laden, the first in nearly three years, compares the Iraq war to American blunders in Vietnam, criticizes the Democratic Party for failing to pull American troops from Iraq, and urges Americans to embrace Islam.

Details of the video emerged yesterday, the same day that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency gave a public warning about Al Qaeda’s gathering strength and unapologetically defended his agency’s campaign to kill and capture the group’s operatives worldwide.

The video, timed to the approaching sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, shows the leader of Al Qaeda with a black beard, and his references to news events appear to date the tape to within the past few months.

The 26-minute video does not contain any direct warnings of an impending attack, focusing instead on the Iraq war and the “terrorism” of Western leaders, including President Bush, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. Mr. bin Laden vowed to “continue to escalate the killing and fighting” in Iraq.

President Bush, speaking in Sydney, Australia, said, “Iraq is part of this war against extremists,” The Associated Press reported. “If Al Qaeda bothers to mention Iraq, it’s because they want to achieve their objectives in Iraq, which is to drive us out.”

A transcript of the tape was made available by the SITE Institute, a research organization that monitors the video and Internet messages of jihadist groups.

An American intelligence official said that an initial analysis confirmed that the voice on the tape was Mr. bin Laden’s. It is the first video message from Mr. bin Laden since October 2004; he released an audio message last summer.

During a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, the C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden defended the agency’s controversial program of detaining terrorism suspects in secret jails abroad and subjecting them to harsh interrogation. He insisted that those efforts were legal, but pledged that his agency would operate right at the boundary of what is permitted by law.

General Hayden said that domestic and European criticism of C.I.A operations was misguided and that it exaggerated the number of suspects in agency hands.

It is rare for a C.I.A. director to defend his agency in such a public forum, and General Hayden said Friday that he had asked to speak at the council.

During a question and answer session after the speech, General Hayden lamented that the Sept. 11 attacks have become a distant memory for too many Americans, giving rise to intense criticism of American counterterrorism efforts.

He said that the number of detainees moved through C.I.A. prisons over the past five years was fewer than 100, and that the C.I.A. had transferred several dozen more into the hands of foreign governments for detention, a practice called extraordinary rendition.

Citing the findings of a recent National Intelligence Estimate about the terrorism threat, General Hayden said that American spy agencies believed that Al Qaeda was planning “high-impact plots” against the United States and focusing on targets that would “produce mass casualties, dramatic destruction and significant economic aftershocks.”

He said intelligence agencies were uncertain whether Al Qaeda had again succeeded in slipping operatives into the United States.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bin Laden Releases Video as C.I.A. Issues Warning, NYT, 8.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/world/08hayden.html?hp

Hayden: CIA Had Fewer Than 100 Prisoners

September 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:02 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Most of the information in a July intelligence report on the terrorist threat to America came from the U.S. government's much-criticized program of detaining and interrogating prisoners, CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said Friday in defending the policy.

The CIA has detained fewer than 100 people at secret facilities abroad since the capture of Abu Zubaydah in 2002, Hayden told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, according to an advance copy of his speech.

He staunchly defended the program, saying even fewer prisoners have been rendered to or from foreign governments.

The CIA director said 70 percent of the information contained in the National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat, which was released in July, came from the interrogation of detainees.

Hayden said claims by the European Parliament that at least 1,245 CIA flights transited European airspace or airports are misleading because they implied that most of those flights were rendition flights.

''The actual number of rendition flights ever flown by CIA is a tiny fraction of that. And the suggestion that even a substantial number of those 1,245 flights were carrying detainees is absurd on its face,'' he said.

Hayden said many flights carried equipment, documents and people, including himself, and had nothing to do with the extraordinary rendition program.

The use of extraordinary rendition for terror suspects -- some of whom were later released, apparently because they were innocent -- was revealed by news media in 2005.

Extraordinary rendition refers to the interrogation policy involving the secret transfer of prisoners from U.S. control into the hands of foreign governments, some of which have a history of torture. The United States government says it does so only after it is assured that transferred prisoners will not be subjected to torture.

The renditions have been ''conducted lawfully, responsibly, and with a clear and simple purpose: to get terrorists off the streets and gain intelligence on those still at large,'' Hayden said.

He said Friday that such leaks to news organizations harm national security.

Hayden said that in one case, news leaks gave a foreign government information that allowed it to prosecute and jail one of the CIA's sources.

''The revelations had an immediate, chilling effect on our ability to collect against a top-priority target,'' he said.

Hayden said other media reports ''cost us several promising counterterrorism and counterproliferation assets'' because CIA sources stopped cooperating out of fear they would be exposed.

He said ''more than one'' foreign government's intelligence services have withheld intelligence that they otherwise would have shared with the U.S. government because they feared it would be leaked.

''That gap in information puts Americans at risk,'' Hayden said, according to the written remarks.

He said ''a lot'' of what has been reported about CIA interrogations has been false.

Hayden said that journalists should stick to ''exposing al-Qaida and its adherents for what they are.''

''Revelations of sources and methods-and an impulse to drag anything CIA does to the darkest corner of the room-can make it very difficult for us to do our vital work,'' he said.

    Hayden: CIA Had Fewer Than 100 Prisoners, NYT, 7.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Hayden.html

The C.I.A.’s Open Secrets

August 27, 2007
The New York Times
By JOSEPH WEISBERG

WHEN a federal judge dismissed Valerie Plame’s lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency earlier this month, she ruled that the agency was entitled to stop Ms. Plame from publishing the dates of her agency service, even though these dates had been supplied to Congress in an unclassified letter from the C.I.A. and had been published in The Congressional Record. Ms. Plame is just one in a long line of ex-C.I.A. employees to lose similar suits, in which the agency successfully defended the position that information in the public domain was classified.

How can information that’s a five-minute Google search away be classified? It’s simple. Classified information is not the same thing as secret information.

When I worked in the C.I.A.’s directorate of operations (now called the national clandestine service) in the early ’90s, we were told that information was classified when it involved sources or methods. It seemed logical that sources were classified. These were actual agents who would be put in jeopardy if their identities were revealed.

But practically everything the C.I.A. does could be considered a “method,” so the C.I.A. can decide that almost anything relating to its work is classified. You’d probably want this latitude if you were running an intelligence agency. But one of its unfortunate byproducts is that no one, inside or outside the intelligence community, really knows what classified information is.

Because so many things at the C.I.A. are classified, only a small percentage of them are actually secrets. Take agency cover arrangements. I cannot write about them in this article in any detail. If I point out that agency officers are often under cover as XXXXXXXXXX, the C.I.A. will make me take it out before publishing this article. (Before I submitted this article to the C.I.A.’s publications review board, I blacked it out myself to save the reviewers the trouble.)

But are cover arrangements secret? Most of the time, no. Anyone with even a passing interest in espionage knows about the C.I.A.’s use of the specific cover that I redacted above. If you think you know what’s under that black bar, you’re probably right. Certainly every foreign intelligence agency in the world knows about it. It can’t possibly be considered secret. But it is definitely classified.

What about the C.I.A.’s covert action in Afghanistan in the 1980s? Everyone knew about this at the time — in no way, shape or form was it a secret — but it was a covert action, and it was classified. I’m assuming it has since been declassified because I’ve read all about it in books by ex-agency officers that were vetted by the agency. If I’m wrong, there will be some more redactions in this paragraph.

There are actually legitimate reasons to classify so much information that isn’t secret. Even if every foreign government in the world knows about our cover arrangements, countless diplomatic and legal problems would be created if we officially admitted that we use them.

Official acknowledgment of covert actions would be even riskier. It was problematic enough to be arming rebels in Afghanistan who were killing Soviet soldiers. How would the Soviets have responded if we had openly admitted it? How would we respond today if Iran openly admitted training and arming insurgents in Iraq? We may know their denials are false, but they help Iran avoid international sanction, and they help us avoid being forced to respond militarily.

If the government openly admitted various C.I.A. activities, even those that are already well-known, it could also precipitate a great deal of negative news coverage in the foreign press. (It would create yet another public perception problem to admit we classify information because of public perception, which is one of the reasons the fiction is maintained that information is classified because it is secret.)

In the end, then, the classification system serves a perfectly valid purpose. It draws a distinction between the information that the government does, and does not, want to discuss publicly. What ends up classified may seem a bit perverse at times, such as when information in the public domain is ruled off limits for publication. But that’s troubling only if you make the mistake of thinking that classified information is supposed to be secret.

For former C.I.A. employees turned writers, like Ms. Plame, the vagaries of the system have tremendous advantages. Ms. Plame just wrote a book that the C.I.A. could reasonably maintain was entirely classified. After all, you’re not supposed to quit an intelligence agency and then tell everybody about what you did when you were there (certainly a lot of methods would be involved).

But since nobody is really sure what is and isn’t classified, the agency permits publication of a lot of material that could go either way. It seems petulant to sue over a few dates the C.I.A. wanted to take out of a book that it was otherwise allowing to go forward. Ms. Plame was right that the dates weren’t secret. But the agency didn’t want to officially admit them, so they were, in fact, classified.

Joseph Weisberg is the author of the forthcoming novel “An Ordinary Spy.”

    The C.I.A.’s Open Secrets, NYT, 27.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/opinion/27weisberg.html

Bush Alters Rules for CIA Interrogations

July 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush breathed new life into the CIA's terror interrogation program Friday in an executive order that would allow harsh questioning of suspects, limited in public only by a vaguely worded ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.

The order bars some practices such as sexual abuse, part of an effort to quell international criticism of some of the CIA's most sensitive and debated work. It does not say what practices would be allowed.

The executive order is the White House's first public effort to reach into the CIA's five-year-old terror detention program, which has been in limbo since a Supreme Court decision last year called its legal foundation into question.

Officials would not provide any details on specific interrogation techniques that the CIA may use under the new order. In the past, its methods are believed to have included sleep deprivation and disorientation, exposing prisoners to uncomfortable cold or heat for long periods, stress positions and -- most controversially -- the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The Bush administration has portrayed the interrogation operation as one of its most successful tools in the war on terror, while opponents have said the agency's techniques have left a black mark on the United States' reputation around the world.

Bush's order requires that CIA detainees ''receive the basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care.''

A senior intelligence official would not comment directly when asked if waterboarding would be allowed under the new order and under related -- but classified -- legal documents drafted by the Justice Department.

However, the official said, ''It would be wrong to assume the program of the past transfers to the future.''

A second senior administration official acknowledged sleep is not among the basic necessities outlined in the order.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the order more freely.

Skeptical human rights groups did not embrace Bush's effort.

Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said the broad outlines in the public order don't matter. The key is in the still-classified guidance distributed to CIA officers.

As a result, the executive order requires the public to trust the president to provide adequate protection to detainees. ''Given the experience of the last few years, they have to be naive if they think that is going to reassure too many people,'' he said.

The order specifically refers to captured al-Qaida suspects who may have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders. White House press secretary Tony Snow said the CIA's program has saved lives and must continue on a sound legal footing.

''The president has insisted on clear legal standards so that CIA officers involved in this essential work are not placed in jeopardy for doing their job -- and keeping America safe from attacks,'' he said.

The five-page order reiterated many protections already granted under U.S. and international law. It said that any conditions of confinement and interrogation cannot include:

-- Torture or other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation or cruel or inhuman treatment.

-- Willful or outrageous acts of personal abuse done to humiliate or degrade someone in a way so serious that any reasonable person would ''deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency.'' That includes sexually indecent acts.

-- Acts intended to denigrate the religion of an individual.

The order does not permit detainees to contact family members or have access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In a decision last year aimed at the military's tribunal system, the Supreme Court required the U.S. government to apply Geneva Convention protections to the conflict with al-Qaida, shaking the legal footing of the CIA's program.

Last fall, Congress instructed the White House to draft an executive order as part of the Military Commissions Act, which outlined the rules for trying terrorism suspects. The bill barred torture, rape and other war crimes that clearly would have violated the Geneva Conventions, but allowed Bush to determine -- through executive order -- whether less harsh interrogation methods can be used.

The administration and the CIA have maintained that the agency's program has been lawful all along.

In a message to CIA employees on Friday, Director Michael Hayden tried to stress the importance and narrow scope of the program. He noted that fewer than half of the less than 100 detainees have experienced the agency's ''enhanced interrogation measures.''

''Simply put, the information developed by our program has been irreplaceable,'' he said. ''If the CIA, with all its expertise in counterterrorism, had not stepped forward to hold and interrogate people like (senior al-Qaida operatives) Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the American people would be right to ask why.''

For decades, the United States had two paths for questioning suspects: the U.S. justice system and the military's Army Field Manual.

However, after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration decided more needed to be done. With Zubaydah's capture in 2002, the CIA program was quietly created.

Since then, 97 terror suspects are believed to have been held by the agency at locations around the world, often referred to as ''black sites.''

The program sparked international controversy as details slowly emerged, with human rights groups saying the agency's work was a violation of international law, including the Third Geneva Convention's Common Article 3 protections, which set a baseline standard for the treatment of prisoners of war.

In September, Bush announced the U.S. had transferred the last 14 high-value CIA detainees to the military's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they would stand trial. The CIA has held one detainee since then -- an Iraqi who the U.S. considered one of al-Qaida's most senior operatives. He was also eventually transferred to Guantanamo.

Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

    Bush Alters Rules for CIA Interrogations, NYT, 21.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Terrorism.html

Closest CIA bid to kill Castro was poisoned drink

Thu Jul 5, 2007
4:26PM EDT
Reuters
By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - The closest the CIA came to killing Cuba's Fidel Castro was a 1963 attempt with a poison pill delivered by American mobsters that was to be slipped into a chocolate milkshake, a former Cuban intelligence chief said.

But the capsule stuck to the freezer where it was hidden in the cafeteria of the Havana Libre (ex Hilton) Hotel and ripped open when the would-be assassin waiter went to get the poison.

"That moment was the closest the CIA got to assassinating Fidel," retired state security general Fabian Escalante told Reuters in an interview this week.

Castro, who seized power in a 1959 revolution that turned Cuba into a communist state 90 miles away from the United States, has survived hundreds of attempts on his life by his enemies, from car ambushes to grenade attacks in baseball stadiums, Escalante said.

Some of the most imaginative cloak-and-dagger plots were the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency, he said.

They included poisoned cigars, an exploding shell meant to be planted in his favorite underwater fishing location and a scuba diving wet suit tainted with toxins.

Among early attempts devised by the CIA to discredit Castro was a plan to place chemical powders on his boots that would cause his beard to fall out when he was in New York to speak at the United Nations in 1960.

When that failed, the CIA planned to slip him a box of cigars tainted with LSD so that he would burst into fits of laughter during a television interview, said Escalante, author of a book that documents 167 plots against Castro.

But it was the CIA's plans to poison Castro with botulinum toxins in the early 1960s that came closest to succeeding.

The agency acknowledged last week for the first time that the plot to assassinate Castro was personally approved by the Kennedy administration's CIA director Allen Dulles.

"FAMILY JEWELS"

The CIA declassified nearly 700 pages of secret records detailing some of its illegal acts during 25 years of overseas assassination attempts and domestic spying.

The agency's so-called "Family Jewels" describe the initial efforts to get rid of Castro by using a go-between to convince two top mobsters, Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficant, the head of the Mafia's Cuban casino operations, to assassinate Castro. Giancana suggested poisoning him.

Six potent pills were provided in 1961 to Juan Orta, identified as a Cuban official who had been receiving kickback payments from gambling interests, who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind. But Orta got cold feet.

Escalante said more poisoned pills, one batch disguised in a bottle of Bayer aspirins, were delivered through the Mafia to an opposition group that almost succeeded in March 1963 when Castro went for a milkshake.

Much of the information declassified by the CIA had been released in congressional investigations in the past.

Escalante, who detailed the poison pill plot in his book "The Secret War" published in 2005, said the agency was trying to "purify" itself but continues its skulduggery today.

While there is no evidence that the CIA has plotted to kill Castro since the Ford Administration banned assassination plots against foreign leaders in 1976, Escalante sees the hand of the CIA in more recent attempts by anti-Castro militants trained by the agency for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

Despite U.S. hostility, Castro remains Cuban leader at age 80, although bowel surgery forced him to hand over formal power to his brother Raul last July.

Escalante said effective Cuban security measures around Castro and the Cuban leader's intuitive "nose" for danger has kept him alive.

To this day, few Cubans know Castro's whereabouts, whether he is in a hospital or at home in a residential compound in western Havana called "Point Zero."

    Closest CIA bid to kill Castro was poisoned drink, R, 5.7.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0427935120070705

CIA Plot to Kill Castro Detailed

June 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:50 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HAVANA (AP) -- The CIA recruited a former FBI agent to approach two of America's most-wanted mobsters and gave them poison pills meant for Fidel Castro during his first year in power, according to newly declassified papers released Tuesday.

Contained amid hundreds of pages of CIA internal reports collectively known as ''the family jewels,'' the official confirmation of the 1960 plot against Castro was certain to be welcomed by communist authorities as more proof of their longstanding claims that the United States wants Castro dead.

Communist officials say there have been more than 600 documented attempts to kill Castro over the decades. Now 80, Castro has not been seen in public since handing power to his younger brother Raul while recovering from intestinal surgery last July. But in a letter published on Monday, the elder Castro claimed without providing details that President Bush had ''authorized and ordered'' his killing.

And while Cuban government press officials didn't return a call seeking reaction Tuesday, the release of the newly declassified CIA documents had already been noted in state media.

''Upon the orders of the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency tried to assassinate President Fidel Castro and other former personalities and leaders,'' the Communist Party newspaper Granma said Saturday. ''What was already presumed and denounced will be corroborated.''

Other aborted U.S. attempts to kill Castro, who rose to power in January 1959 in a revolution that ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista, have been noted in other declassified documents.

The papers released Tuesday were part of a report prepared at the request of CIA Director James Schlesinger in 1973, who ordered senior agency officials to tell him of any current or past actions that could potentially violate the agency's charter.

Some details of the 1960 plot first surfaced in investigative reporter Jack Anderson's newspaper column in 1971.

The documents show that in August 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, then a top aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the representative of international corporations that wanted Castro killed because of their lost gambling operations.

At the time, the bearded rebels had just outlawed gambling and destroyed the world-famous casinos American mobsters had operated in Havana.

Roselli introduced Maheu to ''Sam Gold'' and ''Joe.'' Both were mobsters on the U.S. government's 10-most wanted list: Momo Giancana, Al Capone's successor in Chicago; and Santos Trafficante, one of the most powerful mobsters in Batista's Cuba. The agency gave the reputed mobsters six poison pills, and they tried unsuccessfully for several months to have several people put them in Castro's food.

This particular assassination attempt was dropped after the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. The CIA was able to retrieve all the poison pills, records show.

    CIA Plot to Kill Castro Detailed, NYT, 27.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Cuba-CIA-Castro-Plot.html

Govt's Condemned Over Prison Accusations

June 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

STRASBOURG, France (AP) -- European governments have built ''a wall of silence'' around accusations that they let the CIA abduct their residents and run clandestine prisons on their territory, a European investigator said Wednesday.

Swiss Sen. Dick Marty charged in a report earlier this month that the CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania -- with the knowledge of several local politicians -- to interrogate key terror suspects after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

''There has been a wall of silence on the part of the governments, silence that covers illegal acts, human rights violations. Why this silence, why this systematic refusal to respond to our questions?'' Marty told the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly, which asked him to investigate CIA activities in Europe after media reports of secret prisons emerged in 2005.

Poland and Romania have vehemently denied the allegations, and most of the other EU countries mentioned by Marty have denied any wrongdoing. EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has complained Marty's report only quotes anonymous witnesses and does not name any sources.

His report, citing unidentified CIA sources, said that ''high value detainees'' such as self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and suspected senior al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah were held in Poland. It said lesser detainees, who were still of ''remarkable importance,'' were taken to Romania.

In an earlier report, Marty accused 14 European nations of colluding with U.S. intelligence in a web of rights abuses to help the CIA spirit terror suspects to illegal detention facilities.

President Bush acknowledged the existence of a secret detention program last September, but did not say where the prisons were located.

Marty's latest report, which did not give specific locations for the alleged jails, provided graphic descriptions of conditions. It told of prisoners being kept naked for weeks, and said masked guards who never spoke were the only contact for those consigned to four-month isolation regimes.

Polish lawmaker Urzsula Gacek, from the opposition Civic Platform, called Marty's report a ''piece of fiction, a gripping political thriller which fails to provide a single piece of evidence.''

    Govt's Condemned Over Prison Accusations, NYT, 27.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-CIA-Secret-Prisons.html

CIA Airs Decades Worth of Spy Documents

June 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:11 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Little-known documents now being made public detail illegal and scandalous activities by the CIA more than 30 years ago: wiretappings of journalists, kidnappings, warrantless searches and more.

The documents provide a glimpse of nearly 700 pages of materials that the agency plans to declassify next week. A six-page summary memo that was declassified in 2000 and released by The National Security Archive at George Washington University on Thursday outlines 18 activities by the CIA that ''presented legal questions'' and were discussed with President Ford in 1975.

Among them:

--The ''two-year physical confinement'' in the mid-1960s of a Soviet defector.

--Assassination plots of foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro.

--CIA wiretapping in 1963 of two columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, following a newspaper column in which national security information was disclosed. The wiretapping revealed calls from 12 senators and six representatives but did not indicate the source of the leak.

--The ''personal surveillances'' in 1972 of muckraking columnist Jack Anderson and staff members, including Les Whitten and Brit Hume. The surveillance involved watching the targets but no wiretapping. The memo said it followed a series of ''tilt toward Pakistan'' stories by Anderson.

--The personal surveillance of Washington Post reporter Mike Getler over three months beginning in late 1971. No specific stories are mentioned in the memo.

--CIA screening programs, beginning in the early 1950s and lasting until 1973, in which mail coming into the United States was reviewed and ''in some cases opened'' from the Soviet Union and China.

Much of the decades-old activities have been known for years. But Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, said the 1975 summary memo prepared by Justice Department lawyers had never been publicly released. It sheds light on meetings in the top echelon of government that were little known by the public, he said.

CIA Director Michael Hayden on Thursday called the documents being released next week unflattering, but he added that ''it is CIA's history.''

''The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency,'' Hayden told a conference of historians.

Blanton pointed to more recent concerns, such as post-Sept. 11 programs that included government wiretapping without warrants. ''The resonance with today's controversies is just uncanny,'' he said.

The long-secret documents being released next week were compiled at the direction of then-CIA Director James Schlesinger in 1973. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, he directed senior CIA officials to report immediately on any current or past agency matters that might fall outside the authority of the agency.

A separate memo, also dated 1975 and made public by the National Security Archive, discusses the briefing given to Ford detailing abuses by the spy agency. Then-CIA director William Colby tells the president that the CIA ''has done some things it shouldn't have.''

Among the activities discussed was the mail program in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of the airmail received from the Soviet Union, he said, ''we have four (letters) to Jane Fonda.''

------

On the Net:

The documents can be found at: http://www.nsarchive.org

(This version CORRECTS the spelling of Brit Hume's name.)

    CIA Airs Decades Worth of Spy Documents, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Secrets.html

C.I.A. to Release Documents on Decades-Old Misdeeds

June 22, 2007
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

The Central Intelligence Agency will make public next week a collection of long-secret documents compiled in 1974 that detail domestic spying, assassination plots and other C.I.A. misdeeds in the 1960s and early 1970s, the agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said yesterday.

In an address to a group of historians who have long pressed for greater disclosure of C.I.A. archives, General Hayden described the documents, known as the “family jewels,” as “a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency.” He also directed the release of 11,000 pages of cold-war documents on the Soviet Union and China, which were handed out on compact discs at the meeting, in Chantilly, Va.

In a defense of openness unusual in an administration that has vigorously defended government secrecy, General Hayden said that when government withholds information, myth and misinformation often “fill the vacuum like a gas.” He noted a European Parliament report of 1,245 secret C.I.A. flights over Europe, a number interpreted in some news articles as the number of cases of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects were flown to prison in other countries.

In fact, General Hayden said, the agency has detained fewer than 100 people in its secret overseas detention program since the 2001 terrorist attacks. He said the questioning of those detainees, which in some cases has involved harsh physical treatment, had produced valuable information, contributing to more than 8,000 intelligence reports.

“C.I.A. recognizes the very real benefits that flow from greater public understanding of our work,” General Hayden said at yesterday’s meeting, a gathering of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. But he also complained about “an instinct among some in the media today to take a few pieces of information, which may or may not be accurate, and run with them to the darkest corner of the room.”

Though the 1974 documents will not be released until Monday at the earliest, a research group in Washington posted related documents on the Web yesterday, including a 1975 Justice Department summary of domestic break-ins and wiretaps by the C.I.A. that may have violated American law. Also included were transcripts of three conversations in which President Gerald R. Ford was informed by aides of those activities by the agency.

In one of the conversations, Henry A. Kissinger, then serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser, denounced the efforts of William E. Colby, director of central intelligence, to push an aggressive investigation of the agency’s past transgressions.

Mr. Kissinger said the accusations then appearing daily about agency misconduct were “worse than in the days of McCarthy,” and expressed concern that they would intimidate C.I.A. officers, so that “you’ll end up with an agency that does only reporting and not operations.”

“What Colby has done is a disgrace,” Mr. Kissinger said, according to the transcript, posted along with the others by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (nsarchive.org).

“Should we suspend him?” Mr. Ford asked.

“No,” Mr. Kissinger replied, “but after the investigation is over you could move him and put in someone of towering integrity.”

A year later, Mr. Ford replaced Mr. Colby as director with George Bush.

In the 33 years since the nearly 700 pages of “family jewel” documents were compiled at the orders of Mr. Colby’s predecessor, James R. Schlesinger, much of their content has become known through leaks, testimony or partial disclosure. Most notably, the documents were described by government officials to Seymour M. Hersh, who reported on them in articles in The New York Times beginning on Dec. 22, 1974. The first article described “a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation” that had produced C.I.A. files on some 10,000 Americans.

But the documents’ release next week may offer new details of a period of aggressive, and sometimes illegal, C.I.A. activities, directed particularly at American journalists who published leaked government secrets and activists who opposed the Vietnam War. The release also appears to signify a shift in attitude at the agency in the year that it has been led by General Hayden, a history buff who holds two degrees in the field from Duquesne University, where he wrote a thesis on the Marshall Plan.

Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, which obtains and publishes collections of once-secret government records, said the step announced yesterday might be the most important since at least 1998, when George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, reversed a decision to release information on cold-war covert actions. “Applause is due,” Mr. Blanton said.

But Mr. Blanton took issue with General Hayden’s assurance that the current C.I.A. was utterly different from the pre-1975 institution. “There are uncanny parallels,” he said, “between events today and the stories in the family jewels about warrantless wiretapping and concern about violation of the kidnapping laws.”

The six-page 1975 Justice Department summary, of C.I.A. actions that some officers of the agency had reported as possible illegalities, included the 1963 wiretapping of two newspaper columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, who had written a column including “certain national security information.”

The document said those wiretaps had been approved after “discussions” with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara. A C.I.A. report described them as “very productive,” picking up calls of 12 senators and 6 members of the House, among others.

    C.I.A. to Release Documents on Decades-Old Misdeeds, NYT, 22.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/washington/22cia.html

Rights Group Offers Grim View of C.I.A. Jails

June 9, 2007
The New York Times
By DOREEN CARVAJAL

PARIS, June 8 — In a report on Friday, the lead investigator for the Council of Europe gave a bleak description of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency in Eastern Europe, with information he said was gleaned from anonymous intelligence agents.

Prisoners guarded by silent men in black masks and dark visors were held naked in cramped cells and shackled to walls, according to the report, which was prepared by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating C.I.A. operations for the Council of Europe, a 46-nation rights group.

Ventilation holes in the cells released bursts of hot or freezing air, with temperature used as a form of extreme pressure to wear down prisoners, the investigators found. Prisoners were also subjected to water-boarding, a form of simulated drowning, and relentless blasts of music and sound, from rap to cackling laughter and screams, the report says.

The report, which runs more than 100 pages, says the prisons were operated exclusively by Americans in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2006. It relies heavily on testimony from C.I.A. agents.

Critics in Poland and Romania attacked Mr. Marty’s use of anonymous sources and issued categorical denials, as they have done repeatedly. Denis MacShane, a British member of Parliament and longtime critic of Mr. Marty, complained that the investigator “makes grave allegations to two European Union member states, Poland and Romania, without any proof at all.”

Tomasz Szeratics, a spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “We shall not make any comments on Dick Marty’s latest report until we receive it officially and analyze the evidence presented. The Polish position remains unchanged and it is very clear: There were no secret C.I.A. detention centers on the territory of the Republic of Poland.”

But Mr. Marty said at a news conference in Paris that anonymous testimony was backed by thousands of flight records showing prisoner transfers, including private planes linked to the C.I.A. that made 10 flights from Afghanistan and Dubai to the Szczytno-Szymany International Airport in Poland between 2002 and 2005.

That was the closest airport to a Soviet-era military compound where about a dozen high-level terror suspects were jailed, the report charges. The local authorities formed secure buffer zones around the jails, which were operated exclusively by Americans, Mr. Marty reported.

Lower-level prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq were held at a military base near the Black Sea in Romania, the report says. The Romanians were restricted to the buffer zone.

“Our Romanian officers do not know what happened inside those areas because we sealed them off and we had control,” the report cites a senior military agent as saying.

The details of prison life were given by retired and current American intelligence agents who had been promised confidentiality, the report says.

Their motives were varied, Mr. Marty said. “For 15 years, I have interviewed people as an investigating magistrate and I have always noticed that at a certain point, people with secrets need to talk,” he said.

Others justified the grim treatment, the reports said, saying, in one instance: “Here’s my question. Was the guy a terrorist? ’Cause if he’s a terrorist, then I figure he got what was coming to him.”

According to the report, suspects were often held for months with no contact except with masked, silent guards who would push meals of cheese, potatoes and bread through hatches.

When prisoners resisted, the report says, one investigator considered it a welcome sign. “You know they are starting to crack,” he said, “So you hold out. You push them over the edge.”

    Rights Group Offers Grim View of C.I.A. Jails, NYT, 9.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/world/europe/09prisons.html

Democrats May Subpoena N.S.A. Documents

June 8, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, June 7 — Senior House Democrats threatened Thursday to issue subpoenas to obtain secret legal opinions and other documents from the Justice Department related to the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program.

If the Democrats take that step, it would mark the most aggressive action yet by Congress in its oversight of the wiretapping program and could set the stage for a constitutional showdown over the separation of powers.

The subpoena threat came after a senior Justice Department official told a House judiciary subcommittee on Thursday that the department would not turn over the documents because of their confidential nature. But the official, Steven G. Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, did not assert executive privilege during the hearing.

The potential confrontation over the documents comes in the wake of gripping Senate testimony last month by a former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey, who described a confrontation in March 2004 between Justice Department and White House officials over the wiretapping program that took place in the hospital room of John Ashcroft, then attorney general. Mr. Comey’s testimony, disclosing the sharp disagreements in the Bush administration over the legality of some N.S.A. activities, has increased Congressional interest in scrutinizing the program.

At the same time, the Bush administration is seeking new legislation to expand its wiretapping powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have argued that they do not want to vote on the issue without first seeing the administration’s legal opinions on the wiretapping program.

“How can we begin to consider FISA legislation when we don’t know what they are doing?” asked Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, who heads the subcommittee.

On May 17, after Mr. Comey’s testimony, Mr. Nadler and Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, who is the chairman of the full Judiciary Committee, wrote to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales requesting copies of Justice Department legal opinions used to support the N.S.A. wiretapping program, as well as later documents written by top Justice Department officials that raised questions about the program’s legality in 2004. The letter also asked Mr. Gonzales to provide his own description of the 2004 confrontation.

Mr. Conyers said he had not received a response from the Justice Department. “We’re going to give him two more weeks, and then, as somebody said, it’s about time process kicks in somewhere around here,” Mr. Conyers said.

In an interview after the subcommittee hearing on Thursday, Mr. Bradbury said his refusal to provide the documents was not the final word from the Justice Department on the matter.

But Mr. Nadler made it clear that he did not expect the administration to comply and said he thought he would soon have to push for subpoenas.

In January, the Bush administration announced that it was placing the program under FISA, meaning that it would no longer conduct domestic wiretapping operations without seeking court approval, and officials said they were ending eavesdropping without warrants.

Since then, the White House has said that the debate over the program is moot because it has been brought under court supervision, and the Democrats, focused on Iraq war policy, had done little to challenge such assertions. Mr. Bradbury even said Thursday that the N.S.A. program was “no longer operational.”

    Democrats May Subpoena N.S.A. Documents, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/washington/08nsa.html

Investigator: CIA Ran Secret Prisons

June 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PARIS (AP) -- The CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate detainees in the war on terror, a European investigator said in a report released Friday.

The report by Swiss Sen. Dick Marty also accused Germany and Italy of obstructing probes into alleged secret detentions by the CIA.

Top terror suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah were held and interrogated in Poland, according to the report, which cited unidentified CIA sources. Mohammed is the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Abu Zubaydah is a suspected senior al-Qaida operative.

The report also said the ''highest state authorities'' in countries involved knew of the alleged detention centers.

Jerzy Szmajdzinski, Poland's defense minister from 2001-05, sarcastically brushed aside the accusations, saying: ''Of course, I organized everything and gave them a red-carpet welcome.'' He declined further comment on ''political fiction.''

Romanian Sen. Norica Nicolai rejected Marty's findings as ''totally unfounded.''

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: ''While I've yet to see the report, Europe has been the source of grossly inaccurate allegations about the CIA and counterterrorism.''

President Bush did not acknowledge the CIA's secret detention program until September 2006, when he announced that the agency had just moved Mohammed and 13 other suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay. He did not say where the prisons were located.

In Germany, government spokesman Thomas Steg denied it hindered the probe.

''The government knows of media reports about apparent prisoner transports and secret prisons, but the government itself has no information on such transports and facilities,'' Steg said.

''To date, Mr. Marty has in his other reports also failed to provide any evidence that what is alleged is actually true.''

The report said collaboration by U.S. allies was critical to the secret detention program, which took place in the framework of NATO's security policy.

''The secret detention facilities in Europe were run directly and exclusively by the CIA,'' it said.

''While it is likely that very few people in the countries concerned, including in the governments themselves, knew of the existence of the centers, we have sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA's illegal activities on their territories,'' it said.

Poland and Romania hosted the prisons under a special post-Sept. 11 CIA program to ''kill, capture and detain'' high-value terrorist suspects, wrote Marty, a Swiss senator investigating the alleged role of Council of Europe states in the CIA program.

Evidence of secret flights -- at least 10 flights to Poland between 2002 and 2005 -- show the pivotal role played by Poland and Romania as drop-off points, the report says.

''There is now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania,'' the report said.

Marty did not identify his sources, saying they were people ''who had worked or still worked for the relevant authorities, in particular intelligence agencies.''

''We have never based our conclusions on single statements and we have only used information that is confirmed by other, totally independent sources,'' the report said, adding that where possible, information was cross-checked in the relevant countries, in the U.S., or in documents and data.

In Italy, the first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened on Friday, without the presence of any of the 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terrorist suspect. The case has irritated the historically robust U.S.-Italian relationship, and coincided with Bush's arrival in Rome.

Last year, Marty accused 14 European nations of colluding with U.S. intelligence in a web of rights abuses to help the CIA spirit terror suspects to illegal detention facilities. He said evidence suggested that CIA-linked planes carrying terror suspects had landed at airports in Timisoara, Romania, and Szymany, Poland, and likely dropped off detainees there.

His second report confirmed Szymany as a drop-off point in Poland, where at least 10 flights -- six from Afghanistan -- landed.

''High-value detainees'' were held in Poland at the Stare Kiejkuty intelligence training base, the report said, citing multiple sources. Americans had full control of the detainees, it said.

He added that neither Polish nor U.S. sources would discuss operational details of the detentions at Stare Kiejkuty.

The report said Washington lured Romania into cooperating with ''formidable'' support for its accession to NATO -- the ''biggest prize.''

Marty said he recognized the ''seriousness of the terrorist threat'' but added: ''The fight against terrorism must not serve as an excuse for systematic recourse to illegal acts, massive violation of fundamental human rights and contempt for the rule of law.''

''The rendition, abduction and detention of terrorist suspects have always taken place outside the territory of the United States, where such actions would no doubt have been ruled unlawful and unconstitutional,'' the report said. ''Obviously, these actions are also unacceptable under the laws of European countries, who nonetheless tolerated them or colluded actively in carrying them out.''

Associated Press Writer Jan Sliva contributed to this report.

    Investigator: CIA Ran Secret Prisons, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-EU-CIA-Secret-Prisons.html

Secret CIA jails hosted by Poland, Romania: watchdog

Fri Jun 8, 2007
9:22AM EDT
Reuters
By Jon Boyle

PARIS (Reuters) - A European investigator says he has proof Poland and Romania hosted secret CIA prisons under a post-9/11 pact to hunt down and interrogate "high value" terrorist suspects wanted by the United States.

Swiss senator Dick Marty said Poland housed some of the CIA's most sensitive prisoners, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who says he masterminded the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that killed almost 3,000 people.

"There is now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003-2005, in particular in Poland and Romania," Marty says in a report for the Council of Europe human rights watchdog.

Marty accused the former Polish president and the current and former presidents of Romania of having known and approved of the secret CIA operations on their soil.

European Union members Poland and Romania have repeatedly denied the existence of secret prisons on their territory.

In a preliminary report last year Marty said 20 mostly European countries colluded in a "global spider's web" of secret CIA jails and flight transfers of terrorist suspects stretching from Asia to Guantanamo Bay.

Marty said Germany and Italy had used "state secrecy" to obstruct investigations and his report could embarrass European governments, which have criticized the detention without trial of suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Reacting to Marty's report, the European Commission called on Romania and Poland to hold urgent, independent investigations into the allegations and ensure any victims were compensated.

Commission spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing told a daily news briefing the European Union executive was "very concerned indeed" about the report, which was the culmination of a 19-month investigation.

POLITICAL APPROVAL

According to the report, Poland's then-president Aleksander Kwasniewski, head of National Security Bureau Marek Siwiec, Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski and head of military intelligence Marek Dukaczewski were aware of and could be held accountable for the operation of CIA secret prisons in Poland.

"Marty's work is pure political fiction...It is a waste of time and a waste of money," Szmajdzinski told Reuters.

Former Romanian president Ion Iliescu, current President Traian Basescu and former defence Minster Ioan Mircea Pascu were among those who "knew about, authorized and stand accountable" for Romania's role in the CIA program, Marty said.

"The current report, as the previous one from 2006, brings no evidence to confirm these allegations, except for unnamed sources, whose credibility cannot be estimated," the Romanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"Poland maintains its position...There were no secret centers in Poland," a foreign ministry spokesman said in Warsaw.

The facilities were "run directly and exclusively by the CIA" and European governments connived with the secret transfers and detentions, known as extraordinary renditions, Marty said.

President George W. Bush confirmed last September the CIA had run secret detention centers abroad where terrorism suspects had been interrogated, but he named no country.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said he had not yet seen the report. "Europe has been the source of grossly inaccurate allegations about the CIA and counter-terrorism," he said. "And people should remember that Europeans have benefited from the agency's bold, lawful work to disrupt terrorist plots."

The report said U.S. intelligence contacts and other sources confirmed Poland and Romania "did host secret detention centers under a special CIA program established by the American administration in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 to 'kill, capture and detain' terrorist suspects deemed of 'high value'".

Interrogation techniques used on suspects were "tantamount to torture" said the report. Marty told the Le Figaro daily that Washington had waged a war against terrorism without rules, handing suspects to "rogue states like Syria" to avoid the constraints of U.S. law.

As Marty's report was issued, 26 Americans, almost all of them suspected CIA agents, went in trial in absentia in Italy, accused of kidnapping a Muslim man in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt as part of Washington's extraordinary rendition policy.

(Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan in London, Dave Graham in Berlin, Natalia Reiter in Warsaw, Luiza Ilie in Bucharest)

    Secret CIA jails hosted by Poland, Romania: watchdog, R, 8.6.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0870585420070608?src=060807_0819_DOUBLEFEATURE_

FACTBOX: Secret prison allegations on Poland, Romania

Fri Jun 8, 2007
7:58AM EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - A European investigator said on Friday he had proof of long-standing allegations that Poland and Romania housed secret CIA prisons on behalf of the United States to help in its war on terrorism. Both countries deny it.

Here are key points from the report by Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty.

WHY POLAND AND ROMANIA?

Washington chose the two countries because they were "economically vulnerable, emerging from difficult transitional periods in their history, and dependent on American support for their strategic development". Both were eager to secure their status as key NATO members and friends of the United States.

SECRET DEALS

"The CIA brokered 'operating agreements' with the governments of Poland and Romania to hold its high-value detainees (HVDs) in secret detention facilities on their respective territories. Poland and Romania agreed to provide the premises in which these facilities were established, the highest degrees of physical security and secrecy, and steadfast guarantees of non-interference," the report said.

The CIA chose Polish and Romanian "point men" who vouched for the reliability and secrecy of their national services. The CIA limited to an absolute minimum the number of Polish and Romanian counterparts who knew about even "tiny little pieces" of the operations.

In both countries, the agency worked with the military intelligence agencies, which offered greater levels of secrecy than their civilian counterparts.

WHO KNEW?

For the first time, Marty named top Polish and Romanian officials who, he said, knew of and could be held accountable for the operation of secret CIA prisons in their countries.

In Poland: then-president Aleksander Kwasniewski, head of National Security Bureau Marek Siwiec, defense minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski and military intelligence head Marek Dukaczewski.

In Romania: former president Ion Iliescu, current President Traian Basescu, former presidential adviser on national security Ioan Talpes, former defense Minster Ioan Mircea Pascu and head of military intelligence directorate Sergiu Tudor Medar.

WHEN, WHERE AND HOW

From the first half of 2003, Poland housed some of the CIA's most sensitive prisoners, including senior al Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who says he masterminded the September 11 attacks on the United States. Both were subjected to 'enhanced interrogation techniques'.

In Poland, CIA flights used the northern airport of Szymany. Dummy flight plans were filed to disguise the destination. Secret flights were met at the end of the runway, out of visible range of the terminal, by a team of American officials in vans; the vans then drove through thick pine forest and along the side of a lake to reach the Stare Kiejkuty intelligence training base where the prisoners were held.

The Romanian 'black site' operated between 2003 and the second half of 2005, housing prisoners whose intelligence value had been assessed as lower. CIA flights used the air force base at Mihail Kogalniceanu airfield, Marty said.

SOURCES

Marty said his information came from multiple U.S., Polish and Romanian government and intelligence sources. He acknowledged he had not seen the text of any specific agreement with Warsaw or Bucharest on the holding of high-value prisoners.

    FACTBOX: Secret prison allegations on Poland, Romania, R, 8.6.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0838901220070608

Poland denies CIA prisons existed on its soil

Fri Jun 8, 2007
8:18AM EDT
Reuters

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland said on Friday it had not hosted secret CIA prisons, reacting to a report by a European investigator who said he had proof of such detention centers.

"Poland maintains its position...There were no secret centers in Poland," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Swiss senator Dick Marty said in a report that Poland housed some of the CIA's most sensitive prisoners under a post-9/11 pact to hunt down and interrogate "high value" terrorist suspects wanted by the United States.

Poland and Romania, also accused by Marty of hosting the centers, have repeatedly denied the allegations.

Jerzy Szmajdzinski, who was Poland's defense minister during the time when the alleged detentions took place, also denied the existence of such prisons.

"Marty's work is pure political fiction...It is a waste of time and a waste of money," Szmajdzinski told Reuters.

Poland is one of Washington's leading allies in Europe. It is negotiating terms for placing elements of a U.S missile defense system on its soil.

The European Union called on its member states accused by Marty to hold independent investigations.

    Poland denies CIA prisons existed on its soil, R, 8.6.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0881896220070608 

EU calls on members to probe secret CIA jails

Fri Jun 8, 2007
7:39AM EDT
Reuters

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission called on EU member states accused on Friday of hosting secret CIA prisons for terrorism suspects to hold urgent, independent investigations and ensure victims are compensated.

Commission spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing told a daily news briefing the European Union executive was "very concerned indeed" about a Council of Europe report alleging that Poland and Romania hosted secret U.S. detention centers in 2003-5.

President George W. Bush has confirmed the CIA used secret prisons to interrogate terrorism suspects in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States but has not said where they were located.

Roscam Abbing said the Commission considered "extraordinary rendition" -- the extra-judicial capture and secret transfer of suspects to countries where they may face torture -- was illegal under EU law and harmed the fight against terrorism.

He said he could not comment in detail on a report which the Commission had not had time to analyze but the findings were clearly very serious and EU states were required by the European Convention on Human Rights to hold a full investigation.

"Such effective investigations should be fully carried out as quickly as possible in the member states concerned -- and this is not yet the case -- in order to establish both responsibilities as well as to enable the victims to obtain compensation for damages," he said.

EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said in November 2005 that if reports of secret CIA prisons in Europe were true, states would face serious consequences including the possible suspension of their EU voting rights.

Roscam Abbing said the Commission took the latest report very seriously and intended to discuss the issue further both within the Council of Europe, a pan-European human rights watchdog, and in the EU institutions.

Poland joined the EU in 2004 and Romania this year. The report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty also accused EU members Germany and Italy of using state secrecy to obstruct his investigation.

    EU calls on members to probe secret CIA jails, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0882486120070608

CIA agents go on trial in Italy

Fri Jun 8, 2007
9:57AM EDT
Reuters
By Phil Stewart

MILAN (Reuters) - Twenty six U.S. citizens, almost all believed to be CIA agents, went on trial in absentia in Milan on Friday accused of carrying out one of Washington's most controversial policies in its war on terrorism.

Hours before President George W. Bush was due to visit Italy, the court began the trial of the U.S. citizens, charged with kidnapping a Muslim in Milan in 2003 and then flying him to Egypt where he says he was tortured under interrogation.

Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was on Washington's list of terrorist suspects.

Italian spies, including the former head of the SISMI intelligence agency, are accused of helping the U.S. citizens carry out the so-called extraordinary rendition.

As expected, none of the Americans turned up in court and only one Italian agent was present. The trial got under way with empty cages lining two walls of the courtroom.

"I have been doing this job for 33 years, I have always done it with my head held high and in the full light of day," SISMI agent Luciano di Gregori told Reuters. "I have nothing to hide."

Washington has said it will reject any request by Italy to extradite the accused.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro told reporters the case would show the need to fight against terrorism with "the full respect of the laws of our Western democracies".

"We want the punishment of the terrorists, but in the courtrooms. And we don't need to give to our enemies any reason for recruiting other members of their organizations," he said.

Italy's prime minister at the time, Silvio Berlusconi, and other critics say the trial could expose international espionage secrets and create headaches for Rome.

AWKWARD

The trial comes at an awkward time for center-left Prime Minister Romano Prodi, increasingly unpopular a year into the job. He wants to keep fractious coalition partners united behind him and away from street protests against Bush on Saturday.

"As far as I can see, Bush's visit is a liability for him and for Prodi. And the fact this trial is the day before makes it more so," said James Walston, head of the international relations department at the American University of Rome.

"Whatever the merits of the case, it will remind the world ... that it appears American secret servicemen kidnap Muslims in Italy. So, that's a big problem for the U.S. administration."

Prosecutors say a CIA-led team seized the Muslim cleric, bundled him into a van and drove him to a military base in northern Italy. From there, prosecutors say the CIA flew him via Germany to Egypt where he says he was tortured with electric shocks, beatings, rape threats and genital abuse.

The cleric's Egyptian lawyer, attending the trial, told reporters his client "wants to be compensated morally and wants those who kidnapped him to pay for their crimes".

"He wanted to come but the Egyptian authorities prevented him," said Montasser al-Zayat, who is seeking criminal damages.

Nasr was released from jail in February but had his passport confiscated. His lawyer has said the imam wants to testify in Italy even though he would be arrested on terrorism charges.

The Italian case begins just over a week after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a suit against a Boeing Co. unit it accuses of helping the U.S. CIA transfer foreign suspects to overseas prisons.

The suit was filed on behalf of three people, including an Italian citizen, who the ACLU said were abducted by the CIA, detained and tortured.

    CIA agents go on trial in Italy, R, 8.6.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0738768520070608

TIMELINE: CIA "renditions" and secret prisons

Fri Jun 8, 2007
7:58AM EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - A European investigator said on Friday he had proof the CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania to interrogate suspects in its war on terrorism.

At the same time, an Italian court began trying 26 Americans in absentia over the alleged kidnapping and secret transfer of a terrorist suspect in 2003.

Here is chronology of events in the international controversy over CIA secret prisons for terrorist suspects and the use of U.S. "extraordinary renditions" to move detainees covertly around the world.

Nov 2005 - Washington Post reports CIA has been hiding and interrogating al Qaeda captives at secret facilities in Eastern Europe. Other media reports name Poland and Romania, which both deny hosting such centers.

May 2006 - U.S. judge dismisses lawsuit against former head of the CIA and several of its employees by German Khaled el-Masri, who says he was abducted and tortured by the agency, including being held for months in Afghanistan.

June 7, 2006 - Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty says in report that more than 20 countries, mostly in Europe, colluded in a "global spider's web" of secret U.S. CIA prisons and prisoner transfers. But he concedes he cannot prove his allegations that CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania.

June 2006 - European Parliament committee backs draft report saying CIA or other U.S. services have been "directly responsible for the illegal seizure, removal, abduction and detention of terrorist suspects on the territory of (EU) member states".

Amnesty International says there is "irrefutable evidence of European complicity" with illegal U.S. renditions.

July 2006 - In the first arrests anywhere in connection with renditions, Italy arrests two of its intelligence officials for suspected involvement in alleged CIA kidnap of a terrorism suspect, Abu Omar, in Milan in 2003.

September 2006 - President George W. Bush acknowledges CIA has interrogated dozens of suspects at undisclosed overseas locations and says the last 14 of those held have been sent to U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

December 2006 - Italian prosecutors ask a judge to order CIA agents and Italian spies to stand trial over Abu Omar kidnap.

Jan 2007 - German court orders arrest of 13 people, reported to be CIA agents, suspected of involvement in abduction of Khaled el-Masri in 2003-4.

Feb 2007 - European Parliament passes final report, after year of investigations, saying European governments and secret services accepted and concealed secret U.S. flights carrying terrorism suspects across Europe. Spain, Romania, Poland and Italy are among the countries most criticized.

June 2007 - Six human rights groups list 39 people they say have "disappeared" while in U.S. custody.

European investigator says he has proof Poland and Romania housed secret CIA prisons on behalf of the United States.

Twenty six U.S. citizens go on trial in absentia in Milan accused of kidnapping a Muslim in 2003 and flying him to Egypt. Italian spies, including the former head of the SISMI intelligence agency, are accused of helping the U.S. citizens carry out the so-called extraordinary rendition.

    TIMELINE: CIA "renditions" and secret prisons, R, 8.6.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0783040920070608

7.30pm

Secret CIA prisons confirmed by Polish and Romanian officials

Thursday June 7, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Stephen Grey

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude tomorrow.

Despite denials by their governments, senior security officials in Poland and Romania have confirmed to investigators for the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America's most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation methods. These included water-boarding which leads detainees to believe they are drowning, which critics have condemned as severe torture.

Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council's report, which has been seen by the Guardian, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons' operations and the identities of some of the prisoners.

The council has also established that within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, Nato signed an agreement with the US that allowed civilian jets used by the CIA during its so-called extraordinary rendition programme to move across member states' airspace.

The report states: "We have sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA's illegal activities on their territories."

That agreement may have been illegal, the council's investigators believe.

The full extent of British logistic support for the extraordinary rendition programme was first disclosed by the Guardian, which reported in September 2005 that aircraft operated by the CIA had flown in and out of UK civilian and military airports hundreds of times.

The 19-month inquiry by the council, which is responsible for promoting human rights across Europe, was headed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator and former state prosecutor. He said: "What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven: large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice."

His report says that there is "now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania".

Mr Marty has told Channel 4's Dispatches, in a report to be broadcast on Monday, that although the jails were run "directly and exclusively" by the CIA with local officials barred from access the prisons were only possible because of "collaboration at various institutional levels of America's many partner countries".

He succeeded in confirming details of the CIA's closely-guarded secret by using his own "intelligence methods", which included tracking and persuading to talk intelligence agents on both sides of the Atlantic, including serving members of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre.

"All the conclusions drawn in this report rely upon multiple sources," he said.

He concludes that in eastern Europe, the CIA had trusted "point-men" who alone knew about the prisons; their partners were Poland and Romania's military intelligence agencies who reported directly to then president Aleksander Kwasniewski in Poland, presidents Ion Iliescu and then Traian Basescu in Romania, and their nearest security advisers.

This meant that civilian intelligence agencies, parliamentary oversight committees, and even the countries' prime ministers could "credibly deny" knowledge of the CIA facilities.

In Poland the main CIA jail was in a former Soviet-era military compound at Stare Kjekuty, near Szmany airport in north-eastern Poland. This prison was for the most high value detainees, known as HVDs. Those held there included Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of 9/11.

It was at the Polish site, said Mr Marty, that some of the CIA's "enhanced methods" of interrogation, such as extreme sleep deprivation and water-boarding were used. "These methods amounted to illegal torture," he told Dispatches.

Mr Marty concludes that the CIA was able to move around Europe, flying prisoners to its secret sites and organising renditions of prisoners to other countries, due to an agreement signed by all Nato members, including Britain, just after September 11.

On October 4 2001, Nato's then secretary-general, Lord Robertson, had said alliance members had agreed to grant "blanket over-flight clearances" as well as basing rights to US forces involved in the so-called war on terror. Although Lord Robertson referred only to military flights, the full text of the agreement has remained classified.

Quoting its own confidential sources, the Council of Europe says a secret part of the agreement also gave total freedom of movement for the civilian jets used by the CIA for its prisoner operations.

Government officials in Poland and Romania have repeatedly denied the existence of CIA facilities or the presence of detainees held by US authorities.

But Mr Marty concluded: "All the members and partners of Nato signed up to the same permissive - not to say illegal - terms that allowed CIA operations to permeate throughout the European continent and beyond; all knew that CIA practices for the detention, transfer and treatment of terrorist suspects left open considerable scope for abuses and unlawful measures; yet all remained silent and kept the operations, the practices, their agreements and their participation secret."

There was no immediate comment from Nato.

· Stephen Grey presents Dispatches - Kidnapped to Order on Monday June 11 at 8pm on Channel 4

    Secret CIA prisons confirmed by Polish and Romanian officials, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2097935,00.html

Trial Opens Involving C.I.A. Rendition

June 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MILAN, Italy (AP) -- The first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary renditions program opens Friday in the absence of all 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terrorist suspect.

The trial, which has been an irritant in the historically robust U.S.-Italy relationship and coincides with the arrival in Rome of President Bush, was expected to ground to a halt before taking off.

The government has asked Italy's highest court to throw out indictments against 26 Americans -- all but one of them believed to be CIA agents -- accused of abducting Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.

The Constitutional Court was expected to consider that and a similar appeal in the fall, and participants in the trial said they expect defense requests to postpone the trial until after the high court rules.

A trial has the potential to publicly air details about the renditions -- moving terrorism suspects from country to country without public legal proceedings. It also could embarrass the intelligence community over the handling of a highly secret operation that got the attention of prosecutors.

Italian prosecutors say Nasr -- suspected of recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes but who had not been charged with any crime at the time of his disappearance -- was taken to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany before being transferred to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years. Nasr, who was released Feb. 11, said he was tortured.

Nasr's lawyer traveled from Cairo to attending the opening proceedings; prosecutors have listed Nasr on their list of more than 120 witnesses.

Lawyers for a former Italian intelligence chief also under indictment have included former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who was in office at the time of Nasr's disappearance, and Premier Romano Prodi on their witness list, according to lawyers involved in the case. The same request was denied by a different judge during the preliminary hearing phase.

The 26 Americans have left Italy, and a senior U.S. official has said they would not be turned over for prosecution even if Rome requests it. Prodi's government has so far not made a decision.

The trial's opening comes as Bush arrives for meetings Saturday with the pope and Italy's premier and president.

Relations between Rome and Washington also have been strained by the trial of a U.S. soldier accused of killing an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad in 2005 as well as Italy's withdrawal of troops from Iraq and reluctance to send additional soldiers to Afghanistan.

    Trial Opens Involving C.I.A. Rendition, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Italy-CIA-Kidnapping.html?hp

Libby Given 30 Months

for Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case

June 6, 2007
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, June 5 — I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and one of the principal architects of President Bush’s foreign policy, was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison for lying during a C.I.A. leak investigation that became part of a fierce debate over the war in Iraq.

The sentence ordered by Judge Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court and his refusal so far to delay its enactment means that Mr. Libby may have to report to prison in about two months. That was expected to prompt Mr. Libby’s supporters to accelerate their calls for Mr. Bush to grant him a pardon, although a White House spokeswoman offered a discouraging view of that possibility Tuesday.

Mr. Libby, who was once one of the most powerful men in government and was heavily involved in planning both Iraq wars, stood calmly in the well of the court as Judge Walton said he appreciated his long service to the country, the record of which was put forward by his lawyers as an argument for probation and no prison time.

But, the judge said, “People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of the nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem.”

Judge Walton, who presided over the trial that ended in March with Mr. Libby’s conviction on four felony counts, said the evidence was overwhelming that Mr. Libby had obstructed justice and lied to a grand jury and F.B.I. agents investigating the disclosure of the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Wilson.

The sentence was several months longer than the minimum recommended by federal sentencing guidelines, based on what Judge Walton said was his agreement with prosecutors that Mr. Libby’s crimes obscured an investigation into a serious matter and that his lies obliged the government to engage in a long and costly investigation that might have been avoided had he told the truth.

If Mr. Libby goes to prison, he will be the first senior White House official to do so since the days of Watergate, when several of President Richard M. Nixon’s top aides, including H. R. Haldeman and John D. Erlichman, served prison terms.

In the second setback to Mr. Libby, Judge Walton refused a request by defense lawyers to delay the sentence until Mr. Libby’s appeals are exhausted. Unless the judge reverses his position, as Mr. Libby’s lawyers will press for in arguments next week, or unless Mr. Bush grants a pardon, the Bureau of Prisons is expected to order Mr. Libby to report to a federal prison in the next 45 to 60 days.

Mr. Bush, who learned of the sentence while traveling in Europe, expressed sympathy for Mr. Libby and his family through a spokeswoman, Dana Perino, who was accompanying the president on Air Force One from the Czech Republic to Germany. But as to the possibility of a pardon, Ms. Perino said only, “The president has not intervened so far in this or any other criminal matter, so he’s going to decline to do so now as well.”

Several Republicans advisers close to the White House, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that they were perplexed as to why Mr. Bush seemed reluctant to acquiesce in pardoning Mr. Libby. Mr. Bush has pardoned more than 100 people so far, but none have been prominent.

An intriguing question for many is what role Mr. Cheney will play in pressing Mr. Bush to grant a pardon. In a statement, Mr. Cheney noted that Mr. Libby was appealing the verdict and said that he and his wife, Lynne, “hope that our system will return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man.”

Judge Walton issued his sentence after intense arguments by both sides over the significance of Mr. Libby’s crimes, and after sifting through scores of letters asking for leniency that were sent to the court by notable figures, including former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, who recently resigned as president of the World Bank and who is a former professor and government supervisor of Mr. Libby. Neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Cheney were among the 150 people who wrote letters of support.

In addition, Mr. Libby, who did not testify in his own defense at the trial, delivered a brief statement, asking Judge Walton to “consider, along with the jury verdict, my whole life.” Mr. Libby, who has continued to maintain his innocence, did not offer any words that would have hinted at an acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

Mr. Libby was not charged with leaking Ms. Wilson’s name, which first appeared in a column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003. Mr. Novak’s sources were later revealed to be Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, and Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s senior political adviser in the White House, neither of whom was charged with violating the law prohibiting the disclosure of the identities of C.I.A. officers.

But Mr. Libby was indicted on charges of lying about his conversations with reporters about Ms. Wilson. Mr. Libby argued that the three reporters who contradicted his grand jury testimony were incorrect and that, in any event, he was too pressed by other business to remember details about any conversations concerning Ms. Wilson.

A Libby defense lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., asked Judge Walton to sentence Mr. Libby to probation or home confinement. He urged the judge to take account of Mr. Libby’s long record as a public official, saying that was not an appeal for special treatment but for consideration of the way he had lived his life. Mr. Wells said Mr. Libby had already been punished, through “public humiliation,” hate mail, the virtually certain loss of his license to practice law and the desire of some people to make him “the poster child” for all that has gone wrong with the Iraq war.

“He has fallen from public grace,” Mr. Wells said, his voice dropping to a hush. “It is a tragic fall.”

Many of Mr. Libby’s supporters have hoped he would remain free on bail for more than a year during any appeals. In that view, Mr. Bush might find it more palatable to issue a pardon down the road, perhaps just before leaving office.

A spokeswoman for a legal defense fund on behalf of Mr. Libby would not comment Tuesday. But several of the fund’s organizers have urged that Mr. Libby be pardoned if necessary to avoid a prison sentence, including Fred D. Thompson, the actor and former senator from Tennessee who has made it clear that he is likely to seek the Republican nomination for president.

In court on Tuesday, the chief prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, urged Judge Walton to issue a stiff sentence that would “send a message that the truth matters.” Mr. Fitzgerald said Mr. Libby’s misstatements had made it difficult for law enforcement officers to figure out the truth “in a hall of mirrors.”

In addition to the prison sentence, Judge Walton fined Mr. Libby $250,000. There is no parole in the federal system, but an inmate may be eligible for a reduction of up to 54 days a year for good behavior.

Judge Walton, who is generally regarded as a firm, by-the-book jurist, rejected the request to delay enacting the sentence. The judge said there was no issue that Mr. Libby’s lawyers could appeal that seemed to present a reasonable chance of succeeding. But he relented somewhat and said they could file briefs next week detailing their arguments that there were two reasonable grounds for appeal: that Mr. Fitzgerald’s appointment as a special counsel was improper and that Judge Walton had erred in prohibiting the defense team from presenting experts on the fallibility of human memory.

The only other figure from the Bush White House to have been convicted of a serious crime is David Safavian, a lower-ranking official who has been sentenced to 18 months in connection with the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Mr. Safavian’s sentence has been stayed pending his appeal.

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.

Libby Given 30 Months for Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/washington/06libby.html