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John Kiriakou looked up from his desk at CIA headquarters and was stunned to see The Washington Post investigative reporter, Bob Woodward, walking through the secure area without an agency escort. On another occasion, Kiriakou—who rose at the CIA to become executive assistant to the deputy in charge of operations, the spy agency’s dark activities—saw CNN host Wolf Blitzer wandering unattended through the same area, despite the CIA’s ban on communicating with the media. “We like to think there’s a Chinese wall between the CIA, especially senior CIA officials, and the American media,” Kiriakou recently told the London Real podcast....

When she was arrested in Afghanistan last month, Aafia Siddique allegedly had in her possession maps of New York, a list of potential targets that included the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the subway system and the animal disease center on Plum Island, detailed chemical, biological and radiological weapon information that has been seen only in a handful of terrorist cases, as well as a thumb drive packed with emails, ABC News has learned.

FORT HUACHUCA — The Main Gate will be closed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday to all traffic including foot traffic, due to a planned demonstration. The event is part of the Southwest Weekend of Witness, which is sponsored by Southwest Witness, Tucson SOA Watch and Torture on Trial. The events will have a “No to Torture” rally at Veterans’ Memorial Park, followed by a procession and presence at the Main Gate. These events occur between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Law enforcement documents have revealed security measures at Fort Huachuca in Arizona were changed after warnings of a possible terror attack. The documents said an estimated 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists were planning with the help of Mexican drug cartels to sneak into the United States through underground tunnels and attack the base, the largest intelligence-training center in the country, with high-powered weapons, The Washington Times reported Monday. "A portion of the operatives were in the United States, with the remainder not yet in the United States," said one of the documents, a Federal Bureau...

This is getting very very interesting. Now surfaces an Intel gem from Julian Assange’s Wikileaks alleging that the lawyer for Adam Schiff’s anti-Trump and Ukraine whistleblower was called out by Wikileaks and Assange for selling out a legal client to the CIA. And the client ended up in prison, according to Wikileaks. Wikileaks previouly hurled a brutal and damning Tweet at attorney Mark Zaid accusing him of selling out a client and working with the CIA to get that client locked up. Sounds familiar. Mark S. Zaid ✔ @MarkSZaidEsq · Nov 23, 2018 Replying to @NaomiPitcairn and 6 others Lol,...

Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the Bush administration's argument for torture. That's why Sunday's front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists. Finn and Warrick reported that "not a single significant plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaida's brutal treatment -- and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms." Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction of the White House....

A former CIA officer who was imprisoned for leaking classified information to journalists said he was initially was cleared of charges until Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan got involved. John Kiriakou said he had "no idea" he was under investigation in 2007 for sharing details of terrorists' interrogations to journalists. Kiriakou said his story should be relevant to President Donald Trump, who is dealing with the same officials in his Russia probe as Kiriakou did. "In 2007, the Bush administration investigated me and determined I hadn't committed a crime," he said. However, Kiriakou said that once President Obama took power...

A former CIA officer who was imprisoned for leaking classified information to journalists said he was initially was cleared of charges until Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan got involved. John Kiriakou said he had "no idea" he was under investigation in 2007 for sharing details of terrorists' interrogations to journalists. Kiriakou said his story should be relevant to President Donald Trump, who is dealing with the same officials in his Russia probe as Kiriakou did. "In 2007, the Bush administration investigated me and determined I hadn't committed a crime," he said. However, Kiriakou said that once President Obama took power...

A Senate Judiciary Subcmte. looks into the legal conduct of Justice Dept. lawyers who approved harsh interrogation techniques. One of the witnesses, fmr. FBI agent Ali Soufan, interrogated Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah.

PREWAR INTELLIGENCE WASHINGTON, July 30 - A senior leader of Al Qaeda who was captured in Pakistan several months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was the main source for intelligence, since discredited, that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to members of the organization, according to American intelligence officials. Intelligence officials say the detainee, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a member of Osama bin Laden's inner circle, recanted the claims sometime last year, but not before they had become the basis of statements by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others...

ABC News is reporting that Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert. The disgrunted intelligence officers even disclosed an actual list of 12 high-value targets allegedly held by the CIA, and ABC is reporting it : Abu Zubaydah: Held first in Thailand then Poland Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi: Held in...

Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, whose real name was Ali Mohammed al-Fakheri, 46, took his own life in his prison cell, according to the Libyan newspaper Oea. Information gained from the interrogation of al-Libi was cited on several occasions by the Bush administration as justification for the war in Iraq. He told his CIA interrogators that al-Qaeda had sent two men to Iraq to seek training in chemical and biological weapons in December 2000. Classified documents added that the men did not return, so al-Libi did not know whether the training took place, and that, in any case, he was probably "intentionally...

Lots of good posts lately from the authors about the interrogation of Zubaydah, the latest being Word's post on the book The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack by Ronald Kessler. To add a few more cents Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has noticed an interesting discrepancy in the tall tale coming from Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, in which he says: It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002,...

A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told US interrogators the meeting never happened, according to US officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the US in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague in the Czech Republic, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. US officials caution that Ani may have been lying...

WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate. Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation. On Jan. 25, Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison...

In his Loyal Opposition blog, New York Times ed page editor Andrew Rosenthal goes after the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute former CIA officer, former Democratic Senate staffer and Huffington Post blogger John Kiriakou for leaking classified information — including the names of CIA operatives — to journalists. Rosenthal writes, That may seem simple: CIA officer, classified information disclosed, prison. But take a closer look. He’s been charged with revealing that two men accused of organizing the Sept. 11 attacks, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, were tortured. So the man who blew the whistle on torture may go to...

Classified U.S. government information was found in the cells of high-value detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison that houses the world’s most dangerous terrorists, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

A former staffer for Bay State Sen. John F. Kerry has been charged with leaking the names of CIA operatives, including one who was involved in the interrogation of terror suspects held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and Kerry’s office.

Kiriakou, 47, was a source for stories by The New York Times and other news organizations in 2008 and 2009 about some of the agency’s most sensitive operations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ......... that the information Kiriakou supplied to journalists ... enabling defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in harsh interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of high-value detainees.

The Justice Department on Monday charged a former CIA officer with repeatedly leaking classified information, including the identities of agency operatives involved in the capture and interrogation of alleged terrorists. The case against John Kiriakou, who served as a senior Senate aide after ending his CIA career, extends the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on disclosures of national security secrets to journalist. Kiriakou, who was among the first to go public with details about the CIA’s use of water-boarding and other harsh interrogation measures, was charged with disclosing classified information to reporters and lying to the agency about the origin of...