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CIA: OK, So Maybe We Work With Bad Guys
WASHINGTON — The CIA is willing to overlook some of its shadier partners’ human rights records if they can still get the goods, according to agency Director John Brennan.
In a letter sent to a trio of lawmakers and provided to The Huffington Post, Brennan expanded on the agency’s controversial relationships with less-than-desirable characters, offering an unusually candid glimpse into the spies’ liaison partnerships.
The letter, a response to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), sought to clarify public remarks made by Brennan earlier this year. The unclassified response was dated Thursday.
“While we neither condone nor participate in activities that violate human rights standards, we do maintain cooperative liaison relationships with a variety of intelligence and security services around the world, some of whose constituent entities have engaged in human rights abuses. We strive to identify and, where possible, avoid working with individuals whom we believe to be responsible for such abuses,” the letter says.
“In some cases, we have decided to continue those relationships, despite unacceptable behavior, because of the critical intelligence those services provide,...”
[snip]
“It’s tough sorting out good guys and bad guys in a lot of these areas, it is.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/cia-ok-so-maybe-we-work-with-bad-guys/ar-BBlvak7
(Excerpted)
The secret to ISIS’s success: 100 to 160 former Saddam Hussein-era officers run jihadi group’s military and intelligence operations in Iraq and Syria
The 2003 US led invasion of Iraq led Saddam Hussein to allow foreign fighters to join the resistance against the invaders
ISIS’s deputy leader Abu Muslim al-Turkmani was an Iraqi army major
By Associated Press and Tom Wyke for MailOnline
Published: 07:46 EST, 8 August 2015 | Updated: 08:04 EST, 8 August 2015
Once part of one of the most brutal dictator’s army in the Middle East, over 100 former members of Saddam Hussein’s military and intelligence officers are now part of ISIS.
Now they make up the complex network of ISIS’s leadership, helping to build the military strategies which have led the brutal jihadi group to their military gains in Syria and Iraq.
The officers gave ISIS the organization and discipline it needed to weld together jihadi fighters drawn from across the globe, integrating terror tactics like suicide bombings with military operations.
‘It’s clear that some of these (Saddam-era officers) must have been inside the core of the jihadist movement in the Sunni triangle from the beginning,’ ... referring to the Sunni-dominated area that was the most hostile to American forces in Iraq.
‘This melding of the Iraqi experience and what we might call the Afghan Arab experience became the unique ISIS brand,’
‘That brand ultimately became more successful in Iraq than al-Qaida in Iraq ... and, at least for now, stronger in Syria than al-Qaida.’