Posted on 07/18/2007 10:12:54 AM PDT by SeafoodGumbo
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Dissident U.S. intelligence officers angry at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped a European probe uncover details of secret CIA prisons in Europe, the top investigator said on Tuesday.
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Swiss Senator Dick Marty, author of a Council of Europe report on the jails, said senior CIA officials disapproved of Rumsfeld's methods in hunting down terrorist suspects, and had agreed to talk to him on condition of anonymity.
"There were huge conflicts between the CIA and Rumsfeld. Many leading figures in the CIA did not accept these methods at all," Marty told European Parliament committees, defending his work against complaints it was based on unnamed sources.
The report issued last month said the Central Intelligence Agency ran secret jails in Poland and Romania, with the complicity of those governments, and transported terrorist suspects across Europe in secret flights.
Poland and Romania have repeatedly denied hosting CIA prisons on their soil.
"People in the CIA felt these things were not consonant with the sort of intelligence work they normally do," Marty said.
He said he had based his findings largely on conversations with "high officials of the CIA (and) highly placed European office-holders, who for different reasons, often honorable reasons, were ready to explain what had happened."
Since he had no power to summon witnesses, subpoena documents or search buildings, he was forced to rely on such evidence, Marty said.
"ADMISSIONS"
"The Americans themselves admitted there were secret prisons, that they abducted people from the streets, that people were handed over to countries like Syria, Yemen, Egypt
where they were tortured," he said.
U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged last year that the CIA had held top al Qaeda suspects in secret overseas detention centers but did not say in which countries.
"The president of United States made a very important statement..., I think we can all expect ... in the near future further admissions," said Marty.
He also said he would not remove name of former Polish and Romanian government officials from the report, although they threatened on Tuesday to take legal action against the senator.
The report said former Polish national security adviser Marek Siwiec and former Romanian Defense Minister Ioan Pascu knew their countries had hosted secret CIA detention centers.
"I have no reason to withdraw his name. I would certainly not be prepared to apologies. He knew exactly what was happening as did his president," Marty told a news conference, referring to Siwiec and former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.
"I am not shaking in my shoes," he said of the libel suit that Siwiec vowed to launch in a Polish court unless Marty removed his name from the report within seven days.
Pascu challenged Marty in the hearing to substantiate his allegations or withdraw them, but the Swiss legislator did not respond directly.
Traitors. Still in the Agency?
Where is Fitz? Where are the Plame-fans?
The shadow government in action. Can't win at the ballot box so the Left runs their own agenda from within.
i always suspected this, from day 1
Here is an excerpt from the Inside Flap
How Bush-hating CIA Bureaucrats Are Sabotaging the War on Terror
Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, intelligence collection has become the number-one weapon in the effort to defeat al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. A plot penetrated is an attack stopped. And to the outside observer, the CIA has performed well as a key partner in the Bush administration’s War on Terror. But as Rowan Scarborough reveals in this groundbreaking new book, significant elements within the CIA are undermining both the president and national security through leaks, false allegations, and outright sabotage.
Using his first-rate sources in all levels of national security—from field officers to high-ranking analysts to former intelligence heads—Scarborough paints a disturbing picture of partisan politics endangering the success of our campaigns abroad and the very lives of our soldiers and agents.
In Sabotage, you’ll learn:
* How CIA analysts repeatedly leak details about classified intelligence programs with the dual intent of ending them and damaging the president
* How, on at least eight occasions, intelligence officials have made serious allegations of wrongdoing against the president’s men—which turned out to be false
* Why, contrary to popular belief, the CIA has become predominantly liberal
* How a CIA turf battle prevented special operators from pursuing and capturing a notorious Taliban leader
* How current and former CIA officers fueled conspiracy theories that President Bush orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on America
* How a CIA leak to the New York Times deprived the U.S. of critical information in the War on Terror
* How press leaks by the CIA have damaged relations with our foreign allies in the War on Terror
* How a CIA analyst worked with Democrats to sabotage the nomination of John Bolton to the UN
* How Clinton’s downsizing of the CIA led to the closing of stations in scores of jihadist breeding grounds—including Hamburg, Germany, where the 9/11 plot was hatched
The CIA’s job is to collect facts and let the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department make national security policy. But, as Scarborough conclusively demonstrates, an agency that is supposed to be scrupulously nonpartisan has become increasingly political—during a time of war—against America’s elected commander in chief.
Blow up the CIA. Their management has to be replaced with people who understand that the CIA is not afourth branch of the government, above the other three. These leaks, and probably the forged memo on Niger, are treason pure and simple.
Traitorous cockroaches in our midst.
I think this will eventually be solved with bullets and machetes, instead of words. We cannot simply let a misinformed democracy undermine the U.S. military and dissolve our Nation. People need to be held accountable for treason, for putting our soldiers in jeopardy, and for undermining the Commander-in-Chief during wartime. This Nation will not survive unless laws are followed and those that undermine our country are hung from the rafters.
* How current and former CIA officers fueled conspiracy theories that President Bush orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on America
That our own f'ing CIA would be behind pushing 9-11 conspiracy theories that Bush was behind the attacks -- ONLY 6 YEARS AFTER THOUSANDS DIED AND 100 STORY BUILDINGS DROPPED - is the height of inhuman, treasonous vulgarity. This has to be stopped immediately. There can be no shadow governments and partisan foreign policy -- a country can't survive if things like this are allowed to stand and not punished with the most draconian measures.
Such as missing 9/11, missing the USS Cole attack, missing Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, missing the fall of the Soviet Union, missing the fall of the Shah...
Our own STATE DEPARTMENT is infested with left over commies and sexual fetishists akin to the days when the agriculture department was a “red shop”.
And you’re not alone in that suspicion.
I'm afraid you're right.
A lot of people with careers as higher-ups in CIA, State, etc. appear to have the attitude that they're untouchable in the courts. Perhaps the solution to people like this does not employ a courtroom.
Sure doesn't sound like the mindset of the folks who began the CIA. These people must have absorbed the attitudes of the Church investigations.
Methinks this was also part of the turf war between the CIA and the Pentagon, where the CIA got it's knickers in a twist and started making things difficult for Pentagon planners.
Not to be a knee jerk neocon or anything but the CIA did not become “increasingly politicized”- it became “politicized” under the Clinton administration, as did every other office of govt (ie, the FBI, Commerce Dept, Energy Dept, even IRS became a tool to harass political opponents, even private citizens who spoke out against Hillary of Bill) that the Clintons or their greedy rabidly partisan cronies and apologists could affect and manipulate.
Isn’t it time for some head chopping in the CIA? How can America trust or believe anything coming out of the CIA when the stench of traitors still overpower their every word? The same should go for the State Dept.
Really no surprise. Why else would Cheney/Rumsfeld seek to bypass CIA? They knew that State and CIA were anti-administration.
Think of Reagan. Neither State nor the Agency supported the hard line against the Russkies. Most of them are coming out of the University system that teaches appeasement. The only War College is actually in the military. The typical civilian educated adult sees war as something the US can easily avoid or win in three weeks.
Firing squad...period.
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