Ping to 17, now we know why the CIA chief was outed, I am sure he protested yo this release and the ONE didn’t like it.
Re. post #17.
Mullah Mohammad Fazl was a senior commander in the Taliban army in the 1990s, rising to become its chief of staff. He is thought by many to have supervised the killing of thousands of Shiite Muslims near Kabul between 1998 and 2001. According to WikiLeaks documents, he was also present at the 2001 prison riot that killed CIA operative Johnny Micheal Spann, the first U.S. citizen killed in the Afghan war.
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FLASHBACK:
Posted at 10:20 AM ET, 11/23/2011
Intel community marks a decade since the death of Mike Spann, first CIA officer killed in Afghanistan
(snip)
CIA paramilitary officer Johnny Micheal Spann, 32, was killed in a violent uprising at a prison in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, where he was interrogating detainees captured during the early weeks of the war.
(snip)
Spann’s wife, Shannon, has since left the CIA. Another CIA officer who was working alongside Spann in the Mazar-e-Sharif prison survived the uprising and is still an employee of the CIA, officials said.
As part of the negotiations, the Taliban have long identified five prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay who should be transferred as a “confidence building measure.”
They include Mohammad Fazl, the former Taliban deputy defense minister; Noorullah Nori, the former Taliban governor of Balkh; Khairullah Khairkhwa, the former Taliban governor of Herat; Abdul Haq Wasiq, the former Taliban deputy intelligence chief; and Mohammad Nabi, who helped run the Taliban’s finances through the informal hawala system.
A senior administration official confirmed the names, and said they have been identified by the Taliban as far back as 2005.
But any transfer or release is politically perilous in Washington. Congressional leaders briefed on the names have raised strong objections. Fazl, especially, could prove problematic for the White House if he is ever transferred to Afghan custody because of his record on human rights and his participation in a riot that killed CIA officer Johnny Michael Spann. He could also stoke ethnic tensions with Afghan officials from northern Afghanistan, with whom Fazl fought before 9/11.
Fazl is the most senior of the five and was a close friend of Mullah Omar. In 1999, Omar put him in charge of the Taliban Army in northern Afghanistan, replacing a far more popular and far more brutal commander, Dadullah, according to former Taliban officials. Fazl quickly became known as a good leader who respected his commanders.
The men he led have been accused of helping kill hundreds if not thousands of Shiites as part of a Taliban campaign against them. For that, he is listed on the UN’s Taliban sanctions list.
“When asked about the murders, [Fazl] and [Noori] did not express any regret and stated they did what they needed to do in their struggle to establish their ideal state,” reads a Feb. 2008 Guantanamo assessment of Fazl that was released by Wikileaks. “[Fazl] had operational associations with significant al-Qaida and other extremist personnel… If released, [Fazl] would likely rejoin the Taliban and establish ties with anti-Coalition militias participating in hostilities against US and Coalition forces in Afghanistan.”
In part, the Taliban see the transfer of these men as a form of payback for what they believe are promises broken by northern Afghan commanders in November, 2001. Former Taliban officials say that Fazl, Noori, and Khairkhwa all surrendered themselves to Gens. Daud Daud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, who were allied with the CIA – only after receiving a promise they wouldn’t be turned over to the U.S.
The prisoners then revolted against their jailers, and Spann was caught in the middle and killed. There is no evidence that any of the five detainees had any direct hand in Spann’s death. But after the revolt, the detainees were handed over to the U.S. and quickly became some of the first prisoners to arrive at Guantanamo.
Still bothered that the 2012 article in Rolling Stone about what was going on was written by Michael Hastings Wasn’t he working on a CIA story ? Do the dots connect? What does BB know?
Hastings article was NOT very flattering to military-Obama s command