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So here is a bizarre twist in the David Petraeus resignation saga. Paula Broadwell, the biographer revealed as the woman having a secret affair with the now-former CIA director, gave a talk at the University of Denver on Oct. 26 in which she appeared to reveal sensitive, maybe even classified, information about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. The most interesting revelation is her claim that the CIA was holding several Libyan militia members prisoner, which may have prompted the attack.... [UPDATE: The CIA has denied holding prisoners at the annex, according to the DailyBeast's Eli...

I can only imagine three possible explanations, all of which should be taken with many grains of salt: 1. Intelligence from faraway conflict areas can be hazy, and the story got honestly confused. Who knows how long or convoluted the chain of information was from Benghazi to Broadwell, whether or not it went through Petraeus, and it’s not hard to imagine a misstatement or mistake getting amplified. 2. She made it up or exaggerated some other piece of information, possibly including the name-dropping implication of Petraeus’s knowledge, either deliberately or mistakenly. 3. The story is true, and she let slip...

This seems like a pretty good reason to push the David Petraeus-Paula Broadwell affair from a boys-club peccadillo into a resignation-worthy event. According to a transcript of a speech by Broadwell at the University of Denver the week before the election, Broadwell told an audience that the reason for the September 11 attack on the Benghazi consulate was neither a YouTube video nor a celebration of the anniversary of 9/11, but a prison escape for jihadis secretly held by the CIA in its nearby annex. Late last night, the CIA denied this report of a secret prison in its now-abandoned...

A member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee has told CNBC that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a direct result of enhanced interrogations."The information that eventually led us to this compound was the direct result of enhanced interrogations; one can conclude if we had not used enhanced interrogations, we would not have come to yesterday's action," US Senator Richard Burr in a telephone interview with CNBC. As a member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr was briefed on the attack on the compound that led to Bin Laden's death and believes the failure of Pakistani security forces...

The Pakistani who owned the compound that was Osama bin Laden's final hideaway meticulously bought up adjoining plots of land over two years and once cryptically told a seller that the property he bought for "an uncle" had become very valuable. The new information that emerged Wednesday provided a new glimpse of one of two key figures who sheltered bin Laden in his last years and whose identities remain one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the al-Qaida chief. ..... [ snip ] ..... Property records obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday show that a man named Mohammed Arshad bought...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led U.S. pursuers to the doorstep of his boss, the world's most wanted terrorist. That phone call, recounted Sunday by a U.S. official, ended a years-long search for bin Laden's personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt.

Defence Minister: Poland not 51st US state Created: 23.06.2008 12:30 Poland’s Defence Minister Bogdan Klich has expressed outrage at an article in The New York Times alleging that “Poland has been the 51st state” of the USA acting as host to a secret CIA prison for terrorists. "That is unacceptable. The sheer fact that we are in tough negotiations with the Americans regarding the anti-missile defence shield suggests that we are indeed an independent state,” Minister Klich said on Radio ZET, Monday morning. The Saturday issue of The New York Times reopened the topic of the secret prison camp for...

Bucharest and Brussels, 16 Nov. (AKI) - Romania, one two countries accused by Europe's top human rights watchdog of hosting secret CIA jails used to interrogate Islamist terrorism suspects, says it has written to the European Union executive denying the charges. The letter to the European Commission is a response to a request from EU justice and security commissioner Franco Frattini asking Romania and Poland - the other country implicated by the Council of Europe - for an explanation. A Romanian spokeswoman in Brussels, Doris Mircea, said that a committee of inquiry set up by the government concluded that the...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday terminated a lawsuit from a man who claims he was abducted and tortured by the CIA, effectively endorsing Bush administration arguments that state secrets would be revealed if the case were allowed to proceed. Khaled el-Masri, 44, alleged that he was kidnapped by CIA agents in Europe and held in an Afghan prison for four months in a case of mistaken identity. The administration has not publicly acknowledged that el-Masri was detained, and lower courts dismissed his suit after the administration asserted that state secrets would be revealed if the lawsuit were not...

Hayden: CIA had fewer than 100 prisoners By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago 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...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, under fire over the treatment of CIA detainees, on Friday ordered that agency interrogators comply with the Geneva Conventions against torture. Five years after he exempted al Qaeda and Taliban members from the Geneva provisions, Bush signed an executive order requiring the CIA to comply with prohibitions against "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" as set down in the conventions' Common Article 3. Human rights activists criticized Bush's action, saying it did not go far enough to eliminate dangerous interrogation techniques.

WASHINGTON — Boeing has been sued by suspected Al Qaida operatives transported by the CIA to Arab countries for interrogation and torture. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan on behalf of three Al Qaida suspects transported by the CIA under the so-called "extraordinary rendition program." The suit charged that Jeppesen helped the CIA transport the three plaintiffs to secret locations in Egypt and Morocco, where the company knew they would undergo torture...........

The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday it is suing Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing Co., claiming it secretly flew three of the CIA's terrorism suspects overseas, where they were tortured. The cases involve allegations of mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen, in July 2002 and January 2004; Elkassim Britel, an Italian citizen, in May 2002; and Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian citizen, in December 2001. Mohamed is being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Britel in Morocco; and Agiza in Egypt, the ACLU said in a news release. Mike Pound, a spokesman for Englewood, Colo.-based Jeppesen, said company...

ICIJ: Poland, Romania served CIA program Published: May 25, 2007 at 3:07 PM WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- A U.S. group has criticized Poland and Romania for cooperating in secret CIA arrest and detention policies since Sept. 11, 2001. "Both Poland and Romania have sent troops to Iraq, assisted U.S. anti-terrorism policies by detaining terrorism suspects and faced criticism by European Union government investigators for their involvement in a CIA program of secret prisons and extraordinary renditions ... without any legal due process," the Center for Public Integrity said in a statement. The CPI announced the results of a series...

UN torture commission accuses Poland 22.05.2007 The U.N. Committee Against Torture is criticizing Polish police for using brutal interrogation techniques, too long detentions without trial and inciting violence and hatred towards sexual minorities. It is also asking Warsaw for more information on the alleged CIA prisons on Polish soil. The organization points in its latest report that operations of Polish police, situation in Polish prisons and the flabbiness of the Polish judiciary system are still questionable. According to the group, Polish officials had denied reports their country housed covert prisons for Central Intelligence Agency terrorism suspects. The Committee has urged...

Report Claims U.S. And U.K. Asked Poland To Keep CIA Prison A Secret March 8, 2007 9:57 p.m. EST Matthew Borghese - All Headline News Staff Writer Washington, D.C. (AHN) - A new report alleges that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operated a detention facility for terror suspects in Poland, with the approval of the United Kingdom. According to an internal memo reportedly from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Poland's then-Prime Minister Leszek Miller, the base, which was used from 2002 to 2004, was to be kept a secret from the government in Warsaw. The findings come in...

Remote Polish airport may have hosted CIA Feb. 7, 2007 at 1:35AM A former military air base hidden in the woods in northern Poland may have been used by CIA flights bringing detainees to a secret interrogation center. The Mazury-Szczytno International Airport has a 6,500-foot runway, long enough to handle large jets, the Chicago Tribune reports. While no aircraft have used it recently, there was a lot of activity for a few months in 2002 and 2003. Observers said that most of the planes that landed were corporate jets belonging to U.S. air transport companies. They usually stopped at the...

Poland knew of CIA prisons but no solid evidence, says Euro report A European Parliament report on the alleged illegal transfer and torture of international terror suspects by the CIA states claims 11 EU nations, including Poland, knew of the activity. Report by Slawek Serfs 29.11.06 The draft of the report presented by Claudio Fava and the investigative committee speaks of 20 people suspected of terrorist actions that had been abducted in EU countries and then passed on to US intelligence services. The Italian MEP considers the number to be the tip of the iceberg. 'We know the story of...

New facts about CIA secret prisons in Poland 28.11.2006 Today’s issue of the popular daily Gazeta Wyborcza brings new information about the CIA prisons in Poland. According to the daily American Gulfstream jet airplane allegedly carrying prisoners landed at least seven times in Poland in 2003. Four of such flights were from Afghanistan were al Quaida prisoners were initially kept. The plane would then take off for Uzbekistan or Morocco where local law does not prohibit the use of tortures. There are still no proofs that CIA prisons existed in Poland. According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International over...

WASHINGTON - A suspected terrorist who spent years in a secret CIA prison should not be allowed to speak to a civilian attorney, the Bush administration argues, because he could reveal the agency's closely guarded interrogation techniques. Human rights groups have questioned the CIA's methods for questioning suspects, especially following the passage of a bill last month that authorized the use of harsh — but undefined — interrogation tactics. In recently filed court documents, the Justice Department said those methods, along with the locations of the CIA's network of prisons, are among the nation's most sensitive secrets. Prisoners who spent...