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The former head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center has suggested that counterinsurgency tactics used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan should be applied to ‘domestic extremists’ inside the US. NPR reports that Robert Grenier, who directed the CIA’s Counterterrorism program from 2004 to 2006, declared “We may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency within our own country, perpetrated by our own countrymen.” In an op-ed for The New York Times last week, Grenier suggested that “extremists who seek a social apocalypse … are capable of producing endemic political violence of a sort not seen...

When it comes to domestic extremists such as those who stormed the Capitol, a longtime CIA officer argues that the U.S. should treat them as an insurgency. That means using counterinsurgency tactics — similar in some ways to those used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Robert Grenier served as the CIA's station chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001. He went on to become the CIA's Iraq mission manager and then director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2006. "We may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency within our own country,...

EASTERN European countries were yesterday scrambling to distance themselves from the CIA as officials in Washington searched for the source of an embarrassing leak that exposed a programme of secret jails for terrorist detainees. Claims that the CIA has been hiding prominent Al-Qaeda members at a so-called “black site” facility in eastern Europe have prompted angry denials from Romania, Poland and Albania. As details emerged yesterday of CIA flights to remote military airfields in northeast Poland and southeast Romania, George W Bush’s administration ordered an internal inquiry into how classified data was leaked to The Washington Post and Human Rights...

WASHINGTON - Two top CIA officials will bolster prosecutors' charge that Vice President Cheney's chief aide lied to them, court papers show. Prosecutors say disgraced Cheney chief of staff Lewis (Scooter) Libby learned CIA spy Valerie Plame's identity from, among others, agency officials who will be called to testify at his trial for perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice. The U.S. alleges he learned about Plame from one of the CIA officials when he went after dirt on her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson shattered a pillar of President Bush's rationale for war - that Iraq was seeking...

The CIA's top counterterrorism officer was relieved of his position yesterday after months of turmoil atop the agency's clandestine service, according to three knowledgeable officials. Robert Grenier, who spent most of his career undercover overseas, took charge of the Counterterrorism Center about a year ago after a series of senior jobs at the center of the Bush administration's national security agenda. When al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Grenier was station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan. Among the agency's most experienced officers in southwest Asia, Grenier helped plan the covert campaign that preceded...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the CIA's counter-terrorism center has been forced to step down as part of efforts by the spy agency to bolster its pursuit of al Qaeda, current and former intelligence officials said on Tuesday.Robert Grenier, 51, told colleagues in an e-mail on Monday that he had been asked to move on from the helm of the unit that plans and executes CIA counter-terrorism operations and provides analysis on terrorism issues. It was not clear whether Grenier planned to leave the spy agency and there was no immediate word on who would succeed him in the...

CIA ousts al-Qa'eda hunter 'for lack of aggression' By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 08/02/2006) The man at the head of America's efforts to hunt down terrorists has been forced to resign amid concern that he was too cautious in pursuing al-Qa'eda leaders. Robert Grenier, the head of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre, is the latest in a series of senior officials to resign from the agency over the past year. Intelligence officials told the Los Angeles Times that the head of the CIA's clandestine service had become increasingly frustrated by Mr Grenier's approach, which he thought too tentative. However, they...