Salon.com > Enhanced interrogation

CIA whistle-blower John Kiriakou shares letter from prison

Thu, 30 May 2013 19:58:00 +0000

It remains an abrogation of justice that the one person jailed for his involvement in the CIA's rendition and enhanced interrogation programs is the man who blew the whistle on the torturous Bush-era practices. But former CIA agent John Kiriakou is currently serving a 30-month sentence for speaking out to the press against waterboarding and torture, and revealing the name of another implicated agent.

Through his lawyer, whistle-blower advocate Jesselyn Raddack (herself a DOJ whistle-blower), Kiriakou has sent a handwritten letter from prison, published first by Firedoglake. The following excerpts below are fascinating expositions of his experience (although we recommend you read his whole letter here):

Brennan passes over CIA woman tied to torture for top spy job

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:58:00 +0000

As Salon noted earlier this year, the top-ranking female agent in the CIA, who helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, and oversaw the destruction of videotapes of prisoners being subjected to torture, had been tapped for the top position of director of clandestine services. However, as the AP reported Tuesday, CIA director John Brennan has passed over the agent -- who remains undercover -- for the position, although she has been serving as acting director of clandestine services for a number of months.

The agent's potential promotion angered human rights advocates who have long noted that CIA leaders overseeing torture programs have not only faced no recriminations under Obama, but have maintained high-ranking positions in the government agency. It was thus politically expedient for Brennan to choose an agent with a past less muddied with Bush-era CIA counterterror practices.

According to the AP, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, personally "urged" Brennan not to promote the woman, given the agent's history entrenched in extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation. Via the AP:

Brennan hearing prompts release of kill list rationale

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:21:00 +0000

Although John Brennan's confirmation as CIA Director is nigh on assured, his nomination procedure has been anything but routine. Leading up to his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, a demand for answers about the darkest aspects of the U.S. counterterror program -- of which Brennan is a major architect -- has swelled in the media, among activists and in Congress.

On the eve of the hearing, President Obama fulfilled Congressional demands to have the Justice Department release the classified legal reasoning for the killing of US citizens by drones to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The decision follows the leak of a white paper, believed to summarize the full 50-page document senators have now received, which this week drew sharp criticism from legal experts. A group of 11 senators led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to the White House demanding to see the legal opinion and threatening to hold off on Brennan's appointment were it not released. According to the AP, Wyden "left open the possibility he might still try to block Brennan's nomination":

Senate-approved CIA torture report kept under wraps

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Although the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted Thursday to approve a 6,000-page report on the use of torture and extraordinary rendition by the CIA, the investigation will for now remain classified. According to the Guardian, Republican senators could push for the extensive report to stay under wraps, despite pressure from human rights advocates to make the information public.

"I believe it to be one of the most significant oversight efforts in the history of the United States Senate," said chair of the intelligence committee Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. She noted that the report is "a comprehensive review of the CIA’s detention program that includes details of each detainee in CIA custody, the conditions under which they were detained, how they were interrogated, the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of CIA descriptions about the program to the White House, Department of Justice, Congress and others."

How true is “ZD30″?

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:06:00 +0000

A number of film critics have already described "Zero Dark Thirty" as opening to a black screen and the haunting soundtrack of recorded phone calls from the World Trade Center towers as they collapsed on 9/11. It doesn't. The movie opens to white text against a black background: "Based on first hand accounts of actual events," it reads.

Debate over what the film does — the politics and ethics it might expound — are already fraught, not least because the project's pitch is steeped in truth claims about "actual events." "Zero Dark Thirty" (ZDT) director Kathryn Bigelow told the New Yorker's Dexter Filkins, “What we were attempting is almost a journalistic approach to film.’’ The text that opens the movie is carefully worded in line with this idea of a journalistic attempt. It doesn't present itself as "a true story" or a totalizing narrative. And in this much we can endeavor to hold "Zero Dark Thirty" to account; we can ask, at least, do the events it depicts have such a basis?