Report details military tactics FBI agents found abusive

WASHINGTON — FBI agents repeatedly complained that harsh interrogation techniques used on detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo might violate the law and jeopardize future criminal trials, but administration officials did little to address the concerns, a government watchdog concluded in a report released Tuesday.

At one point in 2003, several top Justice Department officials took the concerns about interrogation practices used by the military at Guantanamo to the National Security Council, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine said in his report. However, Fine said the complaints did not appear to trigger any response from the National Security Council, which includes President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and was chaired at the time by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Although the FBI's concerns about harsh interrogation techniques were previously known, Fine's report provides the most detailed narrative yet of how top law enforcement and military officials were slow to respond to the agents' complaints and how, in some instances, administration officials appear to have disregarded them.

Several witnesses told Fine's investigators then-Attorney General John Ashcroft also brought the matter to the attention of the National Security Council or the Pentagon, but Fine couldn't verify the accounts because Ashcroft refused to be interviewed.

The 370-page report took four years to complete, with its release delayed by the Pentagon's attempt to keep a larger portion of the report classified, according to Fine. His investigators interviewed more than 230 witnesses and surveyed 1,000 FBI agents.

The report describes how agents beginning in 2002 became deeply troubled by some of the interrogations they witnessed and details frequent clashes between agents and their military counterparts over the military's and CIA's use of harsh techniques that one agent described as "borderline torture."

In late 2002, the military adopted broad interrogation policies that clashed with those permitted by the FBI. Among the permitted techniques were hooding, putting prisoners in stress positions for as long as four hours, 20-hour interrogations and removal of clothing.

While FBI agents took part in interrogations in a few isolated cases "that would not normally be permitted in the United States," Fine said the situations "in no way resembled" the treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where graphic photos later exposed abuses. A vast majority of the FBI agents followed FBI policies and did not participate when other agencies used techniques that violated the bureau's policies, Fine said.

"In sum, we believe that while the FBI could have provided clearer guidance earlier, and while the FBI could have pressed harder for resolution of concerns about detainee treatment by other agencies, the FBI should be credited for its conduct and professionalism in detainee interrogations," said Fine, who has no jurisdiction over the CIA or the Pentagon.

Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Pentagon found no evidence that interrogators tortured detainees during a 2005 review of techniques used at Guantanamo. Whitman also said he did not know of any Pentagon efforts that had delayed the inspector general's report.

In a brief statement, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department was "pleased" that the report "credited the FBI for its conduct and professionalism during interrogations."

Justice and Pentagon officials, however, did not address the questions raised by the report's description of interrogation techniques that disturbed FBI agents. Agents at Guantanamo, for example, witnessed and complained about the use of sleep deprivation, prolonged short-shackling, in which a detainee's hands were shackled close to his feet, and the holding of detainees in rooms at extremely cold or hot temperatures.

At times, agents witnessed detainees' thumbs twisted, female interrogators touching detainees sexually and the wrapping of detainees' heads in duct tape.

In 2002, FBI agents objected to the treatment of top al Qaida member Abu Zubaydah, whom they first questioned but later handed over to the CIA. The CIA has since acknowledged waterboarding him, but Fine said FBI agents did not appear to have witnessed waterboarding, which simulates drowning by pouring water over a restrained detainee's face.

Tensions between agents and interrogators heightened between 2002 and 2003 during the military's interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker who was prevented from participating in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Fine said.

After his capture, al Qahtani resisted FBI attempts to interview him and the military took over his questioning. FBI agents complained interrogators relied on questionable techniques, including keeping him awake during 20-hour intervals and threatening him with a dog.

"The informal response that some of these agents received from FBI Headquarters was that agents could continue to witness (military) interrogations ... so long as they did not participate," Fine said.

"No formal responses were ever received by the agents."

Although agents witnessed interrogation techniques that appeared to violate their own policies, the FBI was slow to clarify the bureau's stance on the methods, Fine said.

In 2002, the FBI decided it would not participate in joint interrogations with other agencies when techniques violated the bureau's policies. However, the FBI did not formalize the guidance until May 2004, after abuse surfaced at Abu Ghraib.

Meanwhile, agents continued to remain concerned about whether they could be criminally liable for merely witnessing the interrogations and questioned whether the interrogations jeopardized future trials, Fine said.

Their concerns appear to be justified. This month, military officials dropped charges against al Qahtani, citing concerns about questionable information obtained during the interrogations.

"We believe that the FBI should have recognized earlier the issues raised by the FBI's participating with the military in detainee interrogations ... and should have moved more quickly to provide clearer guidance to its agents on these issues," Fine said.

Officials with the CIA and the Pentagon have said they later revised their rules to limit interrogation methods, including banning the use of waterboarding, which the CIA has acknowledged was used on three high-level terrorism suspects.

The Pentagon and CIA knew of the FBI's ongoing concerns, but did not appear to have weighed them when coming up with their own interrogation policies, Fine said.

FBI: Interrogation tactics might be inappropriate

WASHINGTON (AP) -- FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday recalled warning the Justice Department and the Pentagon that some U.S. interrogation methods used against terrorists might be inappropriate, if not illegal.

Mueller's comments came under pointed questioning by House Democrats demanding to know if the FBI tried to stop interrogations in 2002 that critics define as torture.

Mueller said the FBI does not use coercive techniques when questioning suspects or witnesses, and he reportedly pulled his agents out of CIA or military interrogations several years ago to protect them from legal consequences.

FBI protocol ''wouldn't engage in torture,'' said Rep. Stephen Cohen, D-Tenn. ''But if you find out that other agencies may engage in torture, that you believe is illegal -- does your protocol include informing those agencies that you believe their actions are illegal?''

''Yes,'' Mueller answered.

''Who did you inform?'' Cohen asked.

''At points in time, we have reached out to DoD, DoJ, in terms of activity that we were concerned might not be appropriate, let me put it that way,'' Mueller said. DoD refers to the Department of Defense and DoJ to the Department of Justice.

Mueller said some of the FBI's concerns dated back to 2002, when top al-Qaida detainees were waterboarded by CIA interrogators. Waterboarding involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. Critics call it a form of torture.

Asked how the Justice Department and Pentagon responded to the FBI's advice, Mueller declined to discuss it publicly, citing concerns about releasing classified information. He also referred to the Justice Department's legal guidance at the time that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods were legal as long as they did not result in organ failure or death.

That guidance, contained in a series of memos by the department's Office of legal Counsel, since has been rescinded.

''If you could give us a response as to which agencies did not listen to you, Director, and engaged in torture, I think that would be very important for this committee to know,'' Cohen said. ''If there's departments -- of Defense and Justice, or CIA -- that don't listen to the director of the FBI.''

The brief exchange came during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. It highlighted Congress' interest in whether the Bush administration violated international laws against torture when allowing waterboarding against terror suspects in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Justice Department is investigating internally whether its attorneys crossed a line in authorizing the tactics. Both the CIA and the Pentagon banned personnel from using waterboarding in 2006.

Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said he was ''shocked'' that the FBI's refusal to coerce suspects during interrogations was not followed by the CIA or Pentagon

''The FBI deserves credit for those standards,'' Conyers said, ''but they should be followed by all federal government agencies, not just the FBI.''

Bomb parts at U.S. airport could have exploded: FBI

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The liquid packed in an Air Jamaica passenger's suitcase could have caused a disastrous explosion if it had ignited in mid-air, an FBI agent said on Thursday at a hearing for a man charged with trying to take bomb parts on a plane.

"If the appropriate heat source was introduced, absolutely" the nitromethane could have ignited, FBI agent Kelly Boaz testified at a hearing for Kevin Brown.

The 32-year-old Jamaican man was arrested at Orlando International Airport on Tuesday as he prepared to check his luggage for a flight to Montego Bay, Jamaica.

The FBI said the suitcase contained two galvanized pipes, end caps with holes drilled in them, two prescription bottles containing air gun pellets, a model rocket igniter, batteries, lighters, lighter fluid and two plastic vodka bottles of nitromethane, a liquid used as an industrial solvent and race car fuel.

Assistant U.S. Public Defender Clarence Counts argued that the liquid and other bomb components, which Boaz acknowledged were unassembled and packaged separately, did not endanger the flight.

"None of these items, your honor, were packaged in such a way that they would explode," Counts argued. "We did not have a bomb."

U.S. Magistrate Karla Spaulding sided with prosecutors and let stand the charge against Brown of attempting to put an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft.

Brown was returned to the Seminole County Jail where he is being held without bond because Counts, without explanation, waived the scheduled bond hearing.

Afterward, Counts would only say he would reschedule a bond hearing for Brown "if circumstances change."

Brown was stopped at the airport by officers who said he acted suspiciously while preparing to check his bag. He variously told Boaz that he planned to explode a tree stump on his cousin's land in Jamaica, and that he wanted to show his friends the kind of improvised explosive device he had seen while serving in Iraq.

Newspaper reports said Brown was a U.S. Army veteran who had worked for a military contractor in Iraq last year and who had struggled with depression since the murder of his mother in 2005. His lawyer declined to comment on that.

Absolved of terrorism, Haitian still in limbo

Lyglenson Lemorin must appear this week in front of a judge to argue that he's innocent of terrorism charges -- the very same charges a federal jury acquitted him of in December after a long trial in Miami.

It's not a case of double jeopardy. This time, Lemorin goes before an administrative judge in immigration court, which has a lower standard of proof and no jury of his peers. If he loses his case, he could be deported from Miami to his native Haiti.

Legal experts say Lemorin, 33, who is confined to an immigration facility, may be America's only lawful permanent resident to be booted out of the country despite being acquitted of terrorism charges and having no prior criminal record.

The case is being watched closely by lawyers around the country because it could encourage the government to take similar action against other law-abiding immigrants who are arrested but not convicted of a crime.

''I certainly don't know of a case quite like this one,'' said University of Virginia law professor David Martin, who served as general counsel for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration.

Martin and other immigration experts said that while the U.S. government has a vital interest in ridding the country of terrorists, its move to deport the married father of two raises serious questions about whether authorities are unfairly trying to take double-barreled legal shots at him.

''To try to deport him on the same charges he was acquitted of is outrageous,'' said Marc Van Der Hout, a San Francisco attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, who has a long history of battling the government in deportation cases.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment about the case, but one immigration official said it appeared to be the first removal case of its kind. The vast majority of deportation cases involve foreign nationals in the country illegally or with criminal convictions.

A minuscule number of such cases in immigration court entail terrorism or national security charges, according to TRAC, a data research organization at Syracuse University.

While Lemorin's case appears unique, immigration authorities have stepped up efforts to deport some lawful permanent residents who have been acquitted of drug trafficking.

Lemorin, who was whisked away from South Florida to Georgia by federal agents in mid-December after he was acquitted of four terrorism conspiracy charges, will have his first appearance in an Atlanta immigration court on Thursday. He is charged with virtually the same ''material-support'' conspiracy offenses lodged against him and six other Miami men in the so-called Liberty City 7 case.

ACQUITTED BY JURY

In December, a 12-member jury acquitted Lemorin and deadlocked on the six other defendants, who were arrested in June 2006 on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda to blow up public and private buildings in a war against the United States. The remaining six defendants started another trial this past week.

Unlike the indictment, the immigration case makes no mention of al Qaeda. A charging document says Lemorin is a native and citizen of Haiti who was admitted as a lawful permanent resident at Miami International Airport on May 17, 1993. Like the indictment, it alleges that he conspired to bomb the FBI building in North Miami Beach and the Sears Tower in Chicago between November 2005 and June 2006.

The document says Lemorin is ''removable'' because he ``conspired to engage in a terrorist activity.''

A team of trial lawyers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement based in Miami is prosecuting the case, which will be heard by an administrative judge in Atlanta. The burden of proof is lower than ''beyond a reasonable doubt,'' the standard in criminal court. Instead, it is ''clear and convincing'' proof, which essentially means that the judge can order Lemorin's removal based on the weight of the evidence.

Lemorin recently obtained an immigration attorney in Atlanta with the help of the Florida Immigration Advocacy Center in Miami.

Lemorin, who faces a tough legal challenge to avoid deportation, was subject to a judge's gag order even after his acquittal because he is a potential witness in the Liberty City retrial. He is allowed to say only that he's innocent.

Lemorin's criminal defense attorney, Joel DeFabio, said his client wants to get his full story out so the public can see the reality of the government's allegations. ''He is not a terrorist and not a danger to the community,'' DeFabio said. ``He could be an asset to the Haitian-American community.''

His wife, Charlene Mingo Lemorin, said her husband's continued detention in a Lumpkin, Ga., immigration facility, has taken a heavy toll on his family. He had worked as a security guard and construction worker with the Liberty City group and was the family's ``bread and butter.''

''To look at the kind of man he is and to see what they have put him through, they should have some sympathy and some common sense,'' said Charlene, a U.S. citizen who lives in Miami Gardens. She said she has to undergo kidney dialysis because of complications from a pregnancy before her husband was arrested in 2006.

Charlene said her husband is afraid, confused and frustrated because he thought he would be a free man after his acquittal.

''I honestly thought in the United States and in a court of law you cannot charge a person twice for the same crime,'' she said. ``I feel like something is wrong with this whole situation. Because of their power, they think they can do whatever they please. But they don't realize they're destroying people's lives.''

Lemorin's case is analogous to a few high-profile immigration cases in recent years. Last October, the U.S. government agreed to end its 20-year effort to deport two immigrants accused of supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical offshoot of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The two Palestinians -- among a group dubbed the L.A. 8, which was accused of distributing a Popular Front magazine -- were lawful permanent residents with no criminal records, according to their attorney, Van Der Hout, of the National Lawyers Guild.

At the time, then-FBI Director William Webster testified before Congress that the agency had found no evidence of criminal or terrorist activity, noting that if they were U.S. citizens, there would not have been a basis to arrest them.

JUDGE'S VIEW

The government's decision to drop the deportation case against the last two defendants followed a federal immigration judge's opinion that it was ''an embarrassment to the rule of law'' that left ''a festering wound'' on the two Palestinian immigrants.

''You have a situation in the L.A. 8 case where the government admitted they did nothing criminal and wanted to use the immigration laws to get rid of them because they didn't like what they were doing politically,'' Van Der Hout said.

He said Lemorin's case is similar in that he was acquitted by a jury, but the government didn't like the outcome so authorities have sought to deport him. ''It's a much tougher row to hoe for the defendant because you have no jury, an immigration judge appointed by the government and lax rules of evidence,'' he said.

Can your iPhone be searched without a warrent? // Current

Can your iPhone be searched without a warrent? // Current: "Can your iPhone be searched without a warrent?"

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.

“I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.

“This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.”

FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills

Telephone companies cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time, according to a Justice Department audit released Thursday.

The faulty bookkeeping is part of what the audit, by the Justice Department's inspector general, described as the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.

More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

And at least once, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation - the highly secretive and sensitive cases that allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies - "was halted due to untimely payment."

"We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence," according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.

The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.

Edmonds, a fluent speaker of Turkish and Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Her previous claims about incompetence inside the FBI have been well documented in America.

She has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11 commission, but many of the key points of her testimony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.

One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency.

A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI investigation into links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evidence that pointed to money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology.

“What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.”

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.

In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.

The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.

Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”

The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.

Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden. “We were aware of contact between A Q Khan’s people and Al-Qaeda,” a former CIA officer said last week. “There was absolute panic when we initially discovered this, but it kind of panned out in the end.”

It is likely that the nuclear secrets stolen from the United States would have been sold to a number of rogue states by Khan.

Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pakistani connections when it was revealed that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.

Edmonds says packages containing nuclear secrets were delivered by Turkish operatives, using their cover as members of the diplomatic and military community, to contacts at the Pakistani embassy in Washington.

Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks.

Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’.”

The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited.

Edmonds also claims that a number of senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents.

“The people provided lists of potential moles from Pentagon-related institutions who had access to databases concerning this information,” she said.

“The handlers, who were part of the diplomatic community, would then try to recruit those people to become moles for the network. The lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to.”

One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing US defence information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with an Israeli diplomat.

“He was one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001,” she said.

Once acquired, the nuclear secrets could have gone anywhere. The FBI monitored Turkish diplomats who were selling copies of the information to the highest bidder.

Edmonds said: “Certain greedy Turkish operators would make copies of the material and look around for buyers. They had agents who would find potential buyers.”

In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”

Edmonds’s employment with the FBI lasted for just six months. In March 2002 she was dismissed after accusing a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals.

She has always claimed that she was victimised for being outspoken and was vindicated by an Office of the Inspector General review of her case three years later. It found that one of the contributory reasons for her sacking was that she had made valid complaints.

The US attorney-general has imposed a state secrets privilege order on her, which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current investigations.

Her allegations were heard in a closed session of Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.

She was able to discuss the case with The Sunday Times because, by the end of January 2002, the justice department had shut down the programme.

The senior official in the State Department no longer works there. Last week he denied all of Edmonds’s allegations: “If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous . . . I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.”

In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.

One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.

How Pakistan got the bomb, then sold it to the highest bidders

1965 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s foreign minister, says: “If India builds the bomb we will eat grass . . . but we will get one of our own”

1974 Nuclear programme becomes increased priority as India tests a nuclear device

1976 Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist, steals secrets from Dutch uranium plant. Made head of his nation’s nuclear programme by Bhutto, now prime minister

1976 onwards Clandestine network established to obtain materials and technology for uranium enrichment from the West

1985 Pakistan produces weapons-grade uranium for the first time

1989-91 Khan’s network sells Iran nuclear weapons information and technology

1991-97 Khan sells weapons technology to North Korea and Libya

1998 India tests nuclear bomb and Pakistan follows with a series of nuclear tests. Khan says: “I never had any doubts I was building a bomb. We had to do it”

2001 CIA chief George Tenet gathers officials for crisis summit on the proliferation of nuclear technology from Pakistan to other countries

2001 Weeks before 9/11, Khan’s aides meet Osama Bin Laden to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device

2001 After 9/11 proliferation crisis becomes secondary as Pakistan is seen as important ally in war on terror

2003 Libya abandons nuclear weapons programme and admits acquiring components through Pakistani nuclear scientists

2004 Khan placed under house arrest and confesses to supplying Iran, Libya and North Korea with weapons technology. He is pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf

2006 North Korea tests a nuclear bomb

2007 Renewed fears that bomb may fall into hands of Islamic extremists as killing of Benazir Bhutto throws country into turmoil

Inquiry into CIA tapes seen as payback for FBI

The Justice Department's criminal inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation tapes will be carried out largely by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has been sharply at odds with the CIA over the agency's interrogation practices.

In some law enforcement circles, the prospect of the FBI interviewing high-level CIA officials, under the plan announced Wednesday, and rummaging in the files of the agency's secret interrogation programs represents a payback moment in the rich history of rivalry between the agencies.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, FBI officials have refused to allow agents to take part in CIA interrogations in which harsh methods were used, questioning the effectiveness of the techniques. Others have feared agents might be compromised if they later testified in criminal cases. Some former FBI officials have been among the most vocal critics of what the CIA calls enhanced interrogation techniques.

Some of the sharpest disputes between the agencies have focused on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, one of two terrorism suspects whose interrogations were recorded on the destroyed tapes. The tapes showed harsh interrogation techniques and were destroyed, according to the CIA, to protect the identities of personnel involved.

Some government officials have insisted that the most successful parts of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah came when FBI agents, using nonconfrontational interview techniques, extracted a wealth of information from him before the CIA authorized a tougher approach.

Inquiry into CIA tapes seen as payback for FBICIA officials have said their tactics were responsible for extracting the most important information from Abu Zubaydah. President George W. Bush has cited the Abu Zubaydah interrogation as an example of the success of the CIA program.

Leaders of both agencies have asserted for years that cooperation and coordination between the FBI and the CIA on counterterrorism issues have increased dramatically since 2001 attacks, which by accounts from each side, is true.

Nevertheless, despite the official pronouncements that the rivalry has ended, the investigation will be carried out against a backdrop of ill will that pervades the culture of the two agencies.

Law enforcement officials said Thursday that past disagreements would not influence the FBI investigation into the destroyed tapes.

They insisted the inquiry would be handled in a professional manner under the direction of a Justice Department team led by John Durham, a career U.S. prosecutor from Connecticut.

Intelligence officials have said they would cooperate fully with the criminal inquiry as they have with similar inquiries in the past.

Bush said Thursday that the White House would cooperate with the investigation. "I strongly support it," Bush said in an interview with Reuters. "And we will participate."

Bush, who was asked during the interview whether he was concerned that the investigation might raise questions about his counterterrorism policy, replied: "See what it says. See what the investigation leads to."

In another development Thursday, Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, released a letter she sent to the CIA in February 2003 in which she expressed concern about the agency's interrogation techniques and its intent to destroy videotape of Abu Zubaydah. That Harman had expressed those concerns was reported last month, but the contents of the letter had not been released.

The letter, declassified at Harman's request, was written shortly after she received a classified briefing about the agency's detention and interrogation program because she had become the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The letter, dated Feb. 10, 2003, said Harman had been informed five days earlier by Scott Muller, then the agency's top lawyer, that the CIA planned to destroy the tape after its inspector general had completed an inquiry into the agency's detention and interrogation program.

In the letter, Harman urged CIA officials to reconsider their plan to destroy the videotape, which she said "would reflect badly on the agency." The letter from Harman asked whether White House officials had determined that the interrogation methods used by the CIA were "consistent with the principles and policies of the United States" and whether Bush had approved the methods.

In a brief reply, dated Feb. 28, 2003, and also released by Harman on Thursday, Muller did not answer directly, saying only that "a number of executive branch lawyers" had participated in the determination that "in the appropriate circumstances, use of these techniques is fully consistent with U.S. law."

The reply did not address the issue of videotapes.

Feuding between the FBI and the CIA dates to the founding of the intelligence agency in 1947.

In recent years, their debates have been sharpened by disputes about whether the CIA or the FBI bore greater responsibility for missing signals that might have uncovered the Sept. 11 plot before the attacks.

FBI Recorded 27 Million FISA 'Sessions' in 2006

From Wired:


At the end of 2006, the FBI's Telecommunications Intercept and Collection Technology Unit compiled an end-of-the-year report touting its accomplishments to management, a report that was recently unearthed via an open government request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Strikingly, the report said that the FBI's software for recording telephone surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists intercepted 27,728,675 sessions.

Twenty-seven million is a staggering number given that the FBI only got 2,176 FISA court orders in 2006 from a secret spy court using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

According to the math that means each court order resulted in 12,742 "sessions," all in regards to phone, not internet, surveillance.

FISA watchers have long wondered whether FISA warrants covered more than one person. Knowing how many calls or text messages the FBI captured could add a piece to the puzzle.

Unfortunately, nothing in the documents turned over yet to the Electronic Frontier Foundation explain what a session is. Does it refer to one session of listening in on a target's conversation, even if it is minimized for not being relevant? Does it include text messages? Does the incoming call number and the recording of the call count as two sessions? Do cell phone pings that reveal the general location of a target count as a session? Unknown.

Steven Aftergood, who runs Secrecy News for the Federation of American Scientists, says it's an odd, and not so useful statistic:

I've never seen a number like that. When I hear 27 million sessions that sounds like they are talking about individual communications that were monitored for each individual target.
Aftergood thinks that if you take the number of targets and add them up, it's not that crazy a number. He also suspects that there are likely less than 2,100 foreign surveillance targets and that each target likely gets multiple orders - one for a fax line, one for a cell phone, one for a secret house search, etc.

It's a surprising statistic to keep because it doesn't tell you much. What you want to know is how many of the foreign intelligence surveillance sessions were of significance. If only three out of 27 million were useful, that would tell you something, but one number without the other is meaningless.
Of note is that the software at issue, the DCS-5000 gets information from carriers after they turn on surveillance on their switches once they get a court order (CALEA mandates the switches be wiretap-compliant). That means this number ostensibly has nothing to do with the government's secret warrantless wiretapping program, or the government's data-mining of billions of call records.

Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A.Tapes

From NYT:

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

The destruction of the tapes is being investigated by the Justice Department, and the officials would not agree to be quoted by name while that inquiry is under way.

Spokesmen for the White House, the vice president’s office and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article, also citing the inquiry.

The new information came to light as a federal judge on Tuesday ordered a hearing into whether the tapes’ destruction violated an order to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 16 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The tapes documented harsh interrogation methods used in 2002 on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects in C.I.A. custody.

The current and former officials also provided new details about the role played in November 2005 by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine branch, who ultimately ordered the destruction of the tapes.

The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Mr. Rodriguez received legal guidance from two C.I.A. lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger. The officials said that those lawyers gave written guidance to Mr. Rodriguez that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that the destruction would violate no laws.

The agency did not make either Mr. Hermes or Mr. Eatinger available for comment.

Current and former officials said the two lawyers informed the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, about the legal advice they had provided. But officials said Mr. Rodriguez did not inform either Mr. Rizzo or Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, before he sent the cable to destroy the tapes.

“There was an expectation on the part of those providing legal guidance that additional bases would be touched,” said one government official with knowledge of the matter. “That didn’t happen.”

Robert S. Bennett, a lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez, insisted that his client had done nothing wrong and suggested that Mr. Rodriguez had been authorized to order the destruction of the tapes. “He had a green light to destroy them,” Mr. Bennett said.

Until their destruction, the tapes were stored in a safe in the C.I.A. station in the country where the interrogations took place, current and former officials said. According to one former senior intelligence official, the tapes were never sent back to C.I.A. headquarters, despite what the official described as concern about keeping such highly classified material overseas.

Top officials of the C.I.A’s clandestine service had pressed repeatedly beginning in 2003 for the tapes’ destruction, out of concern that they could leak and put operatives in both legal and physical jeopardy.

The only White House official previously reported to have taken part in the discussions was Ms. Miers, who served as a deputy chief of staff to President Bush until early 2005, when she took over as White House counsel. While one official had said previously that Ms. Miers’s involvement began in 2003, other current and former officials said they did not believe she joined the discussions until 2005.

Besides the Justice Department inquiry, the Congressional intelligence committees have begun investigations into the destruction of the tapes, and are looking into the role that officials at the White House and Justice Department might have played in discussions about them. The C.I.A. never provided the tapes to federal prosecutors or to the Sept. 11 commission, and some lawmakers have suggested that their destruction may have amounted to obstruction of justice.

Newsweek reported this week that John D. Negroponte, who was director of national intelligence at the time the tapes were destroyed, sent a memorandum in the summer of 2005 to Mr. Goss, the C.I.A. director, advising him against destroying the tapes. Mr. Negroponte left the job this year to become deputy secretary of state, and a spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment on the Newsweek article.

The court hearing in the Guantánamo case, set for Friday in Washington by District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. over the government’s objections, will be the first public forum in which officials submit to questioning about the tapes’ destruction.

There is no publicly known connection between the 16 plaintiffs — 14 Yemenis, an Algerian and a Pakistani — and the C.I.A. videotapes. But lawyers in several Guantánamo cases contend that the government may have used information from the C.I.A. interrogations to identify their clients as “unlawful combatants” and hold them at Guantánamo for as long as six years.

“We hope to establish a procedure to review the government’s handling of evidence in our case,” said David H. Remes, a lawyer representing the 16 detainees.

Jonathan Hafetz, who represents a Qatari prisoner at Guantánamo and filed a motion on Tuesday seeking a separate hearing, said the videotapes could well be relevant.

“If the government is relying on the statement of a witness under harsh interrogation, a videotape of the interrogation would be very relevant,” said Mr. Hafetz, of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school.

In addition to the Guantánamo court filings, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal judge to hold the C.I.A. in contempt of court for destroying the tapes. The A.C.L.U. says the destruction violated orders in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by several advocacy groups seeking materials related to detention and interrogation.

FBI withdrew from interrogation due to CIA’s ‘harsh tactics.’

From Think Progress:

In 2002, as the CIA used “harsh tactics” to interrogate al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida, FBI agents involved in his detention increasingly “protested the aggressive methods that were used.” Reportedly, “one agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators.” The Washington Post reports today that the tensions between the two agencies became so bad that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III “eventually ordered the FBI team to withdraw from the interrogation” because of the tactics being used:

Tensions came to a head after FBI agents witnessed the use of some harsh tactics on Abu Zubaida, including keeping him naked in his cell, subjecting him to extreme cold and bombarding him with loud rock music. […]

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III eventually ordered the FBI team to withdraw from the interrogation, largely because bureau procedures prohibit agents from being involved in such techniques, according to several officials familiar with the

FBI: Torturing Gave Us Nothing But "Crap"

From TPM
Abu Zubaydah was:

A) A high-ranking Al Qaeda operative who largely confounded U.S. interrogators with his literary and tactical genius until they submitted him to waterboarding and other forms of torture. After that, he provided key information that likely preempted future attacks.

B) A low-ranking and mentally ill Al Qaeda operative who provided valuable information under gentle questioning, but whose confessions made under torture were useless. Much of the threat information he provided was "crap."

A is the CIA's version (and the President's). B is the FBI's. And in today's Washington Post, Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus walk through the competing profiles. Zubaydah, remember, was one of the two detainees whose interrogations appeared on the destroyed CIA tapes.

It's clear off the bat that the version of events provided by John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent who launched something like a PR blitz last week, is not quite right. In his telling, Zubaydah held out until waterboarded; after only 35 seconds of that, he gave in and "from that day on, he answered every question."

By contrast, both CIA and FBI agents tell the Post that he provided valuable information before he was waterboarded. And there wasn't just one session: "Instead, [other former and current officials] said, harsh tactics used on him at a secret detention facility in Thailand went on for weeks or, depending on the account, even months."

And then you get to the real discrepancies.

A CIA agent says that Zubaydah was a "wily adversary" under questioning who seemed "very selective in what he protected and what he gave up."

Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, "who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida's capture in early 2002 and worked on the case," responded that Zubaydah was talking before he was waterboarded, but the CIA agents couldn't believe that he knew so little.

Coleman, in fact, emerges as an effective foil to Kiriakou (who, incidentally, participated in the capture of Zubaydah but wasn't present during the torture) in the piece. Coleman says that Zubaydah was a "safehouse keeper" for Al Qaeda who had suffered a serious head injury years earlier.

Zubaydah's mental instability was manifest in his diary, Coleman says, which was "written in three distinct personalities -- one younger, one older and one the same age as Abu Zubaida. The book was full of flowery and philosophical meanderings, and made little mention of terrorism or al-Qaeda."

Former CIA Director George Tenet, by contrast, writes in his book that Zubaydah used a "sophisticated literary device to express himself" in the diary.

And you get the impression that Tenet's reading is typical of the way the CIA agents tended to see Zubaydah:

Coleman said reports of Abu Zubaida's statements during his early, traditional interrogation were "consistent with who he was and what he would possibly know." He and other officials said that materials seized from Abu Zubaida's house and other locations, including names, telephone numbers and computer laptops, provided crucial information about al-Qaeda and its network.
But, Coleman and other law enforcement officials said, CIA officials concluded to the contrary that Abu Zubaida was a major player, and they saw any lack of information as evidence that he was resisting interrogation. Much of the threat information provided by Abu Zubaida, Coleman said, "was crap."

"There's an agency mind-set that there was always some sort of golden apple out there, but there just isn't, especially with guys like him," Coleman said.

Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry

Read the rest here FRUQTADA