CIA's Pussy Galore Flying Circus - Set Up For Success - Secrecy Kills
Richard "like father (Bay of Pigs), like son" Earl Blee
Alfreda "BDSM aficionada Ilsa" Frances Bikowsky
Michael "cumdumpster" Anne Casey
Some say that this could weaken a nation.
I say as long as the identity and whereabouts of Jack Bauer are kept under lock and key, we can all sleep well at night.
Unless of course, you sleep near a gay bar in the West Village. Then you got all kinds of Jack Bauer problems to deal with.
I think that given the CIA's history and information that keeps coming out, it's appropriate for everyone to 1) assume they are lying and 2) assume that their push for secrecy is to cover incompetence. Now all they really seem to do is direct drone strikes and generate reams of paper that no one will ever read based on outsourced human intelligence and intercepts (all of which haven't been read).
This is from Unsafe At Any Altitude
[www.amazon.com]
There were two Saudi intelligence agents the CIA believed had been successfully placed inside Al Qaeda as double agents. The problem was that neither the CIA nor the GID had properly vetted the men. In fact, they were triple agents — loyal to Osama bin Laden. Saudi intelligence had sent agents Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi to spy on a meeting of top associates of Al Qaeda in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, January 5–8, 2000. "The CIA/Saudi hope was that the Saudis would learn details of bin Laden’s future plans. Instead, plans were finalized and the Saudis learned nothing," says a CIA terrorism expert who asks that his identity be withheld.By the time the two Saudi agents entered Malaysia, the CIA was well aware of Khalid al-Mihdhar’s name, passport number, and birth information, since he had a US multiple-entry visa issued in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that would expire on April 6, 2000. The CIA knew these details because one of its own officers in the Jeddah consulate routinely approved visas for Saudi intelligence operatives as a courtesy. Under normal circumstances, the names of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi should have been placed on the State Department, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and US Customs watch lists. The two men would have been automatically denied entry into the United States. Because they were perceived as working for a friendly intelligence service, however, the CIA did not pass along the names. If it had, Eric Gill and his colleagues in Newark and Boston might have stood a chance at preventing what was planned for the morning of September 11.
[www.nationalsecuritywatch.com]#more-4726
Hazmi and Mihdhar were triple agents or simply double agents, if the Saudi Royals, were in fact, supporting al Qaeda, as many have alleged.
At this point, something unusual happened. Normally, according to the Justice IG Report, the drafter, Doug Miller, would himself coordinate the communication in the computer system so that designated persons in charge of approving its release are notified.
But in this case, without Miller notifying anyone, [Michael] accessed his draft report – within less than an hour of his writing it, as if she were on the look-out for it. Wilshere later acknowledged to investigators that this was not standard operating procedure.
About forty-five minutes after [Michael] read Miller’s draft warning to the FBI, the other Deputy Station Chief, the one from FBI headquarters, Ed Goetz, also accessed Miller’s draft warning to FBI. Goetz worked out of the third private office in Alec Station. The funny thing about this is that, at that time, Goetz hadn’t yet opened the two CIA cables about Mihdhar’s US visa. The Justice Department's Inspector General's Report noted that Goetz, as Deputy Chief, has the authority himself to immediately release it for electronic dissemination, but he did not.
Another four and a half hours passed. At four p.m., [Michael] reopened the draft message to add a note for Miller: “Pls hold off for now per Tom Wilshere.”
Now here’s another strange thing. According to the Justice Department investigation, which had the ability after the fact to see the precise moment each item was accessed by whom in the computer system, Tom Wilshere never accessed Doug Miller’s draft cable. So how did he know to tell [Michael] to order the draft held off?
It appears that she had been on the look-out for any messages coming from the FBI detailees that morning. Once she saw Miller’s cable, she immediately went to her close colleague Tom Wilshere to discuss it. Perhaps her immediate supervisor [Frances] was in the mix as well? And FBI Deputy Chief Ed Goetz was also let in on the conversation.
Two obvious questions: One. What was their operational plan in withholding Mihdhar’s planned travel to the US from FBI? And two. On whose orders?
Later that Wednesday, two more cables came into the CounterTerrorism Center and Alec Station discussing Mihdhar’s visa, now a total of four. At 6:30 p.m., Tom Wilshere re-read the first cable from the United Arab Emirates and then read the second cable from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
A half hour later, Wilshere’s subordinate and friend [Michael] sent a lengthy message to several CIA stations around the world. It stated: “We need to continue efforts to identify these travelers and their activities… to determine if there is any true threat posed.”
She then devoted an entire paragraph to Mihdhar, and that paragraph included a statement that misleads the entire CIA: [Michael] asserted that a physical copy of Mihdhar’s travel documents, including a US visa, has been copied and passed to the FBI for further investigation.
When later asked by government investigators who had told her that a physical copy of Mihdhar’s visa was passed, she claimed she could not remember. There was a lot of that going around at the time, including from Rossini and Miller.
But we do know that [Michael]’s immediate supervisor, the red-headed [Frances], later told the Congressional Inquiry that she – [Frances] – was the one who had taken the visa down to FBI headquarters.
The guy CIA forced into FBI Counterterrorism Center was a CIA CounterTerrorism Center agent still known only as Rob. The Congressional Inquiry said that Rob was assigned there to fix communication problems between the CIA and the FBI.
The same evening that [Michael] was telling the CIA internally that the FBI had been made aware of al-Mihdhar's visa, Rob was at the FBI updating a supervisor about the Malaysia meeting. The supervisor did not know why Rob briefed him, since he was not Rob’s designated point of contact. He adamantly told the Justice Department investigation that the Mihdhar visa was not mentioned in their conversation.
The next morning, Thursday, Rob briefed a different FBI agent with details on Mihdhar’s travel and the ongoing Malaysia summit. Again, the agent was not Rob’s designated point of contact.
When Rob was emailed by another CIA agent who has been asked by an FBI colleague for an update on Mihdhar, Rob began series of emails explaining that he’d already updated FBI. The last email, which he titled “Malaysia – For the Record,” was CC’d to Tom Wilshere, Maggie Gillespie, and other unknowns at Alec Station. Rob wrote: “In case FBI starts to complain later… below is exactly what I briefed them on.” The email mentions Mihdhar’s transit through Dubai, his arrival in Kuala Lumpur, his activities in Malaysia – everything except his US visa.
The updates that Rob provided Stafford’s employees on Wednesday night and Thursday morning were sent by those men upstairs where they were included in two updates that Thursday to the FBI Director and top FBI officials. These are apparently the only two mentions of Malaysia and Mihdhar’s travel ever found in FBI records. There are NO mentions of his visa to the US, which is the one fact that would have gotten the FBI involved in looking for and stopping him.
The next day, Friday, was the last day of the Millennium threat period, and the last day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Inside Alec Station, Mark Rossini and Doug Miller find themselves with one less FBI ally, as their Deputy Chief from the Bureau Ed Goetz has been diagnosed with cancer and left the day before.
Strangely, the Justice Department investigation did not go into an hour-by-hour look at who accessed the March 5 cable in the same way that they did with the Mihdhar visa cables, making it difficult to verify Tenet’s statement. If true, why had so many inside the CounterTerrorism Center and Alec Station paid attention to the visa cables but no one read the one about Hazmi entering the US.?
Richard Clarke
What happens is when a CIA source reports in to a CIA case officer, the case officer then turns that into a temporary, preliminary report. The preliminary report is then sent into CIA headquarters where a reports officer converts it into English. And then it is automatically disseminated to a list of people. And it comes automatically to me in the White House, to people in the Defense Department, to people in the FBI. You have to intentionally stop it.
[DUFFY: They were stopped from getting to you and stopped from getting to the White House then?]
And stopped from getting to the FBI and the Defense Department… If there was a decision made to stop normal distribution with regard to this case, then people like Tom Wilshere would have known that.
[DUFFY: He reads it multiple times over the course of the next year... On these subsequent times, if he shook something loose, he had the full range of opportunity to alert you?]
He did, but he wouldn't have to, because unless someone intervened to stop the normal automatic distribution, I would automatically get it.
Host
Former CIA Middle East case officer Bob Baer slightly disputes Clarke’s statement about the cables.
Bob Baer
Operational cable doesn’t automatically come to the White House. The decision needs to be made at the desk level… But I’m saying there were a 1000 cables a day that came in about Bin Laden. Or 10,000 for all I know. And you can’t send them all to the White House. There’s a reports officer whose analytical abilities may be good or may not be good. And she or he is the one who decides what to disseminate. And that’s what Clarke saw.
Host
Baer does agree with Clarke’s assessment that Rich Blee briefing the White House about the Kuala Lumpur meeting during the Millennium threat period but not mentioning the most stunning detail, the US visa., is suspicious.
Bob Baer
That makes it even worse. I mean, if they thought it was important enough to tell the White House about these meetings in Kuala Lumpur, if that was briefed orally, and it all comes down to the US visa, then that’s extremely… If White House people were being briefed on KL but not on the passport, that’s extremely suspic – you need answers.
Host
We asked about [Michael]’s standard operating procedure as the person running the Mihdhar operation.
Bob Baer
[RAY: Is she the person who would hold the responsibility if that was not turned into a Telegraphic Dissemination and passed up to the White House at that point?]
Yeah… She then would turn to, or herself would write a memo, to the National Security Council or the White House or in this case Clarke himself. “Richard Clarke, we’ve learned that Mihdhar has a US visa. It was issued on such and such a date in such and such a place. We’ve requested the actual visa application, and here’s what we’re doing about it.” And you put that in a memo and send it to the White House. Probably fax it to Clarke, or maybe you can do it electronically.
Richard Clarke
George Tenet followed all of the information about Al Qaeda in microscopic detail. He read raw intelligence reports before analysts in the CounterTerror Center did. And he would pick up the phone and call me at 7:30 in the morning to talk about them. There was no barrier between George Tenet and the CIA information machine when it came to Al Qaeda.
You gotta understand, my relationship with him -- we were close friends. He called me several times a day. We shared the most trivial of information with each other. He would regularly call me with raw intelligence and say, "You gotta look at this. This is important." And then I would call his analysts, five layers down, the people who knew the details, and say, "What do you think about it?”… He was giving me -- as was the CIA CounterTerrorism Center -- giving me a flood of information all the time… There was not a lack of information sharing between the CIA and me and my stuff... They told us everything accept [IMS: except] this.
That means one thing to me: There was an intentional and very high level decision in the CIA not to let the White House know.
[DUFFY: How high level?]
I would think it would have to be made by the Director.
Richard Clarke
The people who investigated after the fact believed that there was a problem. Believed they never got to the bottom of it. But, if your theory is right that they were covering it up, they got away with it. Because neither the Congressional investigation nor the 9/11 Commission was able to pin it on them.
(music)
[At this point now, are you pissed? How are you left emotionally by this? Do you feel completely burned? All your efforts out the window?]
I am outraged and have been ever since I first learned that the CIA knew these two guys were in the country. But I believed for the longest time that it was one or two low-level CIA people who made the decision not to disseminate the information. Now that I know that 50 CIA officers knew this, and they included all sorts of CIA people who were regularly talking to me -- yeah, saying I'm pissed doesn't begin to describe it.
Jack Cloonan
But you actually have an honor trail here, ya know what I mean? Those documents, that CIR… that Doug Miller puts together, seconded by Rossini, I mean, that’s unambiguous. That stands on its own. So as long as history is here, we know that the FBI tried to do the right thing, understood the significance of it, understood the nexus in the United States, and for whatever reason, or reasons, the Agency makes the decision – it's not an oversight, it’s a conscious decision not to share the information… And history will judge them on that. Those people involved in that have a lot to answer for, and they have not adequately answered it in my mind… If you look at this, it's really just a handful of people. I don’t know how they sleep at night. I really don’t.
We have confirmed that [Frances] is the red-headed CIA employee described in journalist Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side as having been reprimanded for including herself in the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed when she had not been officially assigned to do so. She was reportedly informed by superiors, “It's not supposed to be entertainment.”
Jennifer Lynn Matthews was named for accountability in the CIA Inspector General’s Report on 9/11, according to a source who only accessed the portions pertaining to her. Despite this, she was made the Chief of Base in the Afghan city of Khost where she died in the suicide attack on that facility at the end of 2009. A source who had access to that CIA Inspector General’s Report informs us that [Frances] was named for accountability in that incident as well.
And Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer reveals for the first time the role he believes George Tenet and Alec Station may have played in the shut down of the military’s Able Danger program, the one that identified Mihdhar and Hazmi and other hijackers inside the United States that same year
Then, in May 2001, Tom Wilshere is detailed – of all places – to the FBI where, after ordering Doug Miller not to send that message, he is made the Bureau’s top CIA liaison for counterterror. Wilshere re-accesses the March 5th cable that month, the one that says Hazmi has entered the United States.
Throughout that summer of threat, Wilshere emails back and forth with the people in Alec Station, probably including [Frances], who has been promoted to Wilshere’s position of Deputy Chief, and Blee himself, warning that the men from the Malaysia meeting are major league killers who will likely be involved in the attack that appears to be coming, and Mihdhar should be of great interest given his connection to these people. He asks for permission to tell the FBI, permission apparently not granted.
As the clock ticks down to 9/11, FBI analyst Maggie Gillespie re-discovers the March 5th cable – the same one Rossini says Wilshere and [Michael] must have read back in 2000, the same one Wilshere re-reads in May 2001 – and she finally alerts the FBI to begin a manhunt for Mihdhar and Hazmi in the US. Yet for the following three weeks, even with George Tenet’s hair on fire, no one at CIA places that information into the threat briefings for the White House.
And after the attacks, secrecy protected Rich Blee, the people who worked for him, and his bosses at CIA, as they went on to be involved in other scandals over the past decade, from the failure to capture Bin Laden in Afghanistan to the bad intelligence that drove America to war in Iraq, from renditions and detainee abuses to Blackwater. And we’ll let you know where they’re all at today.
http://www.corbettreport.com/who-is-audrey-frances-tomason/
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