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NYT Story Prompted Clinton to Question CIA's Info On bin Laden, According to Newly Released Memo

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

When a New York Times article cast doubt on the accusation Usama bin Laden had a hand in the 1998 bombings of African embassies, President Clinton questioned his own CIA, according to a note he scrawled to his national security adviser.

The memo, part of a 1,000-page release of documents Friday afternoon by the National Archives, was written after the president apparently read an article in the self-professed “paper of record” casting doubt on the U.S. Justice Department’s case that the Al Qaeda mastermind was involved in the Aug. 7, 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Some 224 people were killed in the twin attacks, including 12 Americans.

Two months later, a federal grand jury in New York indicted bin Laden and 20 others for participating in a terrorist plot to kill Americans. But the Times article, entitled “U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof bin Laden Directed Attacks,” and written the following April, raised doubts about bin Laden’s involvement, at least with Clinton.

“Sandy, if this article is right, the CIA sure overstated its case to me — What are the facts?” Clinton wrote in pen.

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White House Blows Top CIA Official’s Cover

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Photo Credit: WikimediaIn an embarrassing flub, the Obama administration accidentally revealed the name of the CIA’s top official in Afghanistan in an email to thousands of journalists during the president’s surprise Memorial Day weekend trip to Bagram Air Field.

The officer’s name — identified as “chief of station” in Kabul — was included by U.S. embassy staff on a list of 15 senior American officials who met with President Obama during the Saturday visit. The list was sent to a Washington Post reporter who was representing the news media, who then sent it out to the White House “press pool” list, which contains as many as 6,000 recipients.

The Associated Press is withholding the officer’s name at the request of the Obama administration, who said its publication could put his life and those of his family members in danger. A Google search appears to reveal the name of the officer’s wife and other personal details.

White House officials realized the error after the Post reporter notified them, and sent out a new list without the station chief’s name. Other major news organizations, including the Post, also agreed not to publish the officer’s name.

The reporter who distributes the pool report sends it to the White House to be checked for factual accuracy and then forwarded to the thousands of journalists on the email distribution list, so in this case the White House failed on at least two occasions to recognize that the CIA official’s name was being revealed and circulated so broadly.

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CIA Official Dies in Apparent Suicide

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Photo Credit: Wikimedia

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

A senior CIA official has died in an apparent suicide this week from injuries sustained after jumping off a building in northern Virginia, according to sources close to the CIA.

CIA spokesman Christopher White confirmed the death and said the incident did not take place at CIA headquarters in McLean, Va.

“We can confirm that there was an individual fatally injured at a facility where agency work is done,” White told the Washington Free Beacon. “He was rushed to a local area hospital where he subsequently died. Due to privacy reasons and out of respect for the family, we are not releasing additional information at this time.”

A source close to the agency said the man who died was a middle manager and the incident occurred after the man jumped from the fifth floor a building in Fairfax County.

Many agency employees are known to work under stressful conditions and high stress is considered a part of the profession, for the three general types of employees: Intelligence analysts and support personnel, technical services operators, and members of the clandestine services, the agency’s elite spying branch.

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Ex-CIA Boss Says Emotional Opposition From Feinstein May Taint Agency Probe

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden on Sunday questioned the objectivity of a forthcoming report on the agency’s detention and interrogation programs, saying California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who ordered the probe, might have let her feelings about the issue get in the way.

Hayden zeroed in on Feinstein recently saying that declassifying the report would “ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.”

Hayden told “Fox News Sunday”: “That sentence, that motivation for the report, may show deep, emotional feeling on the part of the senator. But I don’t think it leads you to an objective report.”

Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which led the probe, responded sharply to Hayden’s remarks, saying the report is “objective, based on fact, thoroughly footnoted.”

“I am certain it will stand on its own merits,” she said, according to The Washington Post.

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Senate Committee Votes to Declassify Parts of CIA Torture Report

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Photo Credit: J Scott Applewhite/AP

Photo Credit: J Scott Applewhite/AP

After years of inquiry, $40m in expenses and an unprecedented clash with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Senate intelligence committee voted on Thursday to declassify portions of a study into the agency’s use of torture on detainees suspected of being involved in terrorism.

The landmark 11-3 vote now places the Obama administration back at the center of an inherited controversy that it has sought for over five years to escape.

That controversy has immediate implications for the military tribunals of the 9/11 defendants at Guantánamo Bay, several of whom were subjected to the abuse.

Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein of California, a public champion of the investigation, called its findings “shocking” and the CIA’s behavior “in stark contrast to our values as a nation”.

“This nation admits its errors, as painful as they may be,” Feinstein said in a short statement following the vote, which took place in a secret session.

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Did Secret CIA Whistle-Blower Leak to the Senate?

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Does the Central Intelligence Agency have a secret whistle-blower who has been trying to help the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigate his or her own agency? That’s a possibility that panel chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California mentioned Tuesday on the Senate floor in her angry speech alleging that the CIA has illegally spied on committee computers.

At issue is how Intelligence Committee staffers obtained portions of a sensitive internal CIA study named the “Panetta report,” after former agency chief Leon Panetta.

Senator Feinstein in essence said that the Panetta report fell from the sky into the committee’s lap. Staffers flipping through millions of pages of digitized CIA documents, about Bush-era harsh interrogations of terror suspects, simply found the report via a CIA-provided search tool, according to the committee head.

“We have no way to determine who made the internal Panetta review documents available to the committee…. Further, we don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistle-blower,” Feinstein said.

Why is the Panetta report such a big deal? That requires a bit of explanation.

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CIA Head: Al-Qaeda Has ‘Perverse and Very Corrupt Interpretation of Qur’an’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNSNews.com/Penny StarrAl-Qaeda’s ideology, built on “a perverse and very corrupt interpretation of the Qur’an,” resonates in many parts of the world, and is often fed by political repression, economic disenfranchisement and “lack of education and ignorance,” CIA Director John Brennan said on Tuesday.

During an event at the Council on Foreign Relations, Brennan was asked about the “war of ideas” surrounding Islam, which the questioner said many Americans tend to equate with violence.

In the course of his response Brennan said al-Qaeda has “a perverse and very corrupt interpretation of the Qur’an. One of the things that I’m struck with when I travel throughout the Middle East and I meet with leaders, military and civilian – these are individuals who are Qur’anic scholars themselves and they are the ones who are most annoyed at how al-Qaeda has hijacked their religion and how they have really distorted the teachings of Mohammed, you know, for violent purposes.”

“Now, quite unfortunately, though, that ideology, that agenda of al-Qaeda has gained resonance and following in many parts of the world,” he continued. “It’s fed a lot of times by, you know, political repression, by economic, you know, disenfranchisement, by, you know, lack of education and ignorance, so there – there are a number of phenomena right now that I think are fueling the fires of, you know, this ideology.”

Assertions of a link between Islamist terrorism and poverty or lack of education have been called into question by some research.

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Head of Senate Intelligence Accuses CIA of Spying on the Committee, Violating Constitution

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Photo Credit: AFPA behind-the-scenes battle between the CIA and Congress erupted in public Tuesday as the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the agency of breaking laws and breaching constitutional principles in an alleged effort to undermine the panel’s multi-year investigation of a controversial interrogation program.

Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accused the CIA of ­secretly removing documents, searching computers used by the committee and attempting to intimidate congressional investigators by requesting an FBI inquiry of their conduct — charges that CIA Director John Brennan disputed within hours of her appearance on the Senate floor.

Feinstein described the escalating conflict as a “defining moment” for Congress’s role in overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies and cited “grave concerns” that the CIA had “violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution.”

Brennan fired back during a previously scheduled speech in Washington, saying that “when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.”

The dueling claims exposed bitterness and distrust that have soared to new levels as the committee nears completion of a 6,000-page report that is expected to serve as a scathing historical record of the agency’s use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods on terrorism suspects held at secret CIA prisons overseas after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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Intel Committee Chairman Poised to Recall Ex-CIA Chief Morell Over Benghazi Testimony, Weighing Same for Petraeus

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Photo Credit: Fox News Republican allegations that former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell misled Congress over the White House’s role in crafting the flawed Benghazi “talking points” took a dramatic turn Thursday, with the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee telling Fox News it’s likely Morell will be recalled to testify. Investigators also are reviewing the testimony of former CIA Director David Petraeus, Morell’s old boss, to assess whether he should be recalled as well.

“We are having some transcript reviews. We’ve been continually doing that through the committee,” Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., told Fox News. “We’re looking at Director Petraeus’ transcripts and reviews — looking at what information we have now available. Sometimes that second interview can be equally important and it is likely we will have Director Morell up to testify before the committee.”

The debate continues to focus on why the talking points did not reflect the best available intelligence, and what influence the administration brought to bear on the flawed public narrative of the attack in the days immediately following Sept. 11, 2012 – that narrative initially claimed the attacks sprung out of protests over an anti-Islam film.

Among the allegations, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a January 2014 Benghazi report that Morell insisted the talking points were sent to the White House for informational purposes, and not for their input — but e-mails, later released by the administration, showed otherwise.

In response to Rogers’ comments, Morell said in an email to Fox News, “I sent him a letter this afternoon saying that I would very much welcome an invitation to testify in open session before the Committee on Benghazi.”

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Former CIA Official Accused of Misleading Lawmakers on Benghazi

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsFormer CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell is facing accusations from Republicans that he misled lawmakers about the Obama administration’s role in crafting the bogus storyline that a protest gone awry was to blame for the deadly Benghazi attack.

Among other discrepancies, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee allege Morell insisted the talking points were sent to the White House for informational purposes, and not for their input — but emails, later released by the administration, showed otherwise.

“We found that there was actual coordination which could influence then — and did influence — what CIA conveyed to the committees about what happened [in Benghazi],” Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., told Fox News.

Burr was one of six Republicans who leveled the allegations against Morell, who also served as acting director, in an addendum to a recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report. According to the claims, in late 2012, Morell testified the so-called Benghazi talking points were sent to the White House “for their awareness, not for their coordination.”

The 16-page addendum continues, “No effort was made to correct the record … the Acting Director’s (Morell) testimony perpetuated the myth that the White House played no part in the drafting or editing of the talking points.”

Read more this story HERE.