Posts

Obama CIA Pick Argued for Government Censorship in Graduate Thesis

/6 Comments/in , /by

In his 1980 graduate thesis at the University of Texas at Austin, John Brennan denied the existence of “absolute human rights” and argued in favor of censorship on the part of the Egyptian dictatorship.

“Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship,” Brennan wrote. “Inflamatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence, especially in developing political systems.”

Brennan serves as President Barack Obama’s national security advisor. Obama has nominated him to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

The thesis, “Human Rights: A Case Study of Egypt,” was a requirement for Brennan’s Master of Arts degree in government with a Middle Eastern studies concentration. It grew out of his time studying at the American University in Cairo . . .

Central to Brennan’s presentation was a relativist view of human rights, which he said include “security, welfare, liberty, and justice.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s CIA Nominee Won’t Use ‘Jihad’ to Describe Terrorists

/8 Comments/in , /by

While concern has mounted that former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be secretary of defense should be blocked because of past expressed hostility for Israel, little attention has been given to CIA-nominee John Brennan’s view of Islam.

In a speech delivered Aug. 9, 2009, to the Center for Strategic and International Studies that is archived on the White House website, Brennan said using “a legitimate term, ‘jihad’ – meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal” – to describe terrorists “risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself.”

As WND reported, Brennan advised in the speech that U.S. foreign policy should encourage greater assimilation of the Hezbollah terrorist organization into the Lebanese government.

In a July 2008 article in The Annals, a publication of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Brennan argued it “would not be foolhardy, however, for the United States to tolerate, and even to encourage, greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system, a process that is subject to Iranian influence.”

Brennan argued Hezbollah “is already represented in the Lebanese parliament, and its members have previously served in the Lebanese cabinet, reflections of Hezbollah’s interest in shaping Lebanon’s political future from within government institutions.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Graham Threatens to Block Obama’s CIA Pick for Benghazi Answers

/10 Comments/in , /by

In a statement released Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) telegraphed that he would delay the confirmation of President Barack Obama’s CIA nominee John Brennan if the White House fails to answer questions about the Benghazi attacks.

“I do not believe we should confirm anyone as Director of the CIA until our questions are answered,” he declared.

Mr. Graham said that any effort on his part to delay the confirmation process was not directed at Mr. Brennan but rather was meant to get to the bottom of intelligence failures involved in the Benghazi fiasco.

Senate rules allow any United States senator to block a potential nominee from proceeding to the Senate floor by placing a hold on the nomination.

Read more from this story HERE.

Did CIA Pick Sanitize Obama’s Passport Records?

/8 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: nrcgov

NEW YORK – John Brennan, the Obama counter-terrorism adviser nominated this week to head the CIA, played a controversial role in what many suspect was an effort to sanitize Obama’s passport records.

On March 21, 2008, amid Obama’s first presidential campaign, two unnamed contract employees for the State Department were fired and a third was disciplined for breaching the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate and then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Breaking the story, the Washington Times on March 20, 2008, noted that all three had used their authorized computer network access to look up and read Obama’s records within the State Department consular affairs section that “possesses and stores passport information.”

Contacted by the newspaper, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack attributed the violations to non-political motivations, stressing that the three individuals involved “did not appear to be seeking information on behalf of any political candidate or party.”

“As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity,” McCormack told the Washington Times.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak

/2 Comments/in , /by

WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate.

In his years as a C.I.A. operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy.

“Anything for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Kiriakou replied.

Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation.

Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Mr. Kiriakou’s recollection, “In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that right now we’re executing a search warrant at your house and seizing your electronic devices.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Defense Intelligence Agency Setting Itself Up As Rival To The CIA?

/1 Comment/in , , /by

The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said.

The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units.

When the expansion is complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 “collectors” in positions around the world, an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years.

The total includes military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But U.S. officials said the growth will be driven over a five-year period by the deployment of a new generation of clandestine operatives. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense.

Among the Pentagon’s top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawsuit: CIA Killed Its Own Operative When He Got Cold Feet Over Mind Control Programs

/3 Comments/in , /by

A new lawsuit has dredged up a 60-year-old Cold War mystery surrounding the death of an Army bioweapons researcher who was given LSD by the CIA.

The government says Frank Olson jumped to his death in 1959 after he was given the hallucinatory drug as part of a top-secret CIA mind control program codenamed MK-ULTRA.

Dr Olson’s sons now claim they have evidence that he did not commit suicide, but was instead pushed out of a 13th story New York City highrise window by CIA operatives who feared he was getting cold feet about the intelligence agency’s tactics.

Eric and Nils Olson, of Frederick, Maryland, are seeking unspecified compensatory damages in the lawsuit filed in federal court on Wednesday.

Their lawyer, Scott D Gilbert, said the brothers also want to see a broad range of documents related to Dr Olson’s death and other matters that they say the CIA has withheld from them since the death.

Read more from this story HERE.

Petraeus Mistress Claimed Benghazi Annex Held Jihadist Prisoners

/1 Comment/in , /by

The Central Intelligence Agency denied charges Sunday that its annex in Benghazi, Libya secretly held a few jihadi prisoners until it was destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack. Paula Broadwell, the girlfriend then-CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus, made that claim during an Oct. 26 speech in Denver, Colo.

“I don’t know if a lot of you have heard this, but the CIA annex had actually had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner. And they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back,” Broadwell declared during the speech, at the University of Denver.

“That’s still being vetted,” she added.

The CIA’s denial came just hours after Arutz Sheva, an Israeli news outlet, first published a partial transcript of Broadwell’s speech. By midnight Sunday, intelligence reporters with both The Daily Beast and The Washington Post were reporting and tweeting, respectively, that the CIA said her claim was false.

An agency spokesperson told The Daily Beast that “[t]he CIA has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the Agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Probe Widens: Petraeus Scandal Leads to Investigation of Commander in Afghanistan

/0 Comments/in , /by

KABUL—U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Tuesday asked the Senate to put on hold the confirmation of the top commander in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, as the new NATO supreme allied commander for Europe following the discovery of allegedly inappropriate communications between the general and a Tampa social planner.

The planner, Jill Kelley, is at the center of a scandal involving Gen. Allen’s predecessor as the top coalition commander in Kabul, Gen. David Petreaus, who resigned as CIA director last week after acknowledging an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation began probing the matter earlier this year, after Ms. Kelley complained about harassing emails that, according to officials, were eventually traced to Ms. Broadwell. Both women are married, as are Gens. Petreaus and Allen. As part of this inquiry, the FBI also uncovered some 30,000 pages of emails between Ms. Kelley and Gen. Allen, a senior defense official told reporters traveling with Mr. Panetta.

Mr. Panetta said in a statement that the Pentagon received the information concerning Gen. Allen from the FBI on Sunday, and has opened its own investigation. Adultery is a crime under the military code of justice. Gen. Allen’s spokesman declined to comment on the matter and referred all queries to the Pentagon.

Read more from this story HERE.

Husband of Wife That Had Affair With CIA Chief May Have Written the New York Times About It

/3 Comments/in /by

Did the cuckolded husband of Paula Broadwell send a letter to a New York Times advice column back in July that revealed he knew of her affair with David Petraeus?

That intriguing possibility has been raised after canny observers dug out the July 13th edition of Chuck Klosterman’s ‘The Ethicist’ and pointed to extraordinary coincidences between one readers letter and the now scandalous love tryst.

Writing about a deepening relationship he knew his wife was having with a ‘government executive’ whose job ‘is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership’ the anonymous man offers up what could be considered in hindsight as striking information.

The letter writer explains that ‘exposing the affair will create a major distraction that would adversely impact the success of an important effort,’ and asks ‘The Ethicist’ whether it is OK for him to ‘suffer in silence for the next year or two for a project’. Indeed, he seems pained to make it clear he believes the mission ‘must succeed’ and wants to know if he should confront his wife in some way and ‘finally force closure’ or if he should ‘suffer in silence for the next year or two.’

The reader tells ‘The Ethicist’ that has ‘watched the affair intensify over the last year’ – which matches the timeline of the affair from August 2011 until around several months ago.

Read more from this story HERE.