The Senate intelligence committee reached an agreement on the framework of a wide-ranging review of the CIA's past treatment of terrorism detainees, even as members acknowledged the bulk of the panel's work will be conducted in secret.
The CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of terror suspect interrogations, far more than previously acknowledged, the Obama administration said Monday as it began disclosing details of post-Sept. 11 Bush-era actions.
President Obama's first presidential directive, outlining the organization of his national security structure, adds the attorney general, the secretaries of energy and homeland security, and the US ambassador to the UN to the National Security Co
In the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral ar
This was expected, but at the end of business earlier this evening, the Senate announced that Leon Panetta, an all-around respected official who [buried the Clinton's dirty laundry] has been in and out of government, was confirmed to become the n
A top minister in the British government said that the United States threatened to withhold shared intelligence if evidence of the torture of a UK citizen at Guantanamo Bay was released.
Since 1997, Harold Nicholson has been locked in a federal prison in Oregon, the highest-ranking officer of the Central Intelligence Agency ever convicted of espionage. But even as federal inmate No. 49535-083, Mr. Nicholson never really retired as a
In a message aimed at the incoming Obama administration, a top Iranian intelligence official cautioned the United States on Monday not to spy on Iran.
Ray McGovern: My Take
CIA Director Michael Hayden is going around town telling folks he has warned Obama “personally and forcefully” that if Obama authorizes an investigation into controversial activities like water boarding, “no one in Langley will ever take a risk again
Ray McGovern: My Take
Leon Panetta to take charge of the CIA - First and foremost, the appointment gives hope that torture and “rendition” (a euphemism for kidnapping people for delivery to foreign torture chambers) is over — or will be in less than two weeks.
Admiral Dennis Blair played a critical role in backing the Indonesian occupation of East Timor during the 1990s. At the height of a wave of ruthless attacks on Timorese that killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands, Blair personally informed t
The increasingly violent riots in Greece could be the curtain raiser for a military coup d’etat and the installation of a new government more friendly to U.S. hegemony as a countermeasure to increasing Russian influence over the Balkan state.
Feinstein said in a statement she knew “nothing” about the selection of Panetta until media reports yesterday. An aide to Rockefeller who spoke to the senator said the West Virginia Democrat wasn’t consulted. Feinstein said she wants an “intelligence
[change] Former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, a longtime congressional veteran and administrative expert, is being tapped to head the CIA. Retired Adm. Dennis Blair is Obama's choice to be director of national intelligence.
The Justice Department released Attorney General Michael Mukasey's recommendation that President Bush invoke executive privilege in refusing to release to Congress transcripts of Dick Cheney's conversations with the FBI.
The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to 4 younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag
Iran has documents to prove the United States and Britain, the Islamic Republic's two Western arch foes, back a group that killed 16 abducted Iranian police officers, state radio reported.
For two years on the presidential campaign trail, Barack Obama rallied crowds with strongly worded critiques of the Bush administration’s most controversial counterterrorism programs, from hiding terrorism suspects in secret Central Intelligence Agen
Global warming could be a boon to Russia, a European country could be overrun by organized crime and the U.S. and its dollar could further decline in importance during the next two decades, says a U.S. intelligence report with predictions for the wor
The CIA obstructed inquiries into its role in the shooting down of an aircraft carrying a family of US missionaries in Peru in 2001. The CIA-backed program targeting drug runners was so poorly run that many suspect aircraft were shot down
A friend of mine spent many years in the security business doing contract work for the CIA, some of which involved killing people. One of the things he told me was, “A guy will do almost anything if he thinks it’s for the good of other people.”
According to Scott McClellan, George W. Bush confessed to him of having outed CIA Agent Valerie Plame's identity.
Ray McGovern: My Take
He suggested that I focus on what I would tell President-Elect Barack Obama if I were Mike Morell, CIA’s Director of Intelligence, whom CIA Director Michael Hayden has assigned to brief Obama daily.
Senior CIA officers could be put on trial in Britain after it emerged last night that the Attorney General is to investigate allegations that a British resident held in Guantanamo Bay was brutally tortured, after being arrested and questioned by Amer
(This site was downloaded immediately after Brian's untimely death in 2003)
Authorities suspected the incursion -- a Colombian "premeditated violation" of Ecuadoran sovereignty -- relied on support from a US aircraft assigned to joint US-Ecuador anti-drug missions from a US Operating Location in Ecuador
A CIA-led raid on a compound in eastern Syria killed an al Qaida in Iraq commander who oversaw the smuggling into Iraq of foreign fighters whose attacks claimed thousands of Iraqi and American lives, three U.S. officials said Monday.
The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelli
Blackwater's Cofer Black, and former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, said he can't think of a thing "we could have done that would have changed anything." Victory "was not as effectively followed up as we would h
Top White House officials were told in early 2002 about harsh measures used by the CIA to extract information from suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in the agency's secret prisons, according to an account given to congressional investigators by the o
