Max Fisher of the The Washington Post writes: “A just-out report, released by the Open Society Foundation, sheds new light on its shocking scale. According to the report, 54 foreign governments somehow collaborated in the program. Some of those governments are brutal dictatorships, and a few are outright U.S. adversaries.”
(via A staggering map of the 54 countries that reportedly participated in the CIA’s rendition program)
IRIN: Growing risks for aid workers in Pakistan
“NGO security threats are at an all-time high. I have never in almost 20 years known things as bad as this,” Chris Cork, country security adviser for the UK-headquartered Abaseen Foundation, an NGO working chiefly in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province, told the United Nations’ news agency, IRIN.
IRIN reports that over the past few weeks there “has been an upsurge in attacks on aid workers, many of them linked to a national polio eradication campaign in one of the world’s last three countries where the disease remains endemic.” This is thought to, at least partially, be fallout from the U.S. effort to kill Osama Bin Laden. IRIN goes on to state:
“In 2011 Shakil Afridi, a government-employed doctor, collected DNA samples from a residential house in Abbotabad which helped the US Central Intelligence Agency identify the whereabouts of Bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid. It is alleged that Afridi, since sentenced to 33 years in jail, masqueraded in his native Khyber Agency as a polio vaccinator in order to collect the samples.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for militant group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, told IRIN: ‘Afridi was a traitor and naturally people now suspect all anti-polio workers of being US agents.’”
Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak - NYTimes.com
John Kiriakou is the first CIA officer to go to prison for America’s War on Terror torture program. But John Kiriakou didn’t torture anyone. His crime? He told members of the press about the CIA’s torture program.
Read the New York Times’ account here. And for more (and in my opinion, better) context, read this piece by State Department whistleblower Peter Van Buren here.
A poster general for American decline, David Petraeus will be a footnote to history, a man out for himself who simply went a bridge or a book too far. George W. and crew were the real thing: genuine mad visionaries who simply mistook their dreams and fantasies for reality.
But wasn’t it fun while it lasted? Wasn’t it a blast to occupy Washington, be treated as a demi-god, go to Pirate-themed parties in Tampa with a 28-motorcycle police escort, and direct your own biography… even if it did end as Fifty Shades of Khaki?
The CIA sex scandal that felled Petraeus just got stranger. The Associated Press now reports the existence of “20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other documents” exchanged by Allen and Kelley between 2010 and 2012 are under review. A senior official “would not say whether they involved sexual matters or whether they are thought to include unauthorized disclosures of classified information.”
Bravo, New York Post. Bravo!
All the latest on Petraeus story here:http://hypr.vc/1bsykf
It isn’t “Headless Body in Topless Bar,” but you have to hand it to the Post. Who else would or even could run a cringe-worthy headline like this?
Petraeus’ biographer Paula Broadwell under FBI investigation over access to his email, law enforcement officials say
(Photo: NBC News)
The biographer for resigning CIA Director David Petraeus is under FBI investigation for improperly trying to access his email and possibly gaining access to classified information, law enforcement officials told NBC News on Friday.
Paula Broadwell is the author of Petraeus’ biography, “All In.” She had extensive access to Petraeus in Afghanistan and has given numerous television interviews speaking about him.
