Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 17:50:25 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Grassy Knoll redux


all i have to say is wow. wow.i knew these bastards
were corrupt but my god. this is like the x-files.

greg



--- Ali Kazmi <thekazmis2001-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > you make a good point regarding a possible
> > shortcoming of the
> > methodology.  if i could rephrase it, you're
> saying
> > that a simple lie
> > might trump a complext truth.  our pal, Occum, was
> 
> Or a simple lie could trump a simple truth. If the
> data is corrupt, then what.
> 
> > starting from the
> > proposition that the government is lying and has
> > much to hide is
> > always wise.  and i would LOVE to be able to hang
> a
> > huge new scandal
> > on these fuckers.  but i don't want to get ahead
> of
> > the facts.
> 
> Grin. Read the attached New Yorker article. Guess
> out
> of all of us, Mark had it right. hmmm. maybe Shrub
> Sr.
> was on the grassy knoll that day.
> 
> 
> THE GRAY ZONE
> by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
> How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.
> Issue of 2004-05-24
> Posted 2004-05-15
> The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not
> in
> the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists
> but
> in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of
> Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret
> operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for
> Al
> Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq.
> Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American
> intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of
> élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in
> the war on terror.
> 
> According to interviews with several past and
> present
> American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s
> operation, known inside the intelligence community
> by
> several code words, including Copper Green,
> encouraged
> physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi
> prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence
> about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior
> C.I.A.
> official, in confirming the details of this account
> last week, said that the operation stemmed from
> Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of
> America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations
> from
> the C.I.A. 
> 
> Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before
> Congress
> to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law
> from
> explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an
> unclassified session. But he conveyed the message
> that
> he was telling the public all that he knew about the
> story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a
> full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the
> damage it has done, I think, would be a
> misunderstanding.” The senior C.I.A. official, asked
> about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen
> Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said,
> “Some people think you can bullshit anyone.”
> 
> The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks
> after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the
> American bombing of Afghanistan. Almost from the
> start, the Administration’s search for Al Qaeda
> members in the war zone, and its worldwide search
> for
> terrorists, came up against major
> command-and-control
> problems. For example, combat forces that had Al
> Qaeda
> targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance
> before
> firing on them. On October 7th, the night the
> bombing
> began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an
> automobile convoy that, American intelligence
> believed, contained Mullah Muhammad Omar, the
> Taliban
> leader. A lawyer on duty at the United States
> Central
> Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, refused to
> authorize a strike. By the time an attack was
> approved, the target was out of reach. Rumsfeld was
> apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating
> hesitation to attack that was due to political
> correctness. One officer described him to me that
> fall
> as “kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors.” In
> November, the Washington Post reported that, as many
> as ten times since early October, Air Force pilots
> believed they’d had senior Al Qaeda and Taliban
> members in their sights but had been unable to act
> in
> time because of legalistic hurdles. There were
> similar
> problems throughout the world, as American Special
> Forces units seeking to move quickly against
> suspected
> terrorist cells were compelled to get prior approval
> from local American ambassadors and brief their
> superiors in the chain of command.
> 
> Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he
> authorized the establishment of a highly secret
> program that was given blanket advance approval to
> kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate “high
> value” targets in the Bush Administration’s war on
> terror. A special-access program, or sap—subject to
> the Defense Department’s most stringent level of
> security—was set up, with an office in a secure area
> of the Pentagon. The program would recruit
> operatives
> and acquire the necessary equipment, including
> aircraft, and would keep its activities under wraps.
> America’s most successful intelligence operations
> during the Cold War had been saps, including the
> Navy’s submarine penetration of underwater cables
> used
> by the Soviet high command and construction of the
> Air
> Force’s stealth bomber. All the so-called “black”
> programs had one element in common: the Secretary of
> Defense, or his deputy, had to conclude that the
> normal military classification restraints did not
> provide enough security. 
> 
> “Rumsfeld’s goal was to get a capability in place to
> take on a high-value target—a standup group to hit
> quickly,” a former high-level intelligence official
> told me. “He got all the agencies together—the
> C.I.A.
> and the N.S.A.—to get pre-approval in place. Just
> say
> the code word and go.” The operation had
> across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and from
> Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser.
> President Bush was informed of the existence of the
> program, the former intelligence official said. 
> 
> 
> 
> The people assigned to the program worked by the
> book,
> the former intelligence official told me. They
> created
> code words, and recruited, after careful screening,
> highly trained commandos and operatives from
> America’s
> élite forces—Navy seals, the Army’s Delta Force, and
> the C.I.A.’s paramilitary experts. They also asked
> some basic questions: “Do the people working the
> problem have to use aliases? Yes. Do we need dead
> drops for the mail? Yes. No traceability and no
> budget. And some special-access programs are never
> fully briefed to Congress.”
> 
> In theory, the operation enabled the Bush
> Administration to respond immediately to
> time-sensitive intelligence: commandos crossed
> borders
> without visas and could interrogate terrorism
> suspects
> deemed too important for transfer to the military’s
> facilities at Guantánamo, Cuba. They carried out
> instant interrogations—using force if necessary—at
> secret C.I.A. detention centers scattered around the
> world. The intelligence would be relayed to the sap
> command center in the Pentagon in real time, and
> sifted for those pieces of information critical to
> the
> “white,” or overt, world.
> 
> Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials,
> including Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers,
> chairman
> of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were “completely read
> into the program,” the former intelligence official
> said. The goal was to keep the operation protected.
> “We’re not going to read more people than necessary
> into our heart of darkness,” he said. “The rules are
> 
=== message truncated ==

===='the naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct.'
-william s burroughs


	
		
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