In his first interview since commanding the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, CIA chief Leon Panetta tells TIME that U.S. officials feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation by leaking word to its targets. Long …
cia
The CIA Gets a Rare Public Victory
As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death moves from exhilarating novelty to accepted reality, one group in the U.S. government will emerge as key to the win: the Central Intelligence Agency. From the earliest identification of a …
After Gates: Obama’s New Security Team
It was never going to be easy for Obama to watch Robert Gates walk out of the Pentagon and back into private life. Over two and a half years, Gates has provided impenetrable political air cover for a series of extremely difficult national security decisions, from the surge in Afghanistan to repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Gates’ …
White House Offers No Comment, or Denial, On Reports Of CIA Support For Libyan Rebels
Reuters Mark Hosenball reported Wednesday that President Obama has authorized secret CIA support for Libyan rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi. The New York Times went further, saying “The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and make contacts with rebels …
In the ArenaUncategorized
The Double Agent
It seems to me that while acres of forest have been sacrificed to detailing the Undiebomber follies, the other terrorist attack during Christmas week–the suicide bomber who took out much of a CIA station at Forward Operating Base Chapman on the Af/Pak border–was a far more significant event. Turns out he was a double agent, operating …
In the ArenaUncategorized
This Just Doesn’t Happen
Eight CIA officers killed by a suicide bomber wearing an Afghan army uniform near Khost? Stunning. The CIA operators, especially those operating in the border areas, are usually, well, covert. This is an amazing breach of security…and the real concern is this one:
The use of an official army uniform could mean any one of three things:
…
The CIA Doesn’t Tell The Truth–Big Deal, Right?
The Central Intelligence Agency recently agreed to pay $3 million to a former Drug Enforcement Agency official, Richard Horn, whose home was wiretapped in Rangoon, Burma, under apparently illegal conditions. That’s one thing–a squabble in a distant country over turf between the CIA and the DEA that led one official to bug another …
Panetta Says CIA Will Be Absolved
From TIME’s Bobby Ghosh afield in Michigan:
Leon Panetta is confident that the DoJ’s new investigation into wrongdoing by CIA’s interrogators will absolve the Agency. “I don’t believe there’s a basis for any kind of action [against the interrogators]… and I’ll be proved right,” Panetta told reporters in Dearborn, MI, …