Wikileaks released emails show govt may have exaggerated the importance of killing Anwar a [Archive]

sailingaway

02-08-2013, 09:45 PM

Wikileaks released emails revealing the government may have exaggerated the importance of killing Anwar al-Awlaki

not to mention his 16 year old son, with a separate drone strike.

It's been a big week for national security controversies in Washington.

On Wednesday, a confidential Justice Department memo acquired by NBC made waves for its justification for the extrajudicial killing by a drone of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen suspected of association with al-Qaeda. Thursday, protesters stormed CIA director nominee John Brennan's Senate confirmation, upset over the White House's drone policies.

Less noticed was another related development: Wikileaks this week released another round of E-mails sent by private intelligence company Stratfor, several of which shed light on the quest to capture Awlaki. WhoWhatWhy.com, a nonprofit investigative journalism site which first analyzed the E-mails, says what's most interesting about them is their candor.

In one alleged E-mail sent in September 2010, a top Stratfor official wrote to a colleague that U.S. government agencies were exaggerating the importance of nailing al-Awlaki.

"There's been a ton of media spin and leaks later about Anwar al-Awlaki being the next bin Laden. OBL is becoming old news now," Reva Bhalla, Stratfor's VP of global analysis, wrote to a colleague. "CIA and [Joint Special Operations Command] want a new target to claim success, so there's a concerted campaign going on right now to play up al-Awlaki as the #1 terrorist. Al-Awlaki is much easier to target anyway and they have leads on him, so every agency wants to be the one to say they got him."

A Stratfor spokesman declined to comment on the E-mails but directed Whispers to an earlier statementreleased by the company, which called the publication of the E-mails by Wikileaks a "deplorable, unfortunate—and illegal—breach of privacy."

more at link: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/02/08/new-wikileaks-e-mail-dump-shows-wasted-drone-efforts

HOLLYWOOD

02-08-2013, 10:04 PM

The most disgusting thing about the John Brennan CIA confirmation hearing was that 2 bit Con Artist Dianne Feinstein... Showboating for the Main Stream Media audiences... with the big smear campaign on Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, and every other boogyman for the Old lady of Nazi Fear. No mention of the 1000s of innocent civilians killed, or the real terrorists hired and/or funded by the DHS/CIA/CTC/DIA/Candelstine OPS... infiltrating nations, uprisings, revolutions, etc. No mention of the CIA Drug Running, the ramp-up of global Opium, especially Afghanistan, or the Obama/Holder gun running assault weapons(getting Americans killed in the process), and a slew of other terroristic type of funded operands. It keeps the state of fear and the funding flowing to the "Right Pockets"

Code Pink activists shown the red card at John Brennan Senate hearing
Several activists were sent from the room for their vociferous protests – and it's not the first time they've hit the headlines
guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/), Thursday 7 February 2013 16.31 EST
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/2/7/1360268423435/bd58d12c-02f4-4540-b5da-c565d29e9a0f-460.jpeg
Anti-drone protesters hold signs before the start of the Senate hearing on the

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/07/john-brennan-john-kiriakou-cia

John Brennan and John Kiriakou: how to get ahead in the CIA, and how not to

***Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on CIA waterboarding, goes to prison, while Brennan, who approved it, is set to lead the agency
Thursday 7 February 2013 11.11 EST
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/5/8/1336496350497/John-Brennan-007.jpg
John Brennan, architect of the CIA's drone assassination program, has
been nominated to head the agency. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

John Brennan (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/john-brennan) and John Kiriakou worked together years ago, but their careers have dramatically diverged. Brennan is now on track to head the CIA (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/obama-nomination-john-brennan-cia), while Kiriakou is headed off to prison (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/25/cia-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-prison). Each of their fates is tied to the so-called "war on terror", which under President George W Bush provoked worldwide condemnation.
President Barack Obama rebranded the "war on terror" innocuously as "overseas contingency operations", but, rather than retrench from the odious practices of his predecessor, Obama instead escalated. His promotion of Brennan, and his prosecution of Kiriakou, demonstrate how the recent excesses of US presidential power are not transient aberrations, but the creation of a frightening new normal, where drone strikes, warrantless surveillance, assassination, and indefinite detention are conducted with arrogance and impunity, shielded by secrecy and beyond the reach of law.
John Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/cia) as an analyst and a case officer. In 2002, he led the team that found Abu Zubaydah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Zubaydah), alleged to be a high-ranking member of al-Qaida (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/al-qaida). Kiriakou was the first to publicly confirm the use of waterboarding by the CIA, in a 2007 interview (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3978231) with ABC's Brian Ross. He told Ross:
"At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do … I think I've changed my mind, and I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn't be in the business of doing."

Kiriakou says he found the "enhanced interrogation techniques" immoral, and declined to be trained to use them.
Since the interview, it has become known that Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times, and that he provided no useful information as a result. He remains imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/guantanamo-bay), without charge. Kiriakou will soon start serving his 30-month prison sentence, but not for disclosing anything about waterboarding. He pled guilty to disclosing the name of a former CIA interrogator (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/25/cia-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-prison) to a journalist, with information that the interrogator himself had posted to a publicly available website.
Meanwhile, John Brennan, longtime counterterrorism advisor to Obama (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/obama-nomination-john-brennan-cia), is expected to receive Senate confirmation as the new director of central intelligence. I recently asked Kiriakou what he thought of Brennan:
"I've known John Brennan since 1990. I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it's time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11 regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture (http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/torture).
"I think that President Obama's appointment of John Brennan sends the wrong message to all Americans."

Obama has once already considered Brennan for the top CIA job, back in 2008. Brennan withdrew his nomination then under a hail of criticism (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/john-brennan-dishonesty-cia-director-nomination) for supporting the Bush-era torture policies in his various top-level intelligence positions, including head of the National Counterterrorism Center.
What a difference four years makes. With the killing of Osama bin Laden notched in his belt, Obama seems immune from counterterror criticism. John Brennan is said to manage the notorious "kill list" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/31/unmanned-drones-obama-administration) of people that Obama believes he has the right to kill anytime, anywhere on the planet, as part of his "overseas contingency operations". This includes the killing of US citizens, without any charge, trial, or due process whatsoever.
Drone strikes (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-memo) are one way these assassinations are carried out. US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/30/anwar-al-awlaki-killed-yemen) was killed in Yemen by a drone strike; then, two weeks later, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/), was killed the same way.
I asked Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, what he thought of Brennan. He told me:
"What's happening with drone strikes around the world right now is, in my opinion, as bad a development as many of the things we now condemn so readily, with 20/20 hindsight, in the George W Bush administration. We are creating more enemies than we're killing. We are doing things that violate international law.
"We are even killing American citizens without due process and have an attorney general who has said that due process does not necessarily include the legal process. Those are really scary words."

While Kiriakou goes to prison for revealing a name, the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism is launching a project called "Naming the Dead" (http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/02/04/naming-the-dead-bureau-announces-new-drones-project/), hoping "to identify as many as possible of those killed in US covert drone strikes in Pakistan, whether civilian or militant." The BIJ reports a "minimum 2,629 people who appear to have so far died in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan".
John Brennan should be asked about each of them.
• Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column

© 2013 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate