investigation into one of the most notorious night raids conducted by special operations forces in Afghanistan — in which seven civilians were killed, including two pregnant women — determined that all the U.S. soldiers involved had followed the rules of engagement. As a result, the soldiers faced no disciplinary measures, according to hundreds of pages of Defense Departmentdocuments obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act. In the aftermath of the raid, Adm. William McRaven, at the time the commander of the elite Joint Special Operations Command, took responsibility for the operation. The documents made no unredacted mention of JSOC.
Tag: The Intercept
Former U.S. Diplomats Decry the U.S.-Backed Saudi War in Yemen
SAUDI ARABIA AND the other Arab states that form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have been brutally bombing Yemen for more than a year, hoping to drive Houthi rebels out of the capital they overran in 2014 and restore Saudi-backed President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
The United States has forcefully backed the Saudi-led war. In addition tosharing intelligence, the U.S. has sold tens of billions of dollars in munitions to the Saudis since the war began. The kingdom has used U.S.-produced aircraft, laser-guided bombs, and internationally-banned cluster bombs to target and destroy schools, markets, power plants, and a hospital, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths.
Despite all that, U.S. officials have done little to explain this support, have failed to explain the U.S. interests in the campaign, and have made scant mention of the humanitarian toll. In the absence of an official response,The Intercept raised those concerns with half a dozen former senior diplomatic officials, including U.S. ambassadors to Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
https://theintercept.com/2016/05/06/former-u-s-diplomats-decry-the-u-s-backed-saudi-war-in-yemen/
HOW THE CIA WRITES HISTORY
a visit to Georgetown University’s Lauinger Libraryas part of my research on legendary CIA counterspy James Jesus Angleton. I went there to investigate Angleton’s famous mole hunt, one of the least flattering episodes of his eventful career. By the early 1960s, Angleton was convinced the KGB had managed to insert a penetration agent high in the ranks of the CIA.
In researching and writing a biography of Angleton, I constantly confront a conundrum: Was the man utterly brilliant? Or completely nuts?
Angleton is one of America’s archetypal spies. He was the model for Harlot in Harlot’s Ghost, Norman Mailer’s epic of the CIA, a brooding Cold War spirit hovering over a story of corrupted idealism. In Robert De Niro’s cinematic telling of the tale, The Good Shepherd, the Angletonian character was a promising product of the system who loses his way in the moral labyrinth of secret intelligence operations.
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/25/how-the-cia-writes-history/
ECHO PAPA EXPOSED
One of the mechanics soon recognized Echo Papa from news photos — he was Erik Prince, founder of the private security firm Blackwater. Several of the Airborne staff whispered among themselves, astonished that they had been working for America’s best-known mercenary. The secrecy and strange modification requests of the past four months began to make sense. In addition to surveillance and laser-targeting equipment, Airborne had outfitted the plane with bulletproof cockpit windows, an armored engine block, anti-explosive mesh for the fuel tank, and specialized wiring that could control rockets and bombs. The company also installed pods for mounting two high-powered 23 mm machine guns. By this point, the engineers and mechanics were concerned that they had broken several Austrian laws but were advised that everything would be fine as long as they all kept the secret.
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/11/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-drive-to-build-private-air-force/
EVIDENCE MOUNTS THAT U.S. AIRSTRIKE ON ISIS IN LIBYA KILLED SERBIAN DIPLOMATS
The diplomats, who were staffers at the Serbian Embassy in Tripoli, were kidnapped during an attack in early November on a diplomatic convoy near Sabratha, a coastal city 50 miles west of the Libyan capital. Serbia’s ambassador, Oliver Potezica, who was traveling with his wife and two sons in the three-vehicle convoy, escaped unharmed, but Sladjana Stankovic, a 41-year-old communications officer, and Jovica Stepic, a 60-year-old driver, were taken by the attackers.
On February 19, the Pentagon announced it had conducted an airstrike on an ISIS training camp in a farmhouse near Sabratha. The principal target of the attack was Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian national described as a “senior facilitator” for ISIS in Libya and a prime suspect in two deadly attacks in Tunisia last year. The strike, which involved fighter jets and drones, was authorized by President Obama. At the time, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook characterized the attack as “very successful” and made no mention of any civilian casualties.
The day after the attack, Belgrade announced that Stankovic and Stepic had died in the bombing. “Apparently, the Americans were not aware that foreign citizens were being kept there,” Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic told reporters.
FBI Won’t Explain Its Bizarre New Way of Measuring Its Success Fighting Terror
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has quietly developed a new way to measure its success in the war on terror: counting the number of terror threats it has “disrupted” in a year.
But good luck trying to figure out what that number means, how it was derived, or why it doesn’t jibe with any other law enforcement statistic, most notably, the number of terror suspects actually charged or arrested
In the section on “Performance Measures” in the FBI’s latest financial statement, the bureau reports 440 “terror disruptions” in the 12-month period ending on September 30, 2015. That’s compared to 214 in fiscal year 2014. And it’s more than three times the 2015 “target” of 125.
In a vacuum, that would appear to suggest that the FBI’s terror-fighting mission — which sucked up $5.3 billion, or 54 percent of the bureau’s $9.8 billion budget in 2015 — is exceeding expectations.
But that number — 440 — is much higher than the number of arrests reported by the FBI. The Washington Post counted about 60 terror-related arrests in 2015; a study by George Washington University found 71 arrestsrelated to the Islamic State from March 2014 to the end of 2015.
Of those arrests, many were of people trying to travel abroad or trying to help others do so. Many more involved people planning attacks that were essentially imaginary, often goaded by FBI informants.
And according to a document from the Department of Homeland Securityobtained by The Intercept in November, there was only one genuinely “foiled attack” in the United States between January 2014 and September 2015. And that one, involving would-be shooters in Garland, Texas, targeting a cartoon-drawing event inspired by the Prophet Muhammad, was stopped by the local police department.
The FBI didn’t respond to emails asking basic questions such as what qualifies as a disruption, why the number is so much higher than the bureau’s recorded arrests, or how it comes up with its annual “target.”
In a January 2015 Performance Report, Justice Department officials explained that the “targets reflect the number of expected disruptions based on the estimated threat, yet account for potential fluctuations.”
The officials acknowledged that “disruptions can be a challenge to quantify for future years” because the number of potential plots is “outside of FBI control.” Nevertheless, they wrote: “Based on past data trends, coupled with current and emerging threat pictures, the FBI expects to achieve its FY 2015 and FY 2016 targets.”
PENTAGON RELEASES PHOTOS OF DETAINEE ABUSE IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
The Pentagon today released 198 photos related to its investigations into abuse of detainees by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The photos are mainly close-up shots of arms, feet, heads, hands, or joints, sometimes showing bruises or scabs. Faces are redacted with black bars. It’s not always clear where each of the photos was taken, but they come from internal military investigations and have dates ranging from 2003 to 2006. Sometimes the marks on the prisoners’ skin are labeled with tape measuring the size of the wound, or a coin or pen for comparison.
Apple’s Tim Cook Lashes Out at White House Officials for Being Wishy-Washy on Encryption
Apple CEO Tim Cook lashed out at the high-level delegation of Obama administration officials who came calling on tech leaders in San Jose last week, criticizing the White House for a lack of leadership and asking the administration to issue a strong public statement defending the use of unbreakable encryption.
The White House should come out and say “no backdoors,” Cook said. That would mean overruling repeated requests from FBI Director James Comey and other administration officials that tech companies build some sort of special access for law enforcement into otherwise unbreakable encryption. Technologists agree that any such measure could be exploited by others.
But Attorney General Loretta Lynch responded to Cook by speaking of the “balance” necessary between privacy and national security — a balance that continues to be debated within the administration.
EL CHAPO AND THE FOG OF THE DRUG WAR
Some have already begun calling the official account of Guzmán’s arrest last weekend into question. The novelist Don Winslow, who has written two heavily researched, fictionalized accounts of the drug war in Mexico based largely on Guzmán’s real-life rise to power, has repeatedly slammed the official narrative on Twitter, pointing to a Reuters report that found “no signs of bullet holes” on the exterior of the building where Guzmán’s men died. Noting edits in the raid footage and the fact that none of Guzmán’s men were shot on camera, Winslow also tweeted, “Dear President Nieto … Please release the UNEDITED video of the El Chapo ‘raid’ to the American media.”
The extent to which Mexican security forces received help on the ground during last week’s events remains unclear. While there is little question that U.S. intelligence aided in the run-up to the operation, the official line out of Mexico City has credited Mexican security forces with the capture. Yet Reuters, citing a senior Mexican police source and a U.S. source,reported that U.S. marshals and DEA agents were “involved” in Guzmán’s capture.
https://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/el-chapo-and-the-fog-of-the-drug-war/
Politicians Use North Korea H-Bomb Fears to Pitch Wasteful Missile Defense Projects
Republican politicians responded almost reflexively to the North Korean nuclear test on Tuesday by demanding more spending on missile defense programs that have historically proved ineffective at preventing an enemy strike — but are built by companies that have lavished policymakers with campaign cash and political support.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., released a statement calling for the country to “reinvest in missile defense and our military presence in the Pacific.” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., called for Obama to “dramatically enhance trilateral missile defense” and declared that Obama should deploy a Lockheed Martin missile defense system in South Korea. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are among his top donors. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, issued a statement specifically calling for spending on that same program; Lockheed Martin is by far his biggest donor over the course of his congressional career.
https://theintercept.com/2016/01/06/north-korea-missile-waste/
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