Since the September 11 attacks, CIA officials have made it clear that to get the intelligence needed to stop terrorism attacks, U.S. intelligence agencies sometimes have to deal with “bad guys.”

The issue is again in the public eye again after The New York Times reported that the CIA has been regularly paying Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, for at least eight years for services that included helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force. The newspaper report says that Ahmed Wali Karzai is a suspected player in the illegal opium trade, which he denies.

Senator John McCain told CBS “Early Show” yesterday: “I’d heard that rumor before. I think it’s wrong. It’s wrong of the CIA to do it and I’m sure our military commanders there would disagree with it.”

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One former intelligence official, who was not commenting specifically on the Karzai brother situation, said in general it would be worrisome if the debate restarts over whether the CIA should or should not do business with “tainted individuals” when trying to prevent harm to U.S. interests.

“I’ve seen that movie too many times before,” the former official said behind a cloak of  anonymity.

People cannot criticize the CIA on the one hand if it fails to get critical information in societies marked by corruption and, on the other, “express shock and dismay that it might deal with less-than-saintly individuals,” the official said.

What do you think? Is it OK for the CIA to deal with unsavory characters if it means U.S. interests are protected? Or is this a slippery slope?

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Say what?

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales threw folks for another loop on Thursday by saying he doesn’t really support further investigation of CIA prisoner abuses after all.

That was after the earlier loop when he said he did not see a problem with investigating interrogation methods that ran over set boundaries.

He explained in a second interview with the Washington Times that what he really meant in his first interview was that he doesn’t really back the decision last week by current Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a review.

“I don’t support the investigation by the department because this is a matter that has already been reviewed thoroughly and because I believe that another investigation is going to harm our intelligence gathering capabilities and that’s a concern that’s shared by career intelligence officials and so for those reasons I respectfully disagree with the decision,” Gonzales told the newspaper.

(Sounds like the rollercoaster ride is back on the conservative track.)

Just three days ago, Gonzales said on the newspaper’s radio program “America’s Morning News” that the Bush administration set rules and parameters for interrogating terrorism suspects and that Holder appeared to only be focused on the 1 percent of those who went beyond the approved techniques.

And then he added that if interrogators went outside the approved limits, “I think it is legitimate to question and examine that conduct to ensure people are held accountable for their actions, even if it’s action in prosecuting the war on terror.”

Those remarks won praise from human rights groups and caused some head-scratching among conservatives, especially since Gonzales was considered a loyal soldier to former President George W. Bush, serving as the White House counsel and attorney general when the interrogation methods were developed and used.

But Gonzales called the Washington Times back on Thursday to say that he actually did not support Holder’s decision but rather his right to order the investigation, nothing more.

“I’m just saying I would have exercised my discretion in a different manner, given the information I have,” Gonzales said, adding that the matter had already been examined and that no further investigation was warranted.

“It’s no different than when a police officer sees someone perhaps speeding, there is discretion in the law enforcement community, given the circumstances, whether to investigate or to prosecute,” he told the newspaper. “And again this is a matter that has already been looked into thoroughly.”

Sounds like someone got the talking points memo between interviews…

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Gonzales being sworn in during congressional testimony in 2007)

President Barack Obama began his summer vacation by sending a specific message to the White House press corps.

 ”He wants you to relax and have a good time,” Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said as Air Force One carried the first family to the Massachusetts island where they are spending a week-long holiday. “Take some walks on the beaches. Nobody is looking to make any news, so he’s hoping that you guys can enjoy Martha’s Vineyard while we’re there.”

“I asked him if he had a message for the press corps, and that’s what it is,” Burton said.

Right.

No president really leaves the news behind when he takes time off, but Obama’s 7-day break would be a busy news week, even if it ended now — just halfway through.

On Monday, the Obama administration said it was setting up a new group to interrogate terrorism suspects in accordance with established rules, to be overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, rather than the Central Intelligence Agency.  His attorney general, Eric Holder, named a special prosecutor to probe CIA prisoner abuse cases.

On Tuesday, Obama broke the news perhaps most keenly awaited by financial markets. He announced that he would nominate Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The decision on whether Obama would retain the central banker as the economy struggles to recover from recession had been widely expected, but not until later in the year.

And on Wednesday, Obama faced the news of the death of his friend and former U.S. Senate colleague, Ted Kennedy, issuing an overnight statement and making brief remarks at the farm where he is spending his vacation.

The president has squeezed in some relaxation in between his news events. He has played golf twice, gone out to dinner, visited with friends and hit the beach at least once. And his five-book reading list totals more than 2,300 pages.

And at least Obama has an easy answer for critics who said he shouldn’t be taking a break with his healthcare reform plan struggling, a stumbling economy and violence up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He hasn’t.

Photo credits: U.S. President Barack Obama watches his tee shot (Brian Snyder/Reuters) Obama watches as Bernanke speaks (Jason Reed/Reuters) Obama leaves the podium after making a statement to the press following the death of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy (Jason Reed/Reuters)

In the alphabet soup of government national security agencies, the letters CIA seem to be sinking.

The latest blow to the spy agency was the attorney general launching an investigation into interrogation abuses and President Barack Obama has decided that the interrogation of terrorism suspects will be taken out of the hands of the CIA and put into the control of a newly-created group that will be housed at the FBI and report to the White House.

Some intelligence experts say the CIA didn’t want to do the high-value detainee interrogations anyway.

Since the 9-11 attacks eight years ago, the United States is still trying to figure out what  balance of power it wants in intelligence.

The CIA is supposed to dig out secrets to save the United States from national security disasters. In years past it was criticized for being too risk-averse and critics of the investigation into interrogation abuses say it will make the spy agency too risk-averse again.

The DNI (Director of National Intelligence), created after the Sept. 11 attacks, took over the job of overseeing all the intelligence agencies from the CIA director.

This year there was a bureaucratic skirmish between the DNI and the CIA director after the DNI put in writing that there could be times when the DNI’s representative in foreign countries would be someone other than the CIA station chief.

That dispute went to the White House for mediation.

ABCNews reported this week speculation that CIA Director Leon Panetta had threatened to quit, which the agency vigorously denied.  “The ABC story is wrong, inaccurate, bogus, and false,” CIA spokesman George Little says.

Some CIA watchers are betting on a Panetta exit early next year. But then President Barack Obama would have to convince someone to take a job that seems to end up being a political punching bag.

Should the CIA have more oversight, more control over its operations, or is the balance just right?

Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama and Panetta walking out of CIA headquarters)

The Obamas may be on vacation this week, but the news hasn’t taken a break.

The Justice Department is expected to release a report Monday disclosing details of prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the CIA’s inspector general but never before made public. According to published reports, the department has recommended re-opening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases.

A review of the cases threatens to weigh down the Obama administration, which is already involved in deeply partisan battles over healthcare and climate change legislation.

The healthcare reform debate rages on, with Republicans pushing a healthcare bill of rights for seniors and Democrats threatening to use congressional procedure to bypass the need for 60 votes to pass healthcare legislation in the Senate.

Today is also the last day for car buyers to take advantage of the popular “Cash for clunkers,” as the program’s $3 billion budget runs out of gas.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (view of Martha’s Vineyard from Air Force One)

How would you spend the dog days of summer, if you were a former vice president? If you were Dick Cheney, you would be ensconced in your new office above the garage in McLean, Virginia (just down the road from the CIA!), writing your memoir of the administration of George W. Bush. But would you tell all?

The Washington Post indicates Cheney might. In a front-page story that was one of the paper’s most-viewed online, unnamed sources say the former veep was frustrated with Bush, especially in the second term.

When Cheney was asked at an informal meeting to discuss his memoirs if he had any regrets, one meeting participant told the Post: “(Cheney) said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took … The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”

If Cheney does open up about his problems with Bush and others in that administration, that would be unusual. Cheney himself has shown public disapproval of those who leave office and then write about what went on behind the scenes. As former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the Post, “If he goes out and writes a memoir that spills beans about what took place behind closed doors, that would be out of character.”

Since he left office, Cheney has been one of Obama’s most vocal critics, taking aim especially at the current president’s opposition to harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. He is also at the heart of a planned House of Representatives investigation into the concealment of a secret CIA program from Congress. One senator said the program was hidden on orders from Cheney; Republicans see a partisan attack.

Throughout his career, Cheney has remained largely silent on the inner workings of government and policy, but that could be at an end when his memoir comes out. According to the Post, Cheney has said “the statute of limitations has expired” on many of his secrets.

What do you think: should Cheney tell all, and let the chips fall where they may? Or would that be unseemly, impolitic and dangerous?

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing (Washington, November 6, 2008)

A top level U.S.-Pakistani spy meeting in April.

A top Taliban official killed (90 percent certain) in August.

Coincidence?

CIA Director Leon Panetta and Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, held a hush-hush meeting in the Washington area  in April.

The New York Times said the accuracy of American drone strikes against the network of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud improved soon afterward.

Pakistani and U.S. officials believe Mehsud was killed last week, with White House national security adviser Jim Jones putting the likelihood at 90 percent, on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

A U.S. counterterrorism official told Reuters on Monday: “There are strong indications he’s dead. No one is expecting him home for dinner tonight.”

But back to where the latest assault on militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas may have been hatched, the April meeting.

“Panetta and Pasha were in strong agreement on the threats posed by Baitullah Mehsud, someone with American and Pakistani blood on his hands,” a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

“It made sense to everyone that both sides should work even more closely on ways to take him off the battlefield, and to disrupt the terrorist network he led,” the official said.

“Taking this guy out of the equation would deal a serious blow to the Pakistani Taliban and would likely cause the underlying tensions within the group—a collection of extremist factions whose leaders have had some serious disagreements in the past—to rise to the surface,” he said.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (CIA Director Panetta at a luncheon in June)

President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser on Thursday offered a pointed critique of several of former President George W. Bush’s catch phrases on terrorism.

Veteran spy John Brennan, once in line to head the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama and apparently no great fan of the Bush White House, gave a lengthy speech outlining Obama’s strategy for fighting terrorism which attempts to go beyond, using military might to include economic and social policies.

Brennan criticized Bush’s moniker “global war on terror” as playing into the “warped narrative that al Qaeda propagates.” He added that it “plays into the misleading and dangerous notion that the U.S. is somehow in conflict with the rest of the world.”

He also had choice words for Bush regularly describing the terrorism battle as one against “jihadists,” saying that the term has a legitimate use (purifying oneself or waging a holy struggle for a moral goal) and using it “risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.”

Officials from the Obama and Bush administrations have been trading volleys for months about each other’s policies, though for the most part the two presidents have stayed above the fray.

One other phrase that Bush used two months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington was about countries being involved in or distancing themselves from the coalition that went into Afghanistan.

“Over time it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity, that you — either with us or you’re against us in the fight against terror,” Bush said during a news availability with then French President Jacques Chirac.

That drew another rebuke from Brennan, who said that the Obama administration was reaching out instead of issuing sweeping warnings.

“Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism—whether they are with us or against us—the administration is now engaging other countries and peoples across a broader range of areas,” he said.

Brennan did acknowledge that it was eight years ago this very day that he was reading intelligence that warned Osama bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States, “but our government was unable to prevent the worst terrorist attack in American history that would occur on 9/11.”

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- Photo credit: Jonathan Ernst (Brennan walks outside the White House earlier this year)

Someone lied about something at the CIA, that much is clear.

Members of the House Intelligence Committee are not happy about it, that is also clear.

But the actual offense and who committed it was apparently discussed behind closed doors and cannot be revealed publicly which has led to a cryptic dance in statements from members of Congress and the CIA.

It’s worth mentioning that the CIA actually makes a living telling lies overseas to secure secrets for U.S. national security purposes. But the spy agency prides itself on telling truth to power at home.

So let’s see if we can wind our way through what is known so far to see where the pieces fit in the puzzle of shadows.

Six Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee sent CIA Director Leon Panetta a letter dated June 26 that said “recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week. This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods.”

A very tantalizing statement. The letter then asks that Panetta publicly correct his statement of May 15 that it is not CIA’s policy or practice to mislead Congress.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat, issued a statement very late Wednesday night (10:04 p.m. on the BlackBerry) that said he appreciated Panetta’s recent efforts to bring issues to the committee’s attention that “had not previously been conveyed.”

But hold on… Reyes goes on to say that while the CIA has told the truth in the “vast majority of matters,” there were “rare instances” in which “certain officers have not adhered to the high standards held, as a rule, by the CIA with respect to truthfulness in reporting.”

Doesn’t require a whole lot of interpretation: Someone lied

The CIA responded by saying Panetta stands by his May 15 statement that it is not the policy of the spy agency to mislead Congress.

CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta’s actions backed up his words since “it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees.” (Still no word on what the offense was, or who committed it).

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were not going to be left out of this one and issued a statement even later at night. They charge that the Democrats are whacking the CIA to protect their leader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who became embroiled in controversy over when she knew that waterboarding was being used on terrorism suspects.

The Republicans say the “blatantly political nature” of the letters from the Democrats is revealed by the fact that “one was slipped under a staffer’s office door late at night, the other was deliberately hidden from Republican members for two weeks and had to be obtained from the press.”

So that’s what we know. What we don’t know is who lied about what.

Any ideas please send them in.

The daggers are out in the U.S. spy world — for each other.

And the job of breaking up the fight in the ring of shadows has gone to the White House, which is expected to rule soon.

In one corner is the CIA, established by President Truman, when he signed the National Security Act of 1947, to coordinate the country’s intelligence activities.

In the other corner is the DNI, which began operating in 2005 as a coordinator of all intelligence agencies after being created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

And in the middle (not a place anyone would volunteer to be in this battle) is the White House.

Vice President Joe Biden let the cat out of the bag in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” that a settlement of the dispute was close at hand. “I think we’re well on the way to that being solved.”

No word yet on where the White House came out on this one.  Biden would only say “They both won.”

Hmmmmm… wonder how he found the secret to keeping both of them happy when each side appears to have staked out opposing positions.

The crux of it is over the DNI sending out an intelligence directive saying he can choose to appoint a DNI representative in overseas stations who is other than the CIA station chief.

CIA supporters say that would only bring bureaucracy and confusion to overseas posts because it would not be clear to anyone who is in charge, and the system of having the CIA station chief also be the DNI representative is working just fine.

DNI supporters say in some circumstances it may be better to have someone other than the CIA station chief  to handle questions of coordination and resources and strategy.

Winner(s) to be announced in fairly short order.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Lobby of CIA headquarters)