Harpers: CIA's New Baghdad Station Chief - played key role in early “torture by proxy” transfers

[sabra]

http://harpers.org/meet-the-cias-new-2007-01-28.html

Meet the CIA's New Baghdad Station Chief
Appointee played key role in early “torture by proxy” transfers


Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007. By Ken Silverstein.
Sources

Given the desperate situation in Iraq, the CIA's Baghdad station chief needs to be an exceptional manager who can marshal the agency's forces and work closely with the U.S. armed forces. Unfortunately, several sources have informed me that the CIA has nominated a man who has been widely criticized within the agency and seen as a bad fit for the role. Furthermore, I'm told, the new station chief is closely associated with detainee abuses, especially those involving “extraordinary renditions”—the practice of covertly delivering terrorist suspects to foreign intelligence agencies to be interrogated.

By law, I cannot tell you the name of the new station chief, so I will call him James. He is the son of a well-known and controversial figure who served at the agency during its early years. Sources with whom I spoke say James was stationed in Algeria in the early 1990s, after the military staged a coup to block a sweeping victory by Islamist forces in parliamentary elections (and thereby triggered a bloody civil war that lasted eleven years). During the mid-1990s, James served on an Iraq task force that sought to contain and destabilize Saddam Hussein's regime.

Later, James was posted to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC), where he served as chief of operations, effectively the number four position at the center. He oversaw Alec Station (the unit charged with hunting Osama bin Laden, which was disbanded late last year) as well as the CTC branch that directed renditions. Following the 9/11 attacks, James served as station chief in Kabul and then in Islamabad.

James is close to Cofer Black, the CTC's director from 1999 to 2002 and currently vice-chairman for the private security contractor Blackwater. It was Black who famously said, “After 9/11 the gloves came off,” and several people with whom I spoke said that James shares Black's enthusiasm for tough methods. James was a key advocate for the increased use of renditions after 9/11 and was a central figure in the rendering of Ibn al-Shaikh al-Libi, who was suspected of running a major Al Qaeda training camp. Al-Libi was picked up by Pakistani security forces in late 2001, following the fighting at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, and was turned over to the FBI for questioning. But James wanted the CIA to take charge of al-Libi, and so he pressed his case with then‒CIA director George Tenet, with Black at the CTC, and, through them, with the White House. Despite the strong objections of the head of Bagram Air base and FBI director Robert Mueller, James got his way, and the CIA soon took charge of al-Libi. (Newsweek has an account of the fight between FBI and CIA, which I have confirmed independently.)

[Kagemusha]

1. I wonder if Novak would agree that "by law" he cannot reveal the name.

Just saying it's not as cut and dry as it's being implied because Novak never got charged with a crime for publishing Plame's name.

[leveymg]

2. Since this is just a guessing game, how about James Charles Angleton?

Seems to fit a couple clues provided. Sole surviving son of James Jesus Angleton, who surely fits the description, "a well-known and controversial figure who served at the agency during its early years." The most controversial, in fact. Widely disliked within the Agency. Like father, like son?

Who in his right mind would want to be Chief of Station in Baghdad right now? But, Angleton, Sr., was certainly not afraid of being labelled "eccentric" and pursuing impossible causes - like, tracking down the "monster plot". Like father, like son?

Where's Octafish when we need him?

[bobthedrummer]

3. kick