Former Spy With Agenda Operates Own Private C.I.A.

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Duane R. Clarridge parted company with the Central Intelligence Agency more than two decades ago, but from poolside at his home near San Diego, he still runs a network of spies.

Over the past two years, he has fielded operatives in the mountains of Pakistan and the desert badlands of Afghanistan. Since the United States military cut off his funding in May, he has relied on like-minded private donors to pay his agents to continue gathering information about militant fighters, Taliban leaders and the secrets of Kabul’s ruling class.

Hatching schemes that are something of a cross between a Graham Greene novel and Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy,” Mr. Clarridge has sought to discredit Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Kandahar power broker who has long been on the C.I.A. payroll, and planned to set spies on his half brother, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, in hopes of collecting beard trimmings or other DNA samples that might prove Mr. Clarridge’s suspicions that the Afghan leader was a heroin addict, associates say.

Mr. Clarridge, 78, who was indicted on charges of lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal and later pardoned, is described by those who have worked with him as driven by the conviction that Washington is bloated with bureaucrats and lawyers who impede American troops in fighting adversaries and that leaders are overly reliant on mercurial allies.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/world/23clarridge.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[formercia]

3. I knew Dewey when he worked at CIA

He's a pompous asshole. I think the Italians still want to talk to him about the Bologna Train Station bombing that killed a bunch of civilians.

[Sonoman]

5. One more reason to love this DU place.

The levels of experience and knowledge here are truly astounding.

I'll bet if I posted and asked for an explanation of the Theory of Relativity, I would get 20 valid replies.

Of course, I wouldn't be capable of comprehending any of them.

Sonoman

[hootinholler]

8. Damn

The dude is a real piece of work.

Why is it that the right can get 'private' funding for these tactics and the left can't? Or is it more that we don't try?

-Hoot

[starroute]

9. Wow, couldn't he just have retired peacefully?

I first ran into his name in connection with the Niger forgeries, when he was being named as a possible forger because he had both Italian and African connections, as well as being friends with Michael Ledeen.

http://www.counterpunch.org/homeland6.html

To assure that no one else in the CIA would obstruct Reagan's secret policy, Casey in January 1986 conscripted veteran CIA officer Duane Clarridge into the Counter-Terror Network, as its de-facto security chief. ... Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, a man with an extensive background in terror, was well equipped for managing this job. A rabid right wing ideologue, he was chief of the CIA's station in Turkey in the late 1960s and 1970s, when the fascist Grey Wolves went on a terror rampage, bombing, shooting and killing thousands of officials, journalists, students, lawyers, labor organizers, social democrats, left-wing activists and Kurds. Since then, Turkey' military dictatorship has been one of America's strongest allies.

A body-builder and certified member of the Old Boy clique that runs the CIA, Clarridge in August 1976 helped ADDO Ted Shackley recruit Albert Hakim, later a member of Secord's Enterprise, to spy in Iran. (Shackley was soon thereafter forced into retirement due to his association with "rogue elephant" Ed Wilson, the CIA officer who sold tons of explosives to Libya.) Clarridge was serving as the CIA's station chief in Rome when the Pope was shot, and was chief of Latin America Division from 1981 until 1984, when Nicaraguan harbors were mined and the psyops "murder manual" was distributed to the Contras, with his approval. In this capacity Clarridge helped Richard Secord move PLO weapons captured by Israeli forces during their bloody invasion of Lebanon, through Noriega in Panama, to the Contras.

Clarridge, as chief of the Europe Division, next played a pivotal role in the illegal Iran-Contra operation, by providing the back channel, through his station chief in Lisbon, that allowed North and Secord's Enterprise to sell HAWK and TOW missiles to the Iranians, at a huge profit for Secord and his Israeli counterparts, in exchange for the release of several American hostages. The operation, which subverted the U.S. Constitution and the Bolland Amendments passed by Congress, made Ronald Reagan into the world's biggest, but most adorable, liar.


http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq-downing.htm

Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and the quick success of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the INC plan was modified. The new plan was developed with the help of a retired four-star Army general, Wayne Downing , and former CIA officer Duane (Dewey) Clarridge, who have served as unpaid consultants to <Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress>. . . .

The new version included the INC establishing a firebase inside Iraq, from which it would announce the creation of a provisional Iraqi government . The US would begin an intense bombing campaign, as it did in Afghanistan, and airlift thousands of Special Forces troops into southern Iraq. The United States Air Force would systematically bomb key Iraqi command-and-control facilities. Early versions of the plan did not call for a direct military assault on Baghdad, but proposed quick-strike attacks on military units in the north and primarily in the south. If all went as planned, dissent would break out in the Iraqi military, and Saddam Hussein would have to decide whether to send his forces south to attack the Americans or to keep his forces in Baghdad to guard against an invasion from the north. If Saddam's forces counter-attacked, they would be exposed to American air strikes and destroyed. The INC believed that any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq. According to Clarridge, the "idea from the beginning was to encourage defections of Iraqi units. You need to create a nucleus, something for people to defect to. If they could take Basra , it would all be over."

[formercia]

12. He will never retire.

He's one of the boys. It's his life's work as a made Crusader.

[drm604]

2. How can you prove heroin addiction with DNA samples?

It's believable that you might find substances in beard trimmings that would indicate heroin abuse, but I doubt that DNA would have anything to do with it.

[Sonoman]

4. Those trimmings would have to be really long.

If you had a strand of hair a foot long and traces of heroin were evenly evidenced throughout, then you could have probable evidence of addiction (or, as I like to call it, 'regular use').

Sonoman

[DCKit]

6. They meant "hair samples". The reporter is scientifically illiterate.

Every chemical that goes in ends up in the hair.

That said, our own government is doing quite enough to muck up the situation. This guy needs to be locked up for a while.

[Threedifferentones]

15. DNA proves it is his hair...nt

[liberal N proud]

7. He was indicted and now we pay him for intel

All while he pushes his own agenda.

[madmax]

14. and poolside at that.

What a world. :crazy:

[Historic NY]

10. Freelancing....interesting..& were all upset about gossipy diplomatic cables.

[EFerrari]

11. These IranContra guys are like fleas. n/t

[formercia]

13. You never get rid of them.

The answer is not to create them and the environment to thrive in. If it wasn't for Raygun and Poppy, those ops would have never occurred. The funding for the Central America ops didn't come in until 1981. If Carter had been re-elected, I think the vast majority of the covert paramilitary ops would have been de-funded and shut down.