Italian Warrants Have Been Issued For CIA Officer Who BUSHCO Wants To Appoint As CIA Chief In NYC

[kpete]

BUSHCO's CIA-Does WHATEVER It Wants

The Pointy End of a Dull Spear
By: emptywheel Wednesday February 20, 2008 5:31 am

The NYT has a fascinating profile of Jose Rodriguez--the guy who ordered the destruction of the CIA torture tapes. This anecdote conveys the kind of guy we're dealing with:

Not long after the tapes were destroyed, Mr. Goss held a management retreat for top agency officials meant in part to soothe tensions among the agency’s dueling branches. There the deputy director for intelligence — the head of analysis — complained openly about the arrogance of the clandestine branch and said undercover officers thought they could get away with anything.

That was too much for Mr. Rodriguez. He stood up in the room, according to one participant in the meeting, and shouted in coarse language that the analysis chief should “wake up and smell the coffee,” because undercover officers were at the “pointy end of the spear.”

The clandestine branch, Mr. Rodriguez was making it clear, would do what it wanted.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/washington/20intel.html?ex=1361163600&en=47de6d9c58566755&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

While the profile doesn't offer much new in the story of the torture tapes (though it does provide a more compelling case that Goss couldn't control Rodriguez than I've previously seen), I'm most interested that Rodriguez apparently prevented any accountability for those who conducted the pathetically incompetent kidnapping of Abu Omar.

It would become known inside the Central Intelligence Agency as “the Italian job,” a snide movie reference to the bungling performance of an agency team that snatched a radical Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003 and flew him to Egypt — a case that led to criminal charges in Italy against 26 Americans.

Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director in 2005 when embarrassing news reports about the operation broke, asked the agency’s independent inspector general to start a review of amateurish tradecraft in the case, like operatives staying in five-star hotels and using traceable credit cards and cellphones.

But Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., now the central figure in a controversy over destroyed C.I.A. interrogation tapes, fought back. A blunt-spoken Puerto Rico native and former head of the agency’s Latin America division, he had been selected by Mr. Goss months earlier to head the agency’s troubled clandestine branch. Mr. Rodriguez told his boss that no inspector general review would be necessary — his service would investigate itself.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30275-2005Mar12.html

The incident is significant, first of all, because of the likelihood that the IG report finding the interrogation methods used by the CIA constituted cruel and inhuman treatment--possibly illegal. This incident suggests Rodriguez refused to allow the IG to do its job--oversee and correct problems in the CIA. Which, in turn, increases the already large chance that the IG report is central to the reasons for the destruction of the torture tapes.

But the incident is interesting for another reason. By preventing any real evaluation of the Italian job, Rodriguez may have ensured that those responsible remain in significant positions within the CIA. You might be interested in this news, particularly if you're in NY:

Milan Spy Boss on Rebound: CIA officer Jeff Castelli, mastermind of the botched February 2003 “extreme rendition” of an al Qaeda operative in Milan that ended in the indictment of 26 Americans, all but one CIA employees, might be on the rebound. According to a reliable intelligence source who demanded anonymity, Castelli was reprimanded by the CIA’s Accountability Board last year for the much-ridiculed caper and dispatched to the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. But Castelli is now a candidate to be the CIA’s next station chief in New York — an astounding comeback, especially considering that Italy is planning a trial in absentia of the CIA employees implicated in the kidnapping, perhaps as early as this spring. “Well, they can’t send him overseas,” said the source, “because of the Milan thing.” Italian warrants have been issued for Castelli and the others, who would risk arrest if they tried to enter any European Union country, or many other states.http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002672601

more at:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/20/the-pointy-end-of-a-dull-spear/#more-1832

[peacetalksforall]

1. I don't know where you're going with the subject line, but I see a

different structure though I don't have any pieces to fill it in with to defend the picture. The structure focuses around this - something happened between Bushco, as you call it, and the CIA. Bushco has been trying to IMO replace the CIA with the DIA as the brass at the Pentagon generally tend and (past tense) tended to partner more easily with WH residents - specifically Cheney the Planner. They, Cheney and the Pentagon, seem and seemed to be a little at war with the CIA. It appears Blackwater, who is also in these triangles of activism, also follows (or not) the Pentagon while reporting to the State Dept (who has their own intelligence people). But, not even Cheney can close down or phase out the CIA - Congress is involved? The backlash would be disastrous to Bushco. Yes, there are internal wars going on within the planning, setting up, acting, hiding, and defending sides of things. Just learning a few things about Grossman, if true, gives plenty of perspective.

They have mired us d o w n d o w n d o w n. We are a sick country. Very sick.

[L. Coyote]

2. BUSH SR is next: Italy: Judge issues 140 arrest warrants in "Plan Condor" case.

Italian justice is no longer a pawn of the US.
Read as "We can't kill Italians any more!"

Imagine that, having to obey laws overseas. No more political murders!!

Damn, that's just plain too inconvenient to a fascist state!

=============
Italy: Judge issues 140 arrest warrants in "Plan Condor" case. Bush NOT YET indicted.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2528536&mesg_id=2528536

George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135

[sarcasmo]

3. Bookmarked, and Kicked. The Dictatorship is starting to unravel.

[L. Coyote]

4. TPM: Today's Must Read

Today's Must Read
By Paul Kiel - February 20, 2008, 9:47AM - http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_280.php


You remember former CIA official Jose Rodriguez. He's the guy at the center of the criminal investigation into the destruction of the CIA's torture tapes. The videotapes, you'll remember, documented interrogation techniques authorized by Justice Department lawyers and the White House on two detainees. CIA interrogators (and possibly contractors) waterboarded the two detainees and possibly exposed them to a range of other techniques, such as inducing hypothermia. The investigation is not focusing on the use of those techniques, though. The focus is the destruction of the tapes.

But back to Rodriguez. The line from White House and senior CIA officials has been that they repeatedly advised against destroying the tapes. Rodriguez (via his lawyer) says that advice was never unequivocal. The New York Times has a story today exploring that breach between Rodriguez, who ran the CIA's clandestine service, and the leadership.

The story goes something like this: Porter Goss, then the director of the CIA, was viewed as something of a buffoon by the career officers. They didn't like the crew he brought in (like his #3 Dusty Foggo, who was subsequently indicted for taking bribes from Brent Wilkes), and they didn't like the way he ran the place. So Rodriguez pretty much ran things the way he thought they ought to be run in his division. And when the issue of whether to destroy those tapes arose again in late 2005, he did what he thought was right. He saw the tapes as "a sort of time bomb that, if leaked, threatened irreparable damage to the United States’ image in the Muslim world, his friends say, and posed physical and legal risks to C.I.A. officers on them."

And Goss... did nothing. The Times reports that there is "no record of any ..............................