How Libya Seems to Have Helped the CIA with Rendition of Terrorism Suspects

[Octafish]

Such ingratitude, seeing how the US Government used Moammar Gaddafi as long as We they could use him.

How Libya Seems to Have Helped the CIA with Rendition of Terrorism Suspects

By Abigail Hauslohner / Tripoli Friday, Sept. 02, 2011
Time

A treasure trove of hundreds of thousands of secret documents uncovered by TIME and several other news organizations in the Libyan capital on Friday apparently reveals that the CIA and Britain's MI6 maintained a close — even intimate — relationship with their Libyan counterparts dating as early as 2002, before the CIA had set up a "permanent" mission in Libya (which, according to the documents, began in 2004). United Nations sanctions were lifted in September 2003. U.S. economic sanctions ended in Sept. 20, 2004.

Binders full of correspondence sent by the CIA and MI6 to Libyan intelligence and, often specifically, Moussa Koussa, who was Muammar Gaddafi's longtime right-hand man, reveal that the western intelligence agencies worked closely with the Libyans on the renditions of terrorism suspects to Libya for questioning between 2002 and 2004. (Correspondence before and after those dates were not immediately available.) According to the documents, the CIA appears to have expressed interest in participating in the interrogations on Libyan soil. A 2004 letter to Moussa Koussa from CIA operative "Steve," regards "setting up a permanent CIA presence in Libya." But the documents seem to make clear that the relationship has already existed for some time. "We are also eager to work with you in the questioning of terrorists we recently rendered to your country," Steve writes. "I would like to send to Libya an additional two officers and would appreciate if they could have direct access to question this individual."

SNIP...

Types of Documents

Among the documents found were rendition proposals, rendition schedules, a speech drafted for Gaddafi by MI6 about making the Middle East "a WMD free zone," lists of terrorist suspect interrogation questions requested by the CIA, wire taps of foreign embassies, Libyan telephone numbers intercepted by and provided by the CIA to Libyan authorities, as well as transcripts of terrorism suspect interrogations — including a 400-page file detailing interrogations of current Libyan rebel commander in Tripoli, and former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abdel Hakim al-Khulidi Belhaj.

The CIA and MI6 apparently trusted their Libyan counterparts enough to offer detailed information on Arabs outside of Libya upon request by Libyan authorities — even when the U.S. and British intelligence agencies did not see the specified individuals as threats. In one note dated Feb. 23, 2004, Libya seems to have requested information on a Kuwaiti individual. The CIA doesn't see him as posing any danger, it says. But it provides detailed information on that man's role in Kuwaiti politics anyway.

CONTINUED...

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2091653,00.html

Seems to be the case for a long time. Remember Saddam Hussein?



Does Manuel Noriega ring a bell?



And to think I still wonder, on some days: "Whatever happened to Democracy?"

[G_j]

1. the world is in deep

Ex-warlord becomes kingmaker in Liberia

AP foreign, Thursday October 13 2011 RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

Associated Press= MONROVIA, Liberia (AP)

A rebel leader who videotaped himself drinking Budweiser as his men cut off the ears of the nation's former president has finished third in this week's presidential election, according to partial results issued Thursday, thrusting the notorious ex-warlord into the role of kingmaker.

Incumbent Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace laureate who is the continent's only female president, may have finished first with 41.7 percent of the vote, according to the partial tally issued by the electoral commission that represents ballots from around one-sixth of polling stations. But with 24.5 percent voting for her challenger, she needs No. 3 Prince Johnson's endorsement to win the upcoming runoff.

Despite being named one of the main actors in Liberia's horrific civil war, Johnson remains popular in his home county, which elected him senator and he is in third place with 12.5 percent of the vote.

"I will be happy to be the kingmaker," Johnson told The Associated Press on Thursday. "And where we will put our support will depend on what our supporters say. ... We will not put our votes into someone's hands blindly."



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9893705

[Octafish]

2. Things long ago went from nightmare-ish to satanic. I just hoped it would, you know, stop.

It's disappointing, to say the least, that things haven't changed.

Thank you, G_j for the heads-up on Liberia. I did not know about our nation rekindling an old interest in Liberia.

Prince Johnson must be a guy Pat Robertson can do business with.

I wanted to post something for you about the, eh, advisors in Uganda, helping fight the Lord's Resistance Army, but it seems to have disappeared from my Internets. I will follow up...

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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

[Octafish]

4. PTB will use the same techniques on Americans to hold onto their positions of privilege.

Knowing what we know about COINTELPRO and Dr. King and Total Information Awareness and Karl Rove:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” -- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho)

Thanks for grokking, Distant Observer.

[pampango]

5. Juan Cole: Qaddafi was a CIA Asset

Human Rights Watch found documents in Libya after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi that it passed on to the Wall Street Journal, which is analyzing them. The WSJ reported today that the documents show that Qaddafi developed so warm a relationship with George W. Bush that Bush sent people he had kidnapped (“rendition”) to Libya to be “questioned” by Libya’s goons, and almost certainly to be tortured. The formal paperwork asked Libya to observe human rights, but Bush’s office also sent over a list of specific questions it wanted the Libyan interrogators to ask. Qaddafi also gave permission to the CIA from 2004 to establish a formal presence in the country.

I have been going blue in the face pointing out that Muammar Qaddafi is not a progressive person, and that in fact his regime was in its last decades a helpful partner to the international status quo powers. Now it turns out that Qaddafi was hand in glove with Bush regarding “interrogation” of the prisoners sent him from Washington.

Alexander Cockburn’s outfit has been trying to smear me by suggesting that I had some sort of relationship with the CIA, when all I ever did was give talks in Washington at think tanks to which analysts came to listen; when you speak to the public you speak to all kinds of people. I never was a direct consultant and never had a contract or employment with the agency itself. I spoke to a wide range of USG personnel in those talks in Washington in the Bush years, including the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and even local police officers, and the intelligence analysts were just part of the audience.

In fact, we now know that the Bush administration was upset that I was given a hearing in Washington and was influential with the analysts, and asked the CIA to spy on me and attempt to destroy my reputation. So how delicious is it that those who supported Qaddafi, or opposed practical steps to keep him from slaughtering the protest movement (such as A. Cockburn and his hatchet man John Walsh), were de facto allies of the CIA themselves– and not just allies of the analysts, who try to understand the intelligence, but allies of the guys doing “rendition,” i.e. kidnapping suspects off the street and having them “interrogated.”

http://www.juancole.com/2011/09/qaddafi-was-a-cia-asset.html

[Octafish]

6. The PTB tried to destroy Prof. Cole for telling the truth.

He wanted a job at Yale, but for some reason got turned down.

DUer cal04 brought this to our attention a way back:

Ex-Spy Alleges Effort to Discredit Bush Critic

Source: NY Times

A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

It is not clear whether the White House received any damaging material about Professor Cole or whether the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies ever provided any information or spied on him. Mr. Carle said that a memorandum written by his supervisor included derogatory details about Professor Cole, but that it may have been deleted before reaching the White House. Mr. Carle also said he did not know the origins of that information or who at the White House had requested it.

CONTINUED: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16cole.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

PS: Thank you, pampango, for the report. Dr. Cole and I share some acquaintances through Michigan. They tell me he is tops, in every way that's good.

[chill_wind]

12. K & R. I wish him success in his suit. There was supposed to be a Senate panel probe, too.

Professor Sues for CIA and FBI Files
http://www.mainjustice.com/2011/07/14/suspecting-smear-attempt-professor-sues-for-cia-and-fbi-files/

http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/06/senate-panel-to-probe-whether-cia-targeted-juan-cole%e2%80%8f/

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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

[Octafish]

8. Libyan intel docs show ties to CIA renditions

The Tripoli documents are a treasure trove make clear who our government works for. Smart folk from Tarpley to CBS know it isn't "We the People."

Libyan intel docs show ties to CIA renditions

(CBS/AP) TRIPOLI, Libya — The Bush administrations sent terror suspects to Libya for interrogation, despite that country's reputation for torture, according to documents found in the abandoned office of Libya's spy chief.

The intelligence documents were left behind when Tripoli fell to the rebels. They show a close working relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and Muammar Qaddafi's intelligence service.

The CIA declined to comment on the documents. But it did say the U.S. works with foreign governments in an effort to fight terrorism.

SNIP...

One notable case is that of Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, commander of the anti-Qaddafi rebel force that now controls Tripoli. Belhaj is the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a now-dissolved militant group with links to al Qaeda. Belhaj says he was tortured by CIA agents at a secret prison, then returned to Libya.

CONTINUED...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/03/earlyshow/saturday/main20101324.shtml

Thanks, bobthedrummer, for giving a damn. Going on 10 years on DU now...

[bobthedrummer]

9. "We don't torture..." Richard Bruce Cheney, George Walker Bush, Donald Henry Rumsfeld, Alberto

Gonzales, John Yoo, John Ashcroft, Leon Panetta, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, President Obama and many others have repeated this LIE.

The Torture Archive (The National Security Archive)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/index.htm

RECALL SCOTT WALKER!

[Octafish]

10. CIA Helped Gaddafi Torture Libyan Dissidents, Documents Show

MI6, too.

From the How Fast Things Don't Change Department:

CIA Helped Gaddafi Torture Libyan Dissidents, Documents Show

September 5, 2011 by Joseph Fitsanakis
IntelNews.org

Back in February, when Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi blamed the popular revolt against him on al-Qaeda, he was ridiculed in the international media. But documents discovered at an abandoned Libyan government office complex show that the Libyan rebels’ supreme military commander was abducted in 2004 by the CIA, which suspected him of links to al-Qaeda. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, also known as Abdullah al-Sadiq, was snatched by a CIA team in Malaysia, and secretly transported to Thailand, where he says he was “directly tortured by CIA agents”. The CIA then renditioned him to Libya, where he says he was tortured routinely until his release from prison, in 2010. In the 1980s, Belhaj was a member of the foreign Mujahedeen summoned by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Upon returning to Libya in the early 1990s, he led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an al-Qaeda-inspired armed organization that unsuccessfully sought to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi. Ironically, Belhaj is now the Tripoli-based military commander of the Libyan National Transitional Council, and says that he wants a full apology from the United States and Britain “for the way he was transported to prison in Libya in 2004”. But the former Mujahedeen is one of several terrorism suspects delivered to Libya by Western intelligence agencies in the years after 9/11, according to Libyan government documents discovered by Human Rights Watch (HRW) workers at the office of Libyan former intelligence chief and foreign minister Moussa Koussa. The documents show that Libya’s External Security Organization maintained extremely close relations with German, Canadian, British, and American intelligence services.

SNIP...

Admittedly, the documents reveal a degree of cooperation that is far more extensive than generally supposed, as expressed in countless items of correspondence in which British and American spies address their Libyan counterparts by their first names, and refer to routine visits to each other’s offices. In one case, an unnamed official of MI6, Britain’s equivalent of the CIA, tells Moussa Koussa —a senior official in the regime that orchestrated the Lockerbie bombing— that he feels compelled to “offer you my admiration”.

SNIP...

The documents retrieved from Koussa’s office clearly show that the CIA and MI6 went so far as to provide the Gaddafi regime with intelligence on dissident groups of ex-pat Libyans operating abroad. MI6, in particular, even offered to intercept telecommunications exchanges between anti-Gaddafi dissidents in Britain and elsewhere. It is also revealed in the documents that, after delivering alleged al-Qaeda-linked Libyans to the hands of Gaddafi agents, CIA officers participated in the interrogations deep inside Gaddafi’s complex of secret prisons.

It is these very people, who were systematically tortured by the Libyan dictator, with the approval and support of Western intelligence services, who are now in command of the oil-rich North African country. How will this affect Libya’s relations with the West? The answer to this question depends on which faction within the National Transitional Council will eventually prevail in the months ahead. There is no doubt that the group’s tactical mission —the removal of Muammar al-Gaddafi’s dictatorship— is coming to an end. A discussion will now begin about its long-term strategic vision, which will also shape the country’s foreign policy.

CONTINUED...

http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/01-812/

Well. We have that to look forward to.

[bobthedrummer]

15. The CIA's Charter has been shredded-it's David Petraeus's "Counter Insurgency Intelligence Agency"

and his good and fast buddy from the United States Army, Gen. Martin Dempsey, :eyes: is Leon Panetta's DoD #1 Man in a Uniform.

Obama Nominates Gen. Martin Dempsey As New Joint Chiefs Chairman (by Major Garret, 5-30-11 National Journal)
http://www.nationaljournal.com/obama-nominates-gen-martin-dempsey-as-new-joint-chiefs-chairman-20110530

Almost makes one long for the era of CIVILIAN DCIA/Torturers Porter Goss (BFEE) or George Tenet, heh? Preserve protect and defend from all enemies, domestic and foreign-huh?
:puke:

RECALL SCOTT WALKER!

[bobthedrummer]

16. Robert Parry published this TODAY: Petraeus's CIA Steers Obama on Policy (10-20-11 Consortium News)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/10/20/petraeuss-cia-steers-obamas-on-policy/

RECALL SCOTT WALKER!

[leftstreet]

11. K&R

fair weather friends

Nice links, thanks!

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

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

[malaise]

14. I'm ready to jump off this planet

What the West has done in Libya is worse than all of Gadaffi's atrocities.

[bobthedrummer]

17. The Corporate Off-World Colonies aren't any better malaise

RECALL SCOTT WALKER!

[malaise]

18. True

:hi:

[bobthedrummer]

19. Prime time kick-I see some more posts have "deleted" n/t

:patriot:

:fistbump:

[malaise]

20. Mods are working overtime

:D