Corruption Touched CIA’s Covert Operations

[laststeamtrain]

Source: ProPublica

Corruption Touched CIA’s Covert Operations
by Marcus Stern, ProPublica - February 25, 2009 12:00 am EST

Paramilitary agents for the CIA's super-secret Special Activities Division, or SAD, perform raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to "light up" targets from the ground for air-to-ground missile strikes. This week the government acknowledged for the first time that some of SAD's sensitive air operations were swept up in a fraud conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the CIA and cost the government $40 million.

That information was contained in a series <1> of court <2> filings <3> released in advance of the long-awaited sentencing of Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, the disgraced former No. 3 official at the CIA.

One remarkable affidavit came from a leader of SAD, a branch of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, which handles covert actions. It indicates that Foggo forced SAD to use a shell company set up by defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes to handle its sensitive air operations, even though Wilkes and his company had no experience in clandestine aviation operations.

Wilkes was Foggo's boyhood friend and a co-conspirator in the bribery scandal that erupted around former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who is serving more than eight years in federal prison.

Read more: http://www.propublica.org/article/corruption-touched-cias-covert-operations

---

Foggo's sentencing is scheduled for Thursday before Judge James C. Cacheris in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va.

[acmavm]

1. Yep, corrupt repubics used this country like their own personal piggy

bank. They had the DeLay Syndrome, they truly thought they were the 'Federal Government' and could do anything they wanted without having to worry about repercussions. Well, this takes care of Dusty and Brent.

On to george, dick, condi, colon, ...

[EFerrari]

2. I thought this was from The Onion.

:rofl:

[acmavm]

3. Yeah, these guys were a laugh a minute. And yet another who thinks with

an 'organ' further south than his brain:

<snip>


According to prosecutors and testimony included in the filing, Foggo arranged for his family to remain in Europe at taxpayer expense while he moved to Langley. He then arranged a CIA job for his mistress, identified only by the initials ER. At first the CIA ruled that ER was ineligible for employment because a background check found that she had an improper relationship with a superior in her previous government position and had destroyed evidence being sought by the inspector general of that agency.

Foggo summoned the agency's managing associate general counsel to his office and insisted that the woman's service was vital and she must be hired, without disclosing his romantic relationship with ER, according to the documents. ER was hired, but her supervisor soon found her work unsatisfactory.

"Instead of being receptive to her supervisor's critiques and suggestions, ER made it clear that she had influence with Foggo. Indeed, she did," the prosecutors' sentencing memo states. "Her supervisor had been an attorney with the (CIA's Office of General Counsel) for 20 years, during which time she received numerous performance awards and even the Career Intelligence Medal, which rewards 'exceptional achievements that substantially contributed to the mission of the Agency' over the course of her career. Within months of crossing Foggo's mistress, however, she suffered a humiliating firing by Foggo."

[EFerrari]

4. I meant the headline. Who could ever have imagined corruption touched CIA?

[acmavm]

7. Anyone who knows the history of the CIA (or the FBI ). Drug

smuggling, whatever.

So I am going to take it that you were being sarcastic.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. *sigh*

Some days it just doesn't pay to leave home without your sarcasm thingie.

Some days I amuse myself by posting obviously sardonic comments and waiting to see how many earnest little voices gather to correct and chide me.

[readmoreoften]

5. Me too. Next headline will be "Agent Admits Torture Sites Plagued with Swear Words"

:crazy:

[laststeamtrain]

17. "super-secret Special Activities Division, or SAD" has an Onion-y ring to it. n/t

[barbtries]

6. i think corruption did a hell of a lot more

than touch it.

[JackRiddler]

8. Great news about Foggo but not enough - reading between the lines...

.

(Yeah, I also laughed at the Onion-style headline.)

Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. Here's a criminal within national security operations actually getting a sentence - truncated however thanks to the special privileges granted to CIA criminals (see below). He's being punished in part because the conviction relates to crimes of personal corruption, rather than crimes committed with a policy rationale. And this at SAD, the infamous CIA department that performs renditions: "raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to 'light up' targets from the ground for air-to-ground missile strikes," as the lead paragraph says. But even if prosecutors were empowered only to go after corrupt contract awards in the military-intel realm, it might bring an enormous number of perps to task. Let us hope this is only the first of many prosecutions of the Bush regime principals, but understand that the case shows the many obstacles.

Since the 9/11 terror strikes, SAD's role in the war on terror has become more prominent. Its paramilitary operatives have been used to snatch high-value suspects from the streets of foreign countries for rendition to black sites for interrogation. When carrying out their operations in other countries, the agents typically do not wear uniforms or carry items that connect them to the U.S. government. If they are caught, the government may disavow any connection to them.

We pretend this is a democracy and a republic. Once such a policy is allowed in secret and lavishly pre-funded, notions of civilian control are rendered unviable and abuse is preprogrammed. But let's get back to the personal enrichment.

Foggo's sentencing, scheduled Thursday before Judge James C. Cacheris in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., will be the final sentencing of the ring of co-defendants in the bribery scandal that erupted around Cunningham.

Foggo, 53, was running the CIA on a day-to-day basis until he resigned in 2006 after his name surfaced in the scandal. At first, Foggo sought to have the charges against him dismissed. When that failed, he argued that he would need to disclose classified information to defend himself. This practice, sometimes referred to as graymail, was rejected by the court, but led prosecutors to drop 27 of the 28 charges against him.

Sigh. Who figures Foggo was threatening to expose stuff that was more criminal and dangerous than the machinations for which he will now be briefly jailed?

In the affidavit, in which he is identified as "John Doe # 1," the official says Foggo introduced Wilkes to him and other SAD officials as "someone who had an extensive corporate portfolio that included experience in aviation, and for that reason could assist SAD. Mr. Foggo then left Wilkes with us to discuss our need for cover for our air operations." Within days, Wilkes provided the group with a $132 million proposal that John Doe # 1 described as "unwieldy, cumbersome, and lacking a real understanding of what the Agency needed...If implemented as presented, I believed the proposals would be wasteful, misguided, and contrived."

Hm. If it encumbers the renditions program or other approved barbarisms, should we consider corruption a good thing? Cockburn's often made remarks along these lines...

The documents also argue that Wilkes and Foggo tried to incorporate the military's need for armored vehicles into an array of contracts that involved not only the CIA's sensitive air operations but also water for troops in Iraq. Wilkes' and Foggo's deals -- during which they hid their long, personal friendship from other government officials -- included markups of up to 60 percent on the goods and services they sold the CIA.

I usually say, "the plunder never ends," but today I have to also add, ironically: If you didn't know the upshot would be urgent budget rises to ensure all shortfalls are covered, would it be so wrong to deprive the CIA's SAD program of resources?

The documents released Monday provide extensive details about Foggo's efforts to move his mistress from Europe to Langley when he was promoted in November 2004 from chief of support at an undisclosed European location to the agency's No. 3 post, executive director.

Bushism at its zenith.

According to prosecutors and testimony included in the filing, Foggo arranged for his family to remain in Europe at taxpayer expense while he moved to Langley. He then arranged a CIA job for his mistress, identified only by the initials ER...

SNIP

ER was hired, but her supervisor soon found her work unsatisfactory...

SNIP

"Instead of being receptive to her supervisor's critiques and suggestions, ER made it clear that she had influence with Foggo. Indeed, she did," the prosecutors' sentencing memo states. "Her supervisor had been an attorney with the (CIA's Office of General Counsel) for 20 years, during which time she received numerous performance awards and even the Career Intelligence Medal, which rewards 'exceptional achievements that substantially contributed to the mission of the Agency' over the course of her career. Within months of crossing Foggo's mistress, however, she suffered a humiliating firing by Foggo."

Tangential but the juiciest details again left out: what were the supervisor's "exceptional achievements"? Not for us to know, or probably even most of her fellow CIA personnel.

The government's 24-page reply to Foggo's sentencing memorandum, 31-page sentencing memo and 82-page appendix are full of such previously undisclosed material.

Government's reply to Defendant's sentencing memo (24 p)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/foggo_138_1.pdf

Prosecutors' sentencing memo (31 p)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/foggo_139_1.pdf

Appendix including affidavits and exhibits (81 p)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/foggo_139_2.pdf

Downloaded but won't have a chance to read today - hope someone does!

.

[Jackpine Radical]

11. I'd advocate that the Ship of State get all these barnacles like Foggo

scraped off, but I know that the oak of the hull is pretty badly eaten away, so all we have left is the barnacles.

If it weren't for the dysfunction, this government wouldn't function at all after the decades of Republican misrule and thefts of the fittings.

[JackRiddler]

16. FOGGO IS A START, BUT:

Unfortunately, the court cut a deal that serves to disguise more systemic atrocities. As I read it, he was caught unmistakably on the take for personal gain, lacking higher clearance, and also hated at the CIA as deputy to the unpopular Goss. He saved himself by graymail, threatening both his CIA colleagues and the prosecution, which incredibly yielded and offered a radically reduced sentence in exchange for his not testifying. Real justice requires a tribunal that indeed would have reduced his sentence, but for his testimony against the rest of his crew at CIA and in the Bush regime, and not as a trade for his protection of a criminal conspiracy, in no less than the name of "national security."

.

Foggo is the rot in the "ship of state."

The biggest problem is not in the rot, which is symptomatic, but in the functions and destinations of the "ship of state," which in this civilization and country I believe is described best by concepts like: capital, empire, class war, corporatism, and covert power (deep state or parapolitics). All of which are to varying degrees bipartisan consensus. As well as the usually unspeakable traditions of patriarchy and racism (the systems and legacy, not the personal prejudices). Where the Democrats have the better record in the modern era, no doubt!

.

[Javaman]

9. Read, "Legacy of Ashes", By Weiner.

it spells out in very clear terms how completely inept the CIA has always been.

[MinM]

14. A Timeline of CIA Atrocities... By Steve Kangas

how completely inept the CIA has always been ? :shrug:

That's certainly the myth that Mr. Weiner and the CIA like to perpetuate. But which has been debunked by anyone looking at their real history:

Tim Weiner's "history" of the CIA

I just finished listening on C-SPAN to Tim Weiner being interviewed by David Ignatius re his new book on the CIA. Weiner is remarkably misleading about the CIA's record, especially in relation to the Kennedys. This is not surprising, however, since Weiner has been a favored reporter of the CIA's for years now.

Weiner's point he most wants to convey is that -- far from being the "rogue elephant" that Frank Church called it -- the CIA has always been ultraresponsive to Presidents. But that is provable untrue.

I'm shocked he would open with a quote from Richard Helms, and then return to him on the subject of Kennedy's assassination, given Helms' willingness to lie under oath (he was charged with perjury for denying the CIA's role in the Chilean operations).

Let's look at how "responsive" the CIA has been to the president over the years:

Truman wanted an information agency. The CIA essentially blackmailed itself into existence (see CIA officer Miles Copeland's veiled account of this in his book "The Real CIA.") So right off the bat, the CIA was doing something Truman didn't want. After Kennedy's assassination, Truman wrote a letter that was published in the Washington Post, in which he stated:

I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue-and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda ... the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people. ...

The CIA was clearly not created to serve only the President. It was created to serve the interests of Wall Street, and if you follow their pattern of covert action around the globe, you'll see who benefitted. The Guatemalan coup in 1954 benefitted the United Fruit Company.

The Iranian coup in the early fifties benefitted the oil barons (access to oil was listed as the first explicit goal of the coup in the summary of that operation.) The CIA was created from the OSS, itself a creation not of the government so much as of Wall Street. The top officers all came from children of lawyers, bankers, and other money men. The OSS's nickname was "Oh So Social" due to its high profile roster.

The CIA has often run an agenda counter to what the president wished. This is easy to document in the Kennedy administration - they were at odds at nearly every turn. But it wasn't only the Kennedy adminstration that had difficulty with the CIA.

Under the Eisenhower administration, for example, Eisenhower was set to meet with Khrushchev to discuss a mutual reduction in arms. The CIA didn't want to see any such accommodation. So in express defiance of Eisenhower's request that no such flights be made, the CIA flew the U2 over the Soviet Union. As the "official" story goes, the Soviets shot it down. As people close to those events have said in print and elsewhere, there's good evidence that the flight was deliberately sabotaged by the CIA so that it would crash over the Soviet Union, preventing a peace treaty. Even CIA director Allen Dulles stated the plane was not shot down. As Dulles testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 31, 1960:

"We believe that it was not shot down at its operating altitude of around 70,000 feet by the Russians. We believe that it was initially forced down to a much lower altitude by some as yet undetermined mechanical malfunction." ? "It is obvious to us that the plane was not hit. If the plane had been hit by a ground-to-air missile, in our belief, it would have disintegrated."

While Eisenhower later claimed responsibility for the overflight, the evidence is strong that he was surprised, and upset, that the CIA would risk upsetting the all-important peace conference. I believe that incident is part of the reason Eisenhower gave us that famous warning as he prepared to leave office...

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/80
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/172">
A Timeline of CIA Atrocities... By Steve Kangas

[libodem]

12. Touched?

I'd say at least squeezed to out right molested.

[tomp]

13. cia=corrupt. nt

[Solly Mack]

15. Touched nothing. Bedded and wedded...it's in the gene pool

[bitchkitty]

18. A corrupt CIA? Oooooo, what a surprise! n/t

[libodem]

19. I think it should be completely disbanded

and every spook that was under the Bush Bunch should get walking papers. Then a new covert agency, with hand picked agents and assignments, ought to be started. Those Frank Church separation of spy powers had meaning back in the day. There is a reason for those agencies not to be in each others backyard. And spying and listening to American conversations foreign and domestic is the beginning of the end of Democracy as we knew it.

[PufPuf23]

20. In 2009 IMHO we are more at risk from DoD Intelligence ...

operations than the CIA.

Socialism R name is military.

[formercia]

21. My old unit.

I told them they were out of their fucking minds.