Claims by ex-CIA contractor shake Pakistan; Explosive allegations by Raymond Davis raise questions about Pakistan’s judicial, intelligence services, says analystSeptember 22, 2017
Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl
A memoir by a former CIA operative that details the broad daylight killing of two Pakistanis and the alleged government role in spiriting him away from murder charges is stirring outrage in this politically polarized country.
The startling revelations by Raymond Davis have proven to be a major embarrassment for many in the government and intelligence communities who, according to the former contractor, worked to secure his release and quell extended political turbulence between Washington and Islamabad.
Davis was contracted by the CIA and stationed in Pakistan when he fatally shot two Pakistanis in January 2011 — triggering a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
He also killed a third person in a hit-and-run before being arrested.
Two of Davis’ victims, Mohammad Faheem and Faizan Haider, were reportedly agents of Pakistan’s top intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who were pursuing him. There has been no official confirmation regarding their alleged association with the spy agency.
Following a flurry of backdoor efforts involving top Pakistani and U.S. officials, Davis, facing murder charges, was released in March 2011 after the victims’ families were paid a collective “compensation” sum of $2.4 million after being “coerced” by Pakistani officials, according to Davis.
In The Contractor: How I Landed in a Pakistani Prison and Ignited a Diplomatic Crisis, which recently hit bookstores, Davis provides insight into his experience in Pakistan, and especially the series of events that placed him at the center of a diplomatic controversy.
Official help for release claimed
Davis explosively claims that Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership at the time — including President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, Punjab’s Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and ISI head Gen. Shuja Pasha — were “on board,” and “helpful” in arranging his release from prison by exploiting a feature of Islamic law that permits paying blood money to victims’ families.
Neither Pasha nor Leon Panetta — who led the CIA from February 2009 to June 2011 — could not be reached for comment.
Adding fuel to the fire, Qamar Zaman Kaira, former information minister and current Punjab head of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the ruling party at time of Davis’ arrest and release, told local Geo TV on Saturday that the U.S. had used its influence over the government and army for Davis’ release. He claimed that the intelligence agencies had pressured the victims’ families to accept the blood money, which was provided by the federal government.
For his release, Davis gives special credit to Pakistani intelligence.
“ISI … orchestrated my exit. Several guards led me out of the courtroom through a back entrance,” he writes about the last hearing in the triple-murder case against him in Lahore.
“One of the men opened the door, stepped out into a courtyard, and scanned the horizon … once he’d cleared the area, I was waved through door and directed to the SUV idling in the courtyard,” he says in the final chapter of his tell-all memoir.
Davis writes that just a few political parties, particularly Jamat-e-Islami (JI) — the country’s main Islamic party — were opposed to his release, and had arranged huge protests demanding his conviction and execution.
The book’s cover shows a photo of JI demonstrators carrying a banner with the words “HANG RAYMOND DAVIS” emblazoned in red.
Government denial
The government has rejected Davis’ sensational claims as nothing more than “fiction”.
“What should I comment on that,” Mussadiq Malik, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, told Anadolu Agency.
“He has framed each and every institution of Pakistan, whether it is the government, judiciary, army or intelligence agencies without any cogent proof. I don’t think this book deserves even a contradiction,” he said.
‘Shameful’
Despite the denials, opposition parties and the media have reacted sharply to Davis’ claims and demanded an inquiry and action against those who allegedly brokered his release.
“A shameful account of how our top political and military leadership collaborated to let a cold-blooded killer, responsible for four deaths, go scot-free,” tweeted Imran Khan, a former cricket hero and head of the Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan’s second-largest opposition party. (The fourth death he refers to may be the widow of Davis victim Faizan Haider, who committed suicide, fearing justice would not be done.)
“This book should be read by Pakistanis to understand why we are treated with so little respect internationally,” he added.
“This is one of the most shameful chapters in Pakistan’s history. It shows that Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership is so much under U.S. influence that they even dare to exploit Sharia law to appease America,” Jamat-e-Islami spokesman Amir-ul-Azeem told Anadolu Agency in a telephone interview.
“We already knew the whole story, but Raymond Davis has formally confirmed that,” he added.
Opposition Pakistan Peoples Party leader Khursheed Shah — whose former chairman, former President Asif Zardari, and vice chairman, Yousaf Raza Gilani, Davis implicates in his release — has called for an inquiry.
“Helping an American spy is tantamount to treachery. Stern action should be taken against all those who were instrumental in his release,” Shah was quoted as saying by Pakistani daily Dunya.
Social media outrage
Heated debate over Davis’ allegations has not only erupted in Pakistan’s electronic and print media but led hundreds of thousands of social media users to express their anger.
“This is one of the most disgraceful moment(s) in Pakistan history and I feel ashamed of this decision he should have been charged for murder and shame on the victims of the family this case let our nation down. Our blood cannot be replaced with money,” one user wrote.
In a July 1 editorial, right-wing Urdu daily Nawa-I-Waqt raised the question if convicted Indian spy Kalbushan Jhadav — who was sentenced to death this April — would be released in the same manner.
Jadhav, an Indian naval officer, was arrested in the southwestern Balochistan province last year for orchestrating terrorist activities across Pakistan.
Dr. Tauseef Ahmed Khan, a Karachi-based political analyst, told Anadolu Agency that he believes Davis’ disclosures raise serious questions about Pakistan’s judicial system and the inner working of its intelligence agencies.
“If his claim that the victims’ families were forced to take blood money is true, then it is a shame for all of us, especially the judicial system,” he said.
02.07.2017
By Aamir Latif
KARACHI, Pakistan
Find this story at 2 July 2017
© Anadolu Agency 2017
CIA contractor who shot two Pakistani robbers then feared death at the hands of mob breaks silence to tell of real-life Homeland plot which became diplomatic crisisSeptember 22, 2017
Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl
CIA contractor Raymond Davis was held captive in Lahore, Pakistan after killing Faizan Haider, 22, and Faheem Shamshad, 26, in self-defense January 2011
The former security contractor had been driving in the city area when two men in a motorbike brandished a gun at him and in fear he fired back
He was followed an angry mob of locals, thje window in his car broke, and he was only saved when two Pakistani soldiers came to his help – but then arrested him
He was kept in Pakistan’s Kot Lahkpat jail – which is notorious for its brutal regime, murders, and beatings of prisoners
Davis was eventually released from prison in March 2011 in a controversial $2.4million blood-money deal – known as Diya under Islamic law
Incident inspired start of Homelands fourth series
Now he breaks his silence in exclusive DailyMail.com interview
A CIA contractor, a double killing in a hail of bullets on a crowded Pakistani street and a diplomatic crisis that set US-Pakistan relations back years.
It could easily be the plot line of Homeland – and in fact helped inspire a key incident in the CIA spy drama.
But for Raymond Davis – who shot two men in self-defense on a busy Lahore street on January 25, 2011 – it was a dramatic episode in his life that he’s not likely to forget.
Now he is breaking his silence at last in an exclusive DailyMail.com interview.
Speaking for the first time about the incident that made worldwide headlines and sparked a diplomatic nightmare for the U.S., Davis recounts his ‘hell’ of being jailed and ‘tortured’ in a Lahore prison for 49 days and how he was accused of being a spy and interrogated by agents from Pakistan’s feared Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
He recalls in detail the harrowing moment he feared being stoned to death.
And in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com Davis also discusses the emotional toll his incarceration took revealing that, at his lowest point, he believed his country had abandoned him, leaving him to rot in a Pakistani hell-hole jail for the rest of his days.
Davis said: ‘I shot two men in self-defense, was almost dragged out of a car and beaten by an angry crowd, I was thrown in prison for 49 days and accused of being a CIA spy – it was as close to hell as I ever want to get.
‘I had lost my liberty and there were times I thought I’d never see my son again.’
I shot two men in self-defense, was almost dragged out of a car and beaten by an angry crowd, I was thrown in prison for 49 days and accused of being a CIA spy – it was as close to hell as I ever want to get
Davis was eventually released from prison in March, 2011 in a controversial $2.4million blood-money deal – known as Diya under Islamic law – and he believes that if it weren’t for the US Government’s secret plan to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan just months later he may not have made it home.
That Tuesday in January was like any other for Davis.
The former special forces soldier, who was working as a security contractor for the US Consulate in Lahore, woke up, ate hard boiled eggs and drank orange juice before heading out of the secure consulate compound on to the streets of Pakistan’s second most populous city.
The sun was out and the streets of Lahore – a city of some six million people – were as bustling as usual.
Davis, whose call sign was Jinx, wanted to recce a route for a journey he needed to take someone on – a routine security job.
But before he set off he made a decision he now lives to regret.
‘It was a normal, quiet day so I asked for a vehicle,’ he recalls. ‘But all of the hard cars, the armored vehicles that we had, were already taken so ‘I chose to take a soft skin car, just a normal car we drive every day.’
He says it wasn’t a decision he took lightly but Davis had no choice but to drive the white Honda Civic made available to him that morning.
‘I remember I was driving and there was nothing out of the ordinary,’ says Davis. ‘Heading up the road there was a song that came on the radio, it was Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’.
‘It was very funny because she gets to the part where she says, ‘I Kissed a Girl’, but a man’s voice cuts in and says ‘person’ instead of girl. I always got a chuckle out of that every time I heard it.
‘The traffic was bumper to bumper, all the lanes were full, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, everyone is riding in between lanes and racing as they take off from a red light, it is a sight to see.’
But things quickly turned sour for Davis, who says he was always on ‘yellow alert’ while in Pakistan.
‘I’m approaching an intersection in traffic,’ he recalls.
‘I’m sitting there, checking my mirrors, making sure everything is alright, when in front of me I saw a gun come out and begin to rack.’
As Davis waited in traffic at the junction known as Mozang Chowk, two men on a motorbike pulled up in front of him.
The pillion passenger removed a pistol from under his shirt and ‘racked’ the weapon – the action taken to put the first round in the chamber.
Davis says what happened next went down in the blink of an eye.
His Special Forces marksman training kicked in and he removed his own gun from his holster, a brand new semi-automatic 9mm Glock 17 pistol, and opened fire on the two men.
‘It happens very, very quickly,’ he explains. ‘The moment you see threat, the adrenaline dump hits, everything happens in microseconds and you go from there, there’s no time to second guess and make decisions. It’s a ground view perspective.’
Davis fired ten shots in rapid succession hitting the men in the head, chest and legs with expert precision – they both died.
Davis, who has cropped gray hair, says he has no regrets.
He said his training and experience led him to believe that the men posed a threat to his life and he acted in self-defense.
‘In war zones everyone has a gun, but (in this instance) the gun goes from a concealed position to an open position, this happens in microseconds.
‘The next actions you see is, he charges the gun, that tells me he knows how to use it and there’s an intent there, why would you rack a gun on someone if you are not going to use it?
‘The gun is racked and it starts to be aimed. You could say he didn’t have ammunition, he was just trying to scare you, but in that moment you don’t have the luxury to second guess, you have to make a choice, make a decision.’
Davis says there were multiple threats in Pakistan during that time from various terror groups keen to kill westerners, especially US Government targets.
‘Western male, usually has tattoos, well-built, generally wears sunglasses or a ball cap. They automatically assume you are contractor and if they can kill or capture you, there’s a bounty for that,’ he says.
‘Do I feel I acted appropriately given the situation? Absolutely.
‘I don’t regret pulling my gun and defending myself. At the end of the day I had a two-and-a-half year old son at the time, I’m going to work, then I’m coming home to see him.’
In the moments after the shooting the situation escalated rapidly.
Davis got out of his car to check for any further threats before putting his gun away.
But crowds of people began to gather around him – and the air thickened with tension.
HOW BLOOD-MONEY WORKS
Raymond Davis was eventually released from prison in March 2011 in a controversial $2.4million blood-money deal – known as Diya under Islamic law.
The law requires the assailant to compensate the family of victims in cases of murder or property damage
The fines completely protect the offender, and his family, from the vengeance of the injured family.
The Islamic term for the money is a Qisa
The payment goes hand in hand with the idea of ‘blood feuds’ and honor killings, where aggrieved families descend into a spiral of revenge attacks in order to uphold family honor
It was initially believed the money had come from the U.S., but thenSecretary of State Hillary Clinton said America had not paid the grieving families
Instead, the U.S. agreed to reimburse Pakistan after Pakistani officials urged the victims’ families to accept cash and drop the case
Davis got back in his car but in doing so the vehicle accidentally rolled forward because he hadn’t pulled the parking brake.
He said: ‘That’s when they thought I was leaving and they started beating on the car and trying to pull me out,’ Davis recalls. ‘Up until that point there was no mob, but after the car rolled they busted out the window and started pulling me out. I decided I had to leave.’
Davis began moving off through the traffic but he kept getting held up – and the mob followed.
‘There was about 200-300 people there and a motorcyclist came up to my car and started yelling, this whipped the crowd up into a frenzy, it became very intense, very quickly.’
Members of the crowd started reaching into the car trying to open the doors and pull Davis out – he frantically fought them off, kicking and punching every arm that reached in.
It wasn’t until a local police officer and two Punjabi Rangers arrived and got into Davis’ car.
They took over and managed to guide him away from the crowd.
‘At that point I thought we’re going to spend some time at the police station, we’ll call the Regional Security Officer and then I’ll be able to leave,’ he said.
‘But it drastically changed because they didn’t call the consulate or get the RSO there. It was just a barrage of questions and very chaotic.’
Rather than let Davis make contact with consulate officials the police decided to move him to the Lahore military police training college in a bid to keep him out of U.S. control.
It was the beginning of a dark period for Davis – 49 days of confinement that would test his character and resolve.
Once at the training college Davis was confined in a bunk room and questioned some more by police before being taken to court the next morning, where he had no lawyer or representation.
Pakistani authorities wanted to charge Davis with murder, but the Obama administration insisted he was an ‘administrative and technical official’ attached to its Lahore consulate and had diplomatic immunity.
What followed was a complex battle of wills between the Pakistan and US governments during which Davis became a high value political pawn.
Pakistani prosecutors accused Davis of excessive force, saying he fired 10 shots and jumped out of his car to shoot one man twice in the back as he fled. The man’s body was found 30 feet from his motorbike, it was claimed.
The two men Davis killed were later identified as Faizan Haider, 22 and Faheem Shamshad (also known as Muhammad Faheem), aged 26. Both men had been arrested more than 50 times in connection with street robberies.
To add to the mess a third entirely innocent man, motorcycle rider Ibad-ur-Rehman, was crushed by an American Toyota Land Cruiser as it rushed to Davis’s aid.
The two men in it were contractor colleagues Davis had summoned to help him.
After the accident, the vehicle fled the scene and headed without stopping to the US Consulate, jettisoning items outside Faletti’s Hotel in the city.
Police say they included four ammunition magazines containing 100 bullets, various battery cells, a baton, scissors, a pair of gloves, a compass with knife, a black colored mask/blindfold, and a piece of cloth bearing the American flag.
Pakistani officials believed the men were CIA and the U.S. refused their demands to interrogate them, saying they had already left the country.
It also later transpired that the grieving widow of one of the men Davis shot had taken her own life.
With four deaths linked to the incident, the pressure on both countries mounted.
Davis became subject to widespread speculation in Pakistani media, with reports that he was a CIA spy on a mission, that he was somehow involved with America’s controversial drone program or that he was an assassin and the two men were his intended targets.
Such was the suspicion surrounding Davis’ role in Pakistan that he was interrogated several times by agents of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s equivalent of the CIA.
Davis’ background and training helped him get through the interrogations but his history also led many to come up with wild conclusions.
Born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, Davis spent ten years in the US Army, first as an infantryman before joining the special forces for the last six.
But after sustaining an injury to his right lung during special forces training that got worse as the years past, he was discharged from the Army in 2003 before joining the private sector.
‘I wanted to do more for the war on terror so I joined up as a contractor, a group of guys with a special skill set that’s needed in war zones,’ he explains.
Davis worked as a private contractor providing operational security in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
His work took him to Lahore in 2011 where he provided protection for CIA operatives and political figures.
But now he was a prisoner – held at a military police training college and watched by four guards wielding AK47 machine guns.
His future looked bleak.
‘You don’t allow your mind to think about how long it will be before you get out, you live day to day, moment to moment,’ says Davis.
‘You always hope every time for that couple of hours that the embassy personnel shows up that they’re going to put you in the car and take you with them.
Inspiration: The first episode of Homeland’s fourth season was partly inspired by what happened to Davis, with a CIA operative dragged from a car by a baying mob +13
Inspiration: The first episode of Homeland’s fourth season was partly inspired by what happened to Davis, with a CIA operative dragged from a car by a baying mob
‘There’s always hope but you can never be disappointed when they leave without you.’
Davis had pinned his hopes that the staff at the US Consulate, who were working tirelessly to get him out, would have him released in a matter of days.
But after two weeks and another court hearing he was placed on physical remand and thrown into Lahore’s tough Kot Lakhpat jail.
The notorious jail is rammed with more than four times its 4,000-prisoner capacity and it has a reputation for its brutal regime, murders and beatings, especially mistreatment of Indian prisoners held there.
Davis says because he was a high profile prisoner the Pakistani authorities gave him a whole wing of the prison to himself.
But while he says he wasn’t physically harmed during his incarceration, he was ‘tortured’ – by the definition of the term – in several other ways.
Sleep deprivation was the worst, with guards keeping the lights on 24/7 and the Islamic call to prayer pumping out through a loud speaker all day long.
Davis says the cell was basic and he was fed chicken curry every day, twice a day, which in itself he found tortuous.
There was no hot water or heating, leaving him freezing on the cold winter nights.
The guards also played mind games with Davis, depriving him of items he had been given just to exert their power and mess with his head.
‘All of these things you could say was torture, but I was never beaten,’ says Davis.
‘I think because of my having a diplomatic passport I think if they did put their hands on me it wouldn’t look good for either government.
‘But if that’s what hell looks like I’m not going back.’
The experience began to weigh on Davis’ mental health.
He said: ‘Initially my mindset was this is easier than I thought, but when they put you in a jail cell, the closing of the door echoes. You’ve lost your liberty, you can’t leave.’
Davis said he even began talking with small animals that would wonder into his cell.
‘Two birds would come in, I called them my snowbirds and they would visit and fly around the room. I called them Margaret and George.
‘I also had a lizard, Larry the lizard, who would show up and we’d chat a little bit.
‘I wouldn’t say I was going insane but with no one else there it was my way of coping.’
Towards the end the strain began to show.
Sick of the power struggle with the guards who would constantly toy with Davis, he went on a three-day hunger strike.
He explained: ‘The game was that they wanted to show me that they controlled everything about me, ‘You are owned by us’.
‘I went on hunger strike, I wanted to show them that I didn’t need anything from them, that they couldn’t control me.’
Consulate staff eventually persuaded Davis to eat again.
‘Emotionally there was ups and downs that are hard to describe,’ he says.
‘You think through all of your training if this happens I’m going to do this and I’ll make it, but it gets very cloudy in your mind if you’re going to come through all that unscathed, it’s very difficult the amount of stress that is put on you.’
Asked whether he missed his son while in jail, Davis’ tough exterior begins to crack and his eyes well up.
The thought of not seeing his wife Rebecca and son Braeden for years burdened him.
‘The hardest thing to hear was that I was going to be charged with murder,’ he said.
‘Now I’m charged with a crime all of a sudden they start saying he’s not leaving, he’s here, we’ve already convicted him and now I’m here for five, 10, 15, 20 years and I’ll never see my son grow up. That was the hardest thing to hear.
‘There’s a point in time that you’re sat there in the jail cell and the walls are closing in and you’re thinking, ‘I’m never going to get out of here, my country has turned its back on me and I’m never going to see my son again’.
‘My dad died when I was young I was 14. It starts to pull at you and it has you really hard.’
Unknown to Davis lawyers, working behind the scenes for the US Government had come up with a contingency plan to get him out.
They pushed the court to try his case under Islamic sharia law – Pakistan’s criminal law is similar to that of the United States but regular courts can pass their cases to sharia ones – and Davis was to plead guilty to the double murder.
‘My initial thought was, ‘Oh no, sharia law, I’m going to get stoned, killed, beheaded, they already have a court outside – a tree waiting,’ recalls Davis.
‘All of these things were running through my head until it was all explained.’
The plan was to pay the families of the victims blood-money – known as Diyya under Islamic law.
This didn’t sit well with Davis though.
‘My attorney ran up to me and said, ‘They’re going to accept blood money – we’re going to get you out of here today’.
‘And he leaves – I was shocked. I thought, ‘What does that mean, I don’t understand.’
‘There was a bit of anger because I did nothing wrong, all I did was defend myself but we’re going to pay money to these people – we shouldn’t have to, I did nothing wrong.
‘But Carmela Conroy (US Consul General) turned to me and said, ‘There is no other way, the solution is bigger than anyone in this room, it’s at the presidential level.’
‘It needed to be taken care of so everyone saves face so that a diplomat was not charged with a crime that he shouldn’t have been.’
A sum of $2.4million was paid and distributed to the families of the dead, although the US Government later denied it had paid anything.
It later emerged that the Pakistanis had covered the cost only to retrieve the money later.
After 49 days Davis was released.
‘When they finally told me I was going home, I broke down in tears, I was so relieved this ordeal was soon going to be over,’ he says.
‘The tears were also out of gratitude for all the hard work that everyone did to get me out and it was also because I knew I was going home to see my son and my family.’
Davis believes his release was in part because the US Government had their sights on killing Al-Qaeda boss Osama Bin Laden and didn’t want his situation to in any way disrupt the secret mission they had planned.
Bin Laden was killed two months after Davis’ release in a raid by SEAL Team Six in a CIA-led operation on the 9/11 mastermind’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
‘There was too much at stake,’ says Davis.
‘I also believe the US Government didn’t want to lose face, simple as that.’
When the dust settled Davis learned a lot of the hard work that had gone into getting him released.
But he was also told the higher-echelons of the State Department, run by Hillary Clinton at the time, had actually discussed disavowing him.
He said: ‘I heard that – and it was a hard pill to swallow. I was like ‘Did I just dodge a big bullet?’
‘It was mentioned by high-level people at the State Department, ‘Why don’t we just disavow him and say he’s not ours?’ I think Leon Panetta (the then Secretary of Defense) had the hardest time with that. He was like, ‘He’s got a passport, he wasn’t over there doing nefarious things, we’re not going to disavow anybody, it doesn’t matter who he works for, if he worked for us we protect him.’
‘I thought it was very admirable to have someone who has no vested interest in you to take that stance. That was very comforting to know we had leadership that would do that. It reassured me a great deal.’
He added: ‘There are many things that happened behind the scenes that I have no idea about and probably never will.’
Davis thanks the many people involved in his release, and reserves special praise for former Consul General Carmella Conroy, who he describes as an ‘incredible person and diplomat.’
Davis said his return to America was an emotional time.
‘He didn’t know what was happening he was two-and-a-half years old. It was a good hug when I finally got to hold him in my arms, it was different than anything else I have to admit. It was pretty incredible.’
These days Davis lives a quiet life in Colorado Springs where he works as a firearms instructor, contracting for the US government.
He has separated from his wife Rebecca but they have joint custody of their son Braeden.
Davis has recounted his experience in his book The Contractor, but even that was hard fought.
The co-author of the book Storms Reback and Davis accuse the CIA of political bias by trying to stall it publication in case it damaged Hillary Clinton’s chances of reaching the White House in the November, 2016 election.
The CIA held the book manuscript for several months before demanding a swathe of redactions – even on information that is publicly available – pushing the publication of the book from September 2016 to March 2017 and then to June.
They also accuse the State Department – under Clinton’s rule – of withholding two key interviews carried out for the book, which almost prevented the memoir from being written at all.
The Contractor: How I Landed in a Pakistani Prison and Ignited a Diplomatic Crisis is available on Amazon.com.
By RYAN PARRY, WEST COAST CORRESPONDENT, IN COLORADO, FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and EMMA FOSTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 18:12 BST, 30 June 2017 | UPDATED: 20:22 BST, 30 June 2017
Find this story at 30 June 2017
© Associated Newspapers Ltd
A whistleblower plays by the rules at CIA, and finds ‘nothing gets done’September 22, 2017
Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl
When wayward contract employees at the CIA began pilfering snacks from vending machines back in 2013, the Office of the Inspector General sprang into action. Surveillance cameras went up, the culprits were nabbed, and all lost their jobs.
From start to finish, the case of the $3,314.40 in stolen snacks lasted two months.
When more serious allegations of wrongdoing arise at the CIA, though, inspectors may be far less speedy, especially when their findings could embarrass the Langley, Va., spy agency.
In one notable case, that of John Reidy, a contractor whose resume shows that he worked with spies deep inside Iran’s mullah-run regime, charges of wrongdoing have sat idle in the hands of CIA inspectors. Details of Reidy’s charges remain highly classified. The case is now seven years old, and seems only to gather dust.
Reidy, 46, anguishes over his charges, angry at the years-long delay in resolving his complaints but also wary of crossing a line and revealing anything classified beyond his allegations of a “catastrophic intelligence failure” overseas.
“I cannot talk about the 2007 incident. It is classified. I risk incarceration. I have a family,” Reidy wrote in an email before meeting with a reporter.
But in addition to his whistleblower case, Reidy presses a larger issue, one that is pertinent to the era of President Donald Trump and his persistent charges that sensitive leaks cripple his six-month-old administration. Leaks may grow worse if intelligence agencies don’t learn how to channel dissent and protect those who offer it in a constructive spirit.
I PLAYED BY THE RULES. THEY ARE BROKEN.
John Reidy, a CIA contractor and whistleblower
“I played by the rules,” Reidy said. “They are broken. … The public has to realize that whistleblowers [like me] can follow all the rules and nothing gets done.” In frustration, Reidy last month sent a 90-page letter and documentation about his case to the chairman of the Senate’s powerful Judiciary Committee, lambasting its lack of resolution.
“They have enough time to look into who is stealing candy from a vending machine but they can’t look into billion-dollar contract fraud?” Reidy asked in an interview.
The CIA refused to comment on Reidy’s case.
“As a general matter, we do not comment on ongoing litigation,” said spokesperson Heather Fritz Horniak.
CIA Director says WikiLeaks is a ‘hostile intelligence service’
In his first public remarks since becoming CIA director, Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks a ”non-state hostile intelligence service.”
AP
Even if CIA officials have a far different version of events, perhaps contradicting some of Reidy’s allegations, the secrecy with which the agency operates impedes them from speaking out. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in a speech Tuesday night that his agency finds it difficult to “push back” against misleading or wrong news reports.
“At CIA we’re often limited in what we can say, given the need to protect classified information. In many cases we can’t set the record straight because doing so could harm national security,” Pompeo told a gathering of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a nonpartisan group in support of the intelligence community.
It took a lawsuit to release the information about the theft from CIA vending machines. The agency released a declassified report about the case as part of hundreds of documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2015 by BuzzFeed News.
Pilfering from the vending machines began in 2012, and by March 2013, inspectors began looking into the thefts, discovering that the culprits were unplugging a cable linking the machines to a payment system, FreedomPay, letting them obtain snacks at no charge.
“Video footage recovered from the surveillance cameras captured numerous perpetrators engaged in the FreedomPay theft scheme, all of whom were readily identifiable as Agency contract personnel,” the inspectors’ report says.
The vending machine thievery wrapped up neatly. But Reidy still waits for resolution of the seemingly far more significant issues he has raised.
Reidy is more straight arrow than troublemaker. A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, he was educated in Catholic schools, then attended St. Anselm College in New Hampshire and obtained a law degree from the University of San Francisco. Law degree in hand, he dreamed of joining the FBI.
After a stint in the Army, where he worked in a criminal investigations division, Reidy applied for jobs at both the FBI and the CIA. The CIA called more quickly, and Reidy joined in 2003, leaving six months later for a private contractor that dealt in security policy.
Reidy formed his own company in 2006, Form III Defense Solutions, and worked as a subcontractor, piggybacking on contracts won by bigger companies for intelligence collection, tactical targeting guidance and other matters, usually with the CIA.
A resume he gave to McClatchy shows that from 2006 to 2009, Reidy developed an “Iran Study Guide” and worked on “humint” — or human intelligence. Reidy said intelligence community secrecy rules bar him from naming the country where he handled a “complex agency operation,” but he does say he studied some Farsi language. He hasn’t done any classified work since 2012.
Two different issues led Reidy in 2010 to submit a complaint to the CIA’s internal watchdog, the Inspector General’s Office. One issue involved what Reidy alleged was fraud between elements within the CIA and contractors. Another issue involved what he called a “massive” and “catastrophic” intelligence failure due to a bungled foreign operation, according to his 2014 appeal to an office under the director of national intelligence.
Reidy said he sent the Inspector General’s Office 80 emails and 56 documents to back up his complaints.
Legal protections for whistleblowers in the intelligence community grew stronger in 2012, when then-President Barack Obama signed a presidential directive protecting people from various forms of retaliation, including demotions, termination or reassignment. Reidy took heart at the move.
HE WAS THE POSTER CHILD OF THE PERSON THE SYSTEM IS SUPPOSED TO WORK FOR.
Kel McClanahan, former attorney for whistleblower John Reidy
“He was the poster child of the person the system is supposed to work for,” said Kel McClanahan, a Maryland attorney who represented Reidy until 2016.
Despite the Obama directive, experts working in the national security arena say employees still confront obstacles. Employees’ lawyers have no access to classified documents around which a case may rest. Classified matters cannot even be discussed between client and attorney. The CIA sees its Inspector General’s Office as impartial and makes it difficult for employees who hire attorneys, although Reidy did so for years.
Often, CIA employees or contractors find their careers put on hold.
“You will likely find yourself a pariah because nobody likes someone who rocks the boat,” said Bradley P. Moss, a Washington lawyer who handles some national security cases involving whistleblowers.
Employees disgruntled over fraud, abuse or other matters cannot easily look to obtain redress from outside the intelligence community.
IF YOU’RE AN EMPLOYEE WHO SEES SOMETHING EGREGIOUS, THEY DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING WITH IT.
Kathleen McClellan of Expose Facts, a whistleblower advocacy group
“There’s no outside review of whistleblower cases in the intelligence community,” said Kathleen McClellan, deputy director at Expose Facts, a whistleblower advocacy group. “If you’re an employee who sees something egregious, they don’t have to do anything with it. They can flush it down the toilet for all you know.”
As Reidy found out, an internal investigation can drag on without time limit.
“They can go on for years. They can go on for decades,” said Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department ethics attorney who also works at Expose Facts.
Reidy has also told his story to staffers with security clearances for the House and Senate intelligence committees, and seen his case bounce between the CIA inspector general and the inspector general for the Directorate of National Intelligence.
Desperate for an outcome, Reidy increasingly warns that the failure of whistleblowing channels may lead disgruntled employees and contractors to go public with secrets, posing a danger to national security.
The CIA and the National Security Agency have been hit with numerous cases of leaks since the ground-shaking case of Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who in 2013 leaked to the media details of extensive surveillance, including of tens of millions of Americans.
This year, another NSA contractor, Harold T. Martin, was indicted for amassing secret stolen documents and data at his Maryland home over a 20-year period. He awaits trial.
Prosecutors in early June charged another NSA contractor, 25-year-old Reality Winner, with sending a classified report about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections to The Intercept, a national security news outlet. She could face 10 years in prison.
For its part, WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group, began publishing in March a series of cyber-espionage documents that it claimed were taken from the CIA’s elite hacking unit. Speculation rose that a CIA contractor stole the documents and leaked them.
Seeking to spur action in his case, Reidy last month fired off letters to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warning that working through the CIA Inspector General’s Office has been a dead end.
THEY JUST DELAY, DELAY, AND DELAY AND HOPE THE PROBLEM GOES AWAY.
John Reidy, a CIA contractor and whistleblower
“They just delay, delay, and delay and hope the problem goes away,” Reidy said in a June 5 letter to Sen. Charles Grassley, the Judiciary panel’s chairman.
Reidy said his own example bodes poorly for those who want to report fraud or abuse.
“If you are contemplating whistleblowing … you’re going to sit there and say, ‘If I go through that system, it will not end well for me. I’m going to lose my career and I’m going to be financially devastated,’” Reidy said.
BY TIM JOHNSON
tjohnson@mcclatchydc.com
JULY 13, 2017 12:06 PM
Find this story at 13 July 2017
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