Cia

The CIA is probably smug and triumphant about its duplicitous vaccination drive in Abbotabad, a mission hatched to catch and kill Osama bin Laden ("A tainted polio program," Jan. 7). As a doctor, I cringe to think of this unscrupulous use of medicine for murder. While the London Guardian investigated the matter and revealed its unethical intricacies, it is amazing that not one American newspaper thought the CIA's vaccination plot was worthy of further scrutiny. The vaccination drive was against Hepatitis B, a deadly and common disease in the Third World, spread by contaminated needles, surgical instruments and tainted blood.

Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has been elected to the House (or at least that's where we hear he's going). Welcome to your trends report for Monday, May 8, 2013. Sanford will head to Capitol Hill after facing off against Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sister of the late-night satirist Stephen Colbert. Republicans will hold 233 of the House's 435 seats when Sanford is sworn in, probably this week. Another trip to the House comes today, when former diplomat Gregory Hicks is scheduled to testify about the Benghazi attacks last year.

Susan Reimer 's column, "Surprising reaction to L'affaire Petraeus," (Nov. 15), brings up a number of salient points, most notably that male readers in large part thought that Gen. David Petraeus took the honorable, necessary course of action, while women who responded pointed out that chief executives of the past often had affairs but managed to carry out their duties. Ms. Reimer sums up her readers' feelings on General Petraeus and his philandering with the following: "With all due respect ... that has nothing to do with my oath of office, and it's none of your business.

Though he did not participate in torture, ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou was the first person to publicly acknowledge the Bush administration's inhumane abuse of detainees ("The truth about torture," April 23). Mr. Kiriakou's disclosures informed the public and encouraged debate that helped pull this country back from a very dark place. But in doing so he drew the ire of the government, which began to harass and intimidate him and his family under both the Bush and Obama administrations, looking for ways to prosecute him. Finally, when Mr. Kiriakou privately shared a colleague's name to a journalist for use as a source, the government seized the opportunity and threw the book at him. Mr. Kiriakou is now serving 30 months in prison.

Compared to the toppling of Felix Dzerzhinsky's monumental statue outside the KGB building in Moscow last August, the CIA's humiliations during the Robert Gates hearings are more than bearable. They are well-deserved and potentially salutary. If the CIA is to transform itself into an intelligence agency relevant to a world in which the KBG is ostensibly coming in from the cold, the agency at Langley, Va., will have to rid itself of a lot of obsessions, habits, feuds and infighting.Americans were understandably transfixed during the past week's televised Senate hearings in which the CIA's dirty laundry was hung out to dry. It was ostensibly a battle between CIA analysts who accused Mr. Gates of slanting intelligence estimates -- a practice he once described as contrary to "the single deepest ethical and cultural principle of the CIA" -- and those who held he is well qualified to be Director of Central Intelligence.

The report from the State Department was brief: Thomas M. Jennings Jr., a federal worker from Burtonsville on a temporary assignment with NATO peacekeepers, had died in a car crash in Southern Bosnia. Fifteen years later, it turns out that was only part of the story. Unknown to neighbors and friends, Jennings was working for the CIA, the agency acknowledged last week. A veteran covert officer — he told acquaintances he worked for the State Department — he volunteered to go to Sarajevo after the Bosnian war as a U.S.-led force worked to maintain peace.

Though he did not participate in torture, ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou was the first person to publicly acknowledge the Bush administration's inhumane abuse of detainees ("The truth about torture," April 23). Mr. Kiriakou's disclosures informed the public and encouraged debate that helped pull this country back from a very dark place. But in doing so he drew the ire of the government, which began to harass and intimidate him and his family under both the Bush and Obama administrations, looking for ways to prosecute him. Finally, when Mr. Kiriakou privately shared a colleague's name to a journalist for use as a source, the government seized the opportunity and threw the book at him. Mr. Kiriakou is now serving 30 months in prison.

Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has been elected to the House (or at least that's where we hear he's going). Welcome to your trends report for Monday, May 8, 2013. Sanford will head to Capitol Hill after facing off against Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sister of the late-night satirist Stephen Colbert. Republicans will hold 233 of the House's 435 seats when Sanford is sworn in, probably this week. Another trip to the House comes today, when former diplomat Gregory Hicks is scheduled to testify about the Benghazi attacks last year.

WASHINGTON -- A week after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the news media, "This isn't Pearl Harbor." It's worse. In the past eight years, Osama bin Laden has attacked the United States repeatedly: the World Trade Center in 1993, U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. A plan to use commercial airlines as weapons in the mid-1990s (including the CIA headquarters building as a target)

John M. Deutch, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, appeared Nov. 15 at a town meeting in Watts to discuss allegations that CIA-backed contra rebels sold crack cocaine in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods to fund their covert war in Nicaragua. Here is his opening statement: Thank you, Congresswoman [Juanita] Millender-McDonald, for holding this public meeting, for giving me the opportunity to talk with members of this community about charges that the CIA introduced crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles in the mid-1980s.

Of the three major news stories last week, two of them - the Boston Marathon bombing and the Texas fertilizer explosion - received extensive news coverage. But the third, the release of a report by a politically diverse group concluding there was extensive, unwarranted use of torture by our government during the Bush administration, received almost none ("The truth about torture," April 21). It is easy to understand why this received so little coverage. No deaths. No blood. Just another study.

If there were any remaining doubts that what the CIA did to captured terrorist suspects in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was torture, a report last week by an independent investigative panel should put them to rest. According to the report by the Constitution Project, an independent legal research and advocacy group in Washington, not only did the Bush administration indisputably engage in torturing prisoners to extract information, a practice banned by both U.S. and international law, but the nation's highest officials knew about the abuses and condoned them.

Drones over Syria? Hold on! ("CIA eyes drone strikes in Syria," March 16). The whole business of drone strikes on nations with whom we are not at war gets murkier and more distasteful daily - and cries out for transparency from the Obama administration on drone practice and policy, especially abroad. U.S. military and CIA attacks by unmanned aircraft have been going on for well over a decade now with little fanfare or even awareness by most Americans. And that's just as Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have wanted it. Sure, the news is trumpeted when some al-Qaida or Taliban leader has been a "kill" by a targeted missile strike.

The CIA is probably smug and triumphant about its duplicitous vaccination drive in Abbotabad, a mission hatched to catch and kill Osama bin Laden ("A tainted polio program," Jan. 7). As a doctor, I cringe to think of this unscrupulous use of medicine for murder. While the London Guardian investigated the matter and revealed its unethical intricacies, it is amazing that not one American newspaper thought the CIA's vaccination plot was worthy of further scrutiny. The vaccination drive was against Hepatitis B, a deadly and common disease in the Third World, spread by contaminated needles, surgical instruments and tainted blood.

Whether Chuck Hagel and John Brennan are the ideal men to lead the Pentagon and CIA remains to be seen. We need the exercise of a through vetting in Senate confirmation hearings, and certainly an examination of the nominees' past statements and actions is warranted. But the objections raised about Mr. Hagel so far, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Brennan, sound a lot more like an attempt to score political points than an effort to get at the key questions that will face the leaders of two of the nation's most crucial agencies.

The news that the Central Intelligence Agency had been running a fake vaccination program in Pakistan first surfaced in 2011 and quickly ignited fears that the covert operation could compromise the global campaign to eradicate polio. Late last month, a handful of vaccine workers, including a teenage girl, paid the price for the CIA's deceit: They were gunned down as they tried to give the polio vaccine to children living in the Pakistani city of Karachi and other areas. No one has taken responsibility for the attacks, although the Pakistani Taliban has threatened vaccine workers in the past.

The reduction of U.S.-Soviet tensions after policy changes in Moscow has strong implications for American strategic arms spending. But it never meant less need for the intelligence community in general or the Central Intelligence Agency in particular. In a confused and fast-changing world, the U.S. requires better intelligence information and analysis than ever. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait showed that. So does the power struggle between the Russian and Soviet governments.William H. Webster, who is stepping down as director of central intelligence at the age of 67, took the job to rescue the CIA in 1987.

Paris. -- The problem with Robert M. Gates as head of the CIA is not solved by discovering what he knew, and when he knew it, about Irangate. He has made it evident that he understood at the time that not knowing was the prudent course for an ambitious bureaucrat.An ambitious CIA official at his level certainly knew enough about what was going on to also know that not-knowing was the way to go. This was an understandable stance for a career official in an administration whose president was obsessed with Nicaragua, and whose White House harbored a buccaneering operation very likely to end in fiasco.

The finale of “Homeland” Season 2 was an appropriately epic and totally off the wall conclusion to a narrative arc that prioritized constant, edge-of-your-seat dramatic momentum, even at the occasional cost of believability. First, the basics: The episode began at Carrie's aunt's picturesque cabin in the woods, the two lovebirds finally free to juggle produce and watch the sunset together. It's clear that Quinn is stalking them at their hideout, but they seem oblivious. They feel so safe that when Brody unearths a handgun in the cabin, Carrie removes the bullets and shoves the weapon back in the drawer.

Jeanne Vertefeuille and Sandra Grimes could be George Smiley's people. They were recruited on their college campuses by the Central Intelligence Agency during the height of the Cold War. Jeanne wanted travel and adventure. Sandy didn't know much about the CIA; she just needed a job. Jeanne and Sandy. That's how they refer to themselves in the book they co-authored, "Circle of Treason. " It tells the story of these two women - Jeanne worked her way up from the equivalent of the steno pool, while Sandy was immediately in the Soviet division (and over her head)