The CIA has asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, government officials said on Tuesday.
The CIA's request, known as a crimes report or criminal referral, means that the Justice Department will undertake a preliminary review to determine if circumstances justify a criminal inquiry into whether any government official unlawfully provided information to the newspaper. The possibility of this new investigation follows by less than two weeks the perjury and obstruction indictment of Lewis Libby, then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, in a leak case involving other news reporting about a national security issue.
Republican leaders in Congress also jumped into the matter over the Post's article, asking the intelligence committees of the House and the Senate on Tuesday to investigate whether classified material had been disclosed. At the same time, the Senate rejected a Democratic call for an independent commission that would conduct an investigation into claims of abuses of detainees in American custody.
The front-page article, which was published on Wednesday last week, said the agency had set up secret detention centers in as many as eight countries in the last four years.
The existence of secret detention centers, and the identity of a few of the countries in which they were located, like Thailand and Afghanistan, had been previously disclosed. But the article, describing the prison system as a "hidden global internment network," told of previously undisclosed detention facilities at highly classified "black sites" in "several democracies in Eastern Europe."
The Post, citing a "request of senior US officials," did not identify the Eastern European countries. But the mention of Eastern Europe stirred anxiety at the intelligence agency, particularly after Human Rights Watch, a group that opposes US detention policies, issued a statement on Monday saying its research had tracked CIA aircraft in 2003 and 2004 making flights from Afghanistan to remote airfields in Poland and Romania. The group said aircraft used in the flights had been previously flown by the CIA for prisoner transport.
More broadly, former intelligence officials said the Post article had prompted concerns at the CIA over threats to the agency's ability to maintain secret relationships with other intelligence services on detainee matters.
In the wake of the disclosure, the top Republican congressional leaders -- Speaker Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist -- sent the chairmen of the intelligence committees a request on Tuesday for a joint investigation into the origin of the article.
"If accurate," the letter said, "such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences and will imperil our efforts to protect US citizens and our homeland from terrorist attacks."
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Pat Roberts, of Kansas, said he was willing to undertake the inquiry but acknowledged that leak investigations were very difficult.
Meanwhile, a secret CIA report warned in early last year that some post Sept. 11 interrogation techniques approved by the agency might violate an international agreement against torture, The New York Times said yesterday.
The report, issued at about the time the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, lists 10 techniques authorized in early 2002, including feigned drowning, that went beyond those used by the US military on prisoners of war.
While stopping short of labeling them as torture, the report drafted by CIA inspector-general John Helgerson said the techniques appeared to violate the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former CIA officials who described the report for the daily.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS