Intelligence Agency Corruption News Stories
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The Trump administration has declared all-out war on leakers. But the administration is battling the wrong enemy with the wrong weapons. Digital secrets stolen from the National Security Agency represent the real ... security problem. More than half a billion pages have been swiped. The stolen data includes some of the NSAs most prized cyber weapons. Most were created by the agencys own hacker team, the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit. Government hackers search for ways to crack into widely used computer operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows. When they discover a way in ... rather than notify the companies that their products are dangerously flawed, the NSA often secretly stores these vulnerabilities and later converts them into powerful cyber weapons, known as exploits. Like burglars tools, the exploits can secretly open a crack in a system, such as Windows, and insert an implant containing NSA malware - enabling the agency to take control of any computer using that Windows program. Unknown to the public, the NSA has for years been negligent in protecting its top-secret material, including these cyber weapons. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues searching for someone who passed a few tidbits about White House bickering to a reporter, rather than focus on the NSA losing potentially deadly cyber weapons.
Note: In 2014, it was reported that the NSA was developing tools to make it relatively easy to hack millions of computers at once. Two years later, a large collection of NSA hacking tools was leaked. Now, these tools are being used by criminals against people all over the world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
The FBIs background-check system is missing millions of records of criminal convictions, mental illness diagnoses and other flags that would keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands. Experts who study the data say government agencies responsible for maintaining such records have long failed to forward them into federal databases used for gun background checks. As the shooting at a Texas church on Sunday showed, what the FBI doesnt know can get people killed. In that case, the gunman had been convicted at a court-martial of charges stemming from a domestic violence case. Officials say the Air Force never notified the FBI of his conviction, so when he purchased weapons at a retail store, he cleared the background check. The FBI said it doesnt know the scope of the problem, but the National Rifle Association says about 7 million records are absent from the system, based on a 2013 report [which] determined that at least 25% of felony convictions "are not available" to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System maintained by the FBI. In light of the Texas shooting, Air Force officials have ... faulted the staff at an air base for not sending the necessary information to the FBI, but federal officials who work in the database effort say the problem of military nonreporting of domestic violence cases extends far beyond a single base or service branch. A large number of people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence - who also are prohibited from buying guns - are absent from the FBI database as well.
Note: For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the military.
In 1982, long before most Americans ever had to think about warrantless eavesdropping, the journalist James Bamford published The Puzzle Palace: A Report on N.S.A., Americas Most Secret Agency, the first book to be written about the National Security Agency. In the book, Bamford describes the agency as free of legal restrictions while wielding technological capabilities for eavesdropping beyond imagination. He concludes with an ominous warning: Like an ever-widening sinkhole, N.S.A.s surveillance technology will continue to expand, quietly pulling in more and more communications and gradually eliminating more and more privacy. Three decades later, this pronouncement feels uncomfortably prescient: we were warned. Incredibly enough, the Department of Justice, under Jimmy Carter, complied with Bamfords Freedom of Information Act requests, supplying him with secret documents related to the Church Committee, the Senate group that, in 1975, investigated American intelligence agencies for potential transgression of their mandates. That the government would hand over sensitive information to Bamford predictably infuriated the N.S.A.; Reagan Administration lawyers tried to bully Bamford into ceding his goods, threatening him with the Espionage Act, while the N.S.A. attempted to sequester the documents hed uncovered. But because he was a lawyer, Bamford knew that he had done nothing wrong.
Note: As a producer for ABC News, Bamford was also the one who obtained startling declassified documents showing that the top Pentagon generals signed off on plans in the early 1960s to blow up a US ship in the Havana harbor or incite violent terrorism in US cities and blame it on Cuba. Strangely, ABC's article "U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba" was the only media report on this incredibly revealing document release. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
The FBI counterterrorism divisions identification of a movement it calls black identity extremists is the latest addition to the list of protesters and dissidents the agency puts under the domestic terrorism umbrella. But many national security experts say the designation [is] simply a label that allows the FBI to conduct additional surveillance on basically anyone whos black and politically active, said Michael German, who left the FBI in 2004. While the practice of labeling certain protest groups as domestic terrorists is not unique to President Trumps administration, Hina Shamsi ... at the American Civil Liberties Union, said theres concern that abusive and unjustified investigations by the FBI are rising. The problem, Shamsi said, is partly in the overly broad definition of domestic terrorism in the Patriot Act as a violation of the criminal laws ... intended to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion. Eighty-four members of Congress cited that intention to intimidate or coerce in a letter to the Justice Department last week that asked whether the department had labeled Dakota Access Pipeline protesters domestic terrorists. The Justice Department did not respond to questions about the letter. The FBI report that focused on black identity extremists ... had interest groups questioning whether the designation has been used to single out members of Black Lives Matter.
Note: The Department of Homeland Security has reportedly been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since 2014, in some cases producing "minute-by-minute reports on protesters movements". For more along these lines, read about Cointelpro, the program used by corrupt intelligence agencies to spy on and attack the U.S. civil rights movement beginning in the 1960's. See also concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the erosion of civil liberties.
Alison Steel was only 4 years old when her mother's life changed forever. In 1957, Jean Steel was admitted to Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute. In the months that followed, Steel became the victim of CIA-funded brainwashing experiments conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron. She was kept in a chemically induced sleep for weeks and subjected to rounds of electroshocks, experimental drugs and tape-recorded messages played non-stop. Steel said her mother was never quite the same. Now, 60 years after Cameron's experiments left her mother damaged for life, Alison Steel has finally won a measure of justice for her family. The federal government quietly reached an out-of-court settlement with Steel earlier this year, paying her $100,000 in exchange for dropping the legal action she launched in September 2015. The settlement with Steel is the latest development in the decades-old saga that began with Cameron's experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute in the '50s and '60s. What patients and their families didn't know was that Cameron's experiments were ... being funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's MK Ultra program. The CIA ... funded mind-control experiments across North America. In 1992, Conservative Justice Minister Kim Campbell decided to compensate dozens of Cameron's former patients. An estimated 70 patients were compensated, but hundreds more who applied were rejected because the government said they hadn't been "de-patterned" enough to warrant compensation.
Note: Read more about the CIA's MK Ultra program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing mind control news articles from reliable major media sources.
For more than two decades during the Cold War, the public was bombarded by an enormous publicity campaign to shape American views of Russia. The campaign may have been the largest and most consistent source of political advertising in American history. And it was orchestrated by a big, powerful intelligence service: the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1950, [the CIA] created Radio Free Europe, a government-sponsored broadcasting station. Ostensibly, it provided unbiased news for Eastern Europeans, but in fact the agency used it to wage a subversive campaign to weaken Communist governments. But how to hide the agencys hand? Simple: pretend that ordinary Americans are paying the bills. A well-heeled and well-connected front group, the National Committee for a Free Europe ... ran an enormous fund-raising campaign ... that implored Americans to donate freedom dollars to combat Kremlin lies. The donations barely covered the cost of running the fund-raising drives, to say nothing of Radio Free Europes $30 million annual budgets. But that wasnt the point. Declassified documents reveal that almost from the start, the CIA saw that it could exploit the fund-raising campaign as a conduit for domestic propaganda. It was a way to rally public support for the Cold War. Our post-truth media environment [carries] voices from this past. The crusade blasted all information from enemy sources as lies and deceit fake news, we could say.
Note: The US government was legally prevented from broadcasting propaganda to domestic audiences for many years. This prohibition ended when new rules were adopted in 2013. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the manipulation of public perception.
More than 50 years after President John F. Kennedy was slain in full view of the world, the final government documents about his death are set for release. The documents are among the last of still-secret papers the government amassed on the assassination. Some grand jury and tax documents will remain secret. The JFK Records Act passed in 1992. The law mandated the government release the remaining files to the public and gave it 25 years to do so. October 26, 2017 ... is the deadline for full release. The National Archives said government agencies had deemed files covered by the act prior to its passage too sensitive for release. They run the gamut from FBI to CIA materials and all manner of documents said to pertain to investigations into Kennedy's death. The Archives said the full collection ... spans millions of documents. Many files have been released about the Kennedy assassination over the years, including some in redacted form. Barring a waiver from the President, the obscured text will be revealed. The full release of the documents would mark the end of a decades-long struggle for researchers to get a hold of all available information. A Gallup poll in 2013 showed 61% of respondents said more than one person was involved in the shooting and some pointed to the Mafia, the government, the CIA, Cuba and others as playing a role.
Note: An October 21 AFP article reported that Trump said he intends to allow these files to be released as planned. Many are unaware that an official report from 1979 by the U.S. House of Representatives stated: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing Kennedy assassination news articles from reliable major media sources.
In perhaps its most audacious and elaborate incursion into academia, the CIA has secretly spent millions of dollars staging scientific conferences around the world. Its purpose was to lure Iranian nuclear scientists out of their homeland and into an accessible setting, where its intelligence officers could approach them individually and press them to defect. While a university campus might have only one or two professors of interest to an intelligence service, the right conference on drone technology, perhaps, or Isis could have dozens. The FBI and CIA swarm conferences. At gatherings in the US, says one former FBI agent, foreign intelligence officers try to collect Americans; we try to collect them. The CIA is involved with conferences in various ways: it sends officers to them; it hosts them through front companies in the Washington area, so that the intelligence community can tap academic wisdom; and it mounts sham conferences to reach potential defectors from hostile countries. Scientific conferences have become such a draw for intelligence agents that one of the biggest concerns for CIA operatives is interference from agency colleagues trapping the same academic prey. We tend to flood events like these, a former CIA officer who writes under the pseudonym Ishmael Jones observed in his 2008 book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIAs Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science and in the intelligence community.
Im a taxi driver from Karachi, in Pakistan. Fifteen years ago I was sold for a bounty and taken by the U.S. military to a secret prison in Afghanistan. They mistook me for someone called Hassan Gul, and I was tortured for over a year before they flew me to Guantanamo. Theres no disputing thisits in the U.S. Senate report on torture. Ive been held here ever since then, without charge or trial. Ive been through a lot - but a new punitive medical regime at this prison might finally kill me. In May 2013, without any way of defending myself or securing my freedom, I resorted to peaceful protest, and began a hunger strike. On September 20, things abruptly changed. A new senior medical officer (SMO) arrived, bringing in a new Trump administration policy of refusing to tube-feed anyone on hunger strike. They apparently dont mind if people die because of the injustice here, because they figure nobody cares about Guantanmo anymore, and nobody will notice. Ive lost more weight than ever before - Im well under 100 pounds - but they have stopped bringing anyone to check my vitals, weigh me, or force-feed me. They want this peaceful protest over. So they refuse us access to medical care. The doctors here do what the new medical boss tells them. He wants me to beg him for food, but I will not. He is like a dictator. They tell me its my fault if I die. But all I am asking for is basic justice - a fair trial or freedom. I am innocent, but Im not allowed to prove it. I don't want to die, but they will not succeed in breaking my strike.
Note: The horrific treatment of Guantnamo Bay detainees is well documented. For more, read about the 10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture and many other questionable intelligence agency practices.
The U.S. government conducted experiments with Bay Area researchers to determine whether extrasensory perception, telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition could be used as "psychic spy tools" against the Soviet Union and other countries, according to a newly released study of the project. Psychic spies were used to try to pinpoint the location of Moammar Gadhafi before the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986 ... University of Oregon psychology Professor Ray Hyman, one of the authors of the study, said. Dale Graff, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency's ESP program, told ABC's "Nightline" that psychics had provided the name of the city and the building where the Red Brigades terrorist group was holding kidnapped Brig. Gen. James Dozier in Italy in 1981. Dozier was freed by Italian police after 42 days. News reports at the time said the police were assisted by an undisclosed number of U.S. State and Defense Department specialists. Hyman and UC-Davis statistician Jessica Utts were commissioned by the CIA to evaluate the psychic spying project, code-named "Stargate." The government spent $20 million over two decades on the project. Several of the psychics' powers were tested in the Bay Area before the spies were put to work ... Hyman said. Experiments here focused largely on "remote viewing," which involved psychic communication between a "sender" and a "viewer". The government psychics were accurate about 15 percent of the time in their remote viewing experiments.
Note: Explore an excellent compilation of reliable material suggesting that remote viewing is very real.
For 20 years, US intelligence agencies have been experimenting with ESP. It may have helped locate American hostages in Iran [and] mapped a secret Soviet nuclear facility. At the height of the Cold War, everyone was worried about keeping up with the Soviets. Reports that the Soviets were using psychics to spy on us prompted us to do the same to them. Now that the Cold War is over ... Congress has asked the CIA to review the 20-year $20 million program to see what we got out of it. ABC News has obtained a copy of that report which is critical of psychic spying, saying that, "continued use in intelligence gathering operations is not warranted". That negative conclusion has the caused psychic spies ... to speak publicly for the first time. Joe McMoneagle was an Army officer and for the past 17 years one of the intelligence community's most successful psychic spies. McMoneagle claims to be able to describe ... people, places, and things he's never seen before, hundreds, even thousands of miles away. ABC news was told that psychic spying was used in about 500 cases. One case where psychic spies say they played a critical role was in 1989. Charles Jordan was a US Customs agent gone bad, a dangerous fugitive who had eluded police for 2 years. The collective wisdom at the time was that he was probably in the Caribbean. [One psychic spy] started describing him in North Wyoming ... at a campground. Using this and other information, Jordan was finally caught.
Note: The original CIA link above now takes you back to the CIA Reading Room homepage. Here is an Internet Archive link that provides access to the declassified CIA document. Explore an excellent compilation of reliable material suggesting that remote viewing is very real.
Mysterious metal towers are popping up at local tunnels, and soon theyll start appearing at bridges, too. But even people on the MTA board in charge of the towers cant say why theyre being used or whats in them. Its a $100 million MTA project shrouded in secrecy, with 18 of them for tunnels and bridges. So what are they exactly? The MTAs man in charge of the bridges and tunnels, Cedrick Fulton, dodged Carlins questions Wednesday. I said no comment, he said. Some MTA board members, including New York City Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, say they know too little about the towers - even with half the money already spent and some of the towers already up. A lot of the board members felt they didnt have all the details they would have wanted, myself included, she said. Residents suspect there is much more going on in the towers than meets the eye and wonder if theyll ever really know whats going on inside of them. CBS2 demanded answers from MTA Chairman Joe Lhota. Carlin: Some of your own board members say they dont know the specifics. Lhota: The base of these new pieces that are going up include whatever fiber optics are necessary for those Homeland Security items. In other words, anti-terror technology. Could that one day include facial recognition? We dont know and Lhota wont say. Im not at liberty to discuss that, he told Carlin. Lhota said all necessary Homeland Security technology remains in place at all crossings, even the ones that dont have the new towers yet.
Note: See video of these strange new towers containing secret Homeland Security technology at the link above. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
John N. Tye wants to make it easier to expose government wrongdoing without getting fired or breaking the law. Tye, a former State Department whistleblower, and lawyer Mark S. Zaid have formed Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit law office to help would-be tipsters in government and the military navigate the bureaucratic and legal morass involved in reporting governmental misdeeds. Whistleblowing can be a challenge for people who have taken an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution ... Tye said in a telephone interview. Then you get into government and you see something wrong, he said. Youve sworn to stop it, but there arent a lot of tools at your disposal, especially if its your supervisor whos breaking the law. People are scared. Theyre worried about their jobs. If it involves classified information, they can be criminally prosecuted. Tyes interest in whistleblowing came from a stint as section chief for Internet freedom in the State Departments Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. He came forward as a whistleblower to publicize the governments electronic surveillance practices. He wrote about it in 2014 in a Washington Post opinion piece that he submitted to the State Department for approval. His quest to air his concerns cost him $13,000 in legal fees. If a whistleblower comes to Whistleblower Aid with classified information, he or she will be steered to investigators with security clearances and the power to do something about it.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the intelligence community.
When Bill Binney, former NSA analyst and head of the anti-terror ThinThread metadata program sits in front of you and says he is not afraid of the government, you have to admire him. A wheel-chair-bound U.S. serviceman who rose in the ranks of intelligence to work in top-secret NSA programs, Binney created ThinThread prior to September 11, 2001, and says it mathematically broke down all phone communications anywhere in the world without any infringement on Constitutional rights. The program was self-running. More important, it worked. In "A Good American," the new documentary from executive producer Oliver Stone ... audiences are taken on a tense and frightening ride through Binney and his colleagues' experience developing and deploying ThinThread in tests, only to see its funding pulled just weeks before 9/11 in favor of an expensive and ineffective ... program called Trailblazer. Binney contends that ThinThread would have identified the terrorists who planned and executed the 9/11 terror attacks, thereby preventing them from occurring. When ThinThread's plug was pulled, Binney and his team challenged their NSA bosses, and in the process found themselves at odds with the U.S. government and in a complex web of lies and corruption. Thus, when Binney said he remains unafraid of possible repercussions or retaliation tied to the film's thesis, it's not hard to believe. "What else can they do to me?" he asks. "They've already tried everything to stop me."
Note: Watch a free trailer or rent the whole documentary on this webpage. Read a revealing, detailed New York Times article on Oliver Stone and his profound work to expose corruption and manipulation through film. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency corruption news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.
Years before anyone had ever heard of [Edward] Snowden, [Bill] Binney, a gifted cryptologist and mathematician, was pushing back against the NSAs spying overreach. In October 2001 ... he resigned rather than participate in a clandestine, massively overpriced and questionably legal electronic spying system code-named Trailblazer. Eventually, the government came after him. [Binney] was thrilled by [Oliver] Stones powerful biopic of Snowden, who astounded the world with his massive exposure of the NSAs global spying programs. "I think it will help people understand what is really going on behind the scenes. They are invading the privacy of everyone," he says. "They can turn on your cellphone and listen to you. They can turn on your camera and watch you." In 2013 ... James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, [lied] under oath during a congressional hearing about the NSAs spying programs. Snowden was watching. He had also seen what had happened to Binney and fellow NSA executives Thomas Drake, Ed Loomis and Kirk Wiebe, whose homes were raided by FBI agents after The New York Times exposed the NSAs secret spying programs in 2005. Drake, prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, was eventually acquitted ... but his career was ruined. [Snowden's] critics insist he should have pursued his complaints internally, despite the persuasive examples of Binney and his comrades that such resistance is futile, even risky.
Note: Watch a free trailer or rent the whole documentary on this webpage. Read a revealing, detailed New York Times article on Oliver Stone and his profound work to expose corruption and manipulation through film. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. Army soldier who spent seven years in prison for leaking classified documents, will not be distinguished visiting fellow at Harvard after growing backlash prompted the school to rescind the invitation. The school withdrew Manning's invite two days after announcing she would be one of roughly ten visiting fellows this fall. Manning's designation as a visiting fellow led to Mike Morell, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, to resign his post as a senior fellow at Harvard University, CBS reported. CIA Director Mike Pompeo also canceled a speaking event Thursday at a Harvard forum in protest of what he called the school's decision to place Manning in a "position of honor." Manning was convicted of leaking more than 700,000 classified documents, including battlefield reports on Iraq and Afghanistan and State Department cables, while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. She said the leaks were intended to expose wrongdoing. Manning was arrested in May 2010 and given a 35-year sentence, which was commuted in the final days of the Obama administration. Manning was known as Pvt. Bradley Manning at the time of her arrest, but announced she was transgender during her incarceration. Elmendorf said Manning will still spend a day at the Kennedy School and speak in the Forum, though she will not be designated a visiting fellow.
Note: Read about Manning's wartime whistleblowing in this CNN story. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in intelligence agencies and in the corporate world.
The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. The agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if hed walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room. Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 US victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. New details learned by the Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling US officials who say the facts and the physics dont add up. Suspicion initially focused on a sonic weapon. Yet the diagnosis of mild brain injury, considered unlikely to result from sound, has confounded the FBI, the state department and US intelligence agencies involved in the investigation. Some victims now have problems concentrating or recalling specific words, several officials said, the latest signs of more serious damage than the US government initially realized. The United States first acknowledged the attacks in August nine months after symptoms were first reported. The cases vary deeply: different symptoms, different recollections of what happened. In several episodes recounted by US officials, victims knew it was happening in real time, and there were strong indications of a sonic attack.
Note: Sound weapons developed for war and increasingly used against civilian populations are well-documented. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing non-lethal weapons news articles from reliable major media sources.
Americas love affair with LSD did not begin in Haight-Ashbury or during the summer of love. Instead it was seeded ... in Midwestern laboratories and government offices, where it comprised one strand of an extensive germ warfare programme. Errol Morriss splendidly clammy, mysterious docu-drama Wormwood reopens the file on Frank Olson, a jobbing biochemist who fell to his death from a New York hotel. At the time (December 1953) Olsons death was ruled to be suicide. But 20 years later evidence emerged that complicated the official verdict and prompted Olsons family to sue the federal government. Even today elderly Eric Olson is in search of a definitive answer. He casts himself in the role of a Cold War Hamlet, haunted and harried by his fathers ghost. So what became of luckless Frank Olson? Did he fall or was he pushed? Infuriatingly perhaps fittingly we will have to wait to find out. For Morriss docu-drama is a six-part series, commissioned by Netflix. So were left to blunder on, hands outstretched, past pensive Eric Olson and ... through spooky archive footage of a 1970s congressional hearing where sleazy Colonel Ruwet surely the villain of the piece sits with his back to the camera, meaning that we can only see his starched collar and his bald spot and the hint of a smile when he responds to a question. Who, then, can predict how this investigation turns out?
Note: A 1975 US government report said that Frank Olson committed suicide after being given LSD without his knowledge as part of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program. The lawsuit filed by his sons claimed Olson was killed by the CIA after he "raised concerns about testing chemical and biological weapons on human subjects without their consent". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
This summer, operatives with the Central Intelligence Agency gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to bury two of their own. Brian Ray Hoke and Nathaniel Patrick Delemarre, elite gunslingers who worked for the C.I.A.s paramilitary force, were laid to rest after a firefight with Islamic State militants. Their deaths this past October were never acknowledged by the C.I.A., beyond two memorial stars chiseled in a marble wall at the agencys headquarters in Langley, Va. Today there are at least 18 stars on that wall representing the number of C.I.A. personnel killed in Afghanistan - a tally that has not been previously reported, and one that rivals the number of C.I.A. operatives killed in the wars in Vietnam and Laos nearly a half century ago. The deaths are a reflection of the heavy price the agency has paid in a secret, nearly 16-year-old war, where thousands of C.I.A. operatives have served since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The deaths of Mr. Hoke, 42, and Mr. Delemarre, 47, show how the C.I.A. continues to move from traditional espionage to the front lines, and underscore the pressure the agency faces now that President Trump has pledged to keep the United States in Afghanistan with no end in sight.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
A settlement in a landmark lawsuit against two psychologists who helped design the CIA's harsh interrogation methods used in the war on terror marked the first time the agency or its private contractors have been held accountable for the program, legal experts said. The deal in the lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union also makes it unlikely the CIA will again pursue the tactics, said Deborah Pearlstein, professor at the Cardozo Law School in New York. This sends a signal to those who might consider doing this in the future, Pearlstein said, adding, This puts an exclamation mark at the end of don't torture. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but it avoided a civil trial set for Sept. 5 in federal court. The ACLU sued psychologists James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen on behalf of three former detainees, including one who died in custody, who contended they were tortured at secret CIA prisons overseas. Mitchell and Jessen were under contract with the federal government following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The lawsuit claimed they designed, implemented and personally administered an experimental torture program. The techniques they developed included waterboarding, slamming the three men into walls, stuffing them inside coffin-like boxes, exposing them to extreme temperatures, starving them and keeping them awake for days, the ACLU said. A U.S. Senate investigation in 2014 found that Mitchell and Jessen's techniques produced no useful intelligence. They were paid $81 million for their work.
Note: Prior to condemning torture, some of the American Psychological Associations top officials sought to curry favor with Pentagon officials by supporting the CIA's brutal interrogation methods. For more along these lines, read about how the torture program fits in with a long history of human experimentation by corrupt intelligence agencies working alongside unethical scientists. For more, see this list of programs that treated humans as guinea pigs.
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