CIA officer Arthur Keller allegedly hears rumors in 2007 that Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, a Pakistani militant group, is assisting Osama bin Laden with logistics in helping him hide somewhere inside Pakistan. Harkat will later be linked to the courier who lives with bin Laden in his Abbottabad, Pakistan, hideout until the US raid that kills bin Laden in 2011 (see May 2, 2011). The group also has long-standing ties to the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency. Keller had worked for the CIA in Pakistan in 2006. By 2011, he will have retired from the CIA and will tell his account about these rumors to the New York Times. Another US intelligence official will note that members of Harkat may have helped bin Laden without being aware who exactly they were helping or where he was hiding. It is unclear if the CIA investigates possible links between Harkat and bin Laden at this time, or later. [New York Times, 6/23/2011]
January 2007: CIA Prevents Justice Department Investigators from Talking to Abu Zubaida
A 2008 Justice Department report reveals that in January 2007, the CIA prevents Justice Department investigators from questioning al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida, who is being held at the Guantanamo prison. The Justice Department will say the CIA’s obstruction was “unwarranted” and “hampered” an investigation by the department’s Office of Inspector General into the FBI’s knowledge of abuse by CIA and Defense Department interrogators. The CIA’s acting general counsel John Rizzo refused to grant access to Zubaida, claiming that he “could make false allegations against CIA employees.” By contrast, Defense Department officials grant the same investigators access to other Guantanamo detainees also allegedly subjected to torture. After Zubaida was captured in early 2002, the CIA subjected him to harsh torture techniques, including waterboarding (see Mid-May 2002 and After). [Newsweek, 5/20/2008]
January-February 2007: Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Considered for Baghdad Station, but Is Rejected
CIA officer Richard Blee, who headed Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, at the time of the 9/11 attacks (see August 22-September 10, 2001), is considered for the position of chief of station in Baghdad, one of the CIA’s largest stations. [Harper’s, 1/28/2007] However, he does not get the position. [Harper’s, 2/9/2007] The reasons for him not getting the job are apparently that he is seen as a “bad fit,” and is closely associated with detainee abuse and renditions, in particular that of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (see Shortly After December 19, 2001). In addition, he is said to have a poor relationship with the military, in particular the Special Operations community. An unnamed former official calls Blee a “smart guy,” but says, “He’s the last guy you want running a tense place like the station in Baghdad, because he creates a lot of tension himself.” [Harper’s, 1/28/2007] Shortly before mid-May 2003, Blee had been loaned to the FBI, where he had a senior position, but his career history after that is unknown. [New York Times, 5/15/2003]
January 7, 2007: CIA Real Source of Counterfeit Super-Dollars, Says German Newspaper
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a German daily newspaper, accuses the CIA of being the source of sophisticated, almost perfect, counterfeit US bills called “super-notes” or “super-dollars.” FAZ claims that the CIA prints the bills in a secret facility close to Washington, DC. The US government has long accused North Korea of being the source of the “super-notes,” but this claim remains unproven and disputed by some. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), 1/7/2007] In early 2008, McClatchy Newspapers will publish a similar article. It will note that the Secret Service has presented no actual evidence that the North Koreans are behind the notes, and witnesses making that claim have been discredited. The State Department has stopped accusing North Korea of making the notes. In May 2007, the Swiss federal police conclude an investigation and decide it is unlikely the North Koreans are behind the notes, though they do not know just who is. Remarkably, the super-notes have gone through at least 19 different versions, each corresponding to a tiny change in US engraving plates. Thomas Ferguson, former director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, says the super-notes appear to have been made by someone with access to some government’s printing equipment. Klaus Bender, the author of a book on the subject, “claims that the super-notes are of such high quality and are updated so frequently that they could be produced only by a US government agency such as the CIA.” The article will note that the CIA counterfeited the Soviet Union’s currency during the Cold War, and “Making limited quantities of sophisticated counterfeit notes also could help intelligence and law enforcement agencies follow payments or illicit activities or track the movement of funds among unsavory regimes, terrorist groups, and others.” [McClatchy Newspapers, 1/10/2008]
February 11, 2007: Kidnapped Imam Released in Egypt
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar) is released in Egypt. He was kidnapped by the CIA in Milan, Italy, in 2003 and taken to Egypt, where he was imprisoned. This sparked a confrontation between the CIA and Italian anti-terrorist authorities, who had been investigating him before he was kidnapped (see Noon February 17, 2003). Nasr, who filed an action for unlawful detention against Egypt’s Interior Ministry, is released in Alexandria after a State Security Court declares his detention “unfounded.” Nasr will apparently remain in Egypt and not return to Italy, where a warrant for his arrest was issued on terrorism counts (see April 2005). [Associated Press, 2/12/2007]
February 16, 2007: 35 Committed for Trial in Italy over Kidnapped Imam Affair
An Italian judge rules that there is enough evidence to try thirty-five people in the affair of kidnapped imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar). Nasr was kidnapped by the CIA, with the knowledge of the Italian military intelligence service Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI), in Milan in 2003 (see Noon February 17, 2003). Nasr, a former CIA asset (see August 27, 1995 and Shortly After), was then taken to Egypt, where he says he was tortured (see April-May 2004). The 26 Americans that are indicted can be tried in absentia in Italy and include Robert Seldon Lady, former chief of the CIA’s substation in Milan, the former CIA station chief in Rome, and an officer from the US air base in Aviano, near Venice. The nine Italians include former SISMI head Nicolo Pollari, but three of them are only charged with complicity in the kidnapping, not the kidnapping itself. However, none of the Americans are in Italy at this time, and Italy has not asked for them to be extradited. [Associated Press, 1/26/2007; CNN, 2/16/2007]
Spring-Summer 2007: Senators Campaign for Release of Summary of CIA 9/11 Report
A bipartisan group of senators headed by Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Kit Bond (R-MI) campaign to force the CIA to release the executive summary of a report by its inspector general about some aspects of its performance before 9/11. Wyden says, “It’s amazing the efforts the administration is going to stonewall this,” adding that he is considering linking acceptance of President Bush’s nominations for national security positions to the report’s release. Wyden also says that the report is not being kept secret for national security reasons, but merely to protect individuals from embarrassment. Apparently, some of the officials criticized in the report are still in “senior government positions.” The idea of releasing the executive summary is twice approved by the Senate before being made law in August 2007 (see August 8, 2007). [Associated Press, 5/18/2007]
March 14, 2007: House Intelligence Committee Informed of Destruction of CIA Interrogation Tapes in ‘Offhand Comment’
In response to a question asked at a briefing, CIA Director Michael Hayden makes an “offhand comment” to the House Intelligence Committee indicating that tapes the CIA has made of detainee interrogations have been destroyed (see Spring-Late 2002). Although some committee members have been aware of the tapes’ existence since 2003 (see February 2003), this is apparently the first time they learn of their destruction, which occurred over year ago (see November 2005). The destruction is again “briefly mentioned” in a letter to a member of the committee in mid-April. Leading committee members Silvestre Reyes and Peter Hoekstra will later write to Hayden, “We do not consider this to be sufficient notification. Moreover, these brief mentions were certainly not contemporaneous with the decision to destroy the videotapes.” [US Congress, 12/7/2007] The Senate Intelligence Committee is apparently not informed until later (see December 7, 2007).
March 23, 2007: CIA Officer Involved in Botched Rendition Considered for Baghdad Position, but Not Appointed
CIA officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, who ordered the wrongful rendition of a German citizen (see Before January 23, 2004) and made an unauthorized trip to view the waterboarding of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (see After March 7, 2003), is considered for the position of deputy chief at the CIA’s station in Baghdad. Harper’s journalist Ken Silverstein learns of her candidacy from two sources, who describe her as “a person who inspires little confidence, and who is highly adept at working her way through the bureaucracy, but has no leadership ability.” Apparently, she is being considered because “no one wants to take high-profile positions at Baghdad station, so the CIA is stuck taking whoever is willing to go.” However, in the end she does not get the job. [Harper’s, 3/23/2007] Several weeks later, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano will write to Silverstein to defend Bikowsky. Gimigliano says that at this time she “is neither considering, nor being considered for, service in Iraq.” He adds: “I can tell you that she has been central over the years to the efforts of our government, and other governments, to discover and disrupt al-Qaeda operations worldwide. Her work, and the work she has led, has stopped terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives. The counterterrorist expertise she has built and applied on behalf of our country is the product of great effort and exceptional commitment.” [Harper’s, 4/16/2007]
Shortly Before April 30, 2007: CIA Officer Reportedly Makes False Claims to Former Agency Director about Failure to Pass Information to FBI
According to former CIA Director George Tenet, he speaks to a “senior CIA officer” with knowledge of pre-9/11 intelligence failures, apparently in preparation for a book he is writing. They discuss the failure to inform the FBI that one of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar, had a US visa (see 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000). The officer tells Tenet: “Once Almihdhar’s picture and visa information were received, everyone agreed that the information should immediately be sent to the FBI. Instructions were given to do so. There was a contemporaneous e-mail in CIA staff traffic, which CIA and FBI employees had access to, indicating that the data had in fact been sent to the FBI. Everyone believed it had been done.” [Tenet, 2007, pp. 195] The claim that “everyone agreed” the information should be sent to the FBI is false, because two officers, deputy unit chief Tom Wilshire and Michael Anne Casey, specifically instructed two other people working at Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, not to send it (see 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000 and January 6, 2000). The “contemporaneous e-mail” was then written by Casey, who must have known the claim the information had been passed was incorrect (see Around 7:00 p.m. January 5, 2000). Casey later appears to have lied about this matter to Tenet (see Before October 17, 2002) and the Justice Department’s inspector general (see February 2004).
