Obama and Feinstein Set to Destroy the CIA and Allied Intelligence

Intelligence played a large part in the weekend news. ~~~~~ Foreign governments and US intelligence agencies predict that the release of a Senate report anout the use of torture by the CIA will cause "violence and deaths" abroad. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, who is regularly briefed on intelligence matters, told CNN's "State of the Union" that US intelligence agencies and foreign governments have said privately that the release of the report on CIA interrogations a decade ago will be used by extremists to incite violence that is likely to cost lives. For this reason, US diplomatic and military posts overseas are being put on alert over the potential backlash from the looming Senate report. State Department and intelligence community officials confirmed to Fox News early today that an advisory has been sent urging US personnel overseas to reassess security measures. The message directs all overseas posts, including those used by CIA personnel, to "review their security posture" for a "range of reactions that might occur." A similar statement is being sent to military combatant commands, directing them to carry out a readiness assessment. The 480-page summary of the still-classified 6,000 page study is expected to be made public next week. AP reports that on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry urged the Senator in charge of the report to consider the timing of the release, although Obama administration officials say they continue to support making it public. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has not responded to reports of the Kerry call, but she told the Los Angeles Times in a story published Sunday : "We have to get this report out." A congressional aide noted that the White House has led negotiations to declassify the report and that both the President and his director of national intelligence have endorsed its release. The report amounts to the first public account of the CIA's use of 'enhanced interrogation' on al-Qaida detainees held in secret facilities in Europe and Asia after 9/11. US officials who have read it say it includes disturbing new details about the CIA's use of such techniques as sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, humiliation and waterboarding. President Obama has said : "We tortured some folks." The report indicates that the techniques failed to produce life-saving intelligence. But, this is strongly denied by both current and former intelligence officials, including CIA director John Brennan. The CIA told Fox News it would not comment until the report is released, but former CIA officials have told Fox that the program provided it with basic intelligence about the al-Qaida network after 9/11. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has previously told Fox that it is not feasible to believe that three different CIA directors and three different CIA deputy directors conspired over a seven-year period to lie about the program's effectiveness. However, according to Hayden, a small group of Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee is hell-bent on releasing the graphic report that suggests the CIA misled President George W. Bush about torture techniques used on suspected al-Qaida detainees held in secret facilities. Hayden said Monday on "America's Forum" that the release will damage the United States' relationship with allies and risk the safety of overseas personnel, adding that "no good reason" exists to explain the partisan politics of the push for its release. Hayden maintains the CIA did nothing illegal and always kept the administration in the loop, but says the collateral damage [of release] will be US allies and members of the CIA : "We do a lot of things with friends. A lot of these things are edgy, not illegal, but they have a pretty high political risk quotient attached. When you get into a relationship with a partner and you ask them to do something on your behalf or to cooperate with you, you're giving them a really powerful commitment of your discretion. Now, this report is going to come out and although it is not going to name the countries that were involved...there are those people who think they know what countries were involved that will then use the data in this report you and I have already discussed is not accurate, but they will treat it as accurate....What CIA officer in the future, after this and after having been indicted and convicted in absentia, is going to raise his hand in the future and say, 'This is an odd idea, might be a little edgy, but I've been thinking.... The final outcome of this report is going to be an American espionage service that is timid and friendless, and that really is a danger to the US." Hayden said he recommended in 2006 that the US reduce the number of interrogation techniques in order to build political cohesion and to ensure continuity from one administration to the next : "Now, what I did in 2006, with a strong support I should add of President Bush, who was trying to get his emergency measures started after 9/11 on a more sound political footing...so that he could hand them off to his successor, whomever that might be,...we were quite willing, in order to get political consensus, to pull back from some techniques that some people may have objected to, not in any way suggesting they were previously illegal, but simply to get the political buy-in so that we could have a program that wouldn't have an on/off switch with every off-year election." Hayden and former CIA General Counsel John Rizzo also say that the program provided evidence that helped direct the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Representative Rogers questioned why the report needed to become public, given that the Justice Department investigated and filed no criminal charges. But, Feinstein told the LA Times that the harsh interrogations undermined "societal and constitutional values that we are very proud of. Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again." ~~~~~ Meanwhile, even as the Obama administration and lameduck Democrat Senate rush to release the intelligence report that could endanger US and allied field Intell and military personnel, the Obama administration has either ignored or acted without intelligence community advice in Yemen as it hastily sent in a unit to try to rescue an American being held for over a year by jihadist terrorists. The error led to the death not only of the American but also of a South African being held in the same place, whose release in exchange for the payment of a $200,000 'facilitating fee,' that is, a ransom, was imminent, while the American Luke Somers appeared to face immediate execution. The US ambassador in South Africa, Patrick Gaspard, said the United States did not know that the South African organization was negotiating for the release of the South African hostage. The group considered the possibility that Yemeni authorities were talking to American allies about the case, but said they did not want to "delve" into speculation and took the Americans at their word. "If they say they didn't know, they didn't know." But, a senior Yemeni intelligence official said that Yemen knew about negotiations to secure Pierre Korkie's release and that an "exchange of information" about the hostage took place two weeks ago in the presence of American officials in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. But, the US says it had no indication that "Korkie was being held in the same space as the American photojournalist Luke Somers," according to a Pretoria US Embassy statement. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the notion suggested by Senator Feinstein - that the release of the post-9/11 interrogation report summary will prevent future excesses in terrorist interrogation techiques - is pure La-La Land. But, then Feinstein is from California. What its release will do is threaten allies and weaken US intelligence ties with them, and endanger US and allied intelligence operatives and military, and even civilians, worldwide. You can do the risk analysis as well as I can. And, today, I feel heavily and personally the risks taken by those heroic men and women who stand between us and some of the worst evils ever visited on mankind. A friend is dead -- beaten, shot, left for dead, but found, surviving on life support for months. He is now with the other dead heroes who risk and lose their lives every day for us -- working in a sinister world where life means nothing to our enemies and where our defenders experience not only risks but capture, real torture and death. It is these valiant people that Obama and Feinstein now want to toss to demons from Hell. Is there no common sense left in the Democratic leaders who would destroy America, its guardians and its friends simply to make a textbook point that the rest of us learned as children in church. Rest in peace, dear friend. We carry in our hearts your wounds and your determined hope and your valor.