Gina Haspel is well-qualified for her intelligence gathering mission to Turkey in the Khashoggi affair. Haspel is known to have served as an intelligence officer in Turkey and one top former CIA official told me she speaks Turkish. So Haspel was able to talk, without interpreters, Hakan Fidan, chief of the Turkish intelligence service, the MIT....
Category: Activities
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Do We Need Spies? For Counterproliferation, Yes
One of the most important–and least controversial–missions for the CIA and other intelligence agencies is counteproliferation: the detection and disruption networks of people seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Defense One reports Slovenia and other small European countries are offering help to develop counterproliferation technology.
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New Gina Haspel Cable Discloses Her Mistake on Torture
The National Security Archive has obtained new details about the torture tactics of CIA director Gina Haspel and her mistaken belief that extreme measures were necessary. The key document comes from November 2002, a little more than a year after 9/11 attacks. Top CIA officials feared another attack was coming. Haspel was running a “black site” in...
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Jamal Khashoggi Disappearance: ‘The Hallmarks of a Rendition’
The disappeared Saudi dissident was kidnapped, says one former U.S. official quoted by the Washington Post. The arrival and rapid departure of a Saudi security team “bore the hallmarks of a “rendition,” the official said. Khashoggi got the same treatment as terror suspects renditioned by the United states,(although the U.S. does not usually kill and dismember...
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Three Saudi Critics Have Disappeared in the Last Three Years
The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi is not surprising in light of how the Saudi security forces deal with critics of the monarchy. From the BBC: