Cia Officials

Convicted CIA spy Aldrich H. Ames, munching deli sandwiches and sipping coffee, reportedly told FBI and CIA officials questioning him for the first time Friday that he had no other accomplices and knew of no other moles inside the agency where he once worked. While government sources would not reveal Ames' initial insights, one intelligence official said that the questioning began with "a set of priorities that we're working our way through.

Mistakes were made, but on balance waterboarding of terrorism suspects made the world safer. That is the conclusion of Jose Rodriguez, a key CIA architect of the harsh measures used to elicit intelligence from prisoners snatched from the streets of foreign countries and flown to a globe-spanning network of secret prisons for interrogation. But in Europe, where leaders of developing democracies like Poland, Lithuania and Romania allowed the CIA to conduct counter-terrorism activities the Council of Europe defines as torture, Rodriguez's position is unlikely to dampen the quest for accountability for those who welcomed U.S. agents.

Two chiefs of overseas divisions at the CIA are leaving, a federal official said Wednesday night -- the latest changes at the spy agency that has been in turmoil since new Director Porter J. Goss took over. The chiefs of the Europe and Far East divisions -- two critical regions of the world for the spy agency -- are retiring, an official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Their names were not released because they work undercover.

The operation that killed Osama bin Laden was led by the CIA, although most of those conducting the raid were military special operations troops, a U.S. official said today. CIA Director Leon Panetta gave the go-order about midday Sunday, after President Obama had signed off on it. Panetta and other CIA officials monitored the raid via live video on the 7th floor of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. When an operator was overheard confirming that bin Laden was killed, cheers erupted.

The CIA inspector general has identified more than a dozen active or retired officials who either ignored warnings or overlooked complaints against onetime counterintelligence officer Aldrich H. Ames during the nine years he spied for Moscow, according to sources familiar with the report. Chiefs, deputies and operating personnel in the Office of Security reportedly come under fire in a 400-page report for their failure to follow up on information about Ames' lavish spending in 1990.

The CIA's former Costa Rica station chief, portrayed by the agency as a "renegade" for his efforts to help Nicaragua's contra rebels after Congress had banned government aid, testified Friday in a closed session with congressional investigating committees that he kept CIA officials informed of his activities, committee members said. "I gather that people in the agency were notified," said Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), a member of the House committee. Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L.

The CIA recalled its chief officer in Costa Rica last week for aiding the private airlift of weapons to Nicaraguan rebels during a ban on U.S. military aid to the contras, Administration and congressional sources said Thursday. The intelligence agency told the Senate Intelligence Committee this week that it recalled its station chief from the U.S.

A CIA station chief recalled from Costa Rica for aiding a Nicaraguan rebel arms resupply mission has been cleared of wrongdoing by two internal investigations that did not examine broader questions of CIA involvement, intelligence sources say. Despite the legal findings, CIA superiors feel the station chief, known by the pseudonym Tomas Castillo, exercised poor judgment in relaying the messages from then-White House aide Oliver L. North, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The resignations of two more senior CIA officials Monday fueled debate in the intelligence community over whether the agency was tumbling into turmoil under new Director Porter J. Goss, or was taking painful but necessary steps toward fixing serious problems. In the latest in a series of high-profile departures, the top two officials in the CIA's clandestine service quit after clashing with one of Goss' senior aides. Stephen R.

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh said Friday he will drop attempts to prosecute former CIA operative Joseph F. Fernandez after Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh announced that he will continue to refuse to permit classified CIA information sought by the defense to be used in the trial.

When CIA Director Leon Panetta gathered reporters recently to discuss mistakes that allowed a suicide bomber to kill seven personnel in Afghanistan, he didn't mention a separate disclosure the agency made that day: that it had sued a retired officer who wrote an unapproved memoir. To some CIA veterans, the developments are related in ways that do not reflect well on the agency. An internal investigation blamed the December attack by an Al Qaeda double agent on "systemic failures" in CIA training, management, information sharing and vetting of sources.

Reporting from Washington -- The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan's border region, according to current and former counter-terrorism officials. The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as "pattern of life" analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.

The bomber who killed seven CIA employees at an agency forward base in Afghanistan had never been to the compound or met with agency operatives before the attack, U.S. officials said Tuesday. The absence of any previous encounter adds to the confusion over how the attacker -- posing as an informant with valuable information on Al Qaeda -- was able to make it past security with a bomb apparently strapped to his body and lure seasoned CIA operatives to their deaths last week. A U.S. intelligence official said that the bomber had provided a stream of useful information to the CIA after being presented by the Jordanian intelligence service as an Islamic militant who had switched sides and was now willing to work against Al Qaeda.

The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan's intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say. The Inter-Services Intelligence agency also has collected tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA program that pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a clandestine counterpart to the rewards...

The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence "surge" that will make the agency's station there among the largest in CIA history, U.S. officials say. When complete, the CIA's presence in the country is expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one U.S. official said the CIA already has nearly 700 employees in Afghanistan.

The CIA's decision to hire contractors from Blackwater USA for a covert assassination program was part of an expanding relationship in which the agency has relied on the widely criticized firm for tasks including guarding CIA lockups and loading missiles on Predator aircraft, according to current and former U.S. government officials. The 2004 contract cemented what was then a burgeoning relationship with Blackwater, setting the stage for a series of departures by senior CIA officials who took high-level positions with the North Carolina security company.

The Central Intelligence Agency's top covert operations official and its inspector general--both casualties of damaging revelations in the Iran-Contra scandal--are resigning, apparently beginning a long-anticipated housecleaning, sources said Wednesday. Deputy Director for Operations Clair George, a 32-year agency veteran who served undercover in Africa, Lebanon and Europe, announced his resignation at a senior CIA staff meeting Wednesday morning, sources said.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, chafing at the Justice Department's handling of a probe into missing CIA interrogation tapes, threatened Wednesday to subpoena two top CIA officials to jump-start the panel's own investigation. The department, which is conducting a criminal inquiry with the CIA inspector general into revelations that a CIA official destroyed videotapes of two terrorism suspects being interrogated in 2005, asked the panel last week to defer its inquiry.

The House Intelligence Committee launched an investigation Friday into a secret CIA effort to assemble paramilitary teams to kill Al Qaeda leaders -- a probe that will focus in part on whether agency officials were instructed by former Vice President Dick Cheney to hide the program from Congress. The program, launched after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was ended by new agency Director Leon E. Panetta last month, shortly after he learned about it and before it became operational.

The secret CIA program halted last month by Director Leon E. Panetta involved establishing elite paramilitary teams that could be inserted into Pakistan or other locations to capture or kill top leaders of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, according to former U.S. intelligence officials. The program -- launched in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- was never operational.