Cia

WASHINGTON - Despite a dire need for intelligence about the groups fighting to overthrow the Syrian government, the CIA has little if any presence in the country, seriously limiting its ability to collect information and influence the course of events, according to current and former U.S. officials. American intelligence agencies have kept tabs on Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles, using spy satellites and other forms of electronic eavesdropping as well as information from allied nations and U.S. personnel in Turkey and other neighboring countries.

Jim Mann misses the mark in his Aug. 5 article criticizing the CIA for, in his words, "resisting and delaying the attempts of independent historians--and sometimes even the State Department's own government historians--to describe and analyze intelligence operations during the Cold War." The CIA has done a great deal and will do more without compromising its statutory responsibility to protect intelligence sources and methods. This agency has doubled the resources devoted to declassifying historically important records.

Re "Partisan Spooks," editorial, Nov. 18: On the one hand, The Times has criticized the "intelligence failures" of the CIA, yet on the other hand, criticized new Director Porter Goss for making changes by mischaracterizing them as "turmoil" and "needlessly antagonizing senior officials." Had Goss done nothing different upon assuming leadership of the CIA, The Times would surely have been critical. Meanwhile, you imply sinister intent in the admonition by Goss to CIA employees that the agency must "support the administration and its policies in our work."

How craven of liberal politicians and members of the media to decry the failure of our intelligence establishment to avoid the Sept. 11 catastrophe. Any informed American concerned about the increase in terrorist assaults against the U.S. worldwide knows the CIA has not been the same since the Democrats' congressional purges of the 1970s.

Re "CIA Linked to Guatemala Killings, Lawmaker Alleges," March 23: We applaud the media and Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) for their recent reports on the cases of Efrain Bamaca Velazquez and Michael DeVine. Yet we are also compelled to point out that information on underlying covert U.S. support for a literally genocidal government in Guatemala has been in distribution for several years. In this instance, Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez was linked to the Bamaca case by Santiago Cabrera Lopez two years ago in testimony to the OAS. Our government obviously had access to such information also, independently of the classified reports and directives it generated.

President Obama will visit CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., later this week to thank the intelligence community for its work in helping to find terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced on Wednesday. The visit comes during a week when the president will focus on Mideast issues. He met with Jordan's King Abdullah II on Tuesday and will address the nation on U.S. policy in the Middle East on Thursday. On Friday, the same day Obama will visit the CIA, the president is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the stalled peace efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who led a phony vaccination campaign aimed at helping the CIA pinpoint Osama bin Laden's whereabouts was convicted of treason Wednesday and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a decision that is likely to further fray Washington's fragile relations with Islamabad. U.S. officials have been seeking the release of Shakeel Afridi since his arrest by Pakistani authorities after the secret American commando raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader in his sprawling compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad a year ago. In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Afridi had provided intelligence that assisted the raid and criticized Pakistan's arrest of someone involved in helping track down the world's most wanted man. From the start, however, Pakistani authorities have regarded Afridi as a traitor and have ignored Washington's calls for his release.

WASHINGTON - - About a dozen CIA personnel were evacuated from eastern Libya after heavily armed men stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and killed four Americans, setting back an important intelligence operation and prompting a debate about how much risk CIA officers should assume in dangerous overseas posts. The decision to withdraw the team from Benghazi drew criticism from former CIA officers, who called it an overly cautious response to the Sept. 11 attack, which killed two security officers, an information technology officer and the U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department will not file criminal charges for the alleged CIA mistreatment of detainees during the George W. Bush administration, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday, closing the last two investigations and ending a legal chapter that sparked criticism across the political spectrum. The final investigations had focused on the deaths of two men during CIA interrogations overseas. The first was Gul Rahman, a suspected member of Al Qaeda who died in November 2002 after he was shackled in a freezing room in a then-secret CIA prison, known as the Salt Pit, near Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON - A Libyan man says he was waterboarded while in CIA custody in Afghanistan, a new allegation that challenges the long-standing claim by U.S. officials that just three people since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had been subjected to the simulated drowning technique many consider torture. The account by Mohammed Shoroeiya, who says he was detained in Pakistan in April 2003 and kept in American custody in Afghanistan through 2004, is part of a series of new claims included in a report by Human Rights Watch published Thursday.