Top Secret Warfare and the Law

This thread deals with something that I have mulling over for quite a while. While the article deals with a web site that was set up by the CIA and Saudi Arabia, illegally I might add, I want to delve into who actually orders and deems necessary things like an assassination? Does the American public? Did the American public authorize countless millions to be given to the CIA to destabilize the regime in Iran?

Or how about the fact that we actually supplied WMD's to Saddam and supported him financially with his country's war with Iran. Did we the American public say yes to this? These are just things to consider as you mull over the more recent stunt that was pulled for our own good. You see, half of the things we find out about later, we would never have agreed to in the first place. Are we all just brain dead marionettes that our leaders do not regard as being capable of deciding what is best for us?

Though a defense official told CNN that there is no daylight between the CIA and the DoD on the matter, that's incorrect. It's not clear whether Furlong was given permission to do what he did by his superiors, and it's not clear whether the U.S. Strategic Command, which has aggressively moved into the cyber terrain, understood that Furlong's operation was within the confines of their "information operations" mission. Whether Furlong should have been given the job in the first place is another question: he was supervised by Robert Butler, then the senior chief civilian at the Joint Information Operations Warfare Command, and now the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense of Space and Cyberspace. Furlong was hired by then Major General John C. Koziol, JIOWC's commander and now the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence) for Joint and Coalition Warfighter Support. According to several officials, the Department is investigating whether the JIOWC, based at Lackland Air Force Base, diverted funds from another classified contract to Furlong's activities, which would raise the question of whether his actions were sanctioned.

www.theatlantic.com...

You see, they set up an online jihadist web site and were using it for intelligence gathering. The site soon became a logistical tool for the extremists and it was being used to plan and execute operations against our forces in Iraq. Some wanted the site shut down, some didn't.

Someone took the bull by the horns and shut it down which crippled the internet availability of countries that were not involved. They even disrupted service in Texas. Another fine example of wasted tax dollars as we will no doubt pay restitution to those countries that were affected and we wonder how and why we are broke.

Lets all hope they don't fund and operate "other" websites with radicals posting on it.

Eh?

Originally posted by Mr Mask
Lets all hope they don't fund and operate "other" websites with radicals posting on it.

Eh?

I was thinking the same thing..

I also wonder how many Sites are out there that are run or very Closely Watched by the DoD and CIA or even the FBi for that Matter?

I guess even the Police may run Chatrooms looking for Undesirables. Let's face it, FaceBook is no longer a place to hide and Communicate with friends or Family if you want to remain anonymous. I guess though, You only need to be worried if you've done something wrong or commited a Crime.

I bet the Tax Department might even keep an eye out on FaceBook and other Social Websites.

Now, If only TPTB had of thought about inventing a Social Site like FaceBook? If Only???

reply to post by jackflap


Here's a good doc on secret war in Afghanistan -- the mercenaries, etc.

topdocumentaryfilms.com...

Pentagon investigates Jason Bourne spy program (Part 1)

The Department of Defense is investigating an illegal spy operation in which a Defense Department official by the name of Michael Furlong purportedly diverted $24 Million of government funds to an “off the books” real world Operation Treadstone to kill militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Furlong, who once served as deputy director of the Joint Military Information Support Command and Deputy Commander of the Joint Psychological Operations Support, referred to his stable of contractors as “my Jason Bournes”. The ruction over the incident is a bit perplexing because, although it does indeed sound like something out of a Robert Ludlum novel, the U.S. government has been outsourcing clandestine and covert activities for years.

www.examiner.com...

Pentagon investigates Jason Bourne spy program (Part 2)

A major part of the controversy surrounding a Defense Department official by the name of Michael Furlong who diverted government funds to establish an illegal spy ring to assasinate militants in Paksitan and Afghanistan, involves a territorial dispute between the CIA and military intelligence agencies over who can carry out covert versus clandestine operations, which are distinct. According to Title 50 of the U.S. Code section 413(e) covert action is the sole authority of the CIA. Covert action is defined by federal law as: “an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.” Whereas clandestine means the operation is concealed but not the sponsor. Putting it simply, to the U.S. government clandestine means “hidden” while covert means “deniable.”

www.examiner.com...

A couple of good articles that are right in line with what we are discussing here. In part two the author goes into how the oversight works, but the activities have already been played out. So where was the oversight?

reply to post by jackflap


Entrapment comes to mind when I read this, whether those who went onto the website, willingly, or not knew of the military laying a trap, it falls under that as far as I know and or believe.

It fits perfectly with the thread I began on blackmail.

Blackmail : Keep Your Friends Close, Keep Your Enemies Closer, The Threat of Subversion Through Fear

I had not gotten to the part about entrapment, honeypots, and turning agents.

Quote from : Wikipedia : Entrapment

In criminal law, entrapment is when a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit an offense which the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit.

In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability.

And I can hear the questions now, so I will speak to the unasked questions.

If the Department of Defense and or Pentagon is acting in a predicative manner, it is in fact acting in a Law Enforcement manner, and therefore, it is acting out the scenario of entrapment.

Quote from : Wikipedia : Entrapment : United States

The entrapment defense in the United States has evolved mainly through case law.

Two competing tests exist for determining whether entrapment has taken place, known as the "subjective" and "objective" tests.

The "subjective" test looks at the defendant's state of mind; entrapment can be claimed if the defendant had no "predisposition" to commit the crime.

The "objective" test looks instead at the government's conduct; entrapment occurs when the actions of government officers would have caused a normally law-abiding person to commit a crime.

Courts took a dim view of the defense at first.

"[It] has never availed to shield crime or give indemnity to the culprit, and it is safe to say that under any code of civilized, not to say Christian, ethics, it never will" a New York Supreme Court said in 1864.

Forty years later, another judge in that state would affirm that rejection, arguing "[courts] should not hesitate to punish the crime actually committed by the defendant" when rejecting entrapment claimed in a grand larceny case.

So, were these individuals already predisposed towards commission of this crime?

Or were they lead towards commission of said crime through a means, a website, to believe they could commit this crime, because of the availibility of communication?

As well, using this as a means for intelligence gathering violates the quite a few Amendments, if any of these people are American, if they were under the belief that it was a real website, but it was a Government trap.

This is similar to a honeypot.

Quote from : Wikipedia : Honeypot

Honeypot or honeytrap may refer to:

Espionage recruitment involving sexual seduction in

reality or

fiction.

A type of sting operation such as a

*bait car or

*honeypot (computing) , a trap to help fight unauthorized computer access.

It would fall under clandestine HUMINT asset recruiting, if legally done, and if illegally done, without authorization, the man can be looking at decades in prison.

Quote from : Wikipedia : Clandestine HUMINT Asset Recruiting

Love, honeypots and recruitment

If one paid attention only to the fictional James Bond, little besides love would be involved in recruitment.

The reality is different, although the details will vary with countries, cultures, legality of the physical contact, and other aspects of a specific situation.

US intelligence services, for example, are concerned when their own personnel could be subject to sexual blackmail.

This applied to any homosexual relationship until the mid-1990s, and also applied to heterosexual relationships with most foreign nationals.

See honeypots in espionage fiction for fictional examples.

In some cases, especially when the national was a citizen of a friendly nation, the relationship needed to be reported.

Failure to do so, even with a friendly nation, could result in dismissal.

One former CIA officer said that while sexual entrapment wasn't generally a good tool to recruit a foreign official, it was sometimes employed successfully to solve short-term problems.

Seduction is a classic technique; "swallow" was the KGB tradecraft term for women, and "raven" the term for men, trained to seduce intelligence targets.

During the Cold War, the KGB (and allied services, including the East German Stasi under Markus Wolf, and the Cuban Intelligence Directorate (formerly known as Dirección General de Inteligencia or DGI)) frequently sought to entrap CIA officers.

The KGB believed that Americans were sex-obsessed materialists, and that U.S. spies could easily be entrapped by sexual lures.

The best-known incident, however, was of Clayton Lonetree, a Marine guard supervisor at the Moscow embassy, who was seduced by a "swallow" who was a translator at the Embassy of the United States in Moscow.

Once the seduction took place, she put him in touch with a KGB handler.

The espionage continued after his transfer to Vienna, although he eventually turned himself in.

The Soviets used sex not only for direct recruitment, but as a contingency where an American officer might need to be compromised in the future.

The CIA itself made limited use of sexual recruitment against foreign intelligence services.

"Coercive recruitment generally didn't work.

We found that offers of money and freedom worked better."

If the Agency found a Soviet intelligence officer had a girlfriend, they would try to recruit the girlfriend as an access agent.

Once the CIA personnel had access to the Soviet officer, they might attempt to double him.

And the sexual seduction comes into play with the website, as a means of the non-existent means to do something, therefore someone mentally fantasizing about said action, and the website being a clear indicator of the mental fantasy becoming a reality.

Feel free, jackflap, to pull any information from my thread on blackmail.

As for the clandestine manner of recruiting assassins, this is something the C.I.A. is not allowed to do, however I never see them having a law forbidding them to do something, actually stop them, because they flout the law.

Ever since Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs they pretty much believe they can and will do anything, irregardless of national and or international laws.

Barack Obama must justify covert killing. Or halt it It’s not just Israel that is eliminating its enemies. The US is pursuing a programme of state-backed assassination

After 9/11, George W. Bush was granted broad executive powers to combat terrorism around the world, and under Barack Obama the programme of killing using drones has accelerated sharply. Unmanned planes are used routinely to pick out specific enemies, not just in the wild Pakistani borderlands but in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. President Obama has ordered more drone strikes on terrorist targets in his first year in office than President Bush did in two terms. Of the 99 drone attacks carried out in Pakistan since 2004, 89 occurred after January 2008; last year there were a record 50 drone strikes, up from 31 the year before.

The CIA’s targeted killings may be justified on legal, ethical and practical grounds: if a gun it pointed at your head, violent self-defence is a reasonable response. The problem is that the Obama Administration has not sought to justify, or even properly acknowledge, its tactics, just as Israel has neither admitted nor defended the al-Mabhouh hit. Drone strikes take place amid the strictest secrecy. The Obama Administration has made no direct comment on them, nor divulged the criteria by which individuals are selected. The CIA reportedly keeps a constantly updated list of shoot-to-kill targets “deemed to be a continuing threat to US persons or interests”. But how a person gets on that list — or off it — is unclear. Are terrorists and insurgents singled out for what they have done in the past, or what they might do in the future?

www.timesonline.co.uk...

An article I wanted to remember and I believe it fits quite well right here. So who is deciding who gets killed? It could be anyone. All on the American taxpayers dime. I wonder how much it costs to deploy a loaded drone and carry out an attack? Then I wonder how many people could have been fed with them very same resources?

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


Here's more expose on sex blackmail tactics by the CIA and used domestically on politicians -- under the auspice of religious morality no less:

www.conspiracyarchive.com...

It isn't just the CIA and DOD that murder or turn a blind eye to murder.It has trickled down to the DOJ and ICE.

The loss of a few is okay to capture others in the war on drugs. At least that seems to be the stance of ICE and the DOJ.

ICE Ignores Juarez Death House

“[ICE] was aware these people [in the Juarez drug organization] were ruthless and powerful,” the informant told Narco News during a recent telephone interview. “If they say kill someone, you do it, or you get killed. I explained that to Customs [ICE], that those are the conditions I would have to work under, and they [the informant’s ICE handlers] said ‘Yes,’ and I began to infiltrate the cartel...”

“Nobody was allowed to work coc aine in the city, and if they did, they would be killed,” he said. “We [ICE through the informant] had infiltrated the most powerful criminal organization in the country [Mexico] and they kill people as part of their work. There’s n o way to avoid it .”

And ICE and the U.S. prosecutors in El Paso and San Antonio, Texas, working the investigation that utilized the informant understood that reality, according to the informant...

“ICE knew about these houses where they were torturing and killing people,” the informant said. “I would report on these houses in debriefings [with ICE] but they never asked me where the houses were. I had the addresses, but ICE never asked me for the addresses.”

The informant said U.S. law enforcers and prosecutors didn’t seem to care about the murders since they were happening “on Mexican soil.” The revelation that ICE and U.S. prosecutors were made aware that there were multiple death houses in operation while the informant was working for them is important because the informant has since been accused of helping to facilitate some of the murders — with the U.S. government’s knowledge.

The informant, a former Mexican cop named Guillermo E. Ramirez Peyro (also known as “Lalo”), admits to participating in at least one murder carried out at a death house at 3633 Parsioneros in Juarez. He also admitted in the interview with Narco News that he was present at the house when two additional victims were tortured and murdered. A gravedigger who worked with Lalo (the bodies were buried in the backyard of the house) claims the informant was actually present for at least five of the murders at the Parsioneros House of Death.

More From Ice Informant

The informant, while working for ICE, helped to coordinate the gruesome operations of that house for Santil lan — with the knowledge of his ICE handlers. Ramirez Peyro also helped to carry out at least one of the murders at the house and was present for others, including at least two carried out by Loya. Ramirez Peyro claims he reported his activity to his ICE handlers — often in advance of these “carne asadas,” the code word for a torture/murder session at this House of Death. An affidavit sworn by an Assistant U.S. Attorney confirms ICE and the Department of Justice, at the highest levels, were made aware of the informant's participation in murder, yet sanctioned his continued use.

The second article is even more interesting. ICE was trying to run a sting on a corrupt customs inspector. Some how the deal got blown. A FBI informant was killed. Ice showed up and claimed they didn't know anything about the sting. Then they had their own informant put in jail, for his protection.

Ice would later claim that they were trying to sting the people delivering the drugs and guns. Unfortunately their little play ended up costing five people their lives.

“I set up the deal from San Antonio [while supposedly under ICE’s protective custody and working under his own name at an area shopping center],” Ramirez Peyro said. “It took me two months to find someone to do it [to agree to bring a load of drugs from Juarez to El Paso to help set up a sting on the corrupt inspector] because I didn’t want to deal directly with cartel people...”

“He was an informant for the FBI, but he was loyal to me,” Ramirez Peyro said of Guzman, who was 27 and the father of a two-week old baby boy.

People are pawns to those in power. They see things in terms of "the end game," and the grand strategy. The value of any life besides their own is nothing.

Read the full story of Ramirez Peyro at Narco News. It is an interesting view of how those in power pevert justice.

Narco News - Ramirez Peyro - House Of Death

In a twist similar to the Furlong case ICE is trying to pin everything on one agent. They claim that special agent Raul Bencomo never told superiors that Peyro was involved in murders in Juarez. I don't believe that and I don't believe that Furlong diverted the $24 million with out somebody okaying everything.

To answer your original question, I have no idea who really sanctions these things. I know I never explicitly authorized anything. However, we must ask if we authorized them through our own silence? Did we okay these actions simply by voting? I think you raise a good question that is nearly impossible to answer. How responsible are Americans for the covert, clandestine, and deadly actions our government engages in?

That question will haunt me all night. Thanks a lot.

[edit on 25-3-2010 by MikeNice81]