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CIA Tag

A US official told CNN today that an airstrike probably killed al-Qaeda terrorist Jamel Ahmed Mohammed Ali Al-Badawi, the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. The attack killed 17 sailors and injured 39 others. Many believe the terrorist attack "foreshadowed the attack on the US less than one year later on September 11, 2001."

As we've been covering here at LI, Gina Haspel is President Trump's pick to head the CIA.  She has been blasted for her role in overseeing then-legal and -authorized enhanced interrogation techniques against Islamist terrorists. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has issued a statement in which he urges the Senate not to confirm Haspel due to her role in enhanced interrogation.  The problem with this, however, is that he voted to confirm John Brennan to the CIA's top spot, knowing full-well Brennan's role in enhanced interrogation.

The pace of media frenzy and #TheResistance howling has picked up lately, particularly in the wake of the firing of Andrew McCabe. But this frenzy is just a variation on a theme.

After President Donald Trump nominated CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel to takeover as director, stories from a year ago circulated about how she was in charge of a secret CIA prison in Thailand that tortured al-Qaeda suspects. The reports contained claims that she even participated. I even blogged about it, mainly because I was curious how Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and others would vote to confirm her due to her supposed past. After it caught on, ProPublica issued a correction that Haspel did NOT oversee the waterboarding of suspect Abu Zubaydah.

President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this morning and nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take over that role. He also nominated CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel to lead the spy agency. If confirmed, Haspel will become the first woman CIA director. However, she may face a rocky road to confirmation due to her role in torture sessions at a secret prison in Thailand.

A former CIA officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, has been charged with "unlawful retention of national defense information." Lee allegedly had in his possession notebooks containing the details and identities of current CIA operatives and is suspected of identifying both spy recruits and CIA agents to the Chinese government. The New York Times reports:

A former C.I.A. officer suspected by investigators of helping China dismantle United States spying operations and identify informants has been arrested, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The collapse of the spy network was one of the American government’s worst intelligence failures in recent years.

The CIA has released thousands of documents, videos, computer files, and pictures that U.S. forces captured during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan in May 2011. FDD's Long War Journal (LWJ) has been pressing the agency to release these items, which have given us insight into al-Qaeda and the man responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed over 3,000 Americans. This includes bin Laden's journal and more recent images of his son Hamza bin Laden.