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HavenWorks.com/people/a-z/c/cambone-stephen-a Stephen Cambone News |
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Republican Corporate Military Government Intelligence Politician Stephen Cambone News |
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 Stephen
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STEPHEN CAMBONE News:
Dick
Cheney - Stephen
A Cambone - Larry
Franklin - Noteworthy
-  US
-  Italy
- Iraq
-  Iran
-  Military
-  Politics
-  Investigation
- "Did
Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?" ... "Defense
Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles
who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of
Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence
service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the [United
States] U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday."
... "A top aide to [Republican President Bush's] then-secretary of defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the
Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's
top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a
more thorough investigation, the Senate report said." ... "The revelation
raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials
in the Pentagon and in [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney's office
to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the
[Republican President] Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi
dictator." ... "Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign,
has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed
groups now run much of the government and the security forces." ... "The
aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials'
contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency] had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts
were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon
and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading
Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime." ... "Stephen Cambone, then
the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, shut down the counterintelligence
investigation after only a month, the Senate report said." ... "The Senate
committee also found that Pentagon officials concealed the contacts with
Ghorbanifar from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State
Department. Pentagon officials also provided Senate investigators with
an inaccurate account of events and, with support from two unnamed officials
in Cheney's office, continued meeting with Ghorbanifar after contact with
him was officially ordered to stop." ... "The first meetings with Ghorbanifar,
which were disclosed in August 2003 by the Long Island, N.Y. [New York],
newspaper Newsday, took place in Rome [Italy's capital] in December 2001.
They were attended by two Pentagon Iran experts, Harold Rhode and Larry
Franklin; by an Italian military intelligence official, and by Ledeen."
-By John
Walcott -McClatchyDC.com
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Stephen
Cambone - Torture
- Prisons
- Classified
- Military
- 
Intelligence
- US
- Iraq
- 
Afghanistan
- Noteworthy
- "Implausible
Denial II." ... "On Saturday, May 15--twenty-four
hours after The Nation published "Implausible
Denial"--The New Yorker posted on its website Seymour Hersh's latest
Abu Ghraib-related investigative report. Its central revelation: The interrogations
at [Iraq prison] Abu Ghraib were part of a highly classified Special Access
Program (SAP) code-named Copper Green, authorized by [Republican President
Bush's] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ultimately overseen by Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. Originally a joint
[Central Intelligence Agency] CIA-Pentagon program in Afghanistan that
utilized highly trained Special Operations personnel, Copper Green eventually
expanded to Iraq, Hersh reports, where Cambone decided it would begin using
non-Special Operations personnel--including military intelligence officers
and other military personnel--to begin questioning prisoners whose status
was outside the program's original brief. The CIA objected and withdrew
from the program, while Cambone apparently tasked [Major General] Maj.
Gen. Geoffrey Miller, former Guantánamo Bay interrogations chief,
with "Gitmo-izing" Iraq's prison system." ... "What may be more surprising
than the revelations in Hersh's piece is the fact that leads to the Abu
Ghraib skullduggery were hidden in plain sight--and that the Pentagon press
corps all but ignored them. Though Cambone has been an exceptionally sub
rosa figure in his position as DoD's intelligence chief, on November 21,
2003, he sat down for a rare on-record meeting over breakfast with the
Defense Writers Group. Again in contrast to his May 11 comments, in which
he cast himself as a benign bureaucrat largely out of the loop, his November
comments offer a glimpse into the mechanics of how Cambone's office was
assertively taking the lead in coordinating intelligence operations in
Iraq." ... "Noting first that his office has "one group of people over
to do an assessment" and that another was getting ready to go, Cambone
said that "the requirement for an increased level of intelligence support
became increasingly evident as we went through a period between early July/late
August.... In that late August time frame, a delegation went over there
from the Department and included people from the CIA to look at how we
were structured, whether we had proper arrangement at the division level,
whether that information, as it was being compiled at the divisional level,
was being moved from that level up to the CJTF-7 [Combined Joint Task Force-7]
level in an expeditious manner."" ... "Cambone further stated that the
group "came back with a list of somewhere close to eighty or ninety recommendations,"
and went on to describe a rapid infusion of personnel and technology for
intelligence-related endeavors. He also noted that the Director of Central
Intelligence, George Tenet, had "made a number of adjustments in his complement
of people in Iraq" as part of a "concerted effort to lash up much more
tightly the work that is done in the context of the CIA activities with
those being done by the Department to ensure there is [a] cross-flow of
information and cooperation."" ... "Cambone's remarks at the breakfast
also bring into potentially clearer focus the role in Abu Ghraib of [Lieutenant
General] Lieut. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, his deputy for intelligence
and warfighting support. "It is an office," Cambone says of Boykin's shop,
"that is designed to assure the types of capabilities we have just been
talking about here, whether it is people, or it is resources, or it is
material, or it is information, is moved forward to the people who need
it at various levels of command and operation in order for them to execute
their mission."" -By Jason
West -TheNation.com
Stephen
Cambone - Torture
- Prison
- Military
- Intelligence
- Police
- Human
Rights - 
Law
- Politics
- US
- 
Syria
- Iraq
- "Knowledge
of Abusive Tactics May Go Higher." ... "Army intelligence
officers suspected that a Syrian and admitted jihadist who was detained
at [Iraq's] Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad [Iraq's capital] knew about
the illegal flow of money, arms and foreign fighters into Iraq. But he
was smug, the officers said, and refused to talk. So last November, they
devised a special plan for his interrogation, going beyond what Army rules
normally allowed." ... "An Army colonel [Thomas M. Pappas] in charge of
intelligence-gathering at the prison, spelling out the plan in a classified
cable to the top [United States] U.S. military officer in Iraq, said interrogators
would use a method known as "fear up harsh," which military documents said
meant "significantly increasing the fear level in a security detainee."
The aim was to make the 31-year-old Syrian think his only hope in life
was to talk, undermining his confidence in what they termed "the Allah
factor."" ... "According to the plan, interrogators needed the assistance
of military police supervising his detention at the prison, who ordinarily
play no role in interrogations under Army regulations. First, the interrogators
were to throw chairs and tables in the man's presence at the prison and
"invade his personal space."" ... "Then the police were to put a hood on
his head and take him to an isolated cell through a gantlet of barking
guard dogs; there, the police were to strip-search him and interrupt his
sleep for three days with interrogations, barking and loud music, according
to Army documents. The plan was sent to [Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez." ... "Congressional testimony by Defense Department and Army officials
over the past two weeks has highlighted the fact that the abuses in Iraq
-- which mostly occurred in the last quarter of 2003 -- came at a time
of heightened pressures in Washington for more robust intelligence-gathering,
because of proliferating attacks on U.S. forces and the dwindling intelligence
on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction." ... "Although
no direct links have been found between the documented abuses and orders
from Washington, Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition that they
not be named say that the hunt for data on these two topics was coordinated
during this period by Defense Undersecretary Stephen A. Cambone, the top
U.S. military intelligence official and long one of the closest aides to
[Republican President Bush's] Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld."
... ""We've got no proof that a person in authority told them to do this
activity," [Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the Army's deputy
chief of staff, said on May 11." ... "But three directives in particular
have already begun to attract congressional scrutiny: The first is a classified
report by Army [Major General] Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller on [September]
Sept. 9, 2003, demanding that the military police at Abu Ghraib be dedicated
and trained to set "the conditions for the successful interrogation and
exploitation of internees/detainees." The report, which Cambone has testified
was presented to his deputy William Boykin, contained five recommendations
spelling out how this was to occur and reported it had already begun."
... "The second is an [October] Oct. 12 classified memo signed by Sanchez
that demanded a "harmonization" of military policing and intelligence work
at Abu Ghraib for the purpose of ensuring "consistency with the interrogation
policies . . . and maximiz[ing] the efficiency of the interrogation.""
... "The memo, obtained by The Washington Post, also states "it is imperative
that interrogators be provided reasonable latitude to vary their approach,"
depending on a detainee's background, strengths, resistance and other factors.
It also explicitly demands humane treatment and requires that any dogs
present during the interrogations be muzzled." ... "The third is a [November]
Nov. 19 memo from Sanchez's office that formally placed the two key Abu
Ghraib cellblocks where the abuses occurred under the control of Pappas
and his 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. It was 11 days later, after
this memo placed the military police responsible for "security of detainees
and base protection" in Pappas's hands, that he sought, in his memo to
Sanchez, to draw military police explicitly into applying pressure on the
Syrian." ... "The fact that prison interrogations were so directly controlled
by these military directives, as well as the apparent cultural sophistication
of some of the abuses, has already led some lawmakers to conclude that
much more experienced and senior officers were involved than the seven
military police now charged by the Army with wrongdoing. " (1, 2,
3)
-By R. Jeffrey Smith with contributions by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
and Sewell Chan -WashingtonPost
Stephen
Cambone - Torture
- Prisons
- Military
- Intelligence
- Police
- Human
Rights - Law
- Politics
- Feith
- 
Rhode
Island - 
Virginia
- US
- Iraq
- Guantánamo
Bay - 
Cuba
- Noteworthy
- "Implausible
Denial." ... "Writing in the December 16, 2002, edition
of The Nation, I broke the news--and explored the concerns many
in the [United States] US intelligence community had--about [Republican
President Bush's] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's quiet success in
prevailing upon Congress to authorize the creation of a new senior position
at the Pentagon,the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Several
months later, in the pages of the Columbia Journalism Review, I
followed up with a piece devoted to the media's utter lack of interest--perhaps
best demonstrated by the absence of any reporter from a farcical confirmation
hearing--in the new Under Secretary himself, Stephen Cambone." ... "Despite
his status as the Pentagon's über-intelligence authority, in the initial
days of the breaking [Iraq prison] Abu Ghraib scandal Cambone was virtually
invisible. When Rumsfeld was called to the Hill to testify before the Armed
Services Committee on May 7, however, Cambone was unexpectedly summoned
to the witness table from his chair behind Rumsfeld. That cameo appearance
resulted in a more expansive return appearance on May 11, in which Cambone
less than deftly tried to undermine Abu Ghraib investigator [Major General]
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. (Cambone disputed the general's conclusion that
military intelligence units effectively controlled the prison's military
police detachment.) Cambone also reacted adversely to [Rhode Island Democratic]
Senator Jack Reed's assertion (confirmed by Taguba) that recommendations
made in a report on improving intelligence collection at Abu Ghraib by
then-chief Guantánamo Bay [Cuba] interrogator [Major General] Maj.
Gen. Geoffrey Miller clearly called for the use of [Military Police] MPs
in interrogations, which helped create an environment that begot the subsequent
abuse and torture in the tiers. As a May 12 Washington Post editorial
points out, Cambone's office approved interrogation practices that are
in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions." ... "At the May 11 hearings,
Cambone and another senior Defense Department official, Army intelligence
chief [Lieutenant General] Lieut. Gen Keith Alexander, essentially cast
themselves as mere Pentagon representatives fielding questions about Abu
Ghraib--and not as men who might bear any responsibility for what they
desperately tried to cast as an aberrant and isolated incident. Yet many
of their assertions on May 11 are in fact contradicted by statements they
made before the same committee a month before, as well as a year-old memo
outlining the responsibilities of Cambone's office." ... "The Under Secretary
of Defense for Intelligence, or OUSD(I) in Pentagonese, was originally
conceived by Rumsfeld as a centralizing measure, a way to give him "one
dog to kick" rather than a "whole kennel" of individual civilian and uniformed
defense intelligence agencies. In choosing the person responsible for ostensibly
bringing unprecedented order and control to the Pentagon's spy shops, the
Secretary chose Cambone, a man with no intelligence experience but a favored
protégé and loyal partisan who had served on Rumsfeld's ballistic
missile threat commission and worked with the neoconservative Project for
the New American Century. Previously principal deputy to Under Secretary
for Policy Doug Feith (and, in that capacity, liaison between Feith and
the ideological intelligence analysis unit that would later morph into
the notorious Office of Special Plans), Cambone went out of his way in
his confirmation hearings to say that he would closely "consult and coordinate"
with Feith to "insure [that Department of Defense] DoD-related intelligence
activity supports the goals" of the Pentagon's policy shop." ... "Two months
after Cambone's confirmation, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described
his new portfolio in a detailed internal Pentagon memo. Reflecting the
seriousness and specificity of Cambone's mission, an organizational chart
appended to the memo shows a generic under secretary with six deputies,
including one for warfighting and operations, whose duties include specific
liaison with the intelligence elements of each of the armed services, each
individual combatant command, and the under secretary for policy. The document
itself explicitly states that Cambone's office will, among other things:"
... "provide oversight and policy guidance for all DoD intelligence activities;
provide policy oversight of all the intelligence organizations within the
DoD, to include ensuring these organizations are manned, trained, equipped
and structured to support the missions of the Department; provide
assessments of and advice [to] the Secretary and CJCS [Chairman, Joint
Chiefs of Staff] on the adequacy of military intelligence performance;
exercise management and oversight of all DoD counterintelligence and security
activities; coordinate DoD intelligence and intelligence-related policy,
plans, programs, requirements and resource allocations; oversee provision
of intelligence support and involvement in information operations, focused
on assessments in support of operations." ... "None of this should leave
much to the imagination, especially when it comes to policies and practices
pertaining to the dimensions of human intelligence collection that involve
interrogations conducted by military intelligence. Yet when asked by [Virginia
Republican] Senator John Warner if his office has "overall responsibility
for policy concerning the handling of detainees," Cambone dodged with a
"not precisely, sir," effectively denying any responsibility as set forth
in his charge by Wolfowitz. Rather, Cambone said, he only reactively "became
involved in this issue from the perspective of assuring there was a flow
of intelligence back to the commands and done in an efficient and effective
way."" -By Jason
West -TheNation.com
