CIA Pakistan station chief unveiled in drone feud

[David Guyatt]

CIA's most senior officer in Pakistan 'unmasked' by Imran Khan's party

PTI party names man in letter to police demanding he be nominated as one of those responsible for drone strike

• Jon Boone in Islamabad
  
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 27 November 2013 08.52 EST
  

Supporters of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party protest in Karachi against drone strikes at the weekend. Photograph: Fareed Khan/AP

The political party led by the former cricket star Imran Khan claims to have blown the cover of the CIA's most senior officer in Pakistan as part of an increasingly high-stakes campaign against US drone strikes.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party named a man it claimed was head of the CIA station in Islamabad in a letter to police demanding he be nominated as one of the people responsible for a drone strike on 21 November, which killed five militants including senior commanders of the Haqqani Network.
John Brennan, the CIA director, was also nominated as an "accused person" for murder and "waging war against Pakistan".
The US embassy said it could not comment but was looking into the matter. The CIA spokesman Dean Boyd would not confirm the station chief's name and declined to immediately comment, AP reported.
If his identity is confirmed it will be the second time anti-drone campaigners have unmasked a top US spy in Pakistan.
In 2010 another CIA station chief, Jonathan Banks, was named in criminal proceedings initiated after a drone strike. Banks was forced to leave the country.
As with the Banks case, questions will be raised about how the PTI came to know the identity of the top US intelligence official in the country.
Although nearly all foreign spies in Pakistan use diplomatic cover stories to hide their occupation, many, including station chiefs, are declared to the country's domestic spy agency.
The letter signed by the PTI spokeswoman Shireen Mazari demanded the named agent be prevented from leaving the country so that he could be arrested. The PTI said it hoped he would reveal "through interrogation" the names of the remote pilots who operated the drone.
"CIA station chief is not a diplomatic post, therefore he does not enjoy any diplomatic immunity and is within the bounds of domestic laws of Pakistan," the letter said.
The accusation comes at a time when drones have once again become a matter of intense controversy in Pakistan.
The country's interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar, denounced a drone strike in early November. Although the attack killed the much hated chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, Nisar said it had wrecked the government's efforts to hold peace talks with militant groups.
And it infuriated Khan, who has built much of his political platform around opposition to drones, which he claims are largely responsible for the upsurge of domestic terrorism in Pakistan in recent years a suggestion disputed by many experts.
The 21 November strike was even more provocative as it was one of the first ever strikes outside the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where nearly all attacks by the unmanned aircraft have taken place in the past.
The attack on a religious seminary associated with the Haqqani Network was in Hangu, an area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province where Khan's PTI leads a coalition government.
Khan responded with a massive rally in the provincial capital of Peshawar and ordered PTI activists to block vehicles carrying supplies to Nato troops in Afghanistan.
However, party workers have struggled to identify Nato cargo amid all the sealed containers plying the roads to Afghanistan. The exercise has received no support from the national government and the police have tried to stop PTI workers blocking lorries.

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[Magda Hassan]

I don't know why the Guardian doesn't say the name. It seems to be Craig Osth and he also seems to get around quite a bit.

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[TD]CIA, DEA, Operated Without Oversight in Brazil

by Carlos Castiho

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[TD](IPS) RIO DE JANEIRO -- The military aide to Brazilian President FernandoHenrique Cardoso admitted that the government didnot have complete control over U.S. intelligence agents operatingin Brazil.The military aide, General Alberto Cardoso, said the lack ofcontrol was only transitory. But he failed to explain just whythe CIA and DEA agents enjoyed such freedom of action here.
Nor did the general explain how the government planned toresolve the problem.
The actions of U.S. agents in Brazil hit the headlines after alocal magazine, 'Carta Capital,' reported early this month thatthe CIA had bugged President Cardoso's private telephones twoyears ago.
According to the weekly, Cardoso's phones were bugged in searchof inside information regarding the negotiations on theinstallation of a sophisticated air surveillance system aimed atdetecting drug trafficking operations in Brazil's Amazon region.
The project, known by its acronym SIVAM, sparked heated debatedue to allegations of corruption among high-level militaryofficers and government officials, denounced by executives of theU.S. company Raytheon, interested in holding onto a deal worth anestimated one billion dollars.


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[TD] The connections between the CIA, DEA, the military and drugtraffickers returned to the Brazilian political agenda after thediscovery, in the last week of April, that Brazilian air forceofficers were involved in shipping cocaine to Europe in militaryairplanes.One of the main suspects in that case is Lieutenant-ColonelPaulo Sergio Oliveira, one of the officers in charge of airsurveillance over the Amazon basin, where SIVAM operates.
Oliveira and three other officers were identified after asuitcase carrying 33 kilos of Colombian cocaine was found April 19on a Hercules air force plane, shortly before it was to take offto Las Palmas, on Spain's Canary islands.
The entire operation, that culminated in the interception ofthe drugs, was coordinated by U.S. agents -- which annoyed Brazil'smilitary brass and gave rise to friction with the U.S. Embassy,according to the local press.
U.S. adviser Craig Peters Osth was identified by the magazine'Carta Capital' as the head of the CIA in Brazil.
The Hercules airplane incident remains shrouded in mystery,despite parallel probes launched by the military and parliament.
Although the president's aide-de-camp denied that the DEA andCIA had listened in on Cardoso's phone conversations, heacknowledged that U.S. agents enjoyed ''too much freedom'' to moveabout and operate in Brazil.
The general said the Brazilian government had more control overCIA agents than those working for the DEA.
According to Deputy Jose Genoino of the opposition leftistWorkers Party, the DEA has at least 12 agents working secretly inBrazil.
Foreign Minister Luis Felipe Lampreia and Justice MinisterRenan Calheiros will be summoned before parliament this month toaccount for the latest episode in the complex saga involvingbusiness, narco-trafficking, espionage and corruption.


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http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9905a/cop...iadea.html

[Magda Hassan]

Since he certainly does not have diplomatic status I wonder if they will pull the same stunt they did with Ray Davis to get him out of the country.