Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
265 Articles
US Drone Killings of Western Aid Workers Highlight Problems of Nebulous War
President Obama’s apology for the accidental killings of two innocent hostages by US drones in Pakistan has led to understandable criticism of the United States’ secret drone…
As the Senate Torture Report Gathers Dust, Is the Obama Administration Giving Torturers De Facto Amnesty?
It has been more than four months since the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) published the summary of its report on the secret detention program operated by the CIA after the…
Rethinking How We Wage the Forever War
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
The Targeted Killing That Wasn’t: What We Can Learn From the Case of Mohanad Mahmoud al-Farekh
A 2009 US Air Force photo titled “Ready to hunt” shows an armed MQ-9 Reaper drone taxiing in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Almost two weeks ago, we learned from the Washington…
The Investigation into 12333 Begins
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) voted 4–1 yesterday to conduct reviews of how Executive Order 12333 is used in counterterrorism investigations by the…
The Unreal Secrecy About Drone Killings
Last year, after concluding that many passages in the document “no longer merited secrecy,” the Second Circuit published a redacted version of the Justice Department’s July…
Court Denies FOIA Request for Panetta Review on CIA Torture
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg today said that the CIA is not obligated to release the Panetta Review, an internal review of the CIA’s torture program that was heavily…
Cybersecurity in the Intelligence Community’s 2015 Worldwide Threat Assessment
Last week Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released the 2015 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community and testified about it before the Senate…
“New Torture Files”: Declassified Memos Detail Roles of Bush White House and DOJ Officials Who Conspired to Approve Torture
An alleged CIA prison near Kabul, Afghanistan. Image credit: Trevor Paglen via Wikimedia Commons. Last week, I wrote, both here and in the New York Times, that after reading all…
Sexual Torture, Rape, and Gender-Based Violence in the Senate Torture Report
The ramifications and significance of the Senate Torture Report continue to spin out in various fora. While I have noted that the use of certain torture methods used at Guantanamo…
On Rereading the Torture Report – SSCI Focus Gave Too Many Perpetrators a Pass
I have an opinion piece in today’s New York Times Sunday Review provocatively titled (by the NYT editors), “Did the Torture Report Give the CIA a Bum Rap?” Why now, and why…
Torture and the CIA’s Unaccountability Boards
Last Saturday, January 31, CIA Inspector General David Buckley resigned after a little more than four years in office. His departure came at the end of the same month his office…