From: Ralph McGehee Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk Subject: Torturers, Assassins, and Terrorist Date: Thu, 06 Mar 1997 10:44:59 -0800 (PST) /* Written 10:42 AM Mar 6, 1997 by rmcgehee in igc:alt.pol.org.ci */ /* ---------- "Torturers, Assassins, and Terrorist" ---------- */ CIA Agents - Torturers, Assassins and Terrorists Over the past year I have posted examples of human rights abuses by people employed by the CIA -- examples I have gathered over the past 15 years. Now the CIA, as reported in the Washington Post and the New York Times, has been forced to examine its record and not surprisingly -- it confirms my reporting. I and others had also noted that it is standard operating procedure for the CIA to compile Watch Lists of critics or enemies of CIA-supported governments and then pass these lists to the local security services. On a number of occasions such became arrest and assassination lists. The two articles do not mention the overriding problem -- the Directorate of Operations leadership variously descibed as out of control, in a state of deep rot, and where laws and rules do not apply. This is where the real problem lies -- no scrubbing of agents will solve this problem. The New York Times reported that the CIA has severed its ties to roughly 100 foreign agents, about half in Latin America, whose value was outweighed by their acts of murder, assassination, torture, and terrorism. In 1994, the CIA for the first time began to balance the quality of information against agents' criminal histories. CIA's purge of its informers in the last two years focused heavily on its Latin American Division, which has had on its payroll hundreds of military officers and government officials in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Panama (and the Middle East, Africa and Asia). CIA's purge was part of a larger review that has resulted in the dismissal of hundreds more agents. These agents may also have committed crimes, but they were let go primarily because the quality of their info. The "scrub," was resisted by some station chiefs and covert operators. CIA officers had always been rated for quantity, not quality, of the foreign agents they recruited. As many as 1,000 foreign agents -- somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of all the agents on the CIA's payroll in 95 -- failed to meet the new test. The Latin American Division was the one most riddled with foreign agents who were killers and torturers. Throughout Central America, the CIA had been deeply involved in operations in support of pro-American governments and military regimes from the early 1950s onward. Throughout Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, CIA has long-standing official liaisons with military, intel and security services. Some of these services are violent or corrupt, but they are among the CIA's most valued informers. New York Times 3/3/97. Per the Washington Post -- in past two years, the CIA has dropped more than a thousand informants because they were largely unproductive or had likely been involved in serious criminal activity or human rights abuses. About 90 percent were poor sources. But the group also included more than a hundred informants who were implicated in major crimes, such as killings, assassinations, kidnappings or terrorism -- and who also provided inadequate intelligence. A high number of informants dropped for such abuses were employed in Latin America during 1980s and early 1990s, but some were employed in the Middle East and Asia. Under a policy Deutch established early last year, CIA's officers must submit annual reports assessing quality of their informants and are prohibited from recruiting new sources implicated in human rights abuses or criminal behavior. Senior CIA managers can approve recruiting such persons, but only for national security reasons. Of all the informants secretly employed by the agency -- a number widely held to be in the thousands -- the total dropped was roughly one-third. Roughly a tenth of the entire group was discharged for criminal or abusive behavior, although in Latin America the share dropped for that reason approached 50 percent. Washington Post 3/2/97 a1,19. I dispute one claim -- the articles state that somewhere between one third or one fourth of all agents have been dropped. I believe this number to be deceptive. I would multiply the number of agents still being used and believe only a tenth or a twentieth have actually been dropped. Ralph McGehee CIABASE