CIA Stars should not be defined by how they died

A CIA suicide sparks hard questions about the agency’s Memorial Wall

The Washington Post
By Ian Shapira
May 19, 2019

The CIA Memorial Wall in the main lobby of the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., pays tribute to operatives who “gave their lives in the service of their country.” (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

She had spent the year in Afghanistan targeting senior al-Qaeda and Taliban members from one of the CIA’s most important bases.

Ranya Abdelsayed was less than 48 hours away from returning to the United States in 2013 when a colleague found her body in her bed at the agency’s Gecko Firebase in Kandahar. At 34, she had shot herself in the head.

The next year, Abdelsayed was honored with a black star on the CIA’s vaunted Memorial Wall, which pays tribute to members of the CIA who, its inscription reads, “gave their lives in the service of their country.”

On Tuesday, the CIA will hold its annual ceremony to recognize the fallen, unveiling new stars on the increasingly crowded wall. But not everyone agrees that Abdelsayed — one of at least 19 CIA deaths in Afghanistan during the longest war in U.S. history — deserved that honor. Of the 129 men and women given stars, she is the only one to have died by suicide.

Nicholas Dujmovic, a longtime CIA historian who retired in 2016, said that Abdelsayed’s inclusion violates the agency’s own criteria — and that her star “must absolutely come off the wall.”

The famed memorial, he said, is reserved for deaths that are “of an inspirational or heroic character” or are the result of enemy actions or hazardous conditions. But, in addition to Abdelsayed’s, some stars have been awarded to operatives who died in airplane or vehicle accidents that had no connection with the dangers of their assignments.

“There’s been an erosion of understanding in CIA leadership for at least two decades about what the wall is for and who is it that we’re commemorating,” said Dujmovic, who has researched multiple agency deaths to see whether they meet the criteria for inclusion on the wall. “Now we have a suicide star on the wall. That’s not what the wall is for. Suicide is a great tragedy, of course. But the purpose of the wall is not to show compassion to the family. It’s to show who in our community is worthy of this honor.”
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Worthy of this honor? Is that really what he said in denying inclusion of this star for a woman who faithfully served the CIA? 

He also said that the wall was to show "compassion" to the family but seems to think that her family should not be worthy of compassion.

If they had "an inspirational or heroic character" during their service, shouldn't they be worthy...for their service and not be defined by how they died?

Air National Guardsman pretended to be CIA agent to fool woman

New York Air National Guardsman accused of impersonating CIA agent to impress woman

Syracuse Media Group
By CHRIS LIBONATI
Published: February 19, 2019

CICERO, N.Y. (Tribune News Service) — A New York man who police have accused of impersonating a CIA agent to impress a woman works for the New York Air National Guard as a drone camera operator, according to a New York Air National Guard spokesman and an Air Force website.

Staff Sgt. Ryan Houghtalen, who is currently a sensor operator on the MQ-9 Reaper with the 174th Attack Wing, was charged by New York state police with misdemeanor criminal impersonation for pretending to be a CIA agent. He was arrested Monday, Feb. 18, 2019 and spent a day in jail before being released. VIA LINKEDIN

Staff Sgt. Ryan R. Houghtalen, 25, was charged with second-degree impersonation of a public servant, a misdemeanor, according to court records.

After showing the woman a fake CIA ID, Houghtalen told the woman how he was currently targeted by terrorists.

“He was telling her his job as a CIA agent is very dangerous,” said New York State Police spokesman Jack Keller. “He was hoping to use that information to start a relationship with her.”

Houghtalen told the woman he met at church that, because he was a CIA agent, both he and her were targets of ISIS, according to court documents.
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CIA Honored "Smokejumpers"

They were smokejumpers when the CIA sent them to Laos; they came back in caskets
The Washington Post
By IAN SHAPIRA
Published: June 25, 2017

Leary, the University of Georgia history professor and Air America expert, wrote the CIA a letter urging the agency to give the three men Memorial Wall recognition as far back as 1993.

Their families didn't know they were in Laos, and didn't know that they'd started working for the CIA in addition to their jobs with the U.S. Forest Service.

The CIA Memorial Wall uses stars to honor those killed in the line of duty.

JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST

They were young firefighters-turned-CIA operatives working thousands of miles from home in a remote corner of Southeast Asia. David W. Bevan, Darrell A. Eubanks and John S. Lewis, all in their mid-20s, were on a mission to drop supplies for anti-Communist forces in what was then known as the Kingdom of Laos. But on Aug. 13, 1961, the CIA-operated Air America plane carrying the men tried turning out of a mountaintop bowl near the Laotian capital of Vientiane and one of its wings hooked into a ridge.

The C-46 "cartwheeled into little pieces," according to the book, "Smokejumpers and the CIA," published by the National Smokejumpers Association. The CIA operatives died, along with Air America's two pilots.

When their families were told they'd been killed in Laos in a plane crash, they were stunned.
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The Curse of Being a Neglected Hero

Residual War Horrors and Neglected Heroes
Residual War
Kathie Costos
April 8, 2017

On Combat PTSD Wounded Times there are over 27,000 articles spanning nearly 10 years of news and government reports on what our heroes have to go through for our sake. They tell of the price men and women pay for doing what they believe in doing.

Oh, sure, we can boil it all down to being a patriot and doing it because freedom isn't free, but then you'd have to get into the reasons behind sending them into combat. The purest reason they have to risk their lives, is also what cuts them the deepest. They risk their lives for those they are with. 

War is often a wrong choice made by those who do not have to go. But those who go make the choice to be willing to die for the sake of their combat family members. Yes, family.

Think of what you'd do for your own family and then maybe you'll be able to understand how devoted they are to each other. That bond adds to what they face afterwards. That bond is what makes being out of combat more dangerous than being in it for them. 

In combat, the concern of the threat of death is not about their own lives. It is about the others. After combat, when it is about what the risk did to them, they run out of reasons to stay alive for.

Brainyquote

"Life is like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending." Jim Henson

Residual War is out of my own brain but it is based on real accounts from heroes trying to recover from what we asked them to do. Wow, bet that hit you like a sledgehammer.

I envisioned a world where wounded soldiers were sent into a healing unit instead of being cast out of the military after it all cut too deeply into their soul. Fort Christmas was a place where they would stop risking their lives and start simply risking their pride, asking for help and getting it. 

The accounts of what placed them in jeopardy are based on what has happened to many different generations of soldiers and woven into a tale of what can happen...or should I say, what should happen.

It should have happened to someone like  Tech. Sgt Steven Bellino in the following report, but it didn't.

Audio recordings, military records, an Air Force psychiatric evaluation, and a timeline Bellino made of key events in his life — most provided to the San Antonio Express-News by his family — show Bellino dealt with steadily worsening symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder as he struggled to change careers after a stellar record throughout multiple Army deployments and CIA contract work in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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FOX News Commentator Contrived CIA Career

Fox News commentator who feds say faked a CIA career sentenced to 33 months in prison
The Washington Post
Rachel Weiner
July 15, 2016

Over the years, Simmons’s claims were convincing enough to get him a regular spot as an unpaid commentator on Fox News; a post on a 2013 civilian panel investigating the attacks in Benghazi, Libya; and two jobs with defense contractors working in Afghanistan.

Wayne Simmons was a professional football player, a drug trafficker, a nightclub doorman, a Fox News guest analyst and an intelligence adviser in Afghanistan.

What Simmons, 62, was not, according to all available evidence, was a CIA agent. In federal court in Virginia on Friday, just before he was sentenced to 33 months in prison, he apologized for lying about his security clearance, his criminal history and his finances.

“There is not a day that goes by that I am not haunted by these mistakes,” Simmons said. “I stand before you a shameful and broken man.”
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Stolen Valor Airborne, Navy Seal, Pilot Colonel with the CIA?

STOLEN VALOR ALERT ! WALMART IN MARGATE FLORIDA

The Militaria Collecting Channel
Newest stolen valor in Margate, Florida! 

In a Walmart! Guy says he is a Colonel, CIA, Airborne, and a Navy SEAL! He has over 20 ribbons and random pins. This video was first posted by Jonathan Borrero on Facebook, this is a republication and is not being stolen. 

Thank you for viewing and let's find this man!!!

The guys also has a CIA Badge! Proves you can buy just about anything you want without having to actually pay for it!

The Real-Life Heroes Behind '13 Hours

Former CIA chief in Benghazi challenges '13 Hours' film version of 2012 attack
The Washington Post
By Adam Goldman and Greg Miller
Published: January 15, 2016

The movie, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” is based on a book co-written by U.S. contractors hired to protect the CIA base in Benghazi.

John Krasinski as Jack Silva in the film, "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi."

It is the most fateful moment in a movie that purports to present a searingly accurate account of the 2012 attacks that left four Americans dead in Benghazi, Libya: a scene in which the highest-ranking CIA operative at a secret agency compound orders his security team to "stand down" rather than rush off to rescue U.S. diplomats under siege less than a mile away.

According to the officer in charge of the CIA's Benghazi base that night, the scene in the movie is entirely untrue.

"There never was a stand-down order," said the base chief known as Bob, speaking publicly for the first time. "At no time did I ever second guess that the team would depart."

Nor, he said, did he say anything that could be "interpreted as equivalent" as an order to stand down.

In a lengthy interview with reporters from The Washington Post, Bob provided new details about the attacks and his interactions with J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who perished in them. He agreed to talk on the condition his last name not be used because even though he has retired, his cover has not been lifted.

"I thought I would regret it if I didn't," he said about finally speaking out. "So much of this information has been wrong."

“No one will mistake this movie for a documentary,” CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani said. “It’s a distortion of the events and people who served in Benghazi that night. It’s shameful that, in order to highlight the heroism of some, those responsible for the movie felt the need to denigrate the courage of other Americans who served in harm’s way.”
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Linked from Stars and Stripes

FROM ABC

The Real-Life Heroes Behind '13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi'
By JUJU CHANG ERIN BRADY
Jan 16, 2016

What happened during the 2012 Benghazi attack is the most scrutinized, most politically explosive “13 Hours” in recent history, and now the real-life American commandos who fought that night are coming forward to share their stories.

On Sept. 11, 2012, Ansar l-Sharia armed militants attacked a U.S. diplomatic compound and then a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Mark “Oz” Geist was one of the six former elite military operatives who fought back that night.

"We knew to get out of there we were going to have to depend on each other, kill them before they kill you," he told "Nightline."
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Youngest CIA Agent Killed Died in Vietnam When She was Just 21

GALLAGHER: First U.S. woman killed in Vietnam War had Sioux City roots
Sioux City Journal
Tim Gallagher
September 20, 2015

By the time the last American G.I.s evacuated Saigon in 1975, more than 58,000 American soldiers had been killed, more than 303,000 wounded in action.

SIOUX CITY | Barbara Robbins died in a bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon 50 years ago, just 22 days after the first U.S. combat units landed in Vietnam.

Barbara Robbins in Nha Trang, Vietnam, in 1964.

Robbins was the first American woman killed in Vietnam and the first woman killed in the line of duty while working for the Central Intelligence Agency. At 21, she remains the youngest CIA employee ever killed.

She came from Sioux City.

And that's where we begin today, a Sioux City Journal series that highlights 50 Vietnam veterans over the next 50 days. From now until Veterans Day, you'll meet grandfathers and sons, laborers and executives, career military types and those who landed in the jungles of Southeast Asia despite their best efforts to steer clear: Fifty Vietnam veterans, their stories of service and sacrifice, one each day for seven weeks.

The series culminates with an exhibit at Sioux City's Betty Strong Encounter Center and a related program on Nov. 8, three days before the series' conclusion on Veterans Day.

Although the first U.S. combat units arrived in Vietnam on March 8, 1965, military efforts there began taking shape a decade earlier, if not before. The first American killed in combat died Dec. 22, 1961.
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Just a reminder
Vietnam Veterans Memorial The Wall USA
THE FIRST KNOWN CASUALTY

Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth, Mass. is listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having a casualty date of June 8, 1956.

His name is listed on the Wall with that of his son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who has a casualty date of Sept. 7, 1965.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear a reporter say that Afghanistan is the longest war. It all depends on who is doing the counting.

Former Navy SEAL Alleges Anti-Gay CIA

Former SEAL alleges anti-gay harassment in CIA
Brett Jones says he was bullied, called slurs, left outside in hot weather during deployment
San Diego Union Tribune
By Joshua Stewart
July 28, 2015

“I don’t tolerate racism or bigotry, and for some reason, that line of work attracts some people that are like that,” Jones said. “And because of the way the small units are, it goes unchecked.”

Former Navy SEAL Brett Jones discusses the importance of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the continuing breakdown of boundaries for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals during the 2015 Cultural Awareness Day observance, April 10, 2015.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Melanie Rodgers Cox/Released)

A former Navy SEAL who gained national attention for a memoir about being gay in one of the military’s elite communities has filed a complaint, saying he was the victim of homophobic bullying during a June deployment as a CIA contractor.

Brett Jones says when he arrived at his outpost in an undisclosed location in Afghanistan on June 11, he was forced to endure anti-gay bullying, including homophobic slurs, a crass PowerPoint presentation, and snide comments as people watched the news about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down bans on same-sex marriage.

The atmosphere was so toxic that he feared for his safety and had to return home early, he said.

The anti-gay comments came from a group of contractors and civil servants in the CIA’s Global Response Staff, Jones said. Many, like himself, are former members of special-operations units. A few of them took issue with working alongside a gay man, Jones said.
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Afghanistan Veteran May Lose Silver Star After Job Interview?

Green Beret tells of shooting Taliban in CIA job interview, loses Silver Star for it 
Washington Times
By Rowan Scarborough
Sunday, July 19, 2015

Maj. Matthew Golsteyn was to receive the Silver Star for aiding fellow soldiers in Afghanistan, but his award is now in jeopardy.

A Green Beret who was awarded the Silver Star, then saw it stripped away because he killed a Taliban bombmaker, is telling why he did it, as conveyed in a CIA job interview he conducted nearly four years ago.

Maj. Matt Golsteyn said the insurgent was a known maker of improvised explosive devices and was in the presence of such components. He considered him an armed combatant, so he shot him.

Army Secretary John McHugh, who revoked the award, told The Washington Times through a spokesman that Maj. Golsteyn “assassinated an unarmed Afghan.”

Maj. Golsteyn’s explanation is contained in a CIA transcript obtained by The Times. His description of the battlefield shows how difficult it has been on the ground for Americans in Afghanistan. They are fighting an enemy who continually shifts between appearing as a harmless villager one day and an assassin the next.
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Gen. David Petraeus Gets Probation Plus Fine

Petraeus sentenced: 2 years probation; $100K fine 
CNN
By Theodore Schleifer
 April 23, 2015

That rebranding is made easier thanks to a plea deal that allowed Petraeus to escape jail time by paying $40,000 and serving two years on probation. But a federal judge on Thursday in Charlotte, North Carolina instead ordered him to pay $100,000.

Washington (CNN)
Gen. David Petraeus, once a widely celebrated military leader who oversaw operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and was touted as a potential presidential candidate, was sentenced to serve two years on probation and to pay an $100,000 fine on Thursday for sharing classified information with his biographer and lover, Paula Broadwell.

Petraeus, who resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in November 2012 after the relationship became public, avoided jail time as part of a plea deal. Some of his supporters believe that he can recover his reputation -- and argue in some ways, he already has. "I don't want to wallow in 2012, and luckily neither has he," said Michael O'Hanlon, a close friend of Petraeus and a scholar at the Brookings Institution. read more here

Yet Again Congress Puts Lives in Danger

Bureaucrats Block Special Ops Intel Requests 
Associated Press
by Ken Dilanian
March 26, 3015

Email messages and other military records obtained by The Associated Press show that Army and special operations command bureaucrats have been pressing troops to use an in-house system built and maintained by traditional defense contractors. The Distributed Common Ground System, or DCGS, has consistently failed independent tests and earned the ire of soldiers in the field for its poor performance.

WASHINGTON— Military bureaucrats have been trying to force an unpopular government-built intelligence system on special operations units deploying to war zones while blocking soldiers from using the commercial alternative they say they need, according to government records and interviews.

Over the last four months, six Army special operations units about to be deployed into Afghanistan, Iraq and other hostile environments have requested software made by Palantir, a Silicon Valley company that has synthesized data for the CIA, the Navy SEALs and the country's largest banks, among other government and private entities. But the Army has approved just two of the requests after members of Congress intervened with senior military leaders.

Four requests pending with U.S. Army Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Tampa, Florida-based Special Operations Command have not been granted.
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Twisted Tale of Green Beret, CIA and Army Officials

Army’s withdrawal of officer’s Silver Star sparks ire of Congress
Green Beret saved soldiers under fire
Washington Times
By Rowan Scarborough
March 15, 2015

A group of House lawmakers is moving to strip the armed services’ civilian leaders of the power to revoke combat valor awards in response to Army Secretary John McHugh unilaterally canceling the Silver Star, one of the military’s highest honors, for a former Green Beret officer.

Mr. McHugh took the action against Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who braved repeated enemy fire in Afghanistan, even though he has not been charged with any offenses. The Army now is seeking to release him with a less-than-honorable discharge. The officer plans to fight the move, his attorney says.

The secretary acted after the CIA informed the Army that Maj. Golsteyn, during a polygraph exam for a job application, told of killing a terrorist who was making improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the weapon that has killed more Americans in Afghanistan than any other. The Army also removed Maj. Golsteyn from the elite ranks of the Green Berets.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is spearheading the restrictive legislation, says he wants to prevent service secretaries from retaliating against personnel by stripping their awards in cases where there is insufficient evidence to charge them for nonjudicial, or court-martial, punishment.
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Iraq Veterans Not Told of Chemical Weapons Exposures

C.I.A. Is Said to Have Bought and Destroyed Iraqi Chemical Weapons 
New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT
FEBRUARY 15, 2015

Not long after Operation Avarice had secured its 400th rocket, in 2006, American troops were exposed several times to other chemical weapons. Many of these veterans said that they had not been warned by their units about the risks posed by the chemical weapons and that their medical care and follow-up were substandard, in part because military doctors seemed unaware that chemical munitions remained in Iraq.

United Nations workers prepared for the destruction of
Iraqi nerve-agent weapons by sealing leaks in the rockets.
BRITISH MINISTRY OF DEFENSE

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials. United Nations workers prepared for the destruction of Iraqi nerve-agent weapons by sealing leaks in the rockets.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

The effort was run out of the C.I.A. station in Baghdad in collaboration with the Army’s 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion and teams of chemical-defense and explosive ordnance disposal troops, officials and veterans of the units said. Many rockets were in poor condition and some were empty or held a nonlethal liquid, the officials said. But others contained the nerve agent sarin, which analysis showed to be purer than the intelligence community had expected given the age of the stock.

In some cases, victims of exposure said, officers forbade them to discuss what had occurred. The Pentagon now says hundreds of other veterans reported on health-screening forms that they believed they too had been exposed during the war.

Aaron Stein, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the belated acknowledgment of a chemical-rocket purchases, as well as the potentially worrisome laboratory analysis of the related sarin samples, raised questions about the military’s commitment to the well-being of those it sent to war.

“If we were aware of these compounds, and as it became clear over the course of the war that our troops had been exposed to them, why wasn’t more done to protect the guys on the ground?” he said. “It speaks to the broader failure.”
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Marine known as the 'Lion of Fallujah' died during CIA work

Marine known as the 'Lion of Fallujah' died during CIA work
The Washington Post
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff
Published: July 16, 2014

Marine Maj. Douglas Zembiec, seen in this undated photo with wife Pam and daughter Fallyn, four months old at the time, died May 11, 2007, in Baghdad during an operation for the CIA Special Activities Division's Ground Branch.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PAM ZEMBIEC/THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — In the foyer of the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, there is a marble wall covered in stars. They are carved divots that represent those who have fallen in the service of the CIA. Below them, jutting out from the polished rock, is a black book entombed in a case of glass and steel. The book is a guide to the stars, giving the names of some of those who died and withholding the names of others.

On the pages of the CIA's Book of Honor are 107 hand-drawn stars organized by the years those officers died. For 2007, there is a single, anonymous star.

It belongs to Marine Maj. Douglas Alexander Zembiec.

Long thought to be an active-duty Marine when he was killed in Baghdad, Zembiec was actually serving with the CIA's paramilitary arm. While the CIA would not comment on whether Zembiec worked for the agency, former U.S. intelligence officials said in interviews that he died in an alley in Baghdad's Sadr City on May 11, 2007, as a member of the Special Activities Division's Ground Branch.

It was the final chapter in the life of a Marine known to many as the Lion of Fallujah but whose story, until now, has never been fully told. He is one of the few Americans to be simultaneously honored by the military and the CIA for his actions. But because he was working covertly, his role was never acknowledged publicly.
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Top CIA officer in Afghanistan mistakenly named by White House

Top CIA officer in Afghanistan mistakenly named by White House: report
Reuters
May 25, 2014

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House inadvertently included the name of the top CIA official in Afghanistan on a list of participants in a military briefing with President Barack Obama that was distributed to reporters on Sunday, the Washington Post reported.

The newspaper said the official, identified as "Chief of Station" in Kabul, was named as being among those at a briefing with Obama during the president's trip to Bagram Air Base near the Afghan capital.

The list of names was sent by email to reporters traveling with Obama on his surprise Afghanistan visit and included in a "pool report" shared with correspondents and others not on the trip.

The Post said the White House issued a revised list deleting the CIA official's name after it recognized the mistake.

The newspaper said its White House bureau chief, Scott Wilson, who was on the trip, copied the original list from the email provided by White House press officials and included it in a report sent to a distribution list with over 6,000 recipients.

After he spotted the reference to the station chief, Wilson asked White House press officials in Afghanistan if they had intended to include that name, the Post said.
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CIA official dies in apparent suicide

CIA official dies in apparent suicide
The Washington Free Beacon
By Bill Gertz
Saturday, April 5, 2014

A senior CIA official has died in an apparent suicide this week from injuries sustained after jumping off a building in northern Virginia, according to sources close to the CIA.

CIA spokesman Christopher White confirmed the death and said the incident did not take place at CIA headquarters in McLean, Va.

“We can confirm that there was an individual fatally injured at a facility where agency work is done,” White told the Washington Free Beacon. “He was rushed to a local area hospital where he subsequently died. Due to privacy reasons and out of respect for the family, we are not releasing additional information at this time.”

A source close to the agency said the man who died was a middle manager and the incident occurred after the man jumped from the fifth floor a building in Fairfax County.

Many agency employees are known to work under stressful conditions and high stress is considered a part of the profession, for the three general types of employees: Intelligence analysts and support personnel, technical services operators, and members of the clandestine services, the agency’s elite spying branch.
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CIA Director Leon Panetta didn't know who was listening?

What is going on in this country when the CIA Director gives a speech but didn't know who was listening?

Osama Bin Laden Raid Film: Draft Pentagon Report Finds Leon Panetta Violated Security Rules
Associated Press
By ROBERT BURNS
06/05/13

WASHINGTON — Several weeks after overseeing the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the raid commander in a speech attended by the writer of the film "Zero Dark Thirty," according to a draft report by Pentagon investigators.

Under security rules, the commander's name was not to be made public, but the draft report did not say whether Panetta knew a member of the public was in his audience at CIA headquarters. A former CIA official familiar with the event said Wednesday that Panetta did not know of the writer's presence; if the disclosure was inadvertent it would not constitute a violation of the rules by Panetta.

The former official spoke on condition of anonymity because a security issue was involved.

The unpublished draft report was first disclosed by the Project on Government Oversight and confirmed by Rep. Peter King, who asked for the investigation nearly two years ago. The draft report did not accuse Panetta of wrongdoing.
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Vietnam 'veteran found alive in jungle after 44 years' is exposed as a FAKE

FRAUD! US Vietnam 'veteran found alive in jungle after 44 years' is exposed as a FAKE

The man claiming to be a U.S. Vietnam veteran missing for 44-years has been revealed as a fake
Sgt. Robertson crash landed over Laos in 1968 during a special ops mission
Official U.S. Government documents show that the Vietnamese man named Dang Tan Ngoc has been trying to impersonate him for years
Former special forces soldiers have also come forward to pour scorn on his claims to be the former Green Beret
A new documentary claimed to have found him - aged 76 - still living in Vietnam with a wife and children
This would have meant the man who claimed to be Sgt. John Hartley Robertson never contacted his American wife and two children who have believed him dead for 44 years
Despite these new revelations his sister, who is filmed being reunited with him in the documentary, said she knows it is him

Daily Mail
By JAMES NYE
1 May 2013

The astonishing claims of a 76-year-old man found living in Vietnam who says he is a U.S. war veteran presumed dead 44-years ago have been exposed as a hoax.

The story of Sgt. John Hartley Robertson as told by a new documentary 'Unclaimed' gripped the world on Tuesday - raising the astounding possibility that an American POW escaped from his Vietnamese captors and began a family in secret with a local woman - while his wife and two children grieved back home.

However, it can be revealed that the man is not Sgt. Robertson, rather he is a conman who has attempted to suck in members of the Vietnam MIA/POW community and that the CIA performed a secret DNA test on him 20-years ago that confirmed his lies.
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Unclaimed one man's search for missing

CIA’s covert drone program may shift further to Pentagon

CIA’s covert drone program may shift further to Pentagon
By Ken Dilanian
Tribune Washington Bureau
Published: February 17, 2013

WASHINGTON — Facing growing pressure to lift the secrecy around targeted killings overseas, the Obama administration is considering shifting more of the CIA’s covert drone program to the Pentagon, which operates under legal guidelines that could allow more public disclosure in some cases.

John Brennan, whom President Barack Obama has nominated to run the CIA, favors moving most drone killing operations to the military, current and former U.S. officials say. As White House counterterrorism adviser for the last four years, Brennan has overseen the steady increase in targeted killings of suspected militants and al-Qaida operatives.

In written comments released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is considering his nomination, Brennan said coordination has improved between the CIA and Pentagon. If confirmed, he vowed to work closely with Defense officials “to ensure there is no unnecessary redundancy in ... capabilities and missions.”

The proposed shift follows Obama’s vow in his State of the Union speech Tuesday to be “even more transparent” about the “targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists.”
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