From
an interesting BBC interview with ex-CIA officer in the Middle East,
Robert Baer
BARRY: Are you telling me that interrogation techniques have changed since 9/11?
ROBERT: Oh yes, definitely. The attitude is they will break these people, one way or another. The interrogation is changing because they are franchising it. Franchising out assassinations, the collection of intelligence and franchising out torture to Egypt and Syria.
BARRY: But isn't Syria one of the countries on the axis of evil, because they harbour terrorism?
ROBERT: It's schizophrenic, of course. The CIA's out looking for allies and the neo conservatives in the White House are looking for new targets.
BARRY: What assurances do we have that the information the US government is receiving is accurate?
ROBERT: I can assure you that it's for the most part inaccurate.
BARRY: And there's competition between the CIA and the White house with different objectives?
ROBERT: Yeah, look at the war in Iraq. The CIA is full of professional intelligence officers that want to get to the bottom of 9/11 but the White House is looking to mine data for talking points for its policies. They are looking for political talking points. Let's say they need to indict another country before the next election, not attack it, but indict it, say we've got a problem. So what they will do is they go through the intelligence reports until they find something that would suggest that Iran is causing the problem internally in Iraq. If they admit that it's the Iraqis that are killing people,that the Iraqis are against the US and are unhappy and are in opposition, they've lost. So they go through the intelligence selectively picking out things.