Robert Grenier has written a book, about the secret things he did for the CIA.
The Atlantic excerpts a spy story, about the time Robert Grenier nearly stopped the war.
This involves a meeting between Grenier, and Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, a military commander for the Taliban, held in Quetta, in 2001, just before the war. The meeting was like a chess match.
Such meetings thus often take on the deliberate cadence of a chess match.
This one started with a rapid exchange of moves.
What If America Had Never Invaded Afghanistan? The Atlantic
In Robert Grenier's telling of the story about the time Robert Grenier nearly stopped the war, Robert Grenier plays chess like a master.
Osmani paused, and slumped lower in his chair. He suddenly looked very tired, played out. There was nothing left to say. He removed his turban, and put it aside. Looking down, he said: “Then you suggest a solution.”
This was the opportunity I’d hoped for.
What If America Had Never Invaded Afghanistan? The Atlantic
Grenier had once been called out of a meeting with George Tenet, because Scooter Libby was impatient to dig up dirt on Joe Wilson. So Grenier told Scooter Libby about Valerie Wilson, who worked for the CIA. And Scooter Libby told various people, which we all now know.
Grenier was later fired from the CIA, in the purges under Porter Goss, for being soft on torture.
More stuff about spies, and their complex games of chess, after the fold.
The CIA’s top paramilitary officer has become the nations top spy, newspapers report. Our top spy's name is Greg.
The officer, a former Marine who is under cover and whose first name is Greg, was recently the head of the Special Activities Division, the CIA's elite paramilitary force.
New Chief of CIA Clandestine Service Is Spying Veteran, AP
Instead of calling him Greg, the
Wall Street Journal calls him Spider.
Spider’s reputation within the agency is something of legend.
CIA Picks Undercover Veteran ‘Spider’ as Spy Chief, Wall Street Journal
One time, Greg threw himself on Hamid Karzai, preventing Hamid Karzai from being killed by a U.S. bomb. This is Robert Grenier's version of the event.
“Greg had immediately thrown himself on top of the insurgent leader when the initial blast hit,” Robert Grenier, the CIA’s top officer in Pakistan in 2001, wrote in a recent memoir.
CIA promotes top paramilitary officer to lead spying branch, Washington Post
In another version of the event, Greg had more been thrown.
Gary Schroen, who was among the first CIA operatives to be sent into Afghanistan after 9/11, said the force of the explosion launched Greg “into Karzai, tumbling the two like rag dolls across the room.”
CIA promotes top paramilitary officer to lead spying branch, Washington Post
The new spy chief, who used to be a paramilitary chief, is part of a major shakeup about removing walls between spies and analysts.
The new chief [Greg] replaces Frank Archibald who abruptly resigned as director of the clandestine service earlier this month after telling colleagues he opposed a major reorganization of the CIA being contemplated by Director John Brennan. Archibald is retiring from the CIA.
One idea under consideration by Brennan would break down the walls between the agency's spying and analysis arms, combining operations officers and analysts in "centers" devoted to specific subjects. The centers would be modeled after the Counter Terrorism Center, which oversees the drone killing program and is seen as one of the few success stories in what has been a difficult decade for American "HUMINT," or human intelligence. Such centers could focus on cyber warfare, China, or other subjects that now fall under multiple disparate elements of the sprawling spy agency.
New Chief of CIA Clandestine Service Is Spying Veteran, AP
The new head of the National Clandestine Service [Greg], as the spying directorate is known, served on an internal panel set up by Brennan last year to evaluate sweeping changes he has proposed that would blur, if not eliminate, long-standing boundaries between analysts and operatives.
The former head of the Clandestine Service announced his retirement abruptly this month largely because of his concerns about Brennan’s overhaul, current and former U.S. officials said.
CIA promotes top paramilitary officer to lead spying branch, Washington Post
Some spies, it is said, do not like this.
Critics of the reorganization, which hasn’t been formally proposed and, officials have stressed, isn’t a done deal, see it as potentially undermining some of the CIA’s core capabilities in favor of organizing the agency around regions of the world. Some in the National Clandestine Service in particular view a reorganization as a threat to the high-degree of independence it has traditionally enjoyed within the intelligence bureaucracy.
“This would be to their mind the greatest threat to their independence since they were created as the Directorate of Plans back in 1951,” one former official said.
Exclusive: CIA’s Top Spy Steps Down, Daily Beast
Frank Archibald, who used to be our top spy chief, but isn't, had been named, in 2013, via twitter.
The day after it was announced that the interim head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service had been passed over for the full time position because of her connections to the agency's controversial interrogation program, her successor was reportedly outed on Twitter by former Washington Post assistant editor John Dinges and then confirmed by veteran intelligence reporter Jeff Stein. According to Dinges, the new head of the program will be Francis “Frank” Archibald, a former station chief in Latin America.
CIA's New Chief Spy Outed on Twitter, Gawker
This involves bureaucratic maneuvering about someone called Gina, who was not soft on torture.
According to the Washington Post and the Associated Press, the woman – who is also undercover but is identified by Stein as “Gina” — who held the position in an interim basis for the past two months before Archibald's appointment played an “extensive role” in an interrogation program that relied on torture.
From the Washington Post:
She had run a secret prison in Thailand where two detainees were subjected to waterboarding and other harsh techniques. She later helped order the destruction of videotapes of those interrogation sessions.
CIA's New Chief Spy Outed on Twitter, Gawker
Robert Grenier, above, called Hamid Karzai an insurgent.
Greg had immediately thrown himself on top of the insurgent leader
CIA promotes top paramilitary officer to lead spying branch, Washington Post
The
National calls him a Taliban warlord.
It was only then that the ISI decided to take the Taliban under its wing. Among the first warlords to join the Taliban was Hamid Karzai, the very man who was Afghanistan’s president till last year.
Ban or not, US antipathy to Haqqani is puzzling, The National
This is in an article for purposes of getting in digs about the U.S. and the Haqannis.
That said, Washington’s focus on Haqqani – the man –might be seen as puzzling. Haqqani is the very person that US Congressman, Charlie Wilson, once described as “Goodness Personified”.
Ban or not, US antipathy to Haqqani is puzzling, The National
Which Pakistan may or may not recently have banned.
On Friday India’s NDTV reported that U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said that the United States could not confirm that Pakistan had banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa, designated by the United States as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Haqqani Network (NDTV, ET, Dawn). Psaki stated: “We recognize that Pakistan is working through the process of implementing measures to thwart violent extremism, including the national action plan. We don’t have any confirmation of specific steps.”
U.S. Can't Confirm Pakistani Ban on JuD, Haqqani Network, Foreign Policy
The U.S. has recently been parsing words about whether the Taliban is or isn't a terrorist group.
The US has said that the tactics adopted by the Taliban are akin to terrorism but those terror tactics have principally been focused on Afghanistan unlike Al-Qaida or ISIS which have worldwide network.
Justifying its stance of dubbing the Afghan Taliban as “an armed insurgency” and fighting the group, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said American service members have given their lives fighting the Taliban because they do pose a threat to American interests inside Afghanistan.
“They (the Taliban) do carry out tactics that are akin to terrorism. They do pursue terror attacks in an effort to try to advance their agenda,” he said.
Earnest’s remarks came a day after his deputy Eric Schultz said, “the Taliban is an armed insurgency. ISIL is a terrorist group.”
“Now, what’s also true, is that it’s important to draw a distinction between the Taliban and Al-Qaida. The Taliban has resorted to terror tactics, but those terror tactics have principally been focused on Afghanistan,” he repeated.
US: Taliban very dangerous, but not a terror group, The Tribune
Perhaps Greg, who is also called Spider, who used to be our paramilitary chief, but is now our spy chief, in a major shakeup to put the spies together with the analysts, can help sort this all out.