Karzai aide linked to CIA

Dick Taffe — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:47:07 +0000

The New York Times reports that a key aid to Afghan President Hamid Karzai is on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency payroll and has been for years. The aide, Mohammed Zia Salehi, is the chief of administration for the Afghanistan National Security Council and is at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation. International relations Professor Arthur Hulnick, a 35-year veteran of the intelligence profession, mostly with the CIA, says relationships the agency develops overseas inevitably include some people of questionable character.

“But that’s how the agency finds out what’s happening. Too bad that people who understand intelligence — and the New York Times reporters certainly do – -still spin the story to make it appear that the CIA is somehow ‘evil.’ They know better, even while the public is misled.”

Contact Arthur Hulnick, 617-353-8978, ahulnick@bu.edu

CIA head okayed ’05 video distruction

Dick Taffe — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 21:48:53 +0000

A newly released document shows that, although he didn’t okay it in advance, then CIA Director Porter Goss in 2005 approved of the decision to destroy dozens of videotapes of brutal interrogations of terrorism detainees. International Relations Professor Joseph Wippl, a 30-year CIA operation officer, asks if the tapes were destroyed to protect CIA personnel doing the interrogations or to protect the CIA from its Abu Gharib moment?

“Like the Nixon [Watergate] tapes, once done on the record, it cannot be undone without serious repercussions.”

Contact Joseph Wippl, 617-353-8992, jwippl@bu.edu

BU Now » Central Intelligence Agency

Karzai aide linked to CIA

CIA head okayed ’05 video distruction