The Queen of Torture: Alfreda Bikowsky?

[Jacob]

Alfreda Bikowsky is apparently being called out has having terrible judgment and being responsible for much of this torture debacle.

The NBC News investigative reporter Matthew Cole has pieced together a remarkable story revealing that a single senior officer, who is still in a position of high authority over counterterrorism at the C.I.A.—a woman who he does not name—appears to have been a source of years' worth of terrible judgment, with tragic consequences for the United States. Her story runs through the entire report. She dropped the ball when the C.I.A. was given information that might very well have prevented the 9/11 attacks; she gleefully participated in torture sessions afterward; she misinterpreted intelligence in such a way that it sent the C.I.A. on an absurd chase for Al Qaeda sleeper cells in Montana. And then she falsely told congressional overseers that the torture worked.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/unidentified-queen-torture?mbid=social_facebook

Alfreda Frances Bikowsky (born 1965) is a career Central Intelligence Agency officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station (also known as its code name, Alec Station) and the Global Jihad unit. Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the Agency, but was deduced by independent investigative journalists using open source materials in 2011. In January 2014, the Washington Post named her and tied her to a pre-9/11 intelligence failure and the extraordinary rendition of Khalid El-Masri. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, released in December 2014, showed that Bikowsky was not only a key part of the torture program, but one of its chief apologists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfreda_Frances_Bikowsky

The person described by both NBC and The New Yorker is senior CIA officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. Multiple news outlets have reported that as the result of a long string of significant errors and malfeasance, her competence and integrity are doubted — even by some within the agency.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/19/senior-cia-officer-center-torture-scandals-alfreda-bikowsky/

A few different issues at play here:

Sounds like she is or was a key player in some of this torture stuff. Certainly, she's well positioned to be a higher level blame taker if necessary, but Oliver North has shown that that can turn out okay.

There is, of course, the argument about the repercussions of naming her publicly.

Thoughts?

[mongers]

The CIA will now penetrates Capitan Concrete's best defences and  take the forum down permanently. 

More seriously, seems like in part a case of establishing an institutional touchstone and it taking a very long time for many to challenge that established 'truth'.

[MadImmortalMan]

She's going to go in witness protection or something now.


Gleefully? Is that a journalistic word? She sure sounds like a terrible person, but who knows.

[The Brain]

a woman who he does not name

[CountDeMoney]

Alfreda Bikowsky is apparently being called out has having terrible judgment and being responsible for much of this torture debacle.

According to the Senate report, she sent a bubbly cable back to C.I.A. headquarters in 2003, anticipating the pain they planned to inflict on K.S.M. in an attempt to get him to confirm a report from another detainee, about a plot to use African-American Muslims training in Afghanistan for future terrorist attacks. "i love the Black American Muslim at AQ camps in Afghanuistan (sic). ... Mukie (K.S.M.) is going to be hatin' life on this one," she wrote, according to the report. But, as NBC notes, she misconstrued the intelligence gathered from the other detainee. Somehow, the C.I.A. mistakenly believed that African-American Muslim terrorists were already in the United States. The intelligence officials evidently pressed K.S.M. so hard to confirm this, under such physical duress, that he eventually did, even though it was false—leading U.S. officials on a wild-goose chase for black Muslim Al Qaeda operatives in Montana. According to the report, the same woman oversaw the extraction of this false lead, as well as the months-long rendition and gruesome interrogation of another detainee whose detention was a case of mistaken identity.

Previously, I could've believed that the only agency institutionally stupid enough and capable of falling for the concept of black Muslims training for A-Q terrorist attacks in Montana could be the FBI.  I see I am wrong.

Sounds like she is or was a key player in some of this torture stuff. Certainly, she's well positioned to be a higher level blame taker if necessary, but Oliver North has shown that that can turn out okay.

There is, of course, the argument about the repercussions of naming her publicly.

Thoughts?

Oliver North was a member of the National Security Council;  he wasn't a spook.  Neither is this woman;  even though she's CIA, she's still just a bureaucratic administrator, she's not some high-value asset on the NOC list.  The only reason the CIA didn't want her mentioned is because, as the article says, the CIA didn't want anybody mentioned--not to protect identities, but to protect the agency from political fallout.

[CountDeMoney]

She's going to go in witness protection or something now.

She will retire with a pension, write a book and become a consultant making ten times more than what she is making now.

[Razgovory]

Great, we had Sarah Palin running the program.

[11B4V]

Great, we had Sarah Palin running the program.

I don't think Palin is anywhere in the same league.

[CountDeMoney]

Palin is too stupid to be sinister.

[11B4V]

Palin is too stupid to be sinister.

Exactly. This broad is sounding diabolical.

[11B4V]

http://www.dfwretroplex.com/SGHS_1983_master.htm

[Razgovory]

Palin is too stupid to be sinister.

By all accounts McCain's staff felt they had been tortured.

[Tonitrus]

No one has asked yet if she is HOTT. 

[Admiral Yi]

Alfreda Bikowsky and Valerie Plame: double standard or not?

[CountDeMoney]

Alfreda Bikowsky and Valerie Plame: double standard or not?

Not.