Jonathan K. Idema -- Heather Anderson -- Stephen Cambone
Accused torturers claim Pentagon support
The Americans didn't testify. But Idema said afterward that the abuse allegations were invented. He also said he was in regular phone and e-mail contact with Pentagon officials "at the highest level".
Speaking to reporters crowding round the dock, Idema named a Pentagon official who allegedly asked the group to go "under contract" - an offer they refused.
"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did. They absolutely supported what we did," he said.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/22/1090464788... Idema named a Pentagon official
An interview with Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence
http://www.defenselink.mil/usdi/camboneinterview.html Stephen A. Cambone
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Steven_A._... Anderson works for Cambone
Lawmakers lash out at security clearance backlog
It is the Pentagon's policy to hire contractors to relieve the security clearance backlog, according to Heather Anderson, the acting director of security for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. She said Defense officials were concerned about hiring federal investigators and then having too many staffers on hand when the backlog was reduced.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0504/050604d1.htm The Department must have an affiliation with a private citizen before processing them for a personnel security clearance. For employees of DoD contractors, that relationship is established through the execution of a DoD Security Agreement, which is made a part of the contract with the company. Once the company has executed this agreement and is cleared, the company may process current employees or consultants for a background investigation if their duties will require access to classified information.
Approximately 85% of industry applicants are issued an interim clearance. For example, of the 152,059 requests for investigation from industry during FY03, approximately 85% of them were issued an interim clearance. An interim SECRET clearance authorizes access to SECRET information and most contractor employees can perform some functions with access to SECRET information, even if they ultimately require access to information of a higher level.
http://reform.house.gov/UploadedFiles/DOD%20-%20Anderso... OUTSOURCING WAR CRIMES
SAN DIEGO--It was late fall 2001, and the U.S. conquest of Afghanistan was nearly complete. A passel of foreign war correspondents milled about the lobby of the Hotel Tajikistan, waiting for the Tajik foreign ministry to issue permission papers we needed to pass the checkpoints between Dushanbe and the Afghan border, so we could go on to cover the siege of Kunduz. I popped into the Soviet-vintage hotel's business center to check my email. That's when I met Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema, the former Special Forces soldier charged on July 5 along with two other Americans for kidnapping and torturing Afghans as part of an unauthorized, vigilante anti-Taliban operation run out of a private home in Kabul.
"U.S. citizen Jonathan K. Idema has allegedly represented himself as an American government and/or military official," the U.S. military said in a statement. "The public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him."
That's their current story, anyway.
Agents of the National Security Directorate, Afghanistan's new intelligence agency, say they found eight starved Afghan detainees--three of them hanging by their feet--in Idema's rented house in central Kabul, along with a few AK-47 rifles and blood-soaked clothes. None of Idema's prisoners were working against the Karzai regime, so the NSD plans to release them. Idema, say officials, was probably hoping to torture his victims into telling him the location of Osama bin Laden so he could collect a $25 million bounty.
Idema was nice at first, chatting me up with jittery intensity as he alternately identified himself as belonging to--or, more accurately, implying identification with--the CIA and U.S. Special Forces. Griping about a Pentagon ban against supplying Northern Alliance forces with medical supplies, Idema slipped me a computer disc containing photos of gruesome wounds that had gone untreated because of the inhumane policy. He asked me to pitch a piece on the subject to my editors at The Village Voice, but with a caveat: "Don't publish those photos before talking to me first." I promised that I wouldn't. "If you do," he added, "you will die in great pain." He went on at length about the special shadowy brotherhood of Green Berets past and present, and described how anyone who crossed them would be marked for death. I would never have broken my pledge, but I didn't need a story that badly. I soon left for Afghanistan; so, eventually, did Idema.
Jack Idema, reportedly retired from the Special Forces in 1992, fought alongside the Northern Alliance in 2001. He had enough money to buy goods and services at inflated war zone prices, not to mention references in the U.S. military--and a lot of chutzpah.
Beginning in Afghanistan and now in Iraq, the Bush Administration has assigned jobs previously carried out by the traditional uniformed military to private contractors, covert intelligence officers and retired commandos. The idea is "plausible deniability"; should a character like Idema go too far, the government disavows his crimes as the acts of a renegade. Only Idema and the Pentagon will ever know the truth about his status.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&nci... more
Idema role: rogue or U.S. agent?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=737677
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
