Retired US Intelligence Agent Lobbying for USG Protections from Foreign Courts for US Intel Agents

SOURCE http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/31/edward-roche-hackers-expose-the-intelligence-commu/ When the intelligence community is exposed The U.S. must protect its employees from foreign lawsuits Illustration on the threats of foreign legal prosecution of exposed U.S. intelligence personnel by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times By Edward M. Roche - - Monday, August 31, 2015 Hacking is today’s growth industry. The numbers are staggering. Thirty-two million users of the Ashley Madison sex-sharing website were exposed. Home Depot lost 56 million accounts; Anthem, 80 million; JP Morgan Chase, 76 million; eBay, 145 million; Sony PlayStation Network, 77 million; and TJ Maxx, 94 million records. All of these hacks have caused massive disruption to the targeted organization, legal liability for cyber-negligence, and anguish to consumers. The U.S. government also is under siege, and along with it the intelligence community (IC), which is a priority target. The recent hacking of the Office of Personnel Management likely exposed the identities of some current and former IC employees. That data breach alone is unlikely to have compromised all IC employees. But when face recognition methods, sophisticated big-data techniques and cross-indexing of multiple data bases such as consumer, insurance or state records, are woven together, it is reasonable to expect most former and even current IC employees eventually will be identified. And when that happens, their identities undoubtedly will be published on the Internet for everyone in the world to see. Then what? As the information leaks out, the standing army of hostile intelligence community watchers overseas and in the United States will be ready to file lawsuits against individual IC employees or retirees for every type of criminal act and tort they can dream up, no matter how misguided. At the individual level, principles of national jurisdiction guarantee that practically all espionage activities are a violation of the national law where they take place. Generally, there is no immunity for secret agents, although on occasion the acts of an agent have been equated with the national acts of his sovereign and considered sufficient grounds for quietly dropping the suit. But the Internet is making espionage more visible. Counter-espionage, in a sense, has been crowd-sourced to a self-organizing network of watchers worldwide. Indictment of intelligence officials is not new. Once espionage is uncovered, it is difficult for a prosecutor to resist public outrage by refusing to take action. Prosecution of U.S. intelligence community members is rising in foreign courts. In June, 13 CIA officers were indicted in Italy, and convicted in absentia in July. After all, extraordinary rendition is a casus belli and violation by a nation-state of international law. Now these IC officers no longer can travel to any country that has an extradition treaty with Italy. In February 2007, Italy indicted another 25 supposed CIA agents. In January 2007, Germany issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA operatives. A German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, attempted to sue the United States and Spain over his arrest by American intelligence, but in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case on national security grounds. What about suing individual U.S. intelligence agents, not in a U.S. court, but in a foreign court? Using standard investigative procedures, in 2005 the Spanish police identified the three American pilots who handled Mr. el-Masri’s flight, and were even able to peel away their false names. For some reason, the German prosecutor held back, and the potential case quickly was escalated up to a matter of diplomacy between the United States and Germany. Nothing happened. This time. But what about the future? As thousands of intelligence community employee identities are revealed, as they will be, it is reasonable to expect the number of cases against individual IC members will proliferate. Not all can be the subject of bilateral nation-state negotiations. Not all will be in jurisdictions that are close allies with the United States. IC retirees will be faced with mounting headaches, legal bills and seizure of overseas assets. When intelligence community employees put their lives on the line to serve their country, they knowingly take great personal risks. Their anonymity or false names might help them. But when the curtain is thrown back, and they are exposed, then does the U.S. government owe them protection? Or does the U.S. have a de facto policy that leaves retirees hanging out to dry? This would be neither honorable or just, and undoubtedly is not intended. Time is short. Sources confirm China’s Ministry of State Security likely has been cross-indexing insurance, airlines and Office of Personnel Management security clearance files. One support network for the IC already has been compromised, and there are more to come. This problem needs to be studied in greater detail. A legal fund must be established to support the litigation needed to protect exposed agents. U.S. extradition laws might be reviewed. Within the intelligence community, the legal departments that manage accountability need to be funded so they can expand and take on these new challenges. It is bad enough that IC employees no longer can assume their identities will be securely protected by the government, but they should be able to count on robust support if they are attacked in foreign courts. • Edward M. Roche is a member of the American Society of International Law and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- EXTRACT European court of human rights finds against CIA abuse of Khaled el-Masri America must now apologise to the German citizen, a victim of mistaken identity who was kidnapped and beaten by the CIA The much-maligned European court of human rights has this week shown itself at its very best: standing up for the rights of an individual who has been denied justice for almost nine years since he was abducted, secretly detained, and tortured under the CIA's rendition program. Khaled El-Masri, a German national, was seized by Macedonian security officers on 31 December 2003, at a border crossing, because he had been mistaken for an al-Qaida suspect. He was held incommunicado and abused in Macedonian custody for 23 days, after which he was handcuffed, blindfolded, and driven to Skopje airport, where he was handed over to the CIA and severely beaten. The CIA stripped, hooded, shackled, and sodomized el-Masri with a suppository – in CIA parlance, subjected him to "capture shock" – as Macedonian officials stood by. The CIA drugged him and flew him to Kabul to be locked up in a secret prison known as the "Salt Pit", where he was slammed into walls, kicked, beaten, and subjected to other forms of abuse. Held at the Salt Pit for four months, el-Masri was never charged, brought before a judge, or given access to his family or German government representatives. The CIA ultimately realised that it had mistaken el-Masri for an al-Qaida suspect with a similar name. But  it held on to him for weeks after that. It was not until 24 May 2004, that he was flown, blindfolded, earmuffed, and chained to his seat, to Albania, where he was dumped on the side of the road without explanation. This is the first court to comprehensively and specifically find that the CIA's rendition techniques amounted to torture. The decision stands in sharp contrast to the abject failure of US courts to deliver justice to victims of US torture and rendition. Both the United States and Macedonia must now issue el-Masri a full-scale public apology and appropriate compensation. [...]  The European court's decision in the el-Masri case is a clarion call for accountability for the flagrantly illegal CIA rendition program. [ ... ] FULL STORY AT SOURCE http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/13/european-court-human-rights-cia-abuse-khaled-elmasri ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- Now Can Torture Survivor Khaled El-Masri Have His Apology? By Steven M. Watt, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program December 15, 2014 | 2:33 PM EXTRACTS [ ... ] It took the intervention of the National Security Council to settle the dispute and secure Khaled's repatriation to [Albania, where he was dumped on the side of the road] Germany in May 2005. That would confirm that, despite her claim to the contrary, Condoleezza Rice, a member of the council then and later secretary of state, would have known that mistakes had been made resulting in Khaled's wrongful rendition and detention when she visited Germany in December 2005. [...] Despite all this, the Obama administration has so far declined to acknowledge Khaled's wrongful detention and abuse, and State Department lawyers have yet to respond to his petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, filed over six years ago. Protecting legitimate state secrets wasn't the CIA's primary interest. It invoked secrecy to cover up its embarrassing mistakes – which included egregious human rights violations – and to avoid accountability. Now that the CIA's mistakes and atrocities are a matter of public record, the government should take responsibility for them and make amends. As an important first step, the United States should provide Khaled – and other victims of CIA torture – with a full, official, and public accounting of what the CIA did to him, and grant him an apology, compensation, and counseling for rehabilitation. FULL AT SOURCE https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/now-can-torture-survivor-khaled-el-masri-have-his-apology ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- Added following above, because it is an important detail: [Albania, where he was dumped on the side of the road] If the National Security Council settled a dispute regarding el-Masri's 'repatriation to Germany', why was he subsequently dumped, mafia style, by the side of the road in Albania? The CIA's El-Masri Abduction: Cables Show Germany Caved to Pressure from Washington By Matthias Gebauer and John Goetz December 09, 2010 – 07:49 PM  The American diplomatic cables provide new details about the case of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen abducted by the CIA in 2003. The reports confirm just how much pressure the US put on Germany to not pursue 13 agents believed to have been involved. But they also reveal how cooperative and responsive German officials were in light of American worries. [ ... ] Just a few days ago, WikiLeaks published a cable recounting the details of a meeting that then-Deputy US Ambassador John M. Koenig had in the German Chancellery, the official office of Chancellor Angela Merkel. During the conversation, Koenig asked the Germans to "weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the US" that investigations into the CIA-organized abduction would have. In another embassy cable, the Americans reported that Berlin had been informed of the "potential negative implications for our bilateral relationship" in the longer term. A previously unknown cable from the US Embassy in Berlin, dated Feb. 1, 2007, throws light on how the Germans behaved during this back-room horse-trading. A day earlier, German prosecutors in Munich had issued arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA operatives believed to have been involved in the abduction of el-Masri in Macedonia in late 2003 as well as in his being taken via Baghdad to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan on Jan. 23, 2004. There, el-Masri was detained and interrogated until finally being released without charges and brought back to Germany at the end of May that year. [ ...] The details that have recently emerged illustrate that Germany was engaged in a bit of double-dealing when it came to the el-Masri case. In public, the German government continued to call for an investigation. But neither the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel nor the Justice Ministry would have touched the hot issue of illegal CIA kidnappings if it hadn't have been for the pressure exerted upon them by the media. Behind closed doors, German officials agreed that el-Masri was apparently merely the unfortunate victim of mistaken identity because of his name. But nobody wanted to have investigations into the CIA, which would surely cause even more damage to already tattered German-American relations. [ ...] ...  In 2007, then-Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries decided not to further pursue the 13 CIA agents. Though their names were still on an Interpol wanted persons list, the United States stated that it would not recognize its validity. Zypries explained that the Americans had made clear to her that they would neither arrest nor hand over the 13 CIA agents. In the end, she concluded that, given the slim chances of success, it made no sense to even try to get them extradited. FULL AT SOURCE http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-cia-s-el-masri-abduction-cables-show-germany-caved-to-pressure-from-washington-a-733860.html ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- ꕤ