abu omar

Sabrina deSouza is one of the 23 U.S. officials convicted in Italy for the illegal CIA rendition of an Egyptian terrorist suspect named Abu Omar. She concedes the United States “broke the law” in ordering and carrying out the rendition, and says, “we are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorized and approved this.”
Wow, [...]

Here’s The New York Times’ contribution to the what-in-the-world-was-this-series-of-CIA-’significant-actions‘-disclosed-and-stopped-by Director-Leon-Panetta fracas. It backs up Wall Street Journal reporter Siobhan Gorman’s account of a nascent assassination program: like Gorman, The Times reports that the unfruitful effort was aimed to create teams to hunt and take out al-Qaeda leaders, and it adds that the idea of it [...]

Obama on rendition, to The New York Times. I’m transcribing from the audio.

Via Josh Marshall, Mark Mazzetti reports for The New York Times that Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) choice for CIA director, Steve Kappes, might remain deputy director as part of a plan to mollify the new chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee ahead of confirmation hearings for President-elect Barack Obama’s reported pick to head the agency, [...]