TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

THE WASHINGTON TIMES September 07, 2004:

The CIA's Counterterrorist Center has spent more than $15 million in the past three years funding studies, reports and conferences produced by former Democratic administration officials and other critics of the Bush administration.

The latest effort was a $300,000 grant by the CIA to the Atlantic Council for a study co-authored by Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism official who wrote a best seller accusing the Bush administration of failing in the war on terrorism...

"The products of the [center] have a consistent theme: They criticize the Bush administration and provide ammunition for the Kerry campaign," said one U.S. official who has read the resulting reports and studies.

This official said the academic outreach is the Counterterrorist Center's way of "buying off" criticism of the CIA and the intelligence community by providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts and conferences.
[...]
CIA's funding of counterterrorism studies and conferences through the center, known as the CTC, raises questions about whether the agency is violating its charter by getting involved in activities that influence U.S. policy.

The funding also raised questions among administration and congressional officials involved in intelligence activities about whether the CIA selectively funds counterterrorism studies and conferences at liberal or Democratic-oriented research organizations.
[...]
Other recent funding activities by the CTC program... include:



A grant of $250,000 to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, known as CSIS, headed by former Clinton administration Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre...



$200,000 for a conference paper produced by Steven Simon, a former Clinton administration National Security Council staff member, now with the RAND Corp. Mr. Simon's paper was about how to restructure the U.S. government for the war on terrorism and was to be included as a chapter of a book. Mr. Simon was a deputy to Mr. Clarke.



A grant of $100,000 for Bruce Hoffman, vice president for external affairs and public spokesman for RAND and a frequent columnist and guest on National Public Radio commenting on terrorism issues. Mr. Hoffman was granted high-level security clearances at the CIA as part of his consultancy...



Funding for conferences on the failure of U.S. public diplomacy at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
[...]
The CTC academic outreach program until recently was headed by CIA analyst Bonnie Mitchell, who had access to a budget estimated by U.S. officials at about $5 million per year in the past three years.

A CIA spokesman said Miss Mitchell was unavailable for comment.

The spokesman initially suggested that Miss Mitchell was an undercover agent, but changed that characterization when told that Miss Mitchell identified herself publicly.
[...]
The CIA funding skirts rules that prohibit the agency from engaging in domestic-intelligence activities.

One intelligence official said the agency also could be subtly influencing policy by allowing favored research organizations to provide input to intelligence analysts.

| Posted at 13:16 | PERMA-LINK |

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