A Comprehensive Summary of the Crimes of a CIA Sadist

“Extraordinary rendition” (kidnapping)

The rendition of Maher Arar

In an interview last year for the Canadian Times, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower John Kiriakou told Alexander Panetta that the decision to render Maher Arar to Syria in 2002 came down to one woman, over the objections of her subordinates. Kiriakou’s description of that woman matches exactly the profile of Bikowsky.[1] Over the following year, Arar would be tortured by the Assad administration on behalf of the United States and Canada. The CIA had no evidence against Arar.

While Kiriakou declined to say what role Canada’s spy agencies played in his rendition, that question has been answered in Kerry Pither’s impressive investigation: as a result of Canada’s desire to be a hyper-cooperative partner in the so-called “War on Terrorism,” their spy agencies opened their confidential files almost entirely to the FBI. Those files likely included minute details recorded of Arar’s life — and those of his friends and even his wife — given that Canadian spooks had, in surprisingly obvious fashion, stalked them during their daily activities. Despite all this effort, none of Canada’s files contained evidence that Arar was associated with “terrorism.”

Regardless, apparently due to Bikowsky’s insistence, after Arar was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy Airport, he was rendered into the custody of Syria, whose mandatory military service and corrupt, authoritarian government he avoided by moving to Canada as a teenager. The U.S. and Canada would then pressure Syrian officials to continue “detaining and interrogating” (torturing) Arar. Even after being exonerated, as far as Arar’s lawyers know, he’s still on a U.S. watchlist.

The U.S. has not apologized for his rendition. For their part, Canada has apologized. Arar’s rendition was part of what would become a trend for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC): overcrowding the most notorious prisons in the region with supposed suspects, as a means to outsource some of the work which, at the time, largely fell under the auspices of the CTC’s inter-agency collaborative effort, Alec Station (also known as “Bin Laden Station”), of which Bikowsky was deputy chief.[2] The following December, the program would be reorganized — on the surface — when the CTC created the Renditions, Detentions, and Interrogations Group (RDI); Bikowsky would remain intimately involved.

The rendition of Khalid El-Masri

Arar’s experience was not unusual; a German car salesman, Khaled El-Masri, would fall victim to a very similar situation around the time Arar was finally released. Masri was also rendered, in his case, by Macedonia to the CIA. Almost entirely based on an obviously-fallible watchlist system and the “hunch” of Bikowsky, he would be flown to the Salt Pit black site in Afghanistan, where he would be “detained and interrogated.” For Masri, it was the similarity of his name to that of Khalid Al-Masri which would prompt Macedonian police to alert the U.S. of his presence in their country, through which he was passing; that is, Masri himself was not even on a watchlist. This was part of the reason that, again, Bikowsky’s colleagues objected to her insistence on rendering an innocent man. Despite remaining in U.S. custody, Masri describes strikingly similar treatment from the CIA during his disappearance as Arar experienced at the hands of the Syrian administration. Upon arrival at the Salt Pit, he was told, “If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know.”[3]

Even after it became clear that the German passport he carried with him was authentic, and therefore that he was not the man they were looking for, Bikowsky obstinately refused to accept that he was not a “terrorist.” This forced her colleagues to do the work of cleaning up her mess without her help. But she would not stop there. Even after being offered multiple “plans” for his release, she insisted that this be contingent on Germany’s following Masri indefinitely afterward. There was one problem: what she wanted Germany to do is illegal; it had been established that Masri was not a threat, and that he was innocent. Ultimately, no “conditions” were made on Masri’s release. With no apology or explanation, he was dropped off from a CIA vehicle on a desolate Albanian roadside, given approximately $14,000, and told to start walking and not to look back. He thought he was about to be shot by his captors. Masri would eventually reunite with his family in Lebanon, where his wife and kids had returned to live with relatives, after she thought he had abandoned her.

Diplomatic issues created for the U.S., with Canada and Germany

Both of these illegal kidnappings created diplomatic messes for the U.S., particularly with Canada and Germany.[4] Incredibly, this did not prevent the U.S. from threatening Germany that “issuance of international arrest warrants [for Masri’s kidnappers and torturers] would have a negative impact on our bilateral relationship” with them.[5] As they tend to do, Germany acquiesced to the U.S. government, betraying their own citizen to protect the likes of Bikowsky, despite such warrants virtually always being issued by Germany.[6] Finally, last year, Bikowsky was named by a German human rights group in a criminal complaint to be reviewed by German courts. There has yet to be any word on whether it will be accepted.

Still, Macedonia’s government remains the only party to have been held liable in either case, for allowing the CIA to kidnap an innocent man from their territory — a violation of Masri’s human rights.[7] In both Masri and Arar’s cases, the U.S. federal “justice” system has accepted the Executive’s claim that “state secrets privilege” should hinder either man from seeking judicial remedy.[8] This despite the CIA’s own assessment that “[a]vailable intelligence information did not provide a sufficient basis to render and detain Khalid al-Masri [sic],” and that the order to render him did not state that he posed a threat, as required by the Memorandum of Notification guidelines.[9]

A European Union inquiry into similar cases found that over 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA from E.U. territory since 9/11.[10] How many more of these or other arrests were due to Bikowsky’s own malfeasance is unknown, though we do know that “intelligence” gleaned from an “interrogation” in which she went out of her way to participate did lead to the arrest of two other innocent people.[11] As has become a tragic pattern, in all of these cases, Bikowsky escaped the accountability which could have prevented her from committing more human rights violations against Muslims on behalf of the U.S. government.

“Enhanced interrogation techniques” (torture)

The torture of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, better known as Abu Zubaydah

Bikowsky not only sent men to be tortured; she has actively sought to participate in it. On March 28th, 2002, Abu Zubaydah was captured by the CIA, in a raid co-led by Kiriakou in Pakistan.[12] After his arrival in Thailand (where the CIA established the first of a series of black sites), Zubaydah was treated for life-threatening gunshot wounds he sustained during the raid. While recovering in a hospital unit, he was questioned and even tended to by experienced FBI interrogators fluent in Arabic. The experience was fruitful for the intelligence community (IC), as he immediately cooperated, even before breathing tubes which prevented him from speaking had been removed. It was during this period that he is said to have corroborated reports on the identity Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and offered other information that CIA interrogators deemed so useful they would claim for years it was acquired by way of their subsequent torture of Zubaydah. It must be noted that this in itself would quite lucky for the IC, since it turns out they were likely wrong about Zubaydah being associated at all with al-Qa’eda.

While he was being treated, members of the CTC were in talks regarding their plans to interrogate him. Despite one recommendation that “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) only be used as a last resort, the CTC ultimately decided that psycho/torturer James Mitchell should be sent, along with Bikowsky and others, to “provide real-time recommendations to overcome Abu Zubaydah’s resistance to interrogation.” (Resistance? I thought you said Zubaydah was cooperating… Yes, the Orwellian CTC definition of what makes a detainee “cooperative” will become clear.) They decided at this point, from Washington, DC, that he would in fact be tortured upon their arrival.

Once these sadists-in-training arrived in Thailand, the FBI was barred from questioning Zubaydah. The team’s goal was to attain one thing: what they termed — as if to mock their own psychotic delusions — “a most important secret,” by which they meant plans for an “imminent attack” on the U.S., and about which he held no information. The “innovative” approach of these experts-with-no-experience failed to produce anything whatsoever (like, seemingly even words, according to the Senate’s report), and so the FBI was again allowed to question him. Zubaydah “greeted the [FBI] agent by name,” and continued to offer them information. Still, he was deemed “uncooperative” by CIA officers based solely on the fact that he had not yet disclosed information [that he didn’t have] about [non-existent] plans for an “imminent attack” on the U.S. This as a means to excuse their pre-established plan to make him a guinea pig for their “new interrogation program”; a fact which he suspected at the time and that the CTC more or less admitted in cables.[13] This definition would continue to be the basis for torturing their victims in the future.

In accordance with their plan, Zubaydah was left in isolation for 47 days, at which point the FBI cut ties with the program.[14] Anthropologically speaking, I am personally convinced that this is the point at which this cultish group would have performed their apparently-month-and-a-half-long invocation ritual of some series of ancient Germanic dark lords, which was clearly much more urgent than the so-called “imminent attack” they were supposedly convinced Zubaydah was hiding. The day he was brought out of isolation began an aggressive phase of torture; this is when Bikowsky witnessed and potentially partcipated in Zubaydah’s waterboarding, along with his subjection to other “techniques,” to prepare her to help oversee the program.

After his first waterboarding, the team deduced that he was “ready to talk” (the definition of “ready to talk” having noting to do with the kind of “talking” he did with the FBI, remember), but they decided to keep torturing him instead. After a week, they “informed headquarters that it was unlikely Zubaydah had the threat information the agency was seeking, but the team was instructed to continue.” The torture and neglect he endured during this period caused Abu Zubaydah’s wounds to worsen to the point of medical crisis, along with what seems to have been a preexisting infection in his left eye. The condition of his eye would become so bad that after what the CIA recently referred to as its “disintegration,” it had to be removed. As if by guilty instinct, they absurdly claim that releasing any more information about how he lost his eye would threaten national security.[15] Perhaps this is because they commonly used “eye-gouging” as a tactic against detainees.

It is well-worth noting that this phase of Zubaydah’s torture, in August 2002, was so horrific that it caused other CIA officers to cry. Still, after witnessing this “interrogation,” Bikowsky apparently looked forward to the next. Frankly, even reading about his treatment is very difficult, heart- and gut-wrenching, so I will simply direct you to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) “Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program” (Senate torture report) for further details, with a content warning. That said, I do at least encourage Americans to read what’s been done in their name.[16] Zubaydah has never been charged with a crime and, as noted, his association with al-Qa’eda seems to have been altogether false, likely due to genuine misunderstanding on the part of the CIA in the early aftermath of 9/11. The torture sessions to which Bikowsky was party were videotaped; those tapes were later illegally destroyed.[17]

The torture of Ridha al-Najjar and the criminally negligent homicide of Gul Rahman

Ridha al-Najjar was captured by Pakistani forces in May of 2002. Accused of being a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, he was rendered to the Salt Pit the following month. By July, the small group from the CTC, including Bikowsky, who were in discussion of Zubaydah’s torture, also planned that of Najjar. The group’s recommendations included using “Najjar’s fear for the well-being of his family,” “vague threats [to create a] mind virus,” hooding, restraints (“short-chaining”), loud music and sleep deprivation. These were to be used in combination, and ten days later, were followed by additional recommendations; including for isolation, cold temperatures, and later for “worse food” (meaning less food). He was subjected to this scheme starting on August 5th, 2002. By September 21st, 2002, Najjar was described by interrogators as “clearly a broken man…on the verge of complete breakdown,” who would “do whatever the CIA officer asked.” Still his torture would continue for months.

The conditions and treatment that Bikowsky helped design, travelled to Thailand to witness, and encouraged, were directly responsible for the death of Gul Rahman on November 20th, 2002, at the Salt Pit. His death was reportedly caused by hypothermia, dehydration, lack of food, and immobility due to “short-chaining.” Rahman’s death was the subject of a major investigation; the site operator was slated for punishment, but after the double-standard was noted of his facing sanction when those who designed and directed the program would not, the CIA decided instead to punish no one. Rahman’s death did lead to the creation of an actual group in charge of the program (as mentioned: the RDI ) in December.[18] This created some tension, because who in their right mind would want to give up control of the torture program they created out of nothing but their pure sadism and malice? And what would the dark lords think of such a turn of events?

The torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Still, Bikowsky would not be kept away from torture. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who allegedly orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, was apprehended on March 1st, 2003. He was then flown to a CIA detention site in Poland on March 6th. Bikowsky arrived on March 10th to participate in his torture. It was during this time that, in order to placate the sadists, he fabricated such ridiculous “plots” that another high-level CTC official described in multiple emails his disbelief at how Mohammed ever could have plotted attacks like those of September 11th, 2001.

Another detainee, Majid Khan, who was close with Mohammed, would make up similar “plots” under torture, at one point claiming that al-Qa’eda had recruited Black American Muslims, who were training in Afghanistan. Bikowsky was so excited upon hearing this obviously-bogus story, that she said in an e-mail to her colleagues, “i love the Black American Muslim at AQ camps in Afghanuistan (sic). … Mukie (KSM) is going to be hatin’ life on this one.” Not only borderline-illiterate, this message is also quite telling in a way the SSCI overlooked. Their report claims that she “misinterpreted” Khan’s story, believing that there were Black American Muslims still in the U.S. whom al-Qa’eda was attempting to recruit. The wording of the message, if it can be referred to as such, shows that she made no such mistake; she would, however, go on to use that “misunderstanding” to force Mohammed to “admit” an even more ridiculous story. After hours of denial, in the midst of waterboarding, Mohammed would confirm her claims, eventually leading the FBI on a wild goose chase to hunt down a Black Muslim sleeper-cell in Montana.[19] Amazingly, she would go on to tout this nonsense as evidence of the effectiveness of torture…

Attempts to hold Mohammed and others incommunicado for the rest of their lives — specifically in order to silence them about the torture they endured — faltered once detainees were transferred into Department of Defense (DOD) custody at Guantanamo, since DOD discloses information on their detainees to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Mohammed would relate to the ICRC in an interview that, “I later told the interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the U.S.”[20]

It is notable that the torture endured by both Zubaydah and Mohammed are typically the “examples” offered of some of the most egregious combinations of EITs used by the RDI. I should further reiterate how similar were the tactics of both RDI and the Syrian officers who held Arar, and the fact that both groups attempted to force very much the same information from prisoners. To what degree these parties coordinated is unclear. However, it is not these crimes that would upset the CIA, but rather the fact that Bikowsky was not assigned to visit the black site in Poland in the first place, having flown there simply because “she thought it would be cool.” Her giddy communiques about the infamously horrendous treatment suffered by Mohammed would bring her the worst known reprimand of her career: a stern talking-to, about how torture is “not meant to be entertainment.”

“Targeted killing” (assassination)

Nevertheless, employing a high-level official who found torture entertaining troubled the agency so little they would promote her again, surely into a position where she could be sure to make no such mistake: as the director of the “Global Jihad” unit, she oversees a program which makes the mass-murder of wedding processions appear as a video game on a screen, refitted Xbox joysticks and all.[21,22] This, of course, after showing President Barack Obama cards with the names, faces and stats of “monsters,” from which he selects one and, presumably, chooses an attack method based on their hit points.[23,24] That is to say, instead of violating the human rights of Muslims by means of kidnapping or torture, the CTC decided Bikowsky should really be overseeing matters of life or death. Yet the problems inherent to her holding this position don’t end there. The crimes above are only those for which evidence of her involvement is available. And this after a seemingly endless, sometimes illegal effort by her and others to manipulate, exclude, and even falsify records regarding her work. But we will come back to this, since there is yet another problem with her holding this position: the fact that she has already been in charge of such matters before, though it is unclear who was aware of it at the time.

Bikowsky’s record in life-or-death situations

Bikowsky joins Alec Station

It is necessary to backtrack here, to explain how she ended up on such a track. Bikowsky was recruited by the CIA as a postgraduate — ironically, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She served as a Soviet analyst for a few years before being brought on to the core, founding staff of Alec Station. From 1996 until 2001, this unit served as something of a conceptual precursor to today’s Department of Homeland Security, insofar as it was a “virtual station” and included officers from various intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It was intended as an experiment in how useful this inter-agency structure would be for streamlining the collection, analysis, and response to intelligence, both domestic and international.[25] Bikowsky would remain with this unit until its closure in 2005, at which point she served as its deputy chief. The greatest contributing agency to Alec Station was her own CIA. Secondarily it utilized FBI, NSA and DIA officers, and even some from local-issue stations in New York and DC.

The unit is rather noteworthy for being exactly what the U.S. might have needed in the years to come: a cooperative effort between field agents, sweeping up both signals and human intelligence on bin Laden and his associates internationally, and stateside agents, who would analyze this intelligence as a whole and would track the activities of suspects; it was also intended to ensure that the FBI would have access to this information in case al-Qa’eda appeared poised to stage an attack within the country. Truly prescient…had its members followed procedure. Tragically, Bikowsky and her direct subordinate, Michael Anne Casey, did not follow procedure — repeatedly.[26]

Dropping the ball on 9/11 intelligence, infuriating the FBI

In early 2000, Doug Miller, an FBI officer within the unit, noticed a tip shared by Malaysian intelligence that a suspected associate of bin Laden, Khalid al-Mihdhar, had obtained a U.S. visa and was planning to visit New York City. In accordance with procedure, he drafted a Central Intelligence Report (CIR) detailing this information to the FBI; however, these reports had to be cleared by at least a deputy chief (to be clear: a position Bikowsky did not hold at the time). Miller sent the report to station chief Richard Blee, who never replied. When he and Mark Rossini, a fellow FBI officer, checked-up on whether the draft could be sent, Casey became angry, telling them that this presumed-operative having a visa and apparently planning a trip to New York was “not an FBI matter,” and that “when we want the FBI to know, we’ll let them know. And you’re not going to say anything.” Two days prior, she sent an internal CIA cable misleading fellow officers, claiming that the FBI had been notified. Later, Bikowsky would lie to congressional investigators, saying that she had hand-delivered the record of Mihdhar’s visa to FBI headquarters, only to be subsequently disproven by the FBI check-in log, which showed she never entered the building. This was the first of several warnings about Mihdhar and other future 9/11 hijackers that Bikowsky and her Alec Station colleagues did not pass on to the FBI. These incidents have frequently been referred to by officials as “one of the greatest intelligence lapses in U.S. history.”[27]

Thus, Bikowsky’s record when overseeing matters of life or death is long-established. The immediate tragedy of her malfeasance is clear in this case — the deaths of over 3,000 people on U.S. soil. Yet this is compounded by the fact that the only reasonable response to such disregard for their duties — that she and her subordinate, along with others up the chain of command, be fired and possibly criminally charged — was never even floated. The full ramifications of the CIA’s decision to reward her negligence may never be known in full due to a multitude of cover-ups, destruction of records, and silencing of victims.

Lies and cover-ups

The Inspector General’s report on pre-9/11 intelligence failures

It’s clear that Bikowsky has been fully aware that her actions should merit punishment, since she and others have made several known attempts to cover up her crimes. Besides her own lies about delivering to the FBI information that they swear would have enabled them to uncover and prevent the 9/11 attacks, the CIA also failed to offer Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigators the most important record regarding the incident: that CIR drafted by Miller. An accidental reference to this report amidst other documents received by the OIG was caught by an eagle-eyed investigator on the case, yet the late arrival of this — the most pertinent document to their investigation — nonetheless delayed the release of the OIG report.[28] This would not be the only government investigation whose release was delayed due to Bikowsky, but we’ll return to that presently. Next, she would intentionally mislead her own agency’s overseers and Congress about the efficacy of “enhanced interrogation,” in which she was intimately involved from the program’s inception.[29]

Ceaseless lies about torture

It is worth taking a moment to delve into the consequences of her lies about “EITs.” Following Bikowsky’s excited participation in the torture of Mohammed — sans permission even to be present — she began to spread lies to the effect that he did not disclose any actionable intelligence until tortured. To explain this, she concocted an imaginary, Islamophobic scenario in which Mohammed claimed to believe it was acceptable to God for him to “talk” only when duress became “psychologically and physically” intolerable. (Inexplicably, on other occasions according to convenience, she also attributed this statement to Zubaydah.) In fact, if one follows the real-world definition of the word, Mohammed — like Zubaydah — was fully cooperative with interrogators until he began to be tortured by Bikowsky and her fellow CIA sadists, at which point he just started going along with whatever asinine stories they fed him, and desperately attempted to “devise” some of his own which might please them (nb. the CTC’s definition of “cooperation”). This is of course what we have always known people to do under torture.[30] She would also go on to make alternating claims that either Mohammed or Zubaydah claimed that “the general U.S. population was ‘weak,’ lacked resilience, and would be unable to ‘do what was necessary’ to prevent [terrorism].”

Referred to as the “key architect” of the propaganda and lies that enveloped the program, Bikowsky not only mislead Congress, overseers, and investigators, but also her own colleagues, in such a way as to undermine the efficacy of her agency. Belief in her lies was so widespread throughout the CIA that, even after discussing the program with journalists, Kiriakou believed there had been evidence that torture was effective. In an interview, he offered as an example of its efficacy the torture of Mohammed (thus, his misunderstanding is directly attributable to her lies).[31] It should be noted to his immense credit that in spite of this, Kiriakou disclosed details of the illegal program anyway. Fortunately, it appears that by 2006, others in the CTC had already come to recognize Bikowsky’s fabrications…

Worse, these lies were the basis for the same claims we have so often heard repeated on the various warmonger-roundtable programs featured every Sunday morning by the networks. The entire “debate” over the “effectiveness” of torture was fostered by the fact that Bikowsky’s lies had spread vociferously, and ultimately duped a substantial portion of Americans.[33] This “debate” never should have been had, or at least should not have lasted longer than the 30 seconds it might take to explain that torture has never been shown to be useful, and that in fact it has often been shown to produce false information — as Bikowsky giddily witnessed from Mohammed. Why Bikowsky wants to undermine the efficacy of her agency, and wants for that agency to commit countless, major human rights violations against Muslim men, is a question worth asking.

Senate conflict with Robert Litt

This brings us to another report which was delayed by efforts to cover up Bikowsky’s crimes. It was the SSCI’s report from which we learned that Bikowsky had lied about Mohammed’s susceptibility to torture; yet, we never would have known this was the work of Bikowsky were it not for journalists carefully combing through the investigation with her in mind. (For my part, this took several days.) This is because, against the wishes of the SSCI who compiled the report, Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), argued that even pseudonyms could not be used in the already-censored version of the report that was to be publicly released. The reason offered was standard: it would help identify agents (criminals, mostly, in the context of this report), who would then be at risk for retribution. Putting aside the fact that pseudonyms are used specifically so that this would not be the case, Bikowsky’s name was already public and associated with torture.

So we are left to realize that the “retribution” to which Litt refers is that of litigation on behalf of the RDI’s victims; pseudonyms would have offered lawyers evidence for use in proceedings, thus far shut down by erroneous claims of state secrets privilege, by enabling them to more easily connect the dots to discover which crimes were committed by any given person featured in the report. This would, for example, allow them to show patterns of illegal behavior on the part of certain agents who may have harmed their clients and been identifiable by them. Moreover, this issue reportedly hinged on the fact that Bikowsky’s pseudonym would have recurred throughout the report over three dozen times — to which I can attest, having found her name redacted at least 36 unique times, not to mention duplicates.[34] There are almost certainly more of Bikowsky’s crimes laid out in the report of which journalists and lawyers are not yet aware, due to the many shrouds of secrecy between her actions and anyone who might seek some accounting for their effects.

However, the biggest problem posed here by Litt was not his disingenuous argument, but rather his debating the issue with Senate investigators to begin with. In hearings regarding his appointment to the ODNI, the issue arose that his holding general counsel could appear to present a conflict of interest, given that he had previously represented CIA torturers as a private attorney — including Alfreda Bikowsky. In fact, his appointment was “contingent upon his agreement to recuse himself from situations that involved his former clients,” and he swore that he would “not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving these clients.”

As one would hope, the question did arise, of whether overseeing the torture report’s publication represented exactly that appearance of a conflict of interest. Yet, as should not surprise any observer of the past 15 years of Congressional “investigations,” the answer to this question was sought from none other than Litt’s own direct subordinate (a “conflict of interest” in the colloquial sense, one might argue). Naturally, she did not anger her boss, answering that there could be no appearance of a conflict of interest. This non-conflict (squared) led to a stalemate between congressional overseers and Litt over the issue of pseudonyms for his former clients, delaying the report’s release by several months.[35] And thus, there are no pseudonyms for agents amidst the rather difficult-to-follow Senate torture report.

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act: protecting CIA criminals

One might wonder, then, how we even know Alfreda Bikowsky’s name, not to mention so many details of her extremely prolific career as a CIA criminal. For that, credit lies largely with two independent journalists — Rory O’Connor and Ray Nowosielski — who, in exemplary fashion, gathered the few details they had about a CIA mystery woman (her penchant for torture, her involvement in the failures enabling the 9/11 attacks, her former position in Alec Station and, thanks to Adam Goldman, both her middle name and that her first name was unique), and started Googling. As related by John Cook, once they were relatively certain the “Alfreda Frances Bikowsky” nominated to foreign service by the Department of State in 2008 was the woman they were looking for, they started dropping that name to her colleagues in interviews; the lack of correction from interviewees offered the journalists their answer.[36] When they were ready to release a documentary in which they planned to name her, they emailed the CIA public affairs office to give advance notice, out of an abundance of caution.

Which brings us to yet another cover-up by the CIA. In response to their notice to the CIA, those journalists received an unprecedented threat: if they released the names of Bikowsky and Michael Ann Casey (which they also discovered), they would be pursued for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), a law never before applied against journalists. Publishing Bikowsky’s name in connection to the September 11th attacks — which occurred when she was not undercover — seems to have warranted threatening such an over-reaction as would likely violate the First Amendment’s protections for the press. Still, the CIA’s warning successfully chilled the journalists, who redacted her name from their film.[37] It is worth noting that this is the law Kiriakou was charged with violating, in disclosing information about the program’s participants to journalists.

Continuing claims by the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the U.S. and abroad, that information which could serve as evidence in their prosecution must remain classified due to national security concerns, are simply not believable. Securing this information from the “dangers” of independent overseers, judges, and lawyers cannot make the U.S. “more secure”; it has often done — demonstrably — the opposite. However, it must be noted that it is federal judges who have continually acquiesced to claims of state secrets privilege; in the case of the Aulaqi family, denying even American citizens posthumous “justice.” Further, the Senate could have released a much more thorough report on the RDI, yet they too have acquiesced to an ongoing CIA cover-up. It is not U.S. interests in even the broadest sense that are protected by the attempts of the Judiciary and Legislature not to step on the toes of a zealously abusive executive, it is criminals, sadists, and human rights violators acting maliciously in your and my name.

The Fourth Estate

This is precisely the kind of situation in which we need an adversarial press to serve as a check on government abuse of power. And yet because of the IIPA, only serendipity would make Bikowsky’s name public. Shortly after being threatened, O’Connor and Nowosielski accidentally posted their e-mail exchange with the CIA in plain-text on their website, removing it after it had been accessed and reported on by John Young of Cryptome and Sibel Edmunds of Boiling Frogs Post. They then asked Young and Edmunds to remove the information from their websites. Fortunately, it was too late, as the information already began its slow spread across the net.[38]

Journalists continue to be chilled when informing the CIA of the intent to publish Bikowsky’s name, and thus only very infrequently will follow through. Her name has only appeared in print twice — both times in passing — first in a story about Litt, then in a hagiography of Dianne Feinstein.[39] One of the writers of the Litt story, Adam Goldman, also co-wrote the prior piece which attempted to release as much information as possible about her name without actually publishing it.[40]

Yet Goldman is one of the few mainstream journalists who has followed her; since 2011, even on the Internet, her name has been published in only six online media outlets, and beyond that in several popular blogs. In any case, it is notable that these occurred only in 2011, when her identity became known, and 2014, when the torture report was released, until last year with the Feinstein piece, when the New Yorker named her for the first time, despite having publishing articles about her in the past.[41] Journalists should stop treating the crimes of the past 15 years only as newsworthy when there is a particularly “hot take” to report on. On that note, I must also voice my disappointment as a young writer that there is plenty of information presented here which has never been published in the press.[42]

Bikowsky will be named and shamed

Because she “should be … put in jail for what she has done”

As noted, according to Mayer, Bikowsky is heading what she refers to as the “Global Jihad” unit, a role in which she oversees the assassination of “terrorism suspects” who have never faced trial.[43] Little could be more noteworthy in my view than the fact that someone as malicious as Bikowsky leads such an important unit. Even more unsettling is that she “regularly brief[ed former CIA Director Leon] Panetta, making her an influential voice in Obama’s intelligence circle.”[44] Among those most infuriated by her continual promotions are some who know Bikowsky’s work most intimately. In response, colleagues have described her to journalists as “a person who inspires little confidence,” with “no leadership ability,” who suffers from a “horrendous degree of intellectual dishonesty,” and who “should be put on trial and put in jail for what she has done.”[45,46] Even more significantly, the “long-term effect” of the post-9/11 leadership of the CIA, including Bikowsky, has been described as “catastrophically corrosive” by a former officer.[47] So we should not be surprised — especially given Arar’s rendition, her excitement at torture, and her pre-9/11 screw-ups — that “even before the El-Masri case, station chiefs had complained to top CIA officials raising concerns about [her] operational judgment.”[48]

Because she is still harming innocents

Yet even since, she has involved herself in some of the most notorious CIA incidents in the Middle East. Following the suicide-bombing of the CIA base on Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, Bikowsky was reportedly singled-out for “interfering with the instincts of the Base Chief on the ground,” who wanted the man who carried it out to be searched before arrival, in accordance with procedure. The result of his not being searched was that the CIA suffered its deadliest day in 25 years, with 10 people killed, including the base chief and Balawi, and 6 wounded.[49]

Beyond targeted killing, one matter of which we know little is her role in the CIA’s ongoing efforts in the Syrian civil war, as head of the “Global Jihad” unit. Recently, Seymour Hersh spoke to DOD leadership, who claimed to have subverted to the best of their ability the White House and CIA’s efforts to arm Salafi groups involved in the war. This seems to represent a continuation of the frustration DOD and FBI have long expressed about CTC policy and practice.

Because she is still at the heart of CIA fabrications

The operation for which Bikowsky is perhaps best known, however, is the raid on the bin Laden compound in Pakistan. For her involvement in this, she would be represented as part of the composite protagonist, Maya, in the CIA/Hollywood theatrical-propaganda collaboration, Zero Dark Thirty. It is worth emphasizing that this is supposedly the highlight of her career; it should probably not surprise us then that each of the conflicting, official narratives of the raid turned out to be fabricated.

For all the torture, non-existent couriers, and (until a last minute alteration to the story) drone attacks that the CIA would claim were critical in discovering and raiding bin Laden’s compound, the operation was in fact relatively straight-forward. The $25 million reward offered by the U.S. government for information on bin Laden’s location led a Pakistani intelligence (ISI) officer to walk into a U.S. embassy in Pakistan and volunteer that ISI had been holding bin Laden captive in a compound in Abbotabad since 2006. There was no “epic firefight”; the raid consisted of U.S. special forces botching the landing of a helicopter (which they then had to blow up), bursting into the home of a sickly old man they knew to be unarmed, and unloading hundreds of bullets into his body in view of his terrified wives. They didn’t even take computers with them. He was not a source of concern; he was a political feather in Obama’s cap, and a chance for the CIA to attempt to excuse a decade of criminal conduct. Thus, even the raid on bin Laden’s compound, when left to the designs of Bikowsky and the rest of the “catastrophically corrosive” leadership of the CIA, became a blatantly illegal operation.[50]

Astoundingly, Bikowsky’s defenders in the CIA typically use her original failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks as an excuse for her being overzealous to the point of frequent disaster. Allow me to entertain this argument for a moment: we are to presume that Bikowsky was so upset over having been “too lax” when she intentionally impeded FBI access to information which could have prevented the attacks, that instead of attempting to get the best information as quickly as possible, she allowed Abu Zubaydah, who the CIA believed to be their most high value detainee at the time, to be kept in isolation instead of being questioned? She was so upset about her earlier screw-up that she endlessly, blatantly lied about the effectiveness of the torture program, wasting countless IC resources? If her transgressions are all truly accidents, I would genuinely hope that she is the single most disastrously incompetent employee the CIA has ever seen. And yet, she has been promoted to direct one of the most critical units in the CTC? This line of reasoning is simply not believable. It is more spin from the CIA, an organization which has only been supportive of the CTC’s sadistic, illegal practices.

It is not any journalist’s duty to protect the identity of a government official who has displayed such disregard for the human rights of Muslims, moreover while allowing the rise of Boko Haram and the Islamic State to occur on her watch as head of the CTC’s “Global Jihad” unit. It is particularly not my duty to protect a rabid ideologue feigning to be a public servant to the U.S., in detriment to human rights and safety worldwide.[51] But her sordid interests will make for part two of this story on Bikowsky’s affairs.

In the meantime, what follows is a list of sources of unique information on Alfreda Bikowsky; for more on specific incidents enumerated here, see the endnotes. If you are unclear on any details, or have any questions regarding Bikowsky, please do comment. While this represents the most thorough summary to date of Bikowsky’s career, it is still only that; there are many more details available. And remember, this is only what we know of her criminal behavior; for more on that, we need whistleblowers. For more on her motivation to commit these crimes, stay tuned.

Investigate Bikowsky!

Useful sources:

While these sources were not all directly utilized in this article, and therefore might not be found in the endnotes, I found them useful for better understanding Bikowsky’s role in the CIA and/or the RDI.

• Richard Ackland: “State-sanctioned torture can never be justified”

This is a very unique instance of Bikowsky’s being named in the press. It comes from an Australian hoping to use her as a bad example of what happens when the U.S. and its allies, including Australia, let officers off the hook for heinous crimes like torture, while punishing the few whose conscience calls on them to make public the government criminality they witness, like Kiriakou.

• Matt Apuzzo and Mark Mazzetti: “Deep Support in Washington for C.I.A.’s Drone Missions”

On Bikowsky’s new gig, and why Feinstein’s grovelling to the CIA, who have continually lied to her, is repulsive. (Or is that just my reading of it?)

• Cryptome: “CIA Torture Pseudonums Update”

This guide helped me immensely in reading the Senate torture report; I recommend keeping it on hand if you plan to read the report.

• Glenn Greenwald: “Meet Alfreda Bikowsky, the Senior Officer at the Center of the CIA’s Torture Scandals”

This story made Bikowsky’s name far better known than it had been previously, for which Greenwald deserves great credit.

• Carl Hulse and Mark Mazzetti: “Inquiry by C.I.A. Affirms It Spied on Senate Panel”

Remember, while Litt was whining about pseudonyms, the CIA also spied on Senate investigators. They even went so far as to make criminal complaints against Senate staffers, because the CIA is batshit crazy.

• Mark Mazzetti:“C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden”

On the closure of Alec Station.

• Dorothy J. Samuels: “Torture Details for U.S.S. Cole Bombing Suspect”

This recounts the story of al-Nashiri, a man who was also detained by the CIA during the early phases of the torture of Abu Zubaydah, Mohammed, Najjar and Rahman, around late 2002. When interrogators sent a cable describing Nashiri as compliant, Bikowsky responded that they should not make such ‘sweeping statements’ in the cable traffic — as it would create a paper trail — and encouraged his continued torture.

• Seymour Hersh’s entire series available through the London Review of Books.

Details relevant to Bikowsky are strewn across this excellent series.