Monday, March 24, 2014

Columbia University's CIA Connection In 2014--Part 1

"The Central Intelligence Agency has become a killing machine, an organization consumed with man hunting...After President Bush signed a secret order to escalate the CIA's war in Pakistan, Abu Khabib al-Masri was killed in a CIA drone strike, just 12 miles from the CIA base...During his first year in office, President Obama ordered a review of the roughly one dozen covert-action programs the CIA was carrying out at the time, from the drone strikes to a campaign to sabotage Iran's nuclear work...The summer 2009 meetings effectively rubber-stamped all of the CIA's secret ventures...By the time a `principals committee' meeting was scheduled for the fall, when President Obama's top national security advisers would make final decisions on the covert-action programs, not one of them was under consideration for cancellation...The Obama administration approved every one of the covert-action programs that had been handed down by President Bush...

--from New York Times National Security Correspondent Mark Mazzetti's 2013 book, The Way of The Knife

"Peter Clement, who recently began a two-year term as a visiting professor, joins SIPA from the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, where he spent the last eight years as deputy director for intelligence for analytic programs..."

--from a Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs [SIPA] website article on September 9, 2013

Columbia University's CIA Connection In 2014--Part 1

Most people who live in Manhattan opposed both the Bush-Cheney Administration's decision to attack Iraq in 2003 and the Obama Administration's decision to escalate the CIA's covert drone war in Pakistan and other foreign countries after 2009.

Yet in 2013 the Columbia University administration's School of International and Public Affairs [SIPA] hired a 35-year veteran of the CIA--CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence Peter Clement--to be Columbia University's CIA Officer In Residence between 2013 and 2015.

In an interview that was posted on the Columbia University SIPA website on September 9, 2013, CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence Clement indicated how he came to be Columbia University's CIA Officer In Residence in 2014:

"The Agency's Officers in Residence program goes back several decades. Over the years the CIA has had people teach at different schools around the country--including Georgetown, MIT, Harvard, and Princeton--in departments of international affairs and related subjects...

"...Coming to SIPA was largely my idea...I knew Professors [Robert] Jervis and [Richard] Betts. I broached the OIR idea with Jervis, who consults for the CIA and he and Betts were both positive. And then, as I understand it, the appointment was reviewed and finalized...There are a healthy number of SIPA graduates in our workforce...I've spent much of my career at the nexus [of intelligence and foreign policy]. Attending White House meetings, you can see firsthand how senior policymakers use the product...If anyone has questions about the intelligence business, my door is open. I'm just really excited to be here, it's a great opportunity..."

According to New York Times National Security Correspondent Michael Mazzetti's 2013 book The Way Of The Knife, "targeted killings have made the CIA the indispensable  agency for the Obama administration."