Damage assessment author primary State Department liaison to FBI & Watch List
- posted July 22, 2012
According to an October 6, 2009 U.S. State Department cable published by WikiLeaks, the author of the original August 2011 “draft” WikiLeaks State Department damage assessment also “coordinates counterintelligence and sensitive law enforcement operations and policy” for the Department of State and its self described “global law enforcement agency,” the Diplomatic Security Service.
Raymond G. McGrath, the Director of Counter-Intelligence and Consular Support in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and former U.S. Consulate General for both Mexico and Columbia, was responsible for compiling raw reports from the Global Chiefs of Mission and authoring the August 2011 “draft” damage assessment.
INR/CSS advises principles at the Department of State, and INR reports directly to the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
The Director of the Office of Counter-Intelligence and Consular Support in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research also acts as the State Department’s primary liaison with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a leading partner in the USG ‘Whole of Government’ inter-agency investigation of WikiLeaks.
McGrath is the Department of State’s primary liaison with the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) – an inter-agency organization lead by the FBI and responsible for a “single database of identifying factors” about individuals suspected by the UGS of involvement in terrorist activities.
The TSC maintains the “Terrorist Watch-list”, the “No-Fly List”, as well as the “Selectee List” – the later two being subsets of the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) used by the Transportation Security Administration – which associates or supporters of Julian Assange, Manning, and/or WikiLeaks have found themselves detained and interrogated by means of (see David House, Jacob Appelbaum, Jennifer Robinson and her experience on the “inhibited list“, and others.)
Catherine Brown, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Intelligence & Research (INR)
In the October 2009 cable, Catherine Brown was identified as the then point of contact “responsible for representing Department of State Interests” (capital “I”) to the Terrorist Screening Center, working “closely with the Bureau of Consular Affairs in the review of visa security advisory opinions and visa revocations.”
On June 7, 2012, Catherine Brown, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Intelligence & Research (INR) at the Department of State testified at an Article 39(a) session of U.S. v. Pfc. Manning. A transcript of that Article 39(a) session is forthcoming.
Brown said she edited the State Department’s August 2011 “draft” damage assessment, and reported directly to the Under Secretary of Management, Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, who testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on March 10, 2011 about what steps the State Department took in response to the WikiLeaks publication of U.S. State Department cables.
In April of 2011, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research began asking embassies and consulates to look at the impact of the cables becoming public. The information was transmitted through regional bureaus, and up to the Director of the Office of Counterintelligence and Consular Affairs, where the information was compiled and then sent along to Brown.
McGrath reported directly to Brown, and Brown was responsible for editing the “draft” assessment, and then sending it to to her supervisor, Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, who she testified, she was not sure, had read the full. Manning’s lead defense counsel, David Coombs, revealed on July 18 that the document was less than 50 pages long.
McGrath, although not named directly by Brown in her testimony, is still directly tasked with collecting “raw” reports including open-source material about any damage resulting from the WikiLeaks publications of U.S. State Department cables around the globe.
State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)
The Bureau of Intelligence & Research (INR), responsible for the State Department’s WikiLeaks August 2011 damage assessment is the intelligence arm of the Department of State. INR forms part of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC): 17 agencies and organizations within the executive branch that work both independently and collaboratively collecting intelligence to conduct and further U.S. foreign policy and national security” interests.
The IC, at least in theory, is tasked and coordinated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), who reports directly to the President.
INR provides support to the Bureau of Consular Affairs and participates in drafting the U.S. Intelligence Communities’ assessments and analyses, including the President’s Daily Briefing.
According to the public record, on November 21, 2010, the President was informed in his Daily Briefing about the upcoming publication of State Department cables.
At the time, the Director of the Office of Counterintelligence and Consular Support was David Appleton. Appleton retired in December of 2010.
Global Law Enforcement
The State Department and the Diplomatic Security Service partnered with the Department of Defense’s and FBI’s investigation of WikiLeaks from start.
Neil MacBride, U.S. Assistant Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, at the Department of Justice, in charge of the WikiLeaks Grand Jury, was also advising the investigation, according to the testimony of Special Agent Mark Mander.
As early as June 11, 2010, the State Department admitted publicly that the Diplomatic Security Service was conducting a damage assessment.
The Bureau of Diplomatic Security Service at the State Department handled the forensic analysis of the hard drives, which arrived in D.C. from Iraq on June 10, 2010 in order to determine and verify that the alleged leak took place and also to attempt to identify which documents within the Department of Defense network were compromised.
According to the Under Secretary for Management at the State Department, between July and August 2010, the State Dept worked with the Department of Defense on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Information Review Task Force to identify State Department material in WikiLeaks possession. This review was completed in August 2010.
State Department and U.S. Forces Iraq – Oil, Weapons Contracts, Intelligence, and Training for Iraqi Forces
“Our operations in Iraq are interagency,” said the then spokesperson for the U.S.State Department, P.J. Crowley.
According to the Commanding General of Multinational Force – Iraq, Raymond Odierno, the State Department collaborated with the the U.S. military and even assumed its mission, namely training of Iraqi Security Forces.
“We are working very carefully with [the State Department],” Odierno said in a February 2010 press briefing about oil and weapons contracts.
“We have a joint campaign plan that the ambassador and I have worked together on that identifies all of these issues…police training will be turned over to the U.S. embassy. They will continue to do a role in police training.
Manning’s brigade and division, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, partnered with two Iraqi Security Divisions.
Manning’s Battalion (2nd BSTB) The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division was specifically authorized to release information to Iraqi defense forces, “because that was part of our mission to train the Iraqi’s how to use information and to share information with Iraqis,” said Captain Lim, Brigade S2 Company Commander, who testified at the Article 32 pretrial hearing.
This mission was the only reason the T-SCIF has R/W drives, according to Lim.
Lim also testified that he had passed out a link to the State Department’s NetCentric database in the F.O.B. Hammer T-SCIF, where Manning worked, after an atypical command change that took place during deployment in January 2010. The link was not password protected.
Torture
The State Department’s response to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay’s, call for an investigation into allegations of abuse and murder of Iraqis that followed the publication of the Iraq war logs, was simply, “We have an agreement with Iraq where we have turned over responsibilities to Iraq as a sovereign government and these are more appropriate questions to direct to the sovereign Government of Iraq, not to the United States.”
U.S. “troops informed their commanders of more than 1,300 claims of torture by Iraqi Security forces between 2005 and 2009,” further U.S. forces “handed over thousands of detainees to the Iraqi authorities, despite knowing there were hundreds of reports of alleged torture in Iraqi government facilities,” according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Judge Lind Rules that Government must Turn Over Damage Assessment
On June 6, Judge Lind denied the U.S. Government’s motion for the Court to reconsider its March 23, 2012 ruling on the U.S. State Dept damage assessment (Appellate Exhibit LXXXVI ), ordering the Government to turn over all unclassified Brady material from the State Department damage assessment to the defense and Court and classified material from the same to the Court for in camera review.