Here's an article for all the James Bond wanna-be's.
It impresses me how Fox News and it's commentators are portrayed as conveyors
and participants in this man's activities, including:
Oliver North and Glen Beck along with bloggers Brad Thor and Andrew Breitbart
NY Times
Former Spy With Agenda Operates a Private C.I.A.
By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: January 22, 2011
Quote:
WASHINGTON — Duane R. Clarridge parted company with the
Central Intelligence Agency more than two decades ago,
but from poolside at his home near San Diego, he still runs a network of spies.
<snip>
Hatching schemes that are something of a cross between a Graham Greene novel and
Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy,” Mr. Clarridge has sought to discredit Ahmed Wali Karzai,
the Kandahar power broker who has long been on the C.I.A. payroll, and planned
to set spies on his half brother, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai,
in hopes of collecting beard trimmings or other DNA samples that might prove
Mr. Clarridge’s suspicions that the Afghan leader was a heroin addict, associates say.
<snip>
Mr. Clarridge, 78, who was indicted on charges of lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal
and later pardoned, is described by those who have worked with him as
driven by the conviction that Washington is bloated with bureaucrats and lawyers
who impede American troops in fighting adversaries and that leaders
are overly reliant on mercurial allies.
From his days running secret wars for the C.I.A. in Central America to his consulting work
in the 1990s on a plan to insert Special Operations troops in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein,
Mr. Clarridge has been an unflinching cheerleader for American intervention overseas.
“Sometimes, unfortunately, things have to be changed in a rather ugly way,” said Mr. Clarridge,
his New England accent becoming more pronounced the angrier he became.
“We’ll intervene whenever we decide it’s in our national security interests to intervene.”
“Get used to it, world,” he said. “We’re not going to put up with nonsense.”
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Quote:
Charles E. Allen, a former top intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security
who worked with Mr. Clarridge at the C.I.A., termed him an “extraordinary”
case officer who had operated on “the edge of his skis” in missions abroad years ago.
But he warned against Mr. Clarridge’s recent activities, saying that private spies operating in war zones
“can get both nations in trouble and themselves in trouble.”
He added, “We don’t need privateers.”
<snip>
He [Clarridge] was indicted in 1991 on charges of lying to Congress about his role
in the Iran-contra scandal; he had testified that he was unaware of arms shipments to Iran.
But he was pardoned the next year by the first President George Bush.
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