This post is from January 2005. Facts and links may have changed since. See more from that month

Article1 min read

The Cambone Operation: Covert Ops Redux

Wow, tonight’s Nelson Report is chilling stuff.

Chris warns that further investigative reporting will reveal…

… covert operations sounding very much like the Phoenix Program of kidnappings (and perhaps also murder) of terrorist suspects in one country, and the transport of them to a third country where the actual torture interrogation is carried out presumably “free” of even the presumed strictures imposed by Gonzales and his memo.

Calling the whole mess The Cambone Operation, Nelson reports that “the clandestine activities now coming to light may have been the result of decisions Secretary Rumsfeld made and set in motion, but that once in operation, Rumsfeld is kept clean of the details.”

“Strict legal responsibility, if any there be,” Chris notes, “falls to Undersecretary for Intelligence Steve Cambone.”

I am reminded of the serving three-star general who told Salon, “If we were being overrun by the enemy and I had only one bullet left, I’d use it on Cambone.”

Jeffrey Lewis

Writing on ACW 2004–2026

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com. He is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His also a non-resident affiliate at Stanford's Center for Security and International Cooperation and a Contributing Editor to Survival.

All posts by Jeffrey Lewis