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Report: CIA Station Chief Accused Of Drugging, Raping Muslim Women

This doesn't seem like the best way to win hearts and minds...

ABC News reports:

The CIA's station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

Officials say the 41-year old CIA officer, a convert to Islam, was ordered home by the U.S. Ambassador, David Pearce, in October after the women came forward with their rape allegations in September.

The discovery of more than a dozen videotapes showing the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with other women has led the Justice Department to broaden its investigation to include at least one other Arab country, Egypt, where the CIA officer had been posted earlier in his career, according to law enforcement officials.

The details of the alleged rapes:

One of the alleged victims reportedly said she met the CIA officer at a bar in the U.S. embassy and then was taken to his official station chief residence where she said the sexual assault took place.

The second alleged victim reportedly told U.S. prosecutors that, in a separate incident, she also was drugged at the American's official residence before being sexually assaulted.

Investigators searched the station chief's residence and found videotapes of him engaged in sex acts, including with a woman "in a semi-conscious state."

The two women have both given sworn statements to federal prosecutors working on a possible criminal case against the agent.

This station chief appears to have a crucial intel task:

The officer in charge of the CIA station in Algiers plays an important role in working with the Algerian intelligence services to combat an active al Qaeda wing responsible for a wave of bombings in Algeria.

And the case may suggest a serious failure by CIA brass. Bob Baer, a prominent former agency operative, told ABC News that the alleged rapes could open the station chief up to blackmail charges, potentially compromising his mission.

"That's something the CIA should have picked up on," said Baer. "This is indicative of personnel problems of all sorts that run through the agency."

Late Update: ABC News updates its report, naming the suspect:

"[T]he suspect in the case is identified as Andrew Warren in an affidavit for a search warrant filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. by an investigator for the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service.


11 Comments

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This has got to stop. I hope that man is removed from his job and prosecuted in Algiers. Truly horrific.

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I'm way more concerned that someone already had their hooks in him.

No way that kind of thing goes completely unnoticed.

I bet his sorry ass doesn't leave debrief for months!

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Please; these are CIA allowed practices under aggressive interrogation techniques. He's just honing his skills.

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Accuse of raping "Muslim" women?...what this guy did is despicable and I hope that he will be punished severely for it. But why do we have to say "Muslim" women? would it be different if he raped.. let say christian and "non beleiver" women? Most Algerian are Muslim...so..i guess the women this clouwn raped hapen to be Muslim... But the headline seems to indicate that women were raped just because they were muslim... which would be viewed very badly in the muslim world...
So I pray and hope that we call this what it is... a sicko...raping "Women". ..By the way I am muslim.. and so do all members of my family.

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If they were Christian or Hindu or Jew or Buddhist, their religion wouldn't make them a focal point for the rage of millions of Muslims, who will likely see this as a metaphor for all of American foreign policy towards northern Africa and southwest Asia. This man's sexual deviance will get a lot of people killed, before this story ends.

I think that's the angle ABC pushes here, rather than the women being less entitled to human decency because they're Muslim.

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Thanks for posting this story. But you started to outrage me, a loyal and avid reader, by your comment that the case "may suggest a serious failure by CIA brass."

How is there any "may suggest" about it? The evidence points to years of raping people. I realize from context that you're talking about the failure of the brass to realize that an agent might be compromised, and yes, that would be a big deal, but hey, if he was an admin assistant at langley I'd say it was a failure of CIA brass not to know that their employee was a serial rapist who committed his rapes at the office (the rapes according to the story occurred at the official residence.)

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Officials say the 41-year old CIA officer, a convert to Islam...

How nice of ABC News to tell us his religion. I don't remember the media mentioning what churches Charles Graner and Lyndie England belonged to, but of course it's important for us to know that this rapist was a dirty mozlem, not a "real" American.

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To the couple commenters who pointed out the conspicuous references to "Muslims" -- I see your point, but there might be a good reason for it. The insinuation is that this guy "converted" to Islam (maybe not genuinely) to take advantage of these Muslim women. The reporter might have suspected that that was going on, and wanted to clue the reader in, without stating it as a fact.

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I think you hit the nail on the head here.

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He should be turned over to the countries in which he committed the crimes and tried there.
If found guilty, he should be punished there.

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He has to be charged under US law, because Algerian law doesn't apply in the US Embassy. He must be pretty dumb, because there's no way they would have handed him over to the Algerians for trial if he'd done it somewhere else in Algeria. It's too bad Bob Baer wasn't named CIA Director. Leon Panetta should give him a job.

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