An ex-CIA official named Albert who ran a drill near the head of a terrorism suspect and threatened him with a gun during an interrogation is back on the government payroll as a contractor, and had even trained other CIA operatives, the Associated Press reports.
A review by the CIA inspector general said that the 60-year-old man named Albert, whose last name is being withheld at the request of the government, used unauthorized interrogation techniques against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a USS Cole bombing plotter, at a secret CIA prison in Poland in late 2002 and early 2003.
Many details of the report are not public but, according to the AP, Albert is of Egyptian descent and was a former FBI New York bureau translator before joining the CIA.
While he hasn’t been training CIA employees for at least two years, Albert continues to work as an intelligence contractor, an intelligence official told the AP.
Federal prosecutor John Durham is looking at the case, which according to he AP has been referred to federal authorities for possible charges before. Attorney General Eric Holder said in June that Durham was nearly ready to make a recommendation regarding whether the evidence warranted a full investigation being opened into allegations of torture by the CIA.
“The notion that an individual involved in one of the more notorious episodes of the CIA’s interrogation program is still employed directly or indirectly by the U.S. government is scandalous,” Ben Wizner, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the AP.
Ryan J. Reilly
Ryan J. Reilly is a D.C.-based reporter for TPM. Prior to joining TPM, he worked for a news website covering the Justice Department and was a researcher for Bloomberg News. His email address is ryan(at)talkingpointsmemo.com.
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