"The sinking of the nomination..." (Mudd's)

[ProSense]

DHS intel nominee withdraws (UPDATED)

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The withdrawal of the nomination of Philip Mudd, a veteran CIA analyst who had worked in recent years as a senior executive at the FBI, comes after an AP report yesterday. The report said that a Republican lawmaker would question Mudd over whether he had "direct knowledge" of the Bush-era harsh interrogation program while serving in a senior analytical role at the CIA.

The sinking of the nomination of someone who had served in an analytical capacity at the CIA, rather than in an operational or senior policy one, shows the broad scope of exposure of the controversial Bush-era harsh interrogation program to officials who did not obviously have a direct role in the program.

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He said that Mudd started working on terrorism matters back in the 1980s and had extensive knowledge of Middle Eastern terrorism-related issues developed as a former analyst in the Near East and South Asian sections of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence. "He rode through the analytical ranks and knew something on this stuff," the former CIA official said.

Mudd worked for several years in the CIA Counter Terrorism Center, serving as its deputy director from 2003 until 2005. Recently released Justice Department memos show that the CIA first used waterboarding on an al Qaeda terrorism suspect in August 2002. One memo indicates that detainee Abu Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August 2002, and another detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003.

Mudd did not become deputy director of the CIA's CTC until nine months later, in December 2003, according to his FBI biography.

In August 2005, FBI director Robert Mueller named Mudd the FBI's associate executive assistant director for the National Security Division. One of Mudd's chief tasks at the FBI was to help sharpen the bureau's counterterrorism analysis.

The irony, the former CIA official said, is that one of the reasons Mudd was suggested to the Obama team is that because Mudd had been at the FBI all these years, he was thought to be free of some of the "taint" of the CIA interrogation program.

On edit, too bad he didn't keep his hat in the ring. That would have been one way to get the Repubs to initiate an investigation.

[ProSense]

1. No comment? n/t

[Cha]

2. Thanks for this information, PS..

it looks interesting and that would have made it even more so..

.."too bad he didn't keep his hat in the ring. That would have been one way to get the Repubs to initiate an investigation."