9 August 2011, 4:15PM, following two Twitter screen shots:

http://twitter.com/#!/search/sibeledmonds

http://twitter.com/#!/sibeledmonds

9 August 2011. Add point 10 of the backstory.

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/09/boiling-frogs-beltway-buzz-obama-administration%E2%80%99s-

left-over-al-qaeda-card/

http://twitter.com/#!/sibeledmonds

http://boilingfrogspost.com

8 August 2011. Previous: http://cryptome.org/0005/schmidle/schmidle-access.htm

8 August 2011. Cryptome responds to A:

I doubt journalists will pursue the Schmidle funding matter, too many have done or are doing the same or expecting to do so if their jobs are eliminated. Bloggers might look at it if they never expect to do the same as Schmidle. One might hope Sy Hersh or someone of his capabilities will do a deep story on the bin Ladin racketeering (Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, begun 1979, well before Bin Laden Issue "Alec" Station of 1996) which is far from over. Less amusing, perhaps, to the Natsec Party triumphalists:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/us/08seals.html In triumph and in tragedy, members of the Special Operations community do not speak of their work. In fact, many had expressed frustration with the jubilant atmosphere after the raid that killed Bin Laden, marked by fist-pumping and chest-pounding from some politicians and a few retired members of the Seals. Yes, going after High-Value Target No. 1 was a supreme tactical success; but, no, in this line of work, you just do not talk shop. So it was not surprising that when the fate of Seal Team 6 was reversed on Saturday, there was only private mourning across the insular Special Operations community.

8 August 2011. Steven Clemons tries to laugh it off, just like spies and their fronts do at CIA-NGO-cocktail parties to boost their reputation for très amusant game playing:

http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/08/cia-cocktail-party-scene/243269/

Steven Clemons and Condoleezza Rice, left, Nicholas and Rikki Schmidle, right

7 August 2011

A writes: "I just finished reading the explosive file on Schmidle. More needs to be done on this. One of the people on this [New America board] list is Steve Clemons. This guy has been very effective, thus dangerous in planting and circulating propaganda-spins. I have received credible reports on him from several sources, and he was very active (in 2007-2009) in calling up various reporters and bloggers and asking them 'Not to cover' my own case. According to my DC sources Clemons has been a regular fixture in State-CIA cocktail party scene. His dad was a high-level CIA (aka State Department) figure involved in Pakistan operations."

http://www.asianwindow.com/pakistan/80/ January 17, 2008. American journalist Nicholas Schmidle was kicked out of Pakistan by the Musharraf government on Friday. He talks with Steve Clemons of The Washington Note about a Taliban fighter who loves Texas barbeque and about the man who may be Pakistans next prime minister  and who is known as the godfather of Mullah Omars Taliban. Watch the video chat on Bloggingheads.tv. Read the piece Next-Gen Taliban that got him kicked out: NYTimes Magazine

Steven Clemons published in The Atlantic on July 25, 2011 an essay from a former head of Pakistan's ISI, Lt. General Asad Durrani, which concluded with this comment:

I do not know what all the ISI knew about Bin Laden's whereabouts before he was reportedly killed, or when the Pakistani leadership was informed about the US operation on that fateful night. But the fact that we denied all knowledge or cooperation -- even though the military and the police cordons were in place at the time of the raid, our helicopters were hovering over the area, and the Army Chief was in his command post at midnight -- explains the Country's dilemma. If its leadership was to choose between inability to defend national borders and complicity with the US to hunt down one person who defied the mightiest of the worldly powers, it would rather concede incompetence.

6 August 2011. Add back story.

Funding Nicholas Schmidle

Financial sponsors of Nicholas Schmidle, Institute of Current World Affairs (ICWA -- founded in 1932) and New America Foundation (NAF -- founded in 1998), both DC-based, are among the dozens, perhaps hudnreds, of non-profits involved in international and domestic affairs who fund scholars, researchers, journalists and writers to travel and report.

Schmidle is an interesting person. He did exceptional reporting from Pakistan while being funded by ICWA, visited some of the most dangerous areas of the country, and was booted by Pakistan in early 2008 for unexplained reasons.

From the ICWA Tax Report - 2008:

Schmidle, now a fellow at NAF, from the NAF Tax Report - 2009:

The 2009 board of directors of NAF appears impeccable with several eminent journalists and authors:

Schmidle is also an NAF event director and is highlighted there for his celebrated New Yorker article on the killing of Osama bin Laden. For the article he had extraordinary access to national security officials and special operations members either involved or closely linked. Disinformation and propaganda are basic tools of special operations. Significantly, his Marine father, Robert E. "Rooster" Schmidle, Jr., is a former general in special operations and is now a Lt. General serving as deputy commander of Cyber Command. General Schmidle, aptly, appeared an NAF panel in 2006:

The statements of purpose and tax reports of ICWA and NAF are informative:

Taking advantage of the bountiful NGO, DC-based array, the Central Intelligence Agency covertly arranges support for such organizations in return for information and propaganda, just how many is mostly unknown despite periodic revelations, but the CIA has over a half-century experience in the practice initiated as early as 1948:

Handily, most of the CIA covert cohorts have generic names like those of ICWA, NAF and many others, as camouflage for the same confusingly vaunted purposes the organizations do, often burying multiple small ventures and individuals below the eminents glossing the surface.

Back to Pakistan's mysterious expelling of Schmidle: Being expelled from a country for unexplained reasons is characteristic for suspicion of spying, often aimed at reporters and scholars, or more recently, Raymond Davis. Journalists and others accused of spying customarily brush it off as propaganda, exactly as do spies, counterclaiming conspiracy theories, an F1-key standard covert operating procedure.

Nothing wrong with any of this as accused "anti-American" John Cook of Gawker F-1-tweeted recently -- dutiful sons must craven to feed their chips.

Sup, Rooster.

More back story:

Nicholas Schmidle emphasizes that the bin Laden kill was a CIA operation not that of special forces whose members called it an easy job. CIA brains, special ops muscle: that is how the CIA views special forces. Schmidle's story is about the CIA's capabilities about finding and targeting OBL, deliberately omitting or deflecting means and methods of doing that by fattening the role of special forces as a crowd-pleaser. Some clues:

1. He writes the special forces did not have a floor plan of the bin Laden house. Not true: the construction drawings were available at the local building department and it is conventional tradecraft to get them for a targeted facilities. A British newpaper Independent got the drawings shortly after the raid (a third floor added later). These detailed plans show the underground septic system for the house, a favorite means of gathering DNA and other evidence of occupants, as well as running sensors up the waste lines. CIA had been active in the area for months gathering that kind of intelligence and more.

2. CIA has a slew of sensors to establish who occupies a structure, where they are located, what they talk about, when they eat and sleep. Sensors that read signals of window panes from distance, sensors down plumbing ventilation piping, sensors attached to plumbing and electrical systems, sensors attached to reinforcing bars sticking out of the top of the bin Laden House, sensors on drones and in nearby structures and heaved over and buried in the walls and dropped on the roof. Sensors in food supplies and medicines and clothing and vehicles. Tunnels under the house, piece of cake, water table not a barrier. Remote capture of emanations from electronic devices and video displays. Odor, acoustics, vibration, bribery, coercion, much more, standard spin to obscure capabilities like these and others more advanced with pulp fiction. The kill site photos:

3. A main reason CIA wanted into the house after the killing was to removed sensors, many of which were not revealed to the special forces.

4. Not true that drones, sats and ground-based cameras could not photograph bin Laden sufficiently to identify him. This technology is commonplace. Denials are silly. Hill behind the house overlooking the bin Laden walled terrace:

5. Not true a special forces member shot bin Laden twice before he hit the floor. The eye shot, if true, was delivered to a wounded geezer by an automaton pumped on adrenaline and dreams of glory who then ejaculated a scream of triumph. This may be pull-leg fiction fed to Schmidle by the embarrassed "beasts" (CIA term for special forces) or concocted in CIA-SOCOM PR.

6. Nearly all special forces missions in Pakistan are based on CIA intelligence using technical and human means that are never disclosed to special forces in order to avoid disclosure if one or more of the beasts are captured for torture or killed carrying documents.

7. Not true that the crashed chopper faced an unexpected development. Settling in the downwash is a common feature of emergency training even at low altitude and surrounded by walls -- urban warfare requires it. Something else caused the crash, not yet known, most likely pilot error due to excessive adrenaline or stimulants like those carried by special forces.

8. Not true that there was no certainty about bin Laden's presence and location in the house -- to the CIA. After months of certainty the only open question was when would be the most politically useful time to kill him after milking hunt funding for a decade.

9. These and other gaps and insinuations and segues in Schmidle's story assure that CIA and other spin-masters most certainly shaped his account into the exact narrative he delivered, to pretend that most of it came from special forces who were apparently duped into the embellishing the scam or accepting the dumb-down role as the usual CIA mythmaking. It has beguiled the public perfectly, but is way too pat to withstand skeptical scrutiny. Those who know the CIA's standard operating procedure for maximizing credit through coded disclosure can decrypt as needed for continuing revelations to compliant outlets.

10. For those who have studied the CIA's deliberately prolonged operations to assure steady funding (amply described in books like those of Ishmael Jones and Steve Coll) it would not be surprising if the agency maintained a working relationship with bin Laden continuously from 1979 up to his death. Simulated breaks with former associates (and ex-spies) is a common deception tradecraft and warcraft. That bin Laden was able to draw upon his wealth and other finances without serious interruption -- and appear to avoid tracking and capture -- would indicate an arrangement with Saudi, Pakistan and other spies' cooperation to allow that. Eliminating evidence of the long-term association would be a reason for the CIA to not only (allegedly) kill bin Laden and (allegedly) deep-six his carcass, but to seal and scrape the kill site under a ban on media coverage, question the wives, reclaim the chopper remnants, pay off superficial and deep informants and reaffirm Pakistani military bribery and Saudi's long-term condonement, silence and cover stories -- the latter demonstrated by ex-ISI head Lt. General Asad Durrani's comment:

If its leadership was to choose between inability to defend national borders and complicity with the US to hunt down one person who defied the mightiest of the worldly powers, it would rather concede incompetence.

The benefits and complicity of NGOs and media in this successor to the CIA-KGB-fed prolonged 60-year Cold War business cornucopia and wastage of humans deserves deeper examination. Along with the recent extension of these means and methods to Mexico and immigrant communities throughout the US and its allies, accompanied as ever by venal distributors of patriotic carnage porn.

________

Schmidle's Pakistan public-intelligence-rich book:

http://www.nicholasschmidle.com/toliveortoperishforever.html

________

And an interesting cohort, Patrick Reddan Keefe:

http://tcf.org/about/fellows/patrick-radden-keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe is a Fellow at The Century Foundation. The author of Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping (Random House, 2005), he is a frequent commentator on issues of intelligence and international security. His areas of focus include the impact of globalization and new technologies on cross-border security threats, and the legal and ethical dimensions of intelligence and homeland security policy. He is also pursuing ongoing projects on government secrecy, congressional oversight of intelligence, and strategies of post-conflict justice.