Senior CIA officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky has reportedly been described in several articles by large, credible sources as a linchpin figure in the CIA torture program. However, she was unidentified, but The Intercept has named her as being that instrumental figure in the CIA torture program.
After being called a “key apologist,” “The Unidentified Queen of Torture,” noted as “the model for the lead character in ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’” and identified in having a central role in lying to Congress about the CIA’s torture methods, Bikowsky appears to be the main liar. Last week, according to The Intercept, “NBC News reported that one senior CIA officer in particular was responsible for many . . . false claims.”
The report noted that Bikowsky, remaining unnamed, “also participated in ‘enhanced interrogations’ of self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed witnessed the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah and ordered the detention of a suspected terrorist who turned out to be unconnected to al Qaeda, according to the report.”
Other than torture and the willful misleading of government officials about the CIA’s actions, news agencies have noted Bikowsky’s shaky past of incompetence and poor performance in domestic and international intelligence.
The New Yorker added to the NBC report, noting that the officer “is still in a position of high authority over counterterrorism at the CIA.” She also reportedly:
dropped the ball when the CIA was given information that might very well have prevented the 9/11 attacks; she gleefully participated in torture sessions afterward; she misinterpreted intelligence in such a way that it sent the C.I.A. on an absurd chase for Al Qaeda sleeper cells in Montana. And then she falsely told congressional overseers that the torture worked.
These descriptions, as The Intercept has noted, all point to the same person. The CIA wanted outlets to keep her identity secure, but people can’t help but connect the dots. The Washington Post has already identified Bikowsky as doing similar things described by outlets leaving her unnamed.
If Bikowsky is as important to the CIA torture program as many news outlets have indicated her to be, then she should be prosecuted in the same way that Dick Cheney and the other torture hawks should be.
