SPECIAL REPORT. CIA "Torture Queen" likely appeared in iconic White House "Bin Laden" killing photo
CIA counter-terrorism officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky Silverstein, who headed the CIA anti-Bin Laden "Alec Station," has been a mystery until the last few days when NBC News mentioned her, without giving her name, as the rambunctious CIA officer who personally witnessed acts of waterboarding. The recently-released Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture anonymously identified Bikowsky as a key part of the torture program and its primary defender.
Bikowsky, a former CIA Soviet analyst, succeeded Michael Scheuer as the head of Alec Station in 2003 and remained its chief until the station's closure in 2005. She had been with Alec Station since its formation in 1996. Until 2011, Bikowsky reportedly was the head of the CIA's "Global Jihad" element.
The media has been reticent to expose Bikowsky. It is clear that Bikowsky and her assistant at Alec Station, Michael Anne Casey, ordered FBI liaison agents Doug Miller and Mark Rossini not to share information with FBI headquarters and its chief counter-terrorism agent John O'Neill, about the arrival from Malaysia in San Diego of two of the future 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Both future hijackers were financially supported during their stay in California by the Saudi embassy in Washington then headed by Bandar bin Sultan, also known as "Bandar Bush" because of his close links to the Bush family. Details of this link between the Saudi embassy and the two hijackers are contained in the still-classified and redacted 28 pages from the Senate Intelligence Committee report on 9/11 failures.
Although CIA co-workers, who describe Bikowsky as a "bitch on wheels," said she had no legitimate reason to be present at the CIA's BLUE detention site in Stare Kiejkuty, Poland during the waterboarding of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Bikowsky insisted on being there. Bikowsky also ordered German citizen Khalid el-Masri, who was illegally rendered to Afghanistan to Macedonia in 2004 to be tortured. Bikowsky was vetoed for the position of CIA station chief in Baghdad in 2007. The reason for the decision was apparently Bikowsky's inability to work amicably with co-workers.
After el-Masri was identified as an innocent German caught up in the CIA rendition program, Bikowsky insisted that he be kept in detention in Afghanistan despite the CIA Inspector General's determination that there was no legal justification to continue holding him. Bikowsky was not reprimanded for her actions because then CIA director Michael Hayden, who served previously as National Security Agency director, was reluctant to discipline senior female officials because he considered himself ultimately as a "lady's man."
Hayden's chief of the NSA Signals Intelligence Division prior to 9/11 was Maureen "Mo" Baginsky who just so happened to miss alerting on two September 11, 2001 intercepted messages that concerned the attack planned for the following day. Baginsky also took no action to concentrate NSA's pre-9/11 surveillance capabilities on al-Mihdhar's phone number in San Diego, which it maintained in its database, and the switchboard for an Al Qaeda safehouse in Yemen.
One can now point to Baginsky and Bikowsky as the two primary females in the intelligence infrastructure responsible for the 9/11 intelligence failure. However, were they merely "fumbling females" or agents-of-influence placed at both agencies in senior positions to scuttle any chance of recognizing the attack beforehand?
The White House, as with the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Senator Dianne Feinstein, has been absolutely averse to providing information about Bikowsky. In 2011, journalists Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, in an audio documentary titled "Who is Richard Blee?" planned to identify Bikowsky and Casey as largely responsible for withholding critical information from the FBI prior to 9/11. The CIA threatened to prosecute the two journalists for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA). The Associated Press was only able to refer to Bikowsky as "Frances" in a 2011 report.
However, it can now be reported that Bikowsky was likely shown in the iconic White House Situation Room photograph taken as the Navy's SEAL team stormed the alleged Osama bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011 in Operation Geronimo. A Timemagazine story this past May identified a short woman in the photograph seen standing between then National Security Council deputy director (and current CIA chief) John O. Brennan and Vice President Joe Biden's national security adviser Tony Blinken as Audrey Tomason who was reportedly a National Security Council counter-terrorism official. However, even Time concluded that Tomason was a "mystery woman." The White House would only say that the woman's name was "Audrey F. Tomason, director of counter-terrorism" for the National Security Council. When the iconic White House Situation Room photo was released, everyone was identified, except for the woman said to be Audrey F. (Frances) Tomason. It is also noteworthy that "Tomason" was the only person wearing a couple of security badges other than deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, the current White House chief of staff who is pictured with a badge lanyard around his neck. The multiple badges would indicate that Tomason was a White House visitor. An Intellius search on Audrey Thomason results in an Audrey ELIZABETH Tomason, not Audrey FRANCES as revealed by the White House, with the job of "Counterterrorism BLOG National Security Council."
The CIA's "Torture Queen" is identified as Audrey Tomason in this photograph. However, as seen from her high school album, it is actually Alfreda Frances Bikowsky Silverstein.
Although little information was made available about "Tomason," it was known that she attended postgraduate school at Tufts University and earned a Master's degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard. Some Internet sites reported that the mystery woman, Tomason, was actually a covert agent outed by the photograph. Others speculated that the woman was the "Frances" who was responsible for illegally holding el-Masri in Afghanistan. Yet other bloggers said the woman in the photograph regularly briefed CIA director Leon Panetta, which would have been odd for a staffer at the National Security Council.
The South Garland High School, Texas alumni lists Bikowsky's address, as of 2012, in Alexandria, Virginia. Her second surname is listed as Silverstein. Bikowsky is said to have graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor's degree and from Tufts Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy. She married Tufts classmate David Silverstein, who has written for the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation. Silverstein currently works for the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. An Intellius search for Bikowsky yields previous residences in McLean, Virginia (location of CIA headquarters); Alexandria, Virginia (where Alfreda Bikowsky Silverstein lived until 2012); Garland, Texas (where she went to high school); Arlington, Virginia; Medford, Massachusetts (the location of Tufts), and Philadelphia (the location of her undergraduate college, the University of Pennsylvania). Intellius also reports that Bikowsky's previous job as "Central Intelligence Agency Soviet Desk." Bikowsky is 49 years old.
Since Ms. Bikowsky has been identified as a lawbreaker and a violator of the Nuremberg War Crimes Accords and the Geneva Conventions, WMR has no problem in violating the IIPA so that this war criminal will always have to "look over her shoulder" as did Adolf Eichmann when he lived in Buenos Aires.
