SPECIAL REPORT. CIA "Torture Queen" Alfreda Frances Bikowsky Silverstein likely appeared in iconic White House "Bin Laden" killing photo by Wayne Madsen

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.

The CIA-engineered oil glut to bring down Putin and Maduro by Wayne Madsen

The CIA-engineered oil glut to bring down Putin and Maduro
John Brennan's long familiarity with Saudi Arabia, owing to the time he spent there as the CIA station chief in Riyadh in the 1990s and his knowledge of Saudi oil operations, has paid off. WMR has learned that Brennan's agents inside Saudi Aramco convinced the firm's management and the Saudi Oil Ministry to begin fracking operations to stimulate production in Saudi Arabia's oldest oil fields. By pumping salt water into older wells, some at a depth of 3 to 6 thousand feet, an inordinate amount of pressure was built up. The CIA's oil industry implants knew what would occur when the fracking operations began. Due to the dangerously high water pressure, the Saudis were forced continuously pump oil until the pressure became equalized. That process is continuing. If the Saudis ceased pumping oil, they would permanently lose the wells to salt water contamination. In the current "pump it or lose it" situation, the Saudis are forced to pump at a rate that may take up to 5 years before they can slow down production rates.

The net result of the CIA-inspired fracking operations, which the Saudis were warned not to pursue by petroleum engineers working for some foreign-based firms like Schlumberger, is that there will be an oil supply glut for the next 5 years. The glut will be followed by a reduction in Saudi oil production unless new oil fields are brought on line. There is now a major push by U.S. and Canadian oil companies to bring the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the United States to offset the expected sharp rise in oil prices in five years.

The CIA operation to frack Middle Eastern oil fields was not only limited to Saudi Arabia. WMR has learned from oil industry sources that similar fracking caused over production problems in Kuwait and Iraq.


CIA engineered Saudi overproduction by fracking old wells.

The result of the sudden decline in oil prices has resulted in heavy damage to the economies of the CIA-targeted countries of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Brennan and his economic warfare operatives banked on the Saudi over-production to harm the economies of all three countries and the CIA has not been disappointed. The CIA figures that the governments of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela will have long since collapsed and been replaced by pro-Western regimes within 5 years. Already, from his base in Switzerland, exiled Russian tax evader billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has called for Putin's overthrow and even his assassination. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration have taken cues from the CIA to impose devastating economic sanctions on both Russia and Venezuela. Similar congressional legislation to increase sanctions on Iran is pending.

Russia has been harmed the most by the CIA's Saudi oil production scheme. The Russian ruble fell 56 percent in value against the U.S. dollar while Russian interest rates climbed to 17 percent. The price of shares of Russia's largest lending bank, Sberbank, fell 18 percent. Although the Russian economic collapse has resulted in financial ripples around the world, with Austrian and French banks losing their stock values and the value of the Polish zloty and Hungarian forint falling against the dollar, the Obama administration says that there will be no easing on economic sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine. Obama has put the investments of American holders of Russian bonds in dire jeopardy.

The Pacific Investment Management Company's (PEBIX) Emerging Markets Bond Fund, which holds over $800 million in Russian bonds, has lost almost 8 percent in value in the past few weeks.

Russian Central Bank vice chairman Sergei Shvetsov said, "What is happening is a nightmare that we could not even have imagined a year ago."

Meanwhile, basic staples in Venezuela, including cooking oil, rice, and corn flour, are becoming hard to obtain. The U.S. dollar has jumped 1700 percent in value against the Venezuelan bolivar on the black market. The CIA is using the financial collapse to push for an undemocratic overthrow of the Venezuelan government.

Iran, which has been under punitive Western economic sanctions for a number of years over its nuclear power program, is probably best able to weather the storm. Iran has built up a rather impressive domestic food production, telecommunications, and oil industry infrastructure to survive the sanctions. However, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appears very aware of the Saudi role in the conspiracy to drive down oil prices. Rouhani recently said, "The main reason for [the oil price plunge] is [a] political conspiracy by certain countries against the interest of the region and the Islamic world and it is only in the interest of some other countries . . . Iran and people of the region will not forget such conspiracies, or in other words, treachery against the interests of the Muslim world.”

Brennan's and the CIA's industrial sabotage of the Saudi and other Middle East oil industries will continue to have far-reaching effects on the world economy. Oil industry insiders fear that the CIA has unleashed something that may deal a devastating blow to the global economy.

The New Opening With the USA by RAUL CASTRO

Learning the Art of Coexistence

The New Opening With the USA

by RAUL CASTRO

Since my election as President of the State Council and Council of Ministers I have reiterated in many occasions our willingness to hold a respectful dialogue with the United States on the basis of sovereign equality, in order to deal reciprocally with a wide variety of topics without detriment to the national Independence and self-determination of our people.

This stance was conveyed to the US Government both publicly and privately by Comrade Fidel on several occasions during our long standing struggle, stating the willingness to discuss and solve our differences without renouncing any of our principles.

The heroic Cuban people, in the wake of serious dangers, aggressions, adversities and sacrifices has proven to be faithful and will continue to be faithful to our ideals of independence and social justice. Strongly united throughout these 56 years of Revolution, we have kept our unswerving loyalty to those who died in defense of our principles since the beginning of our independence wars in 1868.

Today, despite the difficulties, we have embarked on the task of updating our economic model in order to build a prosperous and sustainable Socialism.

As a result of a dialogue at the highest level, which included a phone conversation I had yesterday with President Obama, we have been able to make headway in the solution of some topics of mutual interest for both nations.

As Fidel promised on June 2001,when he said: “They shall return!” Gerardo, Ramon, and Antonio have arrived today to our homeland.

The enormous joy of their families and of all our people, who have relentlessly fought for this goal, is shared by hundreds of solidarity committees and groups, governments, parliaments, organizations, institutions, and personalities, who for the last sixteen years have made tireless efforts demanding their release. We convey our deepest gratitude and commitment to all of them.

President Obama’s decision deserves the respect and acknowledgement of our people.

I wish to thank and acknowledge the support of the Vatican, most particularly the support of Pope Francisco in the efforts for improving relations between Cuba and the United States. I also want to thank the Government of Canada for facilitating the high-level dialogue between the two countries.

In turn, we have decided to release and send back to the United States a spy of Cuban origin who was working for that nation.

On the other hand, and for humanitarian reasons, today we have also sent the American citizen Alan Gross back to his country.

Unilaterally, as has always been our practice, and in strict compliance with the provisions of our legal system, the concerned prisoners have received legal benefits, including the release of those persons that the Government of the United States had conveyed their interest in.

We have also agreed to renew diplomatic relations.

This in no way means that the heart of the matter has been solved. The economic, commercial, and financial blockade, which causes enormous human and economic damages to our country, must cease.

Though the blockade has been codified into law, the President of the United States has the executive authority to modify its implementation.

We propose to the Government of the United States the adoption of mutual steps to improve the bilateral atmosphere and advance towards normalization of relations between our two countries, based on the principles of International Law and the United Nations Charter.

Cuba reiterates its willingness to cooperate in multilateral bodies, such as the United Nations.

While acknowledging our profound differences, particularly on issues related to national sovereignty, democracy, human rights and foreign policy, I reaffirm our willingness to dialogue on all these issues.

I call upon the Government of the United States to remove the obstacles hindering or restricting ties between peoples, families, and citizens of both countries, particularly restrictions on travelling, direct post services, and telecommunications.

The progress made in our exchanges proves that it is possible to find solutions to many problems.

As we have reiterated, we must learn the art of coexisting with our differences in a civilized manner.

Raul Castro is president of Cuba.

This is the text of Cuban President Raul Castro’s address to the nation this Wednesday broadcast on radio and television on the recent developments in the Cuba-US relations.