Mark Hosenball, who yesterday broke the news that Obama had issued a Finding authorizing the CIA to operate covertly in Libya in the last 2-3 weeks, today says “intelligence operatives” were on the ground before Obama signed that Finding.

I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of these posts, showing how Hunton & Williams asked “Themis” (the three firm team of HBGary, Palantir, and Berico Technologies) to apply counterterrorism approaches to combat First Amendment activities.

This particular installment comes from an early presentation and accompanying proposal Themis prepared for Hunton & Williams. These documents were attached to an email dated November 2, 2010 sent out by Berico Technologies’ Deputy Director. He explains that the presentation and proposal would be briefed to H&W the following day.

As Marcy discussed here, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Obama administration was looking at giving the CIA control over secret operations – including JSOC assassination teams and drones – in Yemen, supposedly in response to the still rather mysterious printer cartridge bombs announced last week. Today, the Pentagon was eager to deny these reports.

Fresh off exempting Yemen from any sanctions for its use of child soldiers and partly in response to this week’s attempted package bombings, the government appears to be ready to let the CIA start operating drones in Yemen.

Details are beginning to emerge in the death of an Afghan prisoner on Sunday night. According to ISAF, a US soldier is in custody and a criminal investigation is underway. Hamid Karzai issued a short statement calling the death a killing by coalition forces. The New York Times recounts that one version of the story suggests the prisoner may have been trying to escape, but other Afghans who were present at the prison disagree on that point.

Just days after a new report (pdf) was released, providing further evidence that torture of detainees in Afghanistan continues at the “secret” site at Bagram Air Base, Reuters informs us that a detainee in NATO custody has been “found dead” in his cell.

It’s hard to imagine how the United States could heap more abuse on Pakistan. We are approaching the one year anniversary since Jeremy Scahill disclosed the extensive JSOC-Blackwater secret war effort within Pakistan and yet there is no indication that either Barack Obama or David Petraeus sees a need to shut down the rogue operators there. Despite the occasional attempt to portray the US military as providing crucial relief efforts in the massive floods in Pakistan (such as in the accompanying photo), the reality is that US military relief to Pakistan has been derided as but a tiny fraction of the military relief provided in other recent world catastrophes. Last week’s sentencing of Aafia Siddiqui to eighty-six years in jail provoked massive protests across Pakistan. And now we are learning that NATO (which really means US) helicopters have killed over 50 people in air raids on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan over the weekend.

Former Bush administration National Security and Central Intelligence Agencies director Gen.Michael Hayden has another tired whine at CNN about Obama’s treatment of the torture program. The entire logic of the piece is predictably silly.

While the UK Guardian and other press are reporting that Wikileaks logs are showing over 2000 people on an elite task force’s “capture or kill” hit list, the New York Times is reporting a figure of only 70.

Barry Eisler’s new novel, Inside Out, is a spy thriller that takes off from the past years’ headlines about missing CIA torture tapes. But it is something even more: it is one of the most politically astute novels of our generation. No other work of fiction has pointedly posed the alternatives for those who would seek political change in the United States in the 21st century. And what are the possibilities in a system where conspiracy is impossible because “everyone is complicit”? Political nihilism, revolutionary adventurism, martyrdom, or subornation by the Establishment.