"I don't believe in breaking the law, I don't believe in leaks, I don't believe in divulging classified information," stated Ilana Greenstein in a video interview released by McClatchy DC, a Washington-based journalistic bureau on Tuesday. "What I believe in is a good internal system, where people who have concerns can voice those concerns without recrimination."
In the interview, the former operative details the concerns which led her to blow the whistle, and the recriminations which followed from her superiors. "I had witnessed things that I thought were not right in Baghdad, things that were covered up, security risks, shoddy tradecraft, a lack of support to the military," says Greenstein. "I had initially talked to my managers, my immediate managers, starting in Baghdad. That's where I felt like the retaliation actually really started."
Greenstein reveals that the CIA "pretty much investigated me for being a traitor," and began a counter-espionage investigation against her. The officer, who served in the agency in 2007 and 2008, tried to write a book about her experiences, but was prevented from doing so when the CIA seized her computers, later returning them with the memory wiped.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report into the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, 600 pages of which were released in redacted form earlier this month, also condemned the agency's response to internal criticism. "The CIA marginalized and ignored numerous internal critiques, criticism, and objections concerning the operation and management," of its activities, and concluded that these concerns were "regularly overridden" by the agency's management.
Among the methods which the report described as used to stem criticism were the instruction to officers from their supervisors that they refrain from putting their concerns in writing, and contradicting the reportage of its program in reports produced by the CIA inspector general' office and the Red Cross.
