CIA eases rules on recruiting informants

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The CIA has loosened its rules to let field officers recruit informants with violent or criminal backgrounds without prior approval from headquarters, a U.S. official said Friday.

CIA director George Tenet and other senior agency officials changed the policy so officers can get information about terrorists as quickly as possible, said the official.

Under the policy shift, field officers can recruit such sources immediately if they have information on terrorist threats. Within a few days, they must inform the head of the CIA’s clandestine service, deputy director for operations James Pavitt, who must approve the recruitment.

Since 1995, field officers have had to seek approval from CIA headquarters in Virginia before using someone with a history of human rights abuses as a source, for example.

No such application was ever denied, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow has said, but critics in Congress have said the rule chilled attempts by field officers to recruit sources who may have unsavory pasts.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, senior congressional members with intelligence oversight have called for a relaxing of the rules, likening these relationships to the informant networks street cops have in a city.

Any informant with access to someone like Osama bin Laden is unlikely to have a clean background, critics of the rule say.

The prior-approval rule was put in place in 1995 after congressional and public criticism of the CIA’s ties to a Guatemalan colonel linked to two murders in the early 1990s. The CIA also performed an "asset scrub," ridding itself of some sources with similar backgrounds.

Previous to 1995, field officers had no approval process for recruitments, the official said.