More on "Jack" Idema and his Torture Techniques

What a bizarre chancre on the nads of life Jonathan Idema is. Idema you may recall, or have heard, is a former american soldier (a long time ago I might add) with some clear personality issues and a long-time con man. Idema is now standing trial in Kabul, Afghanistan for torturing individuals in his self-perceived role as Rambo.

But it gets even more bizarre.

Idema is claiming that he was working closely with the Pentagon while engaging in such matters.

The Pentagon's response has been "Nuh-Uh".

Well, for those (I'm looking at your Missouri Journalism Professor snob) who say bloggers are universally not journalists, I present to you "Flogging the Simian" who has written not a one or two part series on Idema -- BUT AN 8 PART -- series on the guy...and it's continuing. Wow, its very interesting.

Go read, what a complex, disturbing and unsavory character Idema is...but he is a unsavory character who may be being honest about one thing. You may remember yesterday, I stated the BBC named Rummy, well it is more complex than that (lengthy snippet from :

But who is the fucking official? You're in luck, because I know exactly who it is. So do all of the journalists who were there, and I'm deeply suspicious that they would not print her name.

Her name is Heather Anderson. We'll get to who she is in a minute, but it's important to know she is the acting Director of Security for Stephen Cambone.

Does the name Stephen Cambone ring a bell? It should. First, he's a long time personal friend of Rumsfeld, who created Cambone's job out of thin air in March 2003. The Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence (UDI) is sort of the head coordinator of all of the military's intelligence branches.

Cambone was also one of the principal witnesses into the Congressional hearings concerning prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. It was Cambone who authorized the interrogation tactics that were used in Abu Ghraib. If that weren't enough, Cambone's military assistant is General William "My God Is Bigger" Boykin, about whom I wrote an entire expose that will blow your everloving socks off.

Ok, so Anderson works for Cambone. It turns out one of her principal duties was to run the security checks on the thousands of mercenaries the Pentagon was hiring. Back in May 2004, Congressional lawmakers were bitching that she wasn't doing the security checks fast enough. She also testified to Congress and I'll give you a brief excerpt:

"The Department must have an affiliation with a private citizen before processing them for a personnel security clearance. For employees of DoD contractors, that relationship is established through the execution of a DoD Security Agreement, which is made a part of the contract with the company. Once the company has executed this agreement and is cleared, the company may process current employees or consultants for a background investigation if their duties will require access to classified information.

Approximately 85% of industry applicants are issued an interim clearance. For example, of the 152,059 requests for investigation from industry during FY03, approximately 85% of them were issued an interim clearance. An interim SECRET clearance authorizes access to SECRET information and most contractor employees can perform some functions with access to SECRET information, even if they ultimately require access to information of a higher level."

This story, as all stories with con men, is so complicated separating the wheat from the chaff is exhausting, but a great big tip of the Cap to Soj of Flogging the Simian for the work she is doing (I'm assuming it is a she given the picture on the Blog, and to paraphrase Oxycontin boy, when looking at the picture and the quality of the writing..."Hubba Hubba".)

Thanks to "Yankee in exile" for the reference.