Alfreda Frances Bikowsky

Alfreda Frances Bikowsky (born 1965) is a career Central Intelligence Agency officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station and the Global Jihad unit. Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the Agency, but was deduced by independent investigative journalists in 2011. In January 2014, the Washington Post named her and tied her to a pre-9/11 intelligence failure and the extraordinary rendition of Khalid El-Masri. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, released in December 2014, showed that Bikowsky was not only a key part of the torture program, but also one of its chief apologists, resulting in the media giving her the moniker "The Unidentified Queen of Torture."

Bikowsky married her former boss Michael Scheuer in December 2014.

Bikowsky started her CIA career in the 1990s as a Soviet analyst. She was brought into the Bin Laden Issue Station when it was created in 1996 by its first Chief, Michael Scheuer. Sometime after the USS Cole bombing in October 2000, she was promoted to Deputy Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station. By March 2003, she had been appointed Chief of the station. The station was closed in late 2005.

Ken Silverstein reported that Bikowsky was a top candidate to be CIA Deputy Chief of Station in Baghdad in 2007. However, a CIA spokesman later wrote to Silverstein to say Bikowsky was not considered for the position and to dispute the characterization of her in the post.

In 2008, Jane Mayer reported that Bikowsky held "a top post handling sensitive matters in the Middle East." It was reported in 2011 that Bikowsky had been promoted to the head of the CIA's Global Jihad unit. She is a top CIA official, equivalent of a general in the military.

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, Bikowsky was at the center of the CIA's effort to justify its use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques. She testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2007 that enhanced interrogation saved at least hundreds of American lives. The report lists three other claims Bikowsky made in that hearing and claims they are all inaccurate. Bikowsky's pseudonym was redacted at least three dozen times in the report.

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