CIA’s queen of torture was used to create Zero Dark Thirty character
Recently released Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture featured a key character in the agency’s string of horrific misdeeds. Alfreda Frances Bikowsky is a career CIA officer, who remains in a senior position at the agency, having headed the Bin Laden Issue Station (also known as its code name, Alec Station) and the Global Jihad unit. She is a former Soviet analyst, who has worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and in the Al Qaeda unit since the mid-1990s.
While the agency refuses to publicly name Bikowsky, her name was deduced by Salon reporters Rory O'connor and Ray Nowosielski, as well as a contemporary historian Kevin Fenton, in 2011. Bikowsky had been referenced in Jane Mayer’s book “The Dark Side,” by her middle name, Frances. As a supervisor and an analyst in the pre-911 world, Bikowsky dropped the ball when the CIA was given information that might very well have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
