Alfreda Frances Bikowsky

Alfreda Frances Bikowsky (born 1965) is a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station and the Global Jihad unit. Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the CIA, but was deduced by independent investigative journalists in 2011. 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's giving her the moniker "The Unidentified Queen of Torture."

CIA career

Bikowsky started her CIA career in the 1990s as a Soviet analyst.

Journalist 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. Bikowsky's pseudonym was redacted at least three dozen times in the report. She was the direct supervisor of Michael Anne Casey, a CIA staff operations officer who was assigned to track future 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar at an al-Qaeda operatives' meeting in Malaysia in early January 2000. Casey blocked a draft cable written by Doug Miller, an FBI agent detailed to the Bin Laden Issue Station, to the FBI warning that al-Mihdhar had a multiple-entry visa for travel to the U.S. Mark Rossini, another FBI agent first assigned to the Bin Laden Issue Station in 1999, Rossini further stated that Bikowsky told congressional investigators in 2002 that she hand-delivered al-Mihdhar's visa information to FBI headquarters. This was later proven false by FBI log books. The CIA shared some details about al-Mihdhar with the FBI at that time, but not that he had a valid visa to enter the U.S. Arar was sent to Syria, where he was tortured and held for almost one year. In reference to the episode, he referred to the film Zero Dark Thirty.

Interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Bikowsky has been identified as "the redheaded former Soviet analyst who had been in the Bin Laden Unit during Michael Scheuer's supervision"

The Senate torture report claims Bikowsky participated in the interrogation and that claims she made about the results were "almost entirely inaccurate." El-Masri's name was a different transliteration of Khalid al-Masri, the name of a person who had supposedly met Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Marwan al-Shehhi on a train in Germany. Even after El-Masri's passport was checked and his identity as a different person was confirmed in March, Bikowsky still wanted him held in detention in Afghanistan.

Who is Rich Blee? In 2011, independent journalists Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy planned to release an audio documentary entitled Who is Rich Blee? The documentary focused on the CIA's Bin Laden Issue Station before 9/11 and how certain CIA officials blocked information on future 9/11 hijackers from reaching the FBI. They planned to be the first to reveal the identity of two CIA agents, including Bikowsky, who had previously only been identified as "Frances" in an AP news story from 2011 or as a red-headed CIA agent in Jane Mayer's The Dark Side.

Representations

Bikowsky's career and personality were the main models for the character Maya (portrayed by actress Jessica Chastain) in the film Zero Dark Thirty (2012), although Maya is a composite character of several women involved in finding Osama bin Laden. The film attracted controversy for its depiction of the use of torture to elicit information from terrorist suspects.

She is represented by the Corrine Whitman character in the film Rendition (2007), which is based on the true story of the Khalid El-Masri rendition.

She is also a basis for the character Diane Marsh (portrayed by Wrenn Schmidt) in the Hulu miniseries The Looming Tower (2018). In the dramatization, she is depicted as being one of the two people primarily responsible for the lack of intelligence sharing between the FBI and CIA in the lead up to 9/11.

In The Report, a film adaptation of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, a character played by Maura Tierney appears to be based on Bikowsky.

Personal life Bikowsky married Michael Scheuer, in 2014. He was a fellow CIA employee and former Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station. Under a variation of her married name, Freda Scheuer, she owns and operates her own business, YBeU Beauty, alternatively called YBeU Life Coaching for Women. As a life coach she "helps women look good, feel good, and do good."