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.
[12] In 2008, Jane Mayer reported that Bikowsky held "a top post handling sensitive matters in the Middle East.
[2][19] Rossini further stated that Bikowsky told congressional investigators in 2002 that she hand-delivered al-Mihdhar's visa information to FBI headquarters.
[2] 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.[18]: 244–7 Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was interviewed about the arrest and extraordinary rendition of an innocent Canadian citizen Maher Arar, which occurred in September 2002 at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
[21] Bikowsky has been identified as "the redheaded former Soviet analyst who had been in the Bin Laden Unit during Michael Scheuer's supervision"[8]: 273 in Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side.
[9] After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in March 2003, Mayer writes of Bikowsky: Despite the CIA's insistence on the professionalism of its interrogation program, according to two well-informed Agency sources, one particularly overzealous female officer had to be reprimanded for her role.
"[4] In late January 2004, Bikowsky, as head of the Bin Laden Issue Station, made the decision to extraordinarily render Khalid El-Masri to Afghanistan for four months without any evidence in hand.
[7][22] 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.
[14] Bikowsky received no reprimand for the incident, because then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said he didn't want to deter the initiative of counter-terrorism employees.
[23] In 2011, independent journalists Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy planned to release an audio documentary entitled Who is Rich Blee?
[8][14] However, after receiving threats of prosecution from the CIA under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Duffy and Nowosielski decided to release the documentary with the names redacted.
[29] Bikowsky married fellow CIA and former Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station, Michael Scheuer, in 2014.