CIA officer in Algeria accused in 2 rapes

WASHINGTON - The CIA's top officer in Algeria has been returned to Washington amid allegations that he drugged and raped two women at his Algiers residence, an accusation that presents the Obama administration's new intelligence team with an unexpected legal and diplomatic crisis even before it officially takes office.

The 41-year-old Algiers station chief was ordered home by the State Department after a months-long investigation of alleged sexual assaults in September 2007 and February of last year, US officials confirmed yesterday. The two women involved in the incidents told US diplomats that they became unconscious after receiving what they believed were knockout drugs served to them in drinks.

The alleged assaults, if confirmed, are viewed as particularly serious because they could potentially damage diplomatic relations with Algeria, a US ally, and undermine US efforts to improve its image in the Muslim world, former diplomats and foreign policy experts said.

The CIA and State Department declined to comment on the alleged assaults, which were first described in an Internet report yesterday by ABC News. State Department spokesman Robert Wood confirmed that an investigation was ongoing and that the officer involved had been recalled to Washington.

Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, said the spy agency "would take seriously, and follow up on, any allegations of impropriety." He declined to confirm the name of the station chief or to give details on the agency's internal investigation.

However, the women's allegations are described in detail in an affidavit by a State Department investigator assigned to the case. In the affidavit, filed in federal court in Washington, the women give similar accounts of being assaulted by a man described as an official of the US Embassy in the Algerian capital. The official is identified in the affidavit as Andrew Warren, an "employee of the US government" assigned to the embassy.

In the affidavit, the investigator said there was "probable cause" to believe Warren had committed aggravated sexual assault.

Warren has not been charged in the case. Attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.