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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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July 14th,
2009 - CIA Faces Hostile Scrutiny as Details of ‘Dark’ Programmes are
Revealed |
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CIA Faces Hostile Scrutiny
as Details of ‘Dark’ Programmes are Revealed By Chris McGreal The Guardian July 14, 2009 For a while everyone thought
it would be enough to blame Dick Cheney. President Obama assured the
CIA that no one in the agency would be held accountable for the years of
torture, abductions and killings, along with the mass serveillance of
Americans, conducted under dubious legal authorisations. America's intelligence community
breathed a sigh of relief at what it took to be a commitment that if anyone
was to be brought to book it would be the politicians who the agency
enthusiastically served as it slipped the leash of legal restraint,
particularly the former vice-president who fronted the Bush administration's
war on terror. Most doubted that anyone would be held accountable. But in recent days the
ground has shifted dramatically, as a slew of revelations about the CIA's
activities has left the agency facing its most hostile scrutiny since the
1970s, when congressional hearings revealed that it was pursuing its own,
often illegal, agenda including numerous failed attempts to kill Fidel
Castro. Amid growing calls from
within Congress for formal investigations and special prosecutors, former CIA
officers say embittered agency officials believe they are caught up in a
political war as the Democrats wield their newly acquired power to hit back
at old foes in the Bush administration, particularly Cheney. The CIA's critics say that
it is coming under belated scrutiny over its submission to a highly political
and possibly illegal agenda that its officials embraced with enthusiasm in
the febrile atmosphere after the 9/11 attacks, when the Bush administration
thought it could throw out the rule book by declaring the Geneva conventions
out of date and redefining long established parameters for torture. Even where questionable
practices were declared legal by the administration, they remained of dubious
morality such as the practice of kidnapping suspected terrorists and flying
them half way around the world to be tortured and interrogated, known as
rendition. Some former CIA officers,
including the former counter-terrorism chief of operations, Vincent
Cannistraro, say the agency involved itself in suspect practices as it rode
roughshod over long established restraints. "There were things the
agency was involved with after 9/11 which were basically over the edge
because of 9/11. There were some very unsavoury things going on. Now they are
a problem for the CIA," he said. "There is a lot of pressure on the
CIA now and it's going to handicap future activities." The CIA made two mistakes.
The first was to think that it could keep it all hidden. There is much that will
never be made public, it was perhaps inevitable that something damaging would
come out. As it happens, a slew of revelations have emerged with shocking
speed. In recent days, the agency
has admitted hiding from Congress - probably illegally - a covert
anti-terrorism programme. Numerous leaks have revealed it to be an operation
to kill al-Qaida operatives, sometimes in friendly countries. The leaks have
not been denied by the CIA or members of Congress since informed about the
programme. That revelation came days
after five federal inspectors general released a report in to the role of the
CIA and the National Security Agency in to warrantless wiretaps and other
surveillance at the behest of the White House. The CIA was just reeling
from that blow when the attorney general, Eric Holder, said he wants a probe
in to whether the agency was using waterboarding and other tortures even
before the administration gave dubious legal opinions which cleared the way
and swept aside years of precedent. Few doubt that there will be
more revelations to come, particularly if an increasingly agitated Congress
decides to dig deeper. Peter Bergen, an expert on
intelligence at the New America Foundation, said that the CIA is not likely
to be put through the wringer in quite the way it was in the 1970s when
senator Frank Church's committee laid bare an array of illegal activities.
But the agency will have to account for recent actions. "The abuses by the CIA
that Church revealed were worse than anything likely to come out of this.
There were eight separate attempts to assassinate Castro. But the steady drip
drip of revelations that's coming out now is very damaging to the CIA,"
he said. "The cumulative effect is a very large amount of dirty laundry
will be aired and it will have an effect on the CIA, a very damaging
effect." Shortly after he assumed the
presidency Obama reassured CIA officers that they would not be held to
account for the abuses of the Bush years. Some took that to mean that the
slate was wiped clean and that if there was to be any accounting at all it
would be of a narrow group of political leaders. Obama was keen not to lose
the support of the security establishment, particularly as he faced down
Republicans and some of his own party over the dismantling of the Guantanamo
prison and the release of its inmates. But Bergen said that the
recent revelations have undercut Obama's assurances and encouraged Congress
to wade in. "All these things
contribute to create the possibility to have a special prosecutor without
being accused of a witch hunt," said Bergen. There are many in the CIA
who remain convinced that the agency is caught up in a political vendetta in
part aimed at clearing the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, of accusations
she lied when she said the CIA hid waterboarding from her at intelligence
briefings. Cannistraro said the fact
that there was a leak after the CIA director, Leon Panetta, recently admitted
to the intelligence committee about the secret assassination programme has
reinforced the perception that Congress is unreliable and the agency is
caught in a political web. "There's concern at the
agency that they brought it to Congress's attention and it promptly
leaked," he said. But Cannistraro said that
there is also a recognition within the CIA that the ground has shifted. "The impulse for
revealing this [secret programme] came from far below Panetta's office. It's
part of the process to protect the hind quarters of the agency itself because
there are things they recognise were over the edge," he said. Cannistraro said that
scrutiny of the CIA will require further examination of the politicians
involved, and that it won't stop with the former vice-president. "They keep specifying
Cheney, but what Cheney did was endorsed by the president and Bush's office.
This was not a one-man operation," he said. The CIA's second, and
perhaps greater mistake, was that all of the dark programmes appear to have been
largely for nothing. There is now ample evidence
that interrogators learned most of what al-Qaida detainees had to tell before
they were repeatedly water boarded. Rendition, torture and Guantánamo are
likely to have done more to have enhanced terrorism than curb it. The inspector general of the
justice department said of the secret surveillance programme that most of its
leads "were determined not to have any connection to terrorism". "There are plenty of
people who view that the ends justifies the means," said Bergen.
"The problem with Cheney is there were not ends. The waterboarding
derived intelligence of no great value. I think it'll become clear these
extreme measures were counterproductive and above all didn't find anything.
That is going to be a very damning judgement for the CIA." External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/14/cia-bush-cheney-obama-torture |