CIA: Focus on the Beatings, Not the Incompetence
fatster linked to this CQ article, quoting a former CIA ops officer admitting the CIA dissembles to Congress–and suggesting the CIA likes this controversy, because it makes them look tough.
"The interrogations controversy has served the CIA bureaucracy," Jones asserted. "A top goal of bureaucracy is to look busy, and whether one agrees with the interrogation methods or not, the impression given is that the CIA is both busy and aggressive."
Jones added: "It relishes this ‘cowboy’ image, and its greatest fear is that the taxpayer might figure out how little it actually is doing.
"Bans or restrictions on interrogations," he added, "would have the constructive effect of removing this smokescreen, this distraction, and redirecting focus to what exactly the CIA is doing to provide the foreign intelligence the president needs."
All the more reason to bring Ali Soufan back, to talk about how James Mitchell’s torturers tortured because they didn’t have the linguistic skills, knowledge of Al Qaeda, or background in interrogation to do it right.
But they’re not even real cowboys. Cowboys wouldn’t send so many cables back to HQ saying “Mother may I?” They are cowards through and through.
Jim,
I think you got that right. The thing here is that there were and are laws on the books that make what happened illegal and war crimes. What is amazing how many people claim to have done the best they could for their country…fearing that they might be prosecuted later. That’s the thing, real patriots aren’t worried about being prosecuted later. They’ll take their lumps if they break the law. Not these guys though…they are scared of being arrested for doing their patriotic duty? I only hope they are arrested…because a lot of what they call “patriotism” looks more like sadism.
O/T but you’ll love it!
I have written up both a tribute to Marcy and her commitment to Freedom of Speech and the Press, along with a request to honor her today.
I intend to cross-post it at Oxdown just as soon as I can get it up.
Marcy…Thank you again, we can help so little. I’m sorry this is so much less than you deserve for the solace and energy you have given me. But if you ever need a quiet retreat to finish a project or a place to stay while traveling, please know our hospitality is richer than our financial standing.
It easy to play congress for fools, especially when they WANT to be fooled.
But it’s time to admit that any new torture information is simply icing on the cake. There is already enough confirmed information in the public domain to prove that torture was performed by the US goverment with the approval and encouragement of the executive branch.
It is now time for Obama to either prosecute them or pardon them. And if you don’t prosecute, you inherit.
What’s the difference between a terrorist planning a hit and a bank robber planning a heist? Both could result in innocent deaths. Do we waterboard the crook if we think his buddies are about to do the heist?
If I was a drug dealer in prison for torturing an informant, I’d sure be appealing the torture. Make the government define torture so that I did it but they didn’t.
Boxturtle (Can I waterboard a marketeer and make him tell me who bought my information?)
Best analogy I’ve read so far. If we want to torture people to save lives, we should have tortured the tobacco executives to find out the health information in their files. That would have saved more lives than just about any other thing you could think of.
I have no way to know how much of this is true, how much disinfomation, or what the motives are in any of this chatter.
As a practical matter, I live in a region that relies on global trade. At my nearest ‘international’ airport, baggage claim, gate instructions, and hotel information comes over the loudspeakers in English, Japanese, and a variety of other languages.
In my local school districts, people that I know personally work with children who speak … I think we once totaled around a combined total of 46 languages, from Chinese (several dialects) to various African languages, dialects of Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and various Eastern European languages.
In this context, it looks as if the US certainly has far richer linguistic and cultural linguistic ‘potential assets’ than have yet been ‘deployed’.
Here’s hoping that a thorough investigation would highlight that stark but important fact.
Sybil Edmonds was one of these multilinguistic, multicultural assets. Look how far it got her.
I think this post is spot on. CIA’s covert ops branch has always been given more credit for shadowy omnipotence than it deserves–especially by the Left. Bureaucracies are always inefficient and self-serving to some extent. Secret bureaucracies never have to be embarrassed enough to keep the idiocy in check.
Real intelligence gathering is what interrogators like Mr. Soufan and analysts like Empty Wheel do. It is hard, mentally challenging work–lots of reading, collating, and comparing. It is productive, but not much fun and not good for the budget. The CIA analysts told Reagan that the USSR was on its last legs just as he was trying to drive up the defense budget to astronomical levels and letting the covert ops people send Stinger missiles to Al Qaeda for use in Afghanistan. Bush ran into the same problem with analysis when it came to Al Qaeda, Iraq, and WMDs–boring people who come up with what you do not want to hear and spend way too little money doing it.
The jocks and Skull and Bones frat boys who fill the upper ranks of the CIA’s covert operations branch are thus much more popular with the politicians than the analysts who produce real intelligence. The ops types find research and painstaking interrogation boring. They get the desired answers, spend money, and, in Porter Goss’ case at least, can get you into a poker game or a hooker.
If half of what we suspect about the CIA’s conduct of late is true, we should disband it and reorganize the actual professionals into a new, more functional intelligence agency.
Getting religious? Want to visit your local church? There are risks. Taking on Frankenstein isn’t so easy if all you’ve got is a little flower.
I suppose that could arise in the discussion, but the focus needs to be on CIA effectiveness and whether it acted properly? Secondary, but important to some people is whether it has been politically abused.
Off Topic, but related to Marcy and her award:
I’ve linked it above. But her it is again: http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5491
My apologies for any disruption or inconvenience.
The expansion of inhumane treatment from the inteel ’service’ to other ’services’ to match the exploding dimension of the number of executive ‘detainees’ will add increment to social safetynet work as some of the people so employed seek to reintegrate into civilization. I wonder if congress will address these matters. Sen Feingold seems interested.
thanks all for the kind words.
All well deserved … wish we could do more for you. Just as soon as I get that big, fat contract … *wink*
Ex Italian spy denies involvement in CIA kidnapping
“The former head of Italian military intelligence Wednesday denied at a landmark trial any role in the CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian imam from a Milan street six years ago.
. . .
“The abduction of the imam known as Abu Omar was part of the CIA’s covert “secret rendition” programme under which terror suspects were transferred outside the judicial process to third countries known to practise torture.
“The six other Italian defendants in the case took the stand but refused to answer any questions put by lead prosecutor Armando Spataro, saying they were protected by state secrecy laws.
“Judge Oscar Magi adjourned the trial to June 10 after Spataro argued that “illegitimate orders cannot be covered by state secrecy laws” and asked the court to use statements made by the defendants during the investigation.”
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/E…..72009.html
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: We are now dependent on our foreign friends to clean up our mess. Obama isn’t going to bring any of our folks to trial, not even the lawyers.
Feingold is darn near a lone voice in the wilderness. And he’ll be crushed by his own party if it ever looks like he might succeed.
First thing this morning, I wake up to Abu Gonzo pontificating on Obama’s court pick. Perhaps that’s why I’m so negative today. The man ought to be wearing orange and chrome.
Boxturtle (If I were Feingold, I would not be getting onto any small planes)
Amen.
I suspect that many people who want to do something to pursue accountability think twice before getting on small planes ….or small boats either. They don’t need horses heads in their beds to get the message.
Mary, anyone who can educate me: this is a quote from #9 above: “illegitimate orders cannot be covered by state secrecy laws”. I presume that is true in the US as well as Italy. Is it? (Of course, the catch-22, I guess, is if you don’t know what the state secret is, then you’re up the proverbial creek.) Thnx so much.
We’ll be here grinning in your direction, EW. Award very, very well-deserved indeed!
I know I’m behind the curve here, but I finally actually listened to Obama’s “forever detentions with no review” parts of his speech and I couldn’t be more disappointed.
I never expected anything much from him other and Bush lite with better social programs, but he’s not Bush lite at all, he’s the rotgut shot after the warm beer chaser.
What kind of man would even want such a horrific policy linked forever with him as his “legacy” and what kind of person is Holder, to bobblehead along with it all?
What kind of people are Americans to support men like that?
Can’t recall who it was — I think bob from hi — wrote back a few threads that he granted some credit for framing the point publicly. I agreed — still do — and [ducking as I type, with due deference to a particular pecadillo of counselor bmaz] I add here:
Despite his delivering that cover of the mushy Bush hit ‘First/Last Thoughts of the Day’, doing it that way, given such reasonably predictable consequences as feingold’s letter and impending hearing [analogous to an engraved invitation IMO], it had to be conscious; and so deliberately aimed at something like an effort to off-load at least some of the imperial presidential responsibility [I labeled the role as something like the nation going into a confessional].
I recognize the visceral reaction: I watched it live, and found myself screaming at the teevee. But the fact remains it’s a problem that has been ceded to the executive for decades and decades, certainly back to FDR, even very arguably discernible in things Lincoln did. And if you grant that it wasn’t musing, but intentional [ducking again], then my own instinct, like apparently that of others here and elsewhere [again: pseudocyants et al at the tpm universe], is to engage in discussion on how such a goal might be achieved. Fighting against that instinct to be a ‘responsible adult’ is te accumulated experience from over 3 decades of working in a system which, to me at least, is itself far from entirely successful in resolving issues of evidence and proof towards achieving standards justifying public action, despite its clear mandate and general tendency to fixate on them.
So: I don’t think raising it necessarily renders the person who raised it some kind of monster; nor do I expect that’s going to achieve anything. On the other hand, I do think it’s worthwhile concentrating on expanding on what you’ve pressed for a long time now: serious consideration of the implications of Milligan and why this current situation should be rocketing that opinion to the forefront of public discussion.
And I also think that, so far at least, this blog is the single best one to host such a discussion.
OT 1: Wishing you safe travel to a festive and well-deserved occasion, Marcy. Give our thanks to the other honorees, too!
OT 2: Beautiful bit by Scott Horton on the similarities between the Catholic Church’s trial of Galileo and the Bush admin’s show trials in Guantanamo (as well as, implicitly, the Obama-proposed “improved” military commissions).
Liz Cheney Opposes Making Decisions Based On How You Want The Law To Work Out
By Eric Kleefeld – May 27, 2009, 12:05PM
“Appearing on Fox News today, Liz Cheney worried that a judge who makes legal decisions based on how they want the law to work out “moves us away from the rule of law”:
. . .
“Of course, this comes form someone who is mounting a huge public relations campaign for her father’s policy that “enhanced interrogation” was legal and not torture. Interestingly, this Republican concern about results-oriented legal judgement was also lodged yesterday by John Yoo, one of the authors of the torture memos.”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…..hp?ref=fpb
she also said something else to wave the birdy over ‘here’….
i said this earlier—
lizzie said–ask white house if a family member were in danger would they use waterboarding?
ummmm, i would compare that to someone with 1000bucks in their wallet and weighs 300 pounds shoplifting food and saying, would you prosecute someone homeless and who is starving? has nothing to do with their thievery.
um, liz, they waterboarded to elicit false information about a false threat. answer that one…illegally. and lied about it…illegally.
they stole a candy bar with money in their fat pockets.
In response to Mary @ 12.
”What kind of people are Americans to support men like that?”
Dere Murkuns; donchaknow?
I think your previous question is more pertinent for now; that is: what kind of man[is Obama]? This has bothered me since January with the continued Bush legal stance in the al Harramain case. Right off the bat, I thought the Wired article calling the continuing position the Obama position, was pure spin; instead thinking it the product of Bush holdovers. Well, holdovers may play a role, but it’s now clear that it’s Obama’s position, in that case and on other instances. The question is though: why?
Two other possibilities (beyond Bushbots) come to mind. One is that Obama said the things he knew were necessary to get elected, but somehow was in league with the Bush/Cheney cabal all along, and now the wraps are off (and what we see is what we got). Another, perhaps more disturbing view is that somehow the cabal has ”gotten to” the Obama administration and have him/it under control. I don’t pretend to know the correct answer as some here might (and have often proclaimed). What I’m interested in is examining the possibilities and comming to a good perspective as to what’s going on. Mary’s question (as to what kind of people these are) is more than merely rhetorical, and indictes to me that these questions cry out for consideration.
From the perspective of Behavioral Psychology, rather than look to the character of an individual for an explanation of behavior, instead look to the contingencies surrounding that behaior, most especially where the rewards and punishers are comming from.
This comes perilously close to invoking the concept of ‘The Other’. I’m certainly not suggesting you intended that, or else I wouldn’t be responding. I doubt this guy is any more or less ‘gotten to’ than anyone in his position. What was the line from that Paul Mazursky film? I’m guessing/paraphrasing here: ‘America’s one hell of a big town’.
On the narrow point under discussion, he articulated something that I imagine that actually provided or would provide some level of comfort to tens of millions of, not just Americans, but citizens anywhere in the world where there’s a functioning democracy. It’s put falsely, but not blatantly so; and not unproductively so; and the very fact that it’s raised at all is positive; and maybe raising it with some false premises is the only way someone in his position CAN raise it.
If you could define “this”, “that”, and “the narrow point under discussion”, your post would make some sense to me perhaps.
In any case I thought R.H. Green made a good point in asking whether Obama was fooling us all along, or was more recently converted to the dark side. Thirdly one might argue that he is still joking around with political tricks, leading the bad guys on while remaining an upstanding man of his word where it matters.
We’ve already gotten into some deep doodoo by giving otherwise suspicious characters the benefit of the doubt, so if you were to ask me I’d say that’s it. No more. Because you know, if you take it willingly you’ll always get more.
The Public Record article with minutes from the October 2, 2002, meeting mentions Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey, Commander of Joint Task Force 170.
History Commons says about Dunlavey:
On the subject of the post, I hadn’t thought of torture as a substitute for competence. But it certainly makes sense. First new thing I’ve learned about torture in months.
human nature–anyone falsely empowered will use force to keep their imagined power..in doing this, their other skills are lacking or they wouldn’t be incompetent.
==thanks for the burris msnbc h/up…
when a battle is going on, i always watch the enemy, no need to watch an ally unless you’re looking for a traitor. which i guess we are.
Tweety is as happy to have a Democrat to attack as Wolfe Blitzer is to report on Newt Gingrich’s allegations (of racism against Soto) without including the fact that the fascist creep is tweeting his messages from Auschwitz.
See, in this case, this fact is not pertinent to the story. This kind of RW bias is the reason why everyone knows about Elliot Spitzer’s hooker hijinx and so few are familar with Diaper Dave Vitter.
that’s my point–they are incompetent and we are watching/they are reporting the wrong things, except in the case of a possible traitor. then it changes.
Hmmm, very interesting point.
thanks. is true.
first one is a ‘dad’ lesson, when teaching me to keep my cool. i was around 11. rarely did lose my cool, but i would stew and then blow..said that when i lose my temper or try to ‘make’ someone do somehting, it’s my own skills that are lacking or not not being used. never forgot it and taught me to recognize it for what it is, in myself and others.
the second one is mine.
OT
Tweety’s been grilling Burris for 15 minutes.
An old saying about the Civil Service.
The are neither civil, nor do they serve.
Maybe not so much as masking “incompetence” per se, this interrogation debate is masking the general purpose of the CIA and its covert ops; after all, this makes it clear that they’re willing to confront the Islamist boogeyman conservative Americans piss their beds over every night. If people knew that they spent much more time destabilizing socialist/labor movements and politicians that threaten “national interests” (i.e. capital investments) then actually worrying about the safety of American citizens, maybe the general public would not find the CIA so integral to American security (as opposed to “national” security).
From the CQ piece:
“If a single FBI agent, with full security clearances and a contact number, were assigned to the CIA with the ability to investigate reports of fraud and waste provided by CIA employees,” he added, “it would set off a chain reaction of accountability.”
Just be sure to keep him/her out of the hands of the Dallas PD and away from Jack Ruby!