"...we’ve decided to live in this world of limited oversight."
Read it and weep... I can just imagine any of the main players of this sordid state of affairs saying: "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"
I have to say though you have to admire how incredible a cleaner Haspel is. Spotless really.
Yeah next time folks here will defend CIA as bunch of highly moral patriots, well they are either clueless or outright lying, which goes well along what CIA is anyway supposed to do.
US has no moral high ground. US folks here might feel like they still do, but to 95% of the world, US can easily end up bigger bully than any other state, ie Russia or China.
And by bully I mean murders, kindappings, torture, rape and so on. Or just death of few hundreds of thousands of civilians. For reasons that are at best dubious.
How many of those in the article were coming from Afghanistan theatre, a war that US and allies lost recently and ran away quicker than locals could say 'but wait...' ?
Man, am I pissed off. US should be trying to win, or at least keep good friends in near future. This is not how one should do it.
i wouldn't get too worked up, the article cites only one instance from Abu Hamza al-Tabuki while claiming to document 14. The article has a lot of words but little actual information, I would ask for more specific details before letting the author really get under your skin.
Fascinating content, but interrupted six separate times by a "Type your email... Subscribe" text box. I wonder what the conversion rate is on that fifth box; who misses it the first four times and then decides to sign up?
Back on topic, I do hope that some of this is simply being withheld and is not truly lost to history, but it does make one wonder: At what point will the digital information inside secretive state agencies like the CIA be analyzed by, say, 3rd-millenium historians, in the same way that we analyze cave paintings? I enjoy reading through some of the declassified Apollo mission engineering documents, but I would be shocked if a future government was willing to release such shameful material even decades after it was no longer of strategic importance and the individuals involved were all deceased.
I have heard (though I can’t remember the source) that at a certain point on the secrecy ladder, digital files are viewed as intrinsically insecure so documents are only created and handled as hard copies.
Obviously, I have no idea if this is actually true.
I googled Gina Haspel, mentioned as a CIA person who destroyed records of torture, and her Wikipedia page mentions she "does not use social media". I bet she doesn't, and for good reason!
Everything done in those programs was explicitly against numerous laws, and everyone involved knew it at the time. I see no reason not to indict every person who participated, at any level, with numerous felonies, along with everyone whose responsibility was to stop it, and didn't. There is way more than enough guilt to go around.
Prosecutions should particularly include CIA executive management.
We don't need to write new laws. We just need to execute on the laws that were, and are, already in place. The new US Attorney General could start issuing indictments immediately. Most of these laws have no Statute of Limitations deadline, so remain viable no matter how far back you go.
If the laws have been successfully ignored, then something is severely dysfunctional with the current approach.
I don't think this can be explained just by "individual people being evil". You can't just designate a few scapegoats at the CIA, ruin their lives as punishment, and call the problem solved. There are severely wrong incentives in place.
We do need to write more laws. Or rather, your country does.
Come on, a law is not being enforced, therefore it is not possible to make a better law?
Legislation happens to be the simplest fix when government agencies are acting horribly wrong. We can do other things, too, but we should start with the tried and true.
The current laws happen to be really bad and are not stopping anyone. I think we can do better. Law doesn't have to be bad and ineffective.
Here's one example of something you can do with the law: declare the CIA dissolved, reallocate the budget.
Is that the best thing we could do? I genuinely can't say. But that would be a law that cannot be ignored.
If the issue is the unwillingness to enforce any part of existing law then no law that you could possibly write will stop people from continuing to willfully ignore the law.
Yes, there's a high likelihood we could make improvements in the laws.
No, that would not address the reasons why accountability in law does not yield accountability in practice. ncmncm is right.
The Executive branch is not going to police itself seriously unless there is huge public outcry. Americans' outrage tends to rise and fall at the tempo of (so-called) news cycles.
Even if parts of the Executive branch wanted to pursue accountability, they would run into a hard wall due to claims of "National Security" by the intelligence community. You see how much it took for Daniel Jones and how much he still didn't get. It would require Executive branch orders at the highest levels that the intelligence community must cooperate, and sustained policing under those highest authorities to deal with the intelligence orgs when they try to find ways to argue and dissemble about complying with what they were ordered to do. Even then, staff might just outright commit illegal acts knowing that there will never really be consequences so long as you can claim "National Security". The Executive branch is not going to want to air any of this dirty laundry.
Colby at the CIA tried to be more forthcoming with Congress and that was part of what led to his being let go from his position as DCI.
The Judicial branch isn't going to take action autonomously.
The greatest likelihood of any accountability would have to come via the Legislative branch (Congress) and public outcry. There is an insufficient level of backbone among the people in power in Congress, because it's incredibly easy to be attacked on this politically when it comes to "National Security". There is this incompetent populist mindset that conflates intent with actions. So if the intelligence community or DoD was trying "defend America against those that would seek to harm her or her people", as many will say, you will find no shortage people who wrap themselves in the flag for political or media exposure benefit and assail any politician that would dare to criticize the intelligence community, DoD, etc. Because if they have our best interests at heart, who cares how they go about their business, right? A vocal segment of the populace will lap this up and say that we should be treating America's enemies even more harshly, not kowtowing to emasculated Liberal desires to give terrorists baskets full of daisies.
Also, it will be virtually impossible to air the incontrovertible proof of wrongdoing in the open. No matter what the level of wrongdoing, the highest priority will be placed on not damaging ongoing intelligence operations, methods, sources, and active personnel. As well, there will be considerations associated with airing information that would embarrass or otherwise cause blowback to cooperating partners, like other countries. So you will end up exposed to reports written by people who have seen the stuff that needs the right clearances, but the conclusions will all be more vague and high level and you will also have congresspeople who "disagree with the report", also in a vague way (either because of the political benefits or because they belong to the tribe that thinks the end justifies the means), thereby reducing its credibility and impact.
There has to be a critical mass in Congress that can survive the political fallout to try to do something about this problem, and there has to be a presidential administration that also badly wants to do something about this even if they get skewered publically. That's unfortunately a very tall order.
And yes, writing this all out depresses and saddens me.
Nobody with the power to make or enforce laws over the CIA have any interest in doing anything about this. The CIA is on their side, and they like it that way, both because the CIA is a useful tool to use against their enemies and victims, and because the CIA is a dangerous enemy with a lot of experience in removing people from power.
They should have been prosecuted. Instead, Obama gave a blanket pardon for everyone involved and the US has threatened sanctions against the ICC if they attempt a prosecution.
We need no buck. "Following orders" is not an excuse. So, everybody up and down the line who knew they were involved in illegal activity is guilty of that, and also of conspiracy. Many are also guilty of obstruction of justice, which is normally punished more harshly than the crime covered up.
Obama halted the torture program, but could be prosecuted for other crimes involving use of drone strikes on civilians, along with underlings who organized or performed the strikes.
> the US has threatened sanctions against the ICC if they attempt a prosecution
It's worse than that, they have sanctioned ICC prosecutors and there's a law allowing the US to invade The Hague if a war criminal of theirs is under detention or trial there.
It's not even vague, it's blatant hypocrisy and refusal to adhere to international treaties and war crimes definitions ( which the US itself helped shape, but has never applied to itself).
And if we don’t do it, we are no better than nazis.
Whole lots of them were indicted and charged for the simple crimes not of their own but others. Applying the same standards to ourselves will result in similar indictments and justice.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they have blackmail on nearly all of the prominent politicians, prosecutors, and judges in the system. And what's worse, I bet you if any serious candidate runs on intelligence agency reform, they might suddenly have some really juicy dirt about them leaked online. Especially candidates from the younger generation. You could probably crucify someone in the public square with all the weird stuff in our browser histories.
Of course they have blackmail on all of them. Look at how poorly run the Epstein operation was. We saw how all of the senators sat silent, aware of what was going on, and did nothing.
But the real conspiracies you should care about are the ones that are obvious and boring. It's fun to think of crazy blackmail rings, which likely exist, but the others are more important. Like the government and politicians don't care at all about your health, they only care about maintaining power. The healthcare corporations don't care at all about your health, they only care about profit.
Like the tax laws are purposefully so confusing so you have to pay money to TurboTax or someone else.
One thing you need to recognize is there is no difference between you and the Nazis. If you were put back in Germany during that time you would have become a Nazi. You are not special. You are human. Go read the book "ordinary men." And read it from the perspective of the perpetrator, not the victim. You must be aware of your capability to horrific acts and work to make sure it doesn't happen.
Reading about all of this I wonder about the lack of oversight and accountability, and misleading answers to various governmental committees (and to the public, of course). And I know the blanket answer is "well, we cannot divulge our secrets, it would endanger national security!".
But that's often not true. It's self-evident that making detailed records of active intelligence operations public would be self-damaging, but lying about torture is not one of those things. Saying "well, the president claimed we were supposed to guarantee detainees the same standards of treatment as under American law", when someone who conducted the rendition program says "that's a lie" is not the kind of secret you suppress because it would otherwise endanger national security -- it's the kind of secret you suppress because you're undemocratic. Same with destroying records of torture.
The underlying matter here is: how did the US as a (modern) country decide that some things should not be subjected to democracy, that some rules cannot be decided or at least known by the people, and that this must be done "for their own good"?
"But national security!" is a bullshit answer. No-one is asking them to divulge the list of their covert agents right now.
I suspect it is more a case of half the country is fine with what happened and the other half has some issues with it, but not enough to spend political capital on it.
Likely. However, my question goes beyond whether torture is good or bad, but about whether people think some things should not be handled in a democratic, open way and should not be subject to serious oversight, and that it's ok to lie about them "for the greater good".
If I was a US citizen who agreed with the application of torture in some situations -- to be clear, I don't -- even I would be wary of the lying. Next time it will be applied to a policy I do not agree with, and I will be kept in the dark "for my own good".
What's most appalling to me is that "[the torture program] was the CIA’s central counterterrorism program at the time". If the best thing our intelligence agency can come up with is torture, it speaks really poorly to the rest of the work the agency was doing. I wonder how many years it will be before we have a president with the conscience to just shut it down.
I keep hearing that torture doesn't provide reliable information. And then i read that an organization that specializes in obtaining information uses torture extensively.
Either nobody holds them accountable for when their dodgy intel doesn't check out or i have been misled and torture does in fact yield good results. Which one is it?
This assumes their goal is to get actual intel and not just politically actionable intel. Torture is a great way to make someone say whatever you want them to.
Why go through the whole dog and pony show of actually torturing them? Just claim they said what you want in the torture chamber. It amounts to exactly the same thing and nobody will contradict you.
Though I don't disagree that much of it is just sadism, there is also some need for a paper trail. The "informant" denying they ever said anything causes more problems than them recanting what they said while tortured.
Institutions like people have beliefs and positions irrespective of these positions relationship with reality. For example the FBI which would would reasonably expect to be experts in scientific analysis spent decades sending experts to testify as to the nature of matching hair that was left at crime scenes with real live suspects. Turns out that upon review 95% of the cases in which they gave testimony were flawed and they notably couldn't reliably tell dog hair from human hair let alone identify suspects.
Just think of it people got 4 year degrees in a scientific field and built entire decades long career pretending to do something effectively not only to others but to themselves and their superiors. They testified in court dressed up in fancy suits with fancy titles when they were less effective at doing their job than a magic 8 ball.
It would be like finding out your doctor wasn't exactly clear on the difference between a liver and a kidney and him and all his colleagues were just kind of faking it and hoping you wouldn't notice.
The only saving grace that made them look sort of effective was the fact that they quite frequently but not always had ample evidence against the suspect meaning they were far more than average sending them hair samples of people who were in fact already known to be the real killer so they could in theory appear somewhat accurate by for example always saying yes if the hair was the same color which is you know fantastic for black people.
Why would we expect a field of endeavor that is entirely isolated from any accountability to be good at anything?
49 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadRead it and weep... I can just imagine any of the main players of this sordid state of affairs saying: "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"
I have to say though you have to admire how incredible a cleaner Haspel is. Spotless really.
US has no moral high ground. US folks here might feel like they still do, but to 95% of the world, US can easily end up bigger bully than any other state, ie Russia or China.
And by bully I mean murders, kindappings, torture, rape and so on. Or just death of few hundreds of thousands of civilians. For reasons that are at best dubious.
How many of those in the article were coming from Afghanistan theatre, a war that US and allies lost recently and ran away quicker than locals could say 'but wait...' ?
Man, am I pissed off. US should be trying to win, or at least keep good friends in near future. This is not how one should do it.
Uh, we've been there 20 years. If we had run away quicker, it would have saved a lot of lives and money.
Back on topic, I do hope that some of this is simply being withheld and is not truly lost to history, but it does make one wonder: At what point will the digital information inside secretive state agencies like the CIA be analyzed by, say, 3rd-millenium historians, in the same way that we analyze cave paintings? I enjoy reading through some of the declassified Apollo mission engineering documents, but I would be shocked if a future government was willing to release such shameful material even decades after it was no longer of strategic importance and the individuals involved were all deceased.
Obviously, I have no idea if this is actually true.
Everything done in those programs was explicitly against numerous laws, and everyone involved knew it at the time. I see no reason not to indict every person who participated, at any level, with numerous felonies, along with everyone whose responsibility was to stop it, and didn't. There is way more than enough guilt to go around.
Prosecutions should particularly include CIA executive management.
There is no accountability, which is itself extremely immoral.
Both of these are worth stopping. Legality did not affect their decisions, neither should it ours, in this case.
Let's write the laws if we have to; this needs corrective action.
I don't think this can be explained just by "individual people being evil". You can't just designate a few scapegoats at the CIA, ruin their lives as punishment, and call the problem solved. There are severely wrong incentives in place.
We do need to write more laws. Or rather, your country does.
What is wrong with this picture?
Legislation happens to be the simplest fix when government agencies are acting horribly wrong. We can do other things, too, but we should start with the tried and true.
The current laws happen to be really bad and are not stopping anyone. I think we can do better. Law doesn't have to be bad and ineffective.
Here's one example of something you can do with the law: declare the CIA dissolved, reallocate the budget.
Is that the best thing we could do? I genuinely can't say. But that would be a law that cannot be ignored.
I think the reason for that is the complete lack of transparency and accountability.
No, that would not address the reasons why accountability in law does not yield accountability in practice. ncmncm is right.
The Executive branch is not going to police itself seriously unless there is huge public outcry. Americans' outrage tends to rise and fall at the tempo of (so-called) news cycles.
Even if parts of the Executive branch wanted to pursue accountability, they would run into a hard wall due to claims of "National Security" by the intelligence community. You see how much it took for Daniel Jones and how much he still didn't get. It would require Executive branch orders at the highest levels that the intelligence community must cooperate, and sustained policing under those highest authorities to deal with the intelligence orgs when they try to find ways to argue and dissemble about complying with what they were ordered to do. Even then, staff might just outright commit illegal acts knowing that there will never really be consequences so long as you can claim "National Security". The Executive branch is not going to want to air any of this dirty laundry.
Colby at the CIA tried to be more forthcoming with Congress and that was part of what led to his being let go from his position as DCI.
The Judicial branch isn't going to take action autonomously.
The greatest likelihood of any accountability would have to come via the Legislative branch (Congress) and public outcry. There is an insufficient level of backbone among the people in power in Congress, because it's incredibly easy to be attacked on this politically when it comes to "National Security". There is this incompetent populist mindset that conflates intent with actions. So if the intelligence community or DoD was trying "defend America against those that would seek to harm her or her people", as many will say, you will find no shortage people who wrap themselves in the flag for political or media exposure benefit and assail any politician that would dare to criticize the intelligence community, DoD, etc. Because if they have our best interests at heart, who cares how they go about their business, right? A vocal segment of the populace will lap this up and say that we should be treating America's enemies even more harshly, not kowtowing to emasculated Liberal desires to give terrorists baskets full of daisies.
Also, it will be virtually impossible to air the incontrovertible proof of wrongdoing in the open. No matter what the level of wrongdoing, the highest priority will be placed on not damaging ongoing intelligence operations, methods, sources, and active personnel. As well, there will be considerations associated with airing information that would embarrass or otherwise cause blowback to cooperating partners, like other countries. So you will end up exposed to reports written by people who have seen the stuff that needs the right clearances, but the conclusions will all be more vague and high level and you will also have congresspeople who "disagree with the report", also in a vague way (either because of the political benefits or because they belong to the tribe that thinks the end justifies the means), thereby reducing its credibility and impact.
There has to be a critical mass in Congress that can survive the political fallout to try to do something about this problem, and there has to be a presidential administration that also badly wants to do something about this even if they get skewered publically. That's unfortunately a very tall order.
And yes, writing this all out depresses and saddens me.
A good first step would be to stand aside and let ICC prosecute, which even actual pardons would not block.
Who would they prosecute? Obama or Bush?
It seems like the implication people have when talking about this is that the CIA agents or CIA directors should be charged.
From my perspective, would they have done any of these illegal activities if they hadn't been given the green-light from the top?
If Bush/Obama said we will let the ICC prosecute, would any CIA agent/director have done it? Probably not.
I'm not disagreeing about prosecution, I'm just wondering where the buck stops and where the true responsibility lies.
Obama halted the torture program, but could be prosecuted for other crimes involving use of drone strikes on civilians, along with underlings who organized or performed the strikes.
It's worse than that, they have sanctioned ICC prosecutors and there's a law allowing the US to invade The Hague if a war criminal of theirs is under detention or trial there.
It's not even vague, it's blatant hypocrisy and refusal to adhere to international treaties and war crimes definitions ( which the US itself helped shape, but has never applied to itself).
Whole lots of them were indicted and charged for the simple crimes not of their own but others. Applying the same standards to ourselves will result in similar indictments and justice.
But the real conspiracies you should care about are the ones that are obvious and boring. It's fun to think of crazy blackmail rings, which likely exist, but the others are more important. Like the government and politicians don't care at all about your health, they only care about maintaining power. The healthcare corporations don't care at all about your health, they only care about profit. Like the tax laws are purposefully so confusing so you have to pay money to TurboTax or someone else.
One thing you need to recognize is there is no difference between you and the Nazis. If you were put back in Germany during that time you would have become a Nazi. You are not special. You are human. Go read the book "ordinary men." And read it from the perspective of the perpetrator, not the victim. You must be aware of your capability to horrific acts and work to make sure it doesn't happen.
But that's often not true. It's self-evident that making detailed records of active intelligence operations public would be self-damaging, but lying about torture is not one of those things. Saying "well, the president claimed we were supposed to guarantee detainees the same standards of treatment as under American law", when someone who conducted the rendition program says "that's a lie" is not the kind of secret you suppress because it would otherwise endanger national security -- it's the kind of secret you suppress because you're undemocratic. Same with destroying records of torture.
The underlying matter here is: how did the US as a (modern) country decide that some things should not be subjected to democracy, that some rules cannot be decided or at least known by the people, and that this must be done "for their own good"?
"But national security!" is a bullshit answer. No-one is asking them to divulge the list of their covert agents right now.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/26/americans-d...
Americans are split on torture.
If I was a US citizen who agreed with the application of torture in some situations -- to be clear, I don't -- even I would be wary of the lying. Next time it will be applied to a policy I do not agree with, and I will be kept in the dark "for my own good".
Either nobody holds them accountable for when their dodgy intel doesn't check out or i have been misled and torture does in fact yield good results. Which one is it?
Honestly, I just think they like doing it.
Just think of it people got 4 year degrees in a scientific field and built entire decades long career pretending to do something effectively not only to others but to themselves and their superiors. They testified in court dressed up in fancy suits with fancy titles when they were less effective at doing their job than a magic 8 ball.
It would be like finding out your doctor wasn't exactly clear on the difference between a liver and a kidney and him and all his colleagues were just kind of faking it and hoping you wouldn't notice.
The only saving grace that made them look sort of effective was the fact that they quite frequently but not always had ample evidence against the suspect meaning they were far more than average sending them hair samples of people who were in fact already known to be the real killer so they could in theory appear somewhat accurate by for example always saying yes if the hair was the same color which is you know fantastic for black people.
Why would we expect a field of endeavor that is entirely isolated from any accountability to be good at anything?