I’m still too ill and tired to write, but I just want to say that the administration needs to break up the fight between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they need to do it in a way that is basically taking the Senate’s side.
The reason is simple. The root of the problem here is that the Senate Intel Committee has in its possession proof that the CIA’s internal view of the torture they committed is quite different than the view the CIA presented to the committee. It’s a cover-up.
So, unless the administration wants the legal and political problems associated with a massive cover-up, they need to tell the CIA to back off.
I know it’s easy for me to make such a suggestion since I don’t have to worry about any consequences for myself, but it’s the right thing to do.
If John Brennan doesn’t like it, he can resign.
More, when I feel better.
What’s the culture at CIA these days? I don’t follow it but as I recall there were a lot of protest resignations in high places during the Bush years. It was one of those areas I’d hoped early on that Obama would be able to bring about some big changes for the better, but I never heard anything about what was happening inside the agency. Aside from vague rumors that Cheney has all kinds of “leave-behinds” all over the place there.
Aside from vague rumors that Cheney has all kinds of “leave-behinds” all over the place there.
Like someone who was in the news just a few weeks ago, Victoria Nuland!! Although she is in the State Department. But I bet there are people like her in the CIA as well.
The State Department is just the public face of the security state in international matters, CJ. Bet on it. It provides cover for CIA people and a “respectable” face for intelligence activities that would otherwise be out of place in polite society. Bet on that as well. Hillary Clinton has been covering for the Benghazi failure since the day it happened and anyone who thinks otherwise has his or her head so deeply buried in PermaGov bullshit that they wouldn’t recognize a cover operation if it had big “COVERUP!!!” icons emblazoned all over it. Kerry is fronting for the same neocon forces in the Ukraine/Russia dustup. Nuland? She’s State Department mainstream. Has she lost her job? Hell no!!! She was doing her job with that “Fuck the EU” thing. The leak? It’s likely to have been leaked/surveilled on purpose as a warning to NATO. “We run the show. It’s our military and it’s our game. It’s gonna go the way we say it’s gonna go or you can fight your own wars. FUCK you if you don’t want to get in line!!!”
Further, the heads of intelligence agencies have carte blanche to blatantly lie to congress as was plainly illustrated when the head of the NSA told congress that the phone tapping thing was minimal. Is James Clapper in jail for contempt of congress or violating his oath of office?? (Not that “contempt” for this craven congress is necessarily a bad thing, but I digress.) Of course not.
“Vague rumors that Cheney has all kinds of “leave-behinds” all over the place!!!???” Please!!! The whole federal government is a Cheney leave behind on some level. Cheney/Bush were hired to put a security state/permanent war state in place and Obama was hired to put a kinder/gentler face on it. Anybody in any level of federal government who actively opposed that situation has long since been given their walking papers.
We’re living in Cheneyville now, CJ, and it’s not going to get substantially better until the voters speak in a massive way, an action that I do not count upon in the near future.
Meanwhile…remember.
The DemRats and the RatPubs are just two sides of the same Uniparty/Permanent Government.
Get used to it, because it ain’t gonna change soon.
Hunker down and wait for an American Spring.
Any day now.
AAAaaaany day now…
(Not)
Later…
AG
Seems Obama picked Nuland himself for reasons of his own that might be disgusting and might not. Surely the CIA culture is not significantly different from what it was when G.H.W. Bush ran it under Gerald Ford, after the shocks of the Church committee. They don’t get any political hires below the very top level, and as we know they aren’t very well supervised. Where the bad Bush moles are really active I believe is in Department of Justice).
Culture!!!???
It’s an institution, hz. A vast bureaucracy the entire “culture” of which is to sustain itself at all costs and continue to grow. It is a society of professional liars. That’s what it does. It lies. It lies to the president; it lies to the State Department; it lies to Congress and it lies to you and me. Not only that, but anyone with an ounce of brains to whom it lies knows damned well that it’s lying. They are either in on the game or so frightened of its real power that they just keep their mouths shut and their heads down.
That missing Malaysian airliner about which we are hearing so much these days? No matter what really happened we are being fed such a line of bullshit about it by the professional liars that the real story will probably never come out. Just one example of the almost daily lying that now constitutes the entire media output of the governmental media complex.
The “culture” of the CIA?
Incompetence, assassination and torture. And of course…lying.
Bet on it.
Nuthin’ new, though.
Just business as usual.
Been that way since the ’50s and it ain’t gonna change now.
Bet on that as well.
Later…
AG
Didn’t Jay Carney say yesterday that the President favors release of this report?
The President can order its release. And if the President can’t order its release we have Constitutional issues about a rogue agency unresponsive to the chief executive and commander-in-chief as well as to a Senate committee.
The big issue is political Sen. Richard Burr, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee after Grassley retires is trying to set up a GOP Senate win so he can become chair of the committee instead of Feinstein. So he’s picked up the CIA pom-poms and is shaking them at the Senate Democrats who want the report released. The GOP is seeking to cover the Bush record by intimidating Democrats. That puts them with the CIA and means that any action in the Senate Intelligence Committee must be a party-line vote with the Democrats being unanimous.
The White House’s inability to act strongly on this and NSA issues contributes to the growing perception that the national security bureaucrats and generals are running the country. If if that isn’t true, that empowers the national security and intelligence communities to repeat stupid policies, strategies, and actions without accountability.
Since the Justice Dept came up with a report that didn’t result in any charges perhaps the CIA kept information from that investigation as well.
It seems strange how the CIA jumped the gun and asked the Justice Dept to investigate the Senate staffers; sort of like getting your licks in first and accusing others of what you’ve been doing all along.
There is much rot apparently within the halls of the CIA…good to remember this is all about torture and what happened in our name and now being withheld from us. Feinstein, as a longstanding CIA advocate must be feeling betrayed and, boy has that woman got to know where alot of bodies are buried.
When if not now President Obama?
I hope people have been reading Emptywheel re: this. It’s obvious that the C- Augustus years did a lot of damage to this country and I bet that’s what this report will show. The CIA engaged in a lot of pointless, and illegal, torture and stuff.
Marcy’s first Intercept piece is now up: The White House Has Been Covering Up the Presidency’s Role in Torture for Years.
Lotsa tea, BooMan!
With lemon, honey, and booze!
Rum is good.
So is vodka.
Wine, preferably, port, is also terrific!
Now, the booze doesn’t do anything, really, but it does make the symptoms more bearable!
Oh, and remember to drink plenty of water as well – because alcohol dehydrates you.
But why don’t we start with the Constitution? You know, separation of powers, checks and balances, Bill of Rights and so forth? Start working toward a solution from that base and see where we go.
Instead, we’re almost surely going to start from the place where the most pants-wettingest folks join hands with the most devious and underhanded people in government. From there, the narrative will disappear behind a very large, very opaque screen emblazoned with “NATIONAL SECURITY,” and the result (at least, what’s seen of it) will be wrapped up in a very small box that the public will be assured represents all we can be allowed to know about these expenditures of our tax dollars, and the deeds carried out in our names.
I think a war between the Senate and the CIA might be the best thing that can happen. We’ve suffered too much from them being on friendly terms.
If anybody’s been telling any sort of truth at all here, which I realize is a long shot, Brennan was sent to the CIA with instructions to begin its reform from rogue paramilitary to the old-fashioned idea of an intelligence agency. Congress didn’t help when they refused funding to move the CIA drone program to the Pentagon, evidently under pressure that could hardly have been from Brennan but must have been from some of those wicked old spooks that don’t want to get reformed. But now that Senator Feinstein got mad, maybe they will get with the program. Watch and see: if I’m right Obama will find some way of getting on board. Brennan, however, will not alienate the wicked ones by coming out publicly against them.
“If anybody’s been telling any sort of truth at all here, which I realize is a long shot, Brennan was sent to the CIA with instructions to begin its reform from rogue paramilitary to the old-fashioned idea of an intelligence agency.”
I can well believe he was. But how the fuck do you do that? It’s practically impossible. Kind of like taking over a criminal gang and making them law-abiding citizens.
Better men than he have tried to reform the rogue paramilitaries and failed. Look at what happened to JFK. Look at what happened to Nixon. Look what happened to Jimmy Carter.
To even have a hope of doing that, a DCI has to have their respect. To have their respect he has to defend them when the chips are down. And that’s exactly what he’s doing. Of course that hardly leads to reform.
Frankly, the best success was achieved by congress during the 70s. Church Committee, HSCA, stuff like that. But then came Reagan, Bush I, the Neocons, Bush II. They were in their element again. I think the separation of powers gives reform some muscle. It’s long overdue.
Hard to think that the most rogue=i-est guy, one with close attachments to Saudi Arabia, could be seen as the best to de-rogue the CIA. Likely Brennan was sent to Director CIA in order to physically get him out of the water cooler conversations at the White House.
And to reward him for having removed Petraeus from CIA.
Obama doesn’t see him that way. There’s a pretty yucky side to this (the way they were prayer partners in developing the drone-bomb kill list, and Brennan quoted speaking about Obama in the awful flattery language that used to be devoted to Bush, “I tend to do what I think is right. But I find much more comfort, I guess, in the views and values of this president”), but who knows.
Look for people to have accidents. How many people close to the JFK assassination had accidents? Maybe JFK had an accident.
I assume that is why Feinstein made sure her statements drew lots of attention. She wants everyone to know that she took on the CIA, just in case…