CIA News

CIA Misled Congress:

Eric Alterman writes in 'When Presidents Lie,' "Given that we have become familiarized to a culture in which everyday biased lies are taken for settled, it is nevertheless remarkable to what scale presidential lies have shaped our postwar account."(1) The behind cast of characters behind these lies, and in some cases the main performer, to say the least, has been the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Highly politicized and corrupt intelligence officers can betray the American people, resulting in not deliberate and horrific penalty, just as easily as a president. If the CIA's rationale, formed in 1947 after World War II to prevent another Pearl Harbor, was to be a peacetime civilian organization to exclusively collect information from around the world and recommend the president on national security issues, (2) then it has failed glumly. (Recall the Bay of Pigs fiasco.) It was surprised (and disappointed) at the collapse of the Berlin Wall and failed to put off the attacks on Sept 11, 2001. The CIA has also toppled democracies, instituted torture, and manipulated historical trial for its own political and commercial welfare.
When the royally Media pounced on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's blame that she was misled by the CIA in 2002 about the use of agony, the new CIA director Leon Panetta issued this proclamation, "It is not our policy or perform to mislead Congress" and that it "...is against our laws and our morals." Republicans unleashed a verbal onslaught against Pelosi calling her negligent and outrageous. They claimed her indictment was going to damage the brave men and women fighting the war against fright. (As if they have not been spoiled already!) The current dispute should not only be about one lounge, but the thousands of lies the CIA has devoted. While promoting volatility and terror around the world, it has overlooked the Constitution's rule in separating the power to declare war from the power to engage in uses of forces. (3) Following World War II pending now, the president, with the sponsorship of the CIA, has sent troops overseas to fight five major wars, (Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan), as well as over one-hundred period in lesser known conflicts. Along with an royally president, America has inborn an regal CIA!
In his book 'Rogue State,' William Blum has recorded how the CIA has co-existed with anguish for decades.(4) During the late 1940's, the CIA bent a new internal security agency, KYP, to carry out the use of torture on suspect in Greece, Turkey, Italy, and Germany. The CIA formed the SAVAK in the 1950's to help keep the Shah of Iran in rule. It developed new torture technique such as a head screw, a thick whip, and how to extract information from women by means of physical abuse. In Vietnam, electrical shock to genitals of both men and women, along with the addition of a six-inch dowel tap into the brain, were used too. This organized use of torture was repetitive after the CIA overthrew democratically elected governments and popular movements in Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines, Nepal, Lebanon, Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, and many other parts of the world.
For a quantity of in Congress, America's crush and the loss of thousands of U.S. troops in Vietnam was a get up call. So was the revelation that the CIA had run prohibited covert operations against U.S. citizens. After learning too the CIA infiltrate and disrupt peace groups, spied on U.S. citizens and opened their mail, thespian mind control experiments, wiretapped phones, and retaliate against anti-war activists, the Church search, War Powers Act (despite President Richard Nixon's veto), and the Clark Amendment tried to border presidential and CIA abuse of force. Congress traditional oversight committees to monitor CIA activity and to be kept conversant on intelligence matters. (5) This annoyed many in the CIA, including George Bush, Sr. and Robert Gates. It also proved useless. In Crockett v. Reagan (President Ronald Reagan sent U.S. forces to El Salvador without congressional approval.), Conyers v. Reagan (Reagan invaded Grenada.), Lowry v. Reagan (Reagan sent forces to the Persian Gulf to escort ships and attack Iranian ships.), and Dellums v. Bush (Bush, Sr. sent U.S. troops to open a war against Iraq depriving Congress of its legitimate powers.), Congress lost each battle. (6)
The Iran-Contra Affair in the 1980's, where the CIA secretly and illicitly armed and funded the Contras to stage terrorist operation in Nicaragua, revealed and proved that it had not fully briefed Congress and had as an alternative, lied. At the same time, the CIA and hundreds of its proxy organizations have manipulated elections around the globe and in the U.S. In 1968, CIA neo-conservatives worked closely with Nixon to dislocate the Democrat's peace efforts in Vietnam. They promised a better plan to the North and then failed to deliver by growing the war. Some of the same hawkish ideologues purposively withheld important information from President Jimmy Carter about Iran's Islamic Revolution and then, worked closely with Reagan to secure a win in 1980. Again, and unbeknownst to Congress and the American people, the Iran-Contra Affair showed the CIA thoroughly lied about the "arms for hostages" deals and was illegally transporting and selling drugs to buy weapons to fund paramilitary groups. The Death Squad Democrats were no superior!
Some officials in the CIA have become so politicized that they have even acted alongside and contradicted their own government, counting the president. For example, some members of the CIA continued to fight the civil war in Angola against executive authority. The CIA also skirted the Boland Amendment, which by law necessary congressional approval to fund the Contras in their war alongside the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. (7) More recently, a number of CIA officials supported faulty intelligence estimates surrounding Iraq's armaments of mass destruction. Former CIA Director George Tennant assured then-President George W. Bush that the facts for a anticipatory war with Saddam Hussein amounted to a "slam dunk" case. (He first denied making this comment and then later claimed it was taken out of context.) It is now known that former Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were using the CIA and their afflict techniques for political gains, in trying to create a sham link between al Qaeda and Hussein.
When the CIA was first created, its role in domestic affairs was restricted for fear of a police state. Congressional inaction, a listless public, and the CIA's control, manipulation and politicization of intelligence information and briefings has established just this: a police state, at least in the monarchy of perception! In light of the CIA's agonized past, repeated lies, and abuse of force that has backfired, and when Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 giving the CIA the restricted right to conduct covert action operations of "special activities,"(8) the CIA has twisted a police world. In the end, the U.S. has more somber problems than the wrangle between Pelosi and the CIA. During the Iran-Contra scandal Reagan said, "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that are true, but the facts and the data telling me it is not." Was it a counsel to America that sometimes organizations can be collectively more dangerous than an entity, even the president? The only remedy in stopping this Covert Invasion Army (CIA) may ultimately be its impeachment and for right and patriotic CIA officials to become Conscientious Intelligent Objectors.