Obama's torture bind

[florida08]

By John Sifton
April 14 2009

As the CIA digs in against criminal prosecutions, Obama must decide: Does he alienate the agency or push for justice?

The pressure seems to be getting to CIA Director Leon Panetta. On Monday night, a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross detailing CIA torture and detention practices during the Bush administration was published by the New York Review of Books. In an article for The Daily Beast on April 8, I wrote that Panetta’s position against the investigation and prosecution of those potentially guilty of criminal activity is compromised because a number of his top aides are implicated in the torture program. The following day, April 9, possibly in response to the growing furor, Panetta sent a letter to CIA employees, referring to the “continuing media and congressional interest in reviewing past rendition, detention, and interrogation activities that took place dating back to 2002,” including issues involving the involvement of private contractors in CIA activities.

In short, Panetta’s letter to CIA employees simply doesn’t make sense. Is he really aware of what is actually going on?

In his letter, Panetta outlines the agency’s “current policy regarding interrogation of captured terrorists,” stating: “Under the Executive Order, the CIA does not employ any of the enhanced interrogation techniques that were authorized by the Department of Justice from 2002 to 2009.” He also declares: “CIA officers do not tolerate, and will continue to promptly report, any inappropriate behavior or allegations of abuse.” He seems defensive.

Panetta also makes the following interesting statement: “CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites. I have directed our agency personnel to take charge of the decommissioning process and have further directed that the contracts for site security be promptly terminated. It is estimated that our taking over site security will result in savings of up to $4 million.”

This is a strange set of claims and it is difficult to know how to parse them. Panetta seems to be saying that “there are no sites,” that “we’ve submitted a plan to close the sites,” and that “we’re closing the sites” all at the same time. But then he also makes it sound as though the CIA is “taking charge” of the sites from contractors, and that “taking over” the sites will save $4 million, suggesting they’re being kept open for the time being. (From where comes the $4 million in savings? If the sites are being closed, isn’t the money saved anyway?) Each of his statements seems to contradict the last. At a later point in the note, Panetta writes, “CIA retains the authority to detain individuals on a short-term transitory basis.” But where is the agency going to hold them, if the sites are closed? Panetta does not explain.

Perhaps he’s discombobulated. Panetta has increasingly been in the hot seat because of his remarks indicating that he believes no CIA personnel should be investigated for abuse if their actions relied on legal assurances from the Department of Justice—a reference to memos written during the Bush administration by the Office of Legal Counsel, which, through deeply flawed and now repudiated legal analysis, attempted to offer legal justifications for the CIA’s various torture techniques from 2002-2006. (These methods include sleep deprivation, forced standing, and prolonged isolation—methods used by the Soviets and North Koreans—to outright physical assaults, binding or confining prisoners into painful positions, and waterboarding.)

Panetta reiterated the claim on Wednesday in his letter to CIA employees, writing, “Officers who act on guidance from the Department of Justice—or acted on such guidance previously—should not be investigated, let alone punished. This is what fairness and wisdom require.”
.......

It is important to note, however, that “cleaning up the CIA” doesn’t mean a purge. The agency has thousands of officers and directors, and only a few are implicated in the past crimes. In any case, many of the most tainted directors have already left.
.......
Investigations should focus also on high-level executive officers in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) who are still at the agency, for example, G— —, a former deputy to Jose Rodriquez, the chief of CTC back in 2002-2004 and who now enjoys a prestigious CIA station-chief posting in Europe. (I can’t reveal her name or posting; it remains covert. It should also be noted that the former CTC chief of operations also remains at the agency.)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-09/cia-torture-cover-up/full/

[rug]

1. Not a hard question.

[azul]

2. I don't think that I ever really got under whose authority the CIA acts

when it breaks and ignores laws. The president's for ordering missions, the congress's for their oversight and funding, or their own?

Why does the CIA get to break laws, and in secret? That is just the internal threat to democracy that we were supposed to protect against: presidential secret armies that are above the laws.

[florida08]

3. well

I assume they are governed by statutes and executive orders and are overseen by congress but then how do we explain the destruction of the torture tapes showing their interrogations..I don't know. According to Hayden they "posed" a security risk and had no intelligence value which sounds like an admittance that the torture didn't work. According to the AP 92 were destroyed.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96LUS100&show_article=1