The Disappointing Leon Panetta
Melvin A. Goodman - June 19, 2009 -
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/061909b.htmlEditor’s Note: When President Barack Obama picked former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the CIA, there was hope among reformers that Panetta would lead the way toward cleaning up the spy agency and assessing some accountability for torture and other abuses of the Bush-Cheney era.
Instead, however, Panetta has protected the CIA’s bureaucratic interests and opposed releasing documentary evidence of torture and other crimes, as former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman notes in this guest essay:
CIA Director Leon Panetta is continuing the culture of cover-up that has plagued the Agency for the past three decades, ever since William Casey and Robert Gates collaborated in the 1980s to hide the crimes of Iran-Contra and to politicize sensitive intelligence.
Panetta was expected to introduce an era of transparency and accountability to the CIA, but he has been a major disappointment, refusing to remove any of the senior officials responsible for policies that led to secret prisons, extraordinary renditions, and torture and abuse.
Currently, he is doing the bidding of the most reactionary elements of the CIA by supporting the heavy redaction of the Inspector General’s report of 2004, which is the most authoritative account on record of the Agency’s interrogation practices and the use of torture and abuse against detainees.
In addition to blocking the release of an authoritative version of the IG report, Panetta has established his own review group within the Agency on interrogation practices and has filled it with operational officials from the National Clandestine Service and lawyers from the Office of the General Counsel.
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