Certainly, the Senate Select Committee on Torture's report detailing the nature and severity of CIA torture methods has created a media firestorm. Interestingly, you are not seeing responses lined up on strictly partisan lines. Instead, both the left and the right have had a mixed response to the contents of the report.
Senator Claire McCaskill, who championed publishing this report before the start of the new Republican controlled Congress, supported the findings being made public. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry urged consideration for the safety of operators in the field, but this hardly constituted a stiff resistance to the publishing of the report.
Outgoing Senator Mark Udall, on the other hand, ranted on the Senate floor that the report did not go far enough.
The President of the ACLU, anticipating no action to prosecute those guilty of committing crimes, has urged a Presidential Pardon in the spirit of shaming those responsible. Others have very clearly stated that they will not be satisfied unless prosecutions are brought forth.
On the right, there is less diversity in response, but still a rather remarkable disparity considering the charges and they being made against a Republican administration.
Some, like POW and torture-recipient John McCain, have denounced the torture methods as not only ineffective, but unbecoming of the what the United States of America is supposed to represent.
Other conservative responses are more troubling. In the same segment former Bush spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace claimed that releasing this report would endanger operators in the field, while also stating that ravenous murderers like ISIS need no further motivation to desire a strike against the United States. This is a clearly non-nonsensical argument. Even more troubling, Administration officials who have come out to defend their torture policies, notably Former Vice President Dick Cheney, are not only defensive but defiant in the face of even critical questioning. In what will certainly go down in history as an infamous statement, Cheney said he would "do it again in a minute."
This should be exceptionally concerning to anyone who has interest in the functioning of our government, our laws and our democracy. What has been undeniably proven is that the Bush Administration broke the law torturing people, using ineffective techniques that provided ineffective intelligence. They not only lied about the intelligence, giving Millennials their very own Viet-Nam, costing thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and priceless reputation, they lied about how it was obtained.
The history of the CIA is, naturally, shrouded in mystery. It has no shortage of critics, legitimate and otherwise. In criticizing it's role in the history of the last 60+ years, it is critically important to not overstate the breadth of their influence. Agitators are quick to blame every piece of bad news on the CIA, which is not only moronic but muddles the water in terms of legitimate criticisms.
But we have here, at this moment, a unique opportunity to assess and reform the role the CIA plays in policy making, at home and abroad. And, when taking into account its complete history, filled with lies murder and deception on a truly global scale, it is also important not to UNDERstate the critical role it has played in guiding United States policy since its inception in 1949.
The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1949 during the Truman Administration as a way to covertly combat the spread of Communism in Europe. It's first director, Allen Dulles, was a Wall Street Lawyer who was thrust into intelligence as head of the OSS office in Berlin. An ambitious man with unscrupulous Nazi ties, the CIA under Dulles quickly expanded into the world of operational missions. It's first notable success in this capacity was orchestrating the coup in Nicaragua in 1954, with Watergate plummer E. Howard Hunt directing native forces supported by CIA proxies.
Under the auspices of the Truman Doctrine, these expansions in operational capability became a trademark of anti-Soviet policy. It also allowed Presidential Administrations to make politically favorable decisions without having the fallout of taking Americans to war, or in many cases of the public even knowing what they were doing.
The Agency, however, began to be exposed as a less than perfect anti-Soviet outfit as the country transitioned from Eisenhower, a career military man, to John F. Kennedy, whose experiences in the White House would profoundly effect his policy decisions.
Kennedy was bred to be a hawk. His campaign rhetoric, and much of his Presidential rhetoric before the Cuban Missile Crisis, is indicative of this. But Cuba changed everything for Kennedy, and most importantly his relationship with the CIA.
This particular subject is a touchy one still, with terabytes of disinformation and straight lies to be found anywhere you look. But after 51 years, we have enough of an accurate picture to make some definitive statements about the Bay of Pigs and its aftermath.
The CIA was attempting to corner Kennedy into an invasion. Their plan to storm the beaches with Cuban exiles was never supposed to work without conventional military support, and it's questionable if anything short of a full-scale invasion would have defeated Castro as the "uprising" this attack was supposed to spark never actually happened. When Kennedy realized this, he ordered no air support and the attack failed. His relationship with the CIA would never be the same.
Kennedy fired Allen Dulles, American super spy and CIA godfather, threatening to break the CIA into a thousand pieces. The mutual distrust between Kennedy and the war-mongers was obviously strained to a further degree by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy's cool head not only proved his mettle on the world stage, it literally prevented nuclear war. Castro had nuclear weapons deployed with commanders who had the authority to use them if they were attacked, as was the intent of the military authorities prodding the President towards a first strike.
A year later, the President had his head was blown off in Dallas.
I won't focus too much on Kennedy, although his assassination is perhaps the single most important event of the 20th century. 51 years later, the culprits have come into focus.
E. Howard Hunt, of Watergate fame, on his death bed, admitted to being in Dallas on the day Kennedy was assassinated. J. Edgar Hoover had a personal file on Lee Harvey Oswald in 1960. Oswald was an intelligence agent, sent to Russia as part of a false defector program run by future CIA chief Richard Helms. When he returned, he was worked into the Dallas area by George de Mohrenschildt, a White Russian and CIA asset living in Dallas. De Mohrenschildt gave Oswald the job at the Texas School Book Depository.
One fingerprint was found in the 6th floor of th TSB -- that of Malcolm Wallace, a man known for doing dirty work for future President Lyndon Baynes Johnson.
We are still lied to, to this day, about the head shot. It came from the front, from the grassy knoll. There were 4 or 5 shots, not 3. A third shooter from the Daltex building lines up perfectly with the trajectory of the first shot, blowing the insane, idiotic magic bullet theory out of the water.
But as important to cracking this case as the murder is the cover up. Documents regarding Oswald's connections with the intelligence community were withheld from the public. It not only indicated complicity at a government level, it also eliminates groups like the KGB and the Mafia from being the ultimate culprits.
Had any of these pieces of information been available at the time, this conversation might have been different. But it has taken over 50 years to compile what I consider to be incontrovertible evidence that the CIA, marshaled by their erstwhile director Allen Dulles, plotted and executed the assassination of President Kennedy. It also brings into question further assassinations in the 1960's, most notably those of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. I will touch on those subjects another time.
One month later, former President Harry Truman wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled: "Limit CIA Role To Intelligence", never anticipating that this organization would turn into a policy making and militarily active part of the government. The Washington Post, as the result of prodding from Allen Dulles, published a false repudiation.
This is a turning point. We allowed the story to stick, and allowed the world to keep spinning. This dynamic opened the floodgates of intelligence operations that have stained our reputation ever since.
Did you know that the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened? Thank them for Viet Nam.
Iran-Contra, a nice little story that packs every illegal and immoral thing the CIA has ever done into one package.
They at the very least failed to catch on to the September 11th plots, and then demanded to have more responsibilities as a result.
This is insanity.
The cabal of intelligence operatives and their wall street backers, a fluid system where people move back and forth as it suits them, has done enough damage to this country.
No more can we accept that things are done in our name secretly for national security. No more can we accept plausible deniability as an answer for intelligence failures, lapses, or purposeful misinformation.
Look at the news today. We had a shooter kill 6 people in Pennsylvania, and the American networks instead chose to cover the nut in Australia. As the shooter is active.
What does that tell you?
It tells me that the IC is on a full press PR campaign, and we can't let them pull the hood over again.
John Brennan recently made mention of sweeping organization changes to the CIA, breaking it into regional-based operations groups.
President Obama can secure his legacy, and the legacy of a slain President, by following through on the promise of John Kennedy 51 years ago. Dismantle this monster we call the CIA, and limit their role to their mandate -- gathering intelligence.
