Prior to the release of the torture report, the following comments were made:
(various sources, emphasis added)
Mr. Bush and his closest advisers decided that "we're going to want to stand behind these guys," as one former official put it. Mr. Bush made that clear in an interview broadcast on Sunday. "We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the C.I.A. serving on our behalf," he told CNN's Candy Crowley. "These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base." "These are "really good people and we're lucky as a nation to have them," he said. (Another former official, who remains close to Mr. Bush, said the former president did not believe that the C.I.A. had misinformed him.)
Former intelligence officials, seeking allies against the potentially damaging report, have privately reassured the Bush team in recent days that they did not deceive them and have lobbied the former president's advisers to speak out publicly on their behalf. The defense of the program has been organized by former C.I.A. leaders like George J. Tenet and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, two former directors, and John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy C.I.A. director who also served as acting director.
"Once the release occurs, we'll have things to say and will be making some documents available that bear on the case," Mr. McLaughlin said Sunday. Although he could not discuss details because of a nondisclosure agreement, in general he said the report "uses information selectively, often distorts to make its points, and as I recall contains no recommendations." General Hayden added that the former C.I.A. team objected to the Senate's characterization of their efforts. "We're not here to defend torture," he said by email on Sunday. "We're here to defend history." General Hayden appeared earlier on Sunday on "Face the Nation" on CBS News to say that any assertion that the C.I.A. "lied to everyone about a program that wasn't doing any good, that beggars the imagination." "The idea that George Tenet, John McLaughlin, Mike Hayden and Steve Kappes would knowingly mislead the president and the country is absurd," the former official said. Mr. Kappes was another deputy C.I.A. director during the Bush era. "This was not a rogue program. And nobody in our administration is going to throw the C.I.A. over the side on this."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney told the New York Times that claims that the CIA was out of bounds or that the interrogation program was a rogue operations were "a bunch of hooey." "The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program," Cheney said.
***
Sounds like admissions to me, despite the "finding" in the Senate report that the CIA failed to inform the President. I'm looking forward to the new "disclosures."
"All that is necessary for tyranny to succeed is for good men to do nothing." (unknown)
James Tracy: "There is sometimes an undue amount of paranoia among some conspiracy researchers that can contribute to flawed observations and analysis."
Gary Cornwell (Dept. Chief Counsel HSCA): "A fact merely marks the point at which we have agreed to let investigation cease."
Alan Ford: "Just because you believe it, that doesn't make it so."
Drew Phipps Wrote:I wonder how the CIA is going to respond to the inevitable blowback here. Might just be worse than any time since the Bay of Pigs. I wonder if they will just "lay back and think of England" (to borrow a phrase), or if they will attempt to level the playing field a bit, with disclosures of their own, to retain a bit of self-respect. They are, or were (before today), the most powerful intelligence agency in the world.
x
I expect they will ask for moar money and moar powers and moar renditions and moar torture to 'protect' Merka from those who will really hate their freedoms now some pussy senators have been so unpatriotic as to do endanger national security.
I have every confidence that not one architect or even Lieutenant of this hideous policy will be charged with war crimes or any crimes. Obama is already saying 'Let's move forwards not backwards' But not for John Kiriakou. He will definitely pay for daring to expose war rimes.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
...redacted or not, should go a loooooong way to FURTHER enhance the sterling reputation the USA enjoys outside of the 'Heimat'...which has gone from sky high [after WW2] to now believed my most around the World as the greatest danger they personally face to their freedom and lives.....
....sadly, many Americans are rather oblivious to the harm and danger we have been and pose...outside and in....
Also, the International Criminal Court should indict those responsible...but won't for rather obvious reasons. As for internal legal action, I won't hold my breath either. Law now comes out of the barrel of a gun.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
A detainee from Afghanistan is carried on a stretcher before being interrogated by military officials at Camp X-Ray at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, CubaPhoto: LYNNE SLADKY/AP
[/FONT][/COLOR] By Raf Sanchez, Peter Foster, Washington
6:29AM GMT 10 Dec 2014
The Senate report into the CIA's secret torture programmes is clinical and unsparing.
Over the course of a 480-page summary, it lays out in horrifying detail what was done to detainees in secret torture sites around the world. Here are some of the starkest examples:
Detainees were "rectally fed"
At least five prisoners were forced to ingest food or water through their rectums. One detainee, Majid Khan, went on hunger strike and had a "food tray" of pureed hummus, pasta, nuts and raisins forced into his rectum. Khan apparently tried to kill himself by biting his own veins.
In 2012, he pleaded guilty to terror charges in front of a military court at Guantánamo Bay.
Prisoner dies of suspected hypothermia In November 2002, the suspected Afghan militant Gul Rahman was being held at "the Salt Pit", a secret US prison in Afghanistan. Rahman was stripped naked below the waist, chained, and made to sit on a bare concrete floor. He was found dead the next day of suspected hypothermia. 26 of 119 prisoners were wrongfully held Among the people who were wrongly held was Nazar Ali, "an 'intellectually challenged' individual whose taped crying was used as leverage against his family member". Repeated waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003. The report describes how the the simulated drownings caused prisoners to vomit, convulse and pass out. Prisoners deprived of sleep for a week At least five prisoners began to suffer hallucinations because they were so badly deprived of sleep. Two of them were subjected to further sleep deprivation even after their hallucinations began. Russian Roulette An unnamed CIA operative subjected a detainee to a game of Russian Roulette, where a gun was pointed at the prisoner. Prisoner threatened with a drill Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi citizen alleged to have been behind the bombing of the USS Cole, was flown to secret prisons around the world after his capture in 2002. A CIA agent held a pistol near his head and spun a drill at him in an effort to frighten him. Threatening to harm detainees' children and families CIA officers threatened at least three of their prisoners with harm to their families, including a warning that they would sexually abuse one detainee's mother. Playing loud music to give detainees a "sense of hopelessness" Prisoners were subjected loud music - including the "Rawhide" theme from the Blues Brothers movie - and white noise to try to break their spirits. Prisoner handcuffed with his hands above his head for 22 hours at a time Redha al-Najar, a former bodyguard to bin Laden, was handcuffed to a bar above his head and left to hang for 22 hours at a time to "break" his resistance. He was put in a nappy and refused access to the toilet.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Ray McGovern on RT interview yesterday said he had read the official WW2 Gestapo interrogation manual and that the CIA allowable and suggested procedures closely followed these [and he feels were taken from this manual]...in the few places they diverged, the CIA''s mandated even stronger 'enhanced' interrogation methods.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
What comes across strongly to me in the following report (and elsewhere these days too) is how the two sides of US power politics are now so divided that the employees now tell the boss what's going to happen....
Quote:Former CIA directors George Tenet and Michael Hayden and deputy directors John McLaughlin and Steve Kappes, who were guilty of past deceit on sensitive issues, have threatened to make documents available to undermine the findings of the Senate committee.
And
Quote:Jose Rodriquez, like Kappes, was particularly hostile to the statutory IG, John Helgerson, and the work of the OIG on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Rodriquez, who destroyed 92 torture tapes over the objections of the White House...
What they're saying, in effect, is how dare the president reveal secrets we have classified - and fuck you Mr. President, we'll do as we damn well please.
The stunning Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture and other sadistic treatment meted out to "war on terror" detainees has shredded the credibility of CIA apologists who claimed the "enhance interrogations" were carefully calibrated and humane, as ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman explains.
By Melvin A. Goodman
CIA Director John Brennan, having failed to block the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on torture and abuse, is now abetting the efforts of former CIA directors and deputy directors to rebut the report's conclusions that the interrogation techniques amounted to sadism and that senior CIA officials lied to the White House, the Congress, and the Department of Justice about the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation program.
Former CIA directors George Tenet and Michael Hayden and deputy directors John McLaughlin and Steve Kappes, who were guilty of past deceit on sensitive issues, have threatened to make documents available to undermine the findings of the Senate committee. The senior operations officer who ran the CIA's torture and abuse program, Jose Rodriquez, has been permitted to write a book and a long essay in the Washington Post that argue the interrogation techniques were legal and effective. Their charges are completely spurious and their credibility is non-existent.
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right). (White House photo)
CIA directors Tenet and Hayden, who signed off on the enhanced interrogation program, were involved in numerous efforts to politicize the work of the CIA. In addition to deceiving the White House on the efficacy of the torture program, Tenet provided misinformation to the White House on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. His role on Iraqi WMD has been comprehensively and authoritatively documented in the reports of the Robb-Silberman Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
In response to President George W. Bush's demand for intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq, Tenet responded that it would be a "slam dunk" to do so. He resigned from the CIA in 2004 in order to avoid testifying to a series of congressional committees about his perfidy.
General Hayden's record is similarly flawed. Even before taking over the CIA in 2006, Hayden was the director of the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program that began after 9/11. This program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution that prohibits unlawful seizures and searches.
At the CIA, Hayden named John Rizzo as the Agency's general counsel although he knew that Rizzo had been the CIA's leading lawyer in pursuing legal justification for torture and abuse of terrorist suspects. Fortunately, Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, who led the way in making sure that the CIA could not redact key aspects of the torture report, blocked the confirmation of Rizzo, who eventually withdrew his nomination.
Hayden also weakened the Office of the Inspector General, which had been critical of the CIA's renditions and interrogations programs, and even targeted the IG himself, John Helgerson, who had recommended accountability boards for CIA officers involved in the 9/11 intelligence failure, torture and abuse, and illegal renditions.
Deputy directors McLaughlin and Kappes also misled senior U.S. officials on key intelligence issues. McLaughlin, who actually delivered the "slam dunk" briefing to President Bush that CIA Director Tenet had promised, misled Secretary of State Colin Powell on the intelligence that became part of Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 to make the case for war in Iraq.
In addition to perverting the intelligence process, McLaughlin tried to silence the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, who found no evidence of Iraqi WMD. McLaughlin was also a key advocate for the notorious "Curveball," whose phony intelligence on mobile biological laboratories ended up in Powell's speech to the UN. Earlier in his career, McLaughlin had a key role in covering up the efforts of CIA deputy Robert Gates to politicize key intelligence in the 1980s.
Kappes may not have been involved in all of the decisions on torture and abuse and the secret prisons where the sadistic activity took place, but he was totally witting of the program. The Senate report cites the efforts of senior CIA leaders to impede the work of the Office of the Inspector General, and Kappes was a key part of this effort.
Kappess career eventually suffered from briefing the White House on a Jordanian agent who was going to lead the CIA to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri; the agent turned out to be a suicide bomber who decimated the leadership of the most sensitive CIA facility in Afghanistan in 2009.
Jose Rodriquez, like Kappes, was particularly hostile to the statutory IG, John Helgerson, and the work of the OIG on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Rodriquez, who destroyed 92 torture tapes over the objections of the White House, contends that the interrogation techniques were "blessed by the highest legal authorities in the land, conducted by trained professionals, and applied to only a handful of the most important terrorists on the planet." The Senate report puts the lie to all of these contentions.
It is unfortunate that the Obama administration did not appoint a special prosecutor in order to get some accountability for the heinous crimes that were committed by senior CIA officials or the kind of truth and reconciliation committee that has proved useful in East Europe or South Africa where terrible crimes have been committed. Nevertheless, the Senate's authoritative report gives a full description of the unconscionable activities that took place in the name of the United States and offers sufficient evidence to block the outrageous efforts of former CIA directors and deputy directors to deceive the American people. Melvin A. Goodman is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism and the forthcoming The Path to Dissent: The Story of a CIA Whistleblower (City Lights Publishers, 2015).
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
![[Image: share-fb.png]](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/template/ver1-0/i/share-fb.png)
[/TD]![[Image: share-tw.png]](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/template/ver1-0/i/share-tw.png)
[/TD]![[Image: share-p.png]](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/template/ver1-0/i/share-p.png)
[/TD]![[Image: share-in.png]](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/template/ver1-0/i/share-in.png)
[/TD]![[Image: share-share.png]](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/template/ver1-0/i/share-share.png)
[/TD]![[Image: share-email.png]](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/template/ver1-0/i/share-email.png)
[/TD]![[Image: guantanamo_3132492b.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03132/guantanamo_3132492b.jpg)
![[Image: Raf-Sanchez_60_1932308j.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01932/Raf-Sanchez_60_1932308j.jpg)
![[Image: Majid_Khan_-_recta_3133280c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/Majid_Khan_-_recta_3133280c.jpg)
![[Image: dottedLine_2317531a.png]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02317/dottedLine_2317531a.png)
![[Image: Gul_Rahman_-_hypot_3133281c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/Gul_Rahman_-_hypot_3133281c.jpg)
![[Image: intellectually_cha_3133288c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/intellectually_cha_3133288c.jpg)
![[Image: vomiting_3133289c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/vomiting_3133289c.jpg)
![[Image: sleep_deprivation_3133292c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/sleep_deprivation_3133292c.jpg)
![[Image: Russian_roulette_3133295c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/Russian_roulette_3133295c.jpg)
![[Image: al-nashiri_-_drill_3133298c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/al-nashiri_-_drill_3133298c.jpg)
![[Image: harm_3133300c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/harm_3133300c.jpg)
![[Image: music_3133302c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/music_3133302c.jpg)
![[Image: handcuffs_3133303c.jpg]](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03133/handcuffs_3133303c.jpg)
![[Image: tenet-cheney-bush-300x199.jpg]](https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tenet-cheney-bush.jpg)