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11 December, 2007
CYAIt shouldn’t be a great surprised that the CIA lied about having video tapes of agents interrogating terrorism suspects. They used so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques that any ordinary citizen would consider torture. In their defense, the CIA was assured by the Bush administration that their interrogations were legal and constitutional. One must think, though, that the average CIA agent is intelligent enough to know which branch of government has the power to determine the legality and constitutionality of a policy. Of course they knew. That’s why they destroyed the tapes. Individual agents might plead that they were just following orders, but they would have a legitimate gripe against their superiors for ordering them to do something of questionable lawfulness. The evidence that would have held individuals responsible has been destroyed. We may discover the fact of torture, but any possibility of justice has been erased. The House and Senate Intelligence Committees are summoning the current CIA director Michael Hayden to face the music.(1) Democratic Rep Silvestre Reyes of Texas has promised an investigation. The Justice Department is getting in on the action, too. I suspect that the investigation will be mainly focused on the cover-up rather than the torture. It would be a rough slog to prove that individual agents broke the law, and the political leaders who directed them will be protected by sovereign immunity. The investigation still has a value: it allows the American people to know what their government is doing in their name. The videotapes in question were not made under Hayden’s regime. The chief of the agency’s Clandestine Service, Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., was promoted by then-CIA Director Porter Goss.(2) It was apparently Rodriguez who ordered the destruction of the tapes. There is wide suspicion that Rodriguez either received instructions from higher-ups, or informed his superiors of his actions. Who knew and when did they know? If the Bush administration’s track record holds true, Rodriguez will be the scapegoat. Senior-level administrators will have their reputations slightly tarnished, but they’ll still collect their pensions. Ask Scooter Libby.(3) There are a lot of groups that have a dog in this fight. The CIA memo that divulged the destruction of the tapes implied that they were no longer “relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries”(4) That was not exactly true. There had been numerous requests for the tapes. Rep Peter Hoekstra, the then-chair of the Intelligence Committee, said he was never informed that the tapes existed or that they were destroyed.(5) The 9/11 commission also requested the tapes, but were similarly kept in the dark. This kind of obfuscation is precisely why voters elected the Democratic congress in 2006. After six years of lies and careful omissions, the majority of Americans are demanding honesty and openness. For his part, George W. Bush claims to have “no recollection” of the tapes’ existence.(6) Once again, Bush shows himself to be Reaganesque. Just last week he forgot that he was informed in August of Iran’s possible suspension of their nuclear program, two months before invoking fears of “World War III.”(7) We could blame Reagan’s memory lapses on senility. Bush isn’t old enough to use that excuse. The revelations about Iran and the CIA’s torture tapes are symptoms of a broader culture of deceit in Washington. The Bush regime has invoked the war on terrorism as a justification for all manner of covert action. Their logic is simple: terrorists are bad; therefore everything that is done against terrorists must be good. The secret prisons, the warrantless wiretaps, the cherry-picking of evidence before invading Iraq—they are all actions of an administration that considers itself above the law. It may seem ironic that Regressive politicians who dislike government intrusion could engineer such an intrusive and abusive set of policies. It is less ironic, though, when you consider the Regressives want government out of public matters, where most of us would agree that it belongs, but they want it involved in private matters, where most of us would prefer that it stay out. Perhaps more ironic is the fact that a Regressive Republican government is using some of the same tactics that the hated Soviet Union used during the Cold War. There are democratic issues at the heart of this scandal. The government belongs to the American people. We must choose who will make our laws, and who will carry them out. We cannot make an informed decision if the facts are hidden from us. We have a right to know if our government is torturing people. We may not have a right to every detail of intelligence material, but we do have a right to truthful answers to our basic questions. Anything the government does is done in our name. When the government locks people away in secret prisons, or renders detainees to countries that torture then, it sullies your name and mine. Come quickly, 2008 elections.
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