Will There Ever Be Accountability For The CIA? Don't Be Silly

The redacted, but still horrifying, Torture Report that the Senate Intelligence Committee released Tuesday, isn't the same as the stunning revelations that Senator Mark Udall made on the Senate floor yesterday. The disclosure of portions of an internal CIA review, the so-called Panetta Review, by Udall was absolutely riveting-- and stunning. The review backs up the Senate report and puts to the lie all the Cheney, Yoo, Hayden apologist palaver dominating corporate media since the release Tuesday. This is the document-- which Udall called a "smoking gun"-- the CIA was trying to steal when it illegally hacked into Senate computers in January.

The CIA has insisted the Panetta Review stay secret, since it contradicts all the blatant, calculated lies propagated and systematically spread by the John Brennan and the other avatars of the Surveillance State. What disturbs these people most is that the Panetta Review clearly shows that the CIA and Brennan consistently and consciously lied to Congress, the president, and the public on the efficacy of its coercive techniques and it identifies dozens of documents based on these lies that were used to justify torture. Timelines make it clear that the use of torture wasn't useful in helping the CIA acquire any actionable information and it shows that the CIA was torturing people willy-nilly, including innocent people with no information whatsoever. "Director Brennan and the CIA today," intoned Udall, "are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture. In other words, the CIA is lying." He reiterated his demand that Brennan resign or be fired.

To date, there has been no accountability for the CIA’s actions or for Director Brennan’s failure of leadership. Despite the facts presented, the president has expressed his “full confidence” in Director Brennan, and demonstrated that trust by making no effort at all to rein him in. The president stated that it wasn’t “appropriate” for him to wade into the issues between the Committee and the CIA.

The White House has not led on this issue in the manner we expected when we heard the president’s campaign speeches in 2008 and read the executive order he issued in January 2009. To CIA employees in April 2009, President Obama said, “What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard-- not just when it’s easy; even when we are afraid and under threat-- not just when it’s expedient to do so. That’s what makes us different.”

This tough, principled talk set an important tone for the beginning of his presidency. However, fast forward to this year, after so much has come to light about the CIA’s barbaric programs, and President Obama’s response was that we “crossed a line” as a nation, and that, quote, “hopefully, we don’t do it again in the future.”

That’s not good enough. We need to be better than that. There can be no cover-up. There can be no excuses. If there is no moral leadership from the White House helping the public understand that the CIA’s torture program wasn’t necessary and didn’t save lives or disrupt terrorist plots, then what’s to stop the next White House and CIA Director from supporting torture?

To students of history this should all sound very, very familiar-- nauseatingly so. In his new book, The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein wrote extensively about both the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House delving into the same kind of CIA malfeasance 40 years ago. Does this sound vaguely familiar? It's what Church appended to his committee's report and was basically most of what the media covered about that report:

"The committee does not believe that the acts which it has examined represent the real American character... They do not reflect the ideals which have given the people of this country and of the world hope for a better, fuller, fairer life. We regard the assassination plots as aberrations." (He did not note that the "aberrations" spanned two decades and spanned four presidential administrations.) "The United States," he continued, "must not adopt the tactics of the enemy." He concluded, "Despite our distaste for what we have seen, we have great faith in this country. The story is sad, but this country has the strength to hear this story and to learn from it. We must remain a people who confront our mistakes and resolve not to repeat them. If we do not, we will decline, but if we do, our future will be worthy of the best of our past."

There was no accountability and America ignored-- or discredited-- the revelations rather than confronting them. The CIA denied everything and, according to Walter Mondale (D-MN), used a system "clearly designed for fog-- to hide responsibility and prevent anyone from ever being called to account." Today the criminals don't even bother to hide. Cheney and his crew are front and center, still lying, still strutting around proud of their work... still not called to account.