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SEVEN FORMER CIA HEADS TELL OBAMA NOT TO INVESTIGATE THEIR AGENCY'S CRIMES
Reuters - Seven former heads of the CIA urged President Barack Obama on Friday to end the probe into allegations of abuse of prisoners held by the agency, arguing that it would hamper intelligence operations. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder last month named a prosecutor to examine whether criminal charges should be filed against Central Intelligence Agency interrogators or contractors for going beyond approved interrogation methods, including using a power drill and death threats to scare detainees.
The former CIA chiefs countered that the cases had already been investigated during the Bush administration and lawyers had declined to prosecute all but one contractor.
"This approach will seriously damage the willingness of intelligence officers to take risks to protect the country," they said in the letter. "In our judgment, such risk-taking is vital to success in the long and difficult fight against terrorists who continue to threaten us.". . . The former CIA directors warned that Holder's decision "creates an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy" for those involved and that there was no reason to believe the investigation would be narrowly focused.
They also warned that releasing more details about interrogation methods could help al Qaeda operatives elude U.S. intelligence efforts and plan operations.
"Disclosures about CIA collection operations have and will continue to make it harder for intelligence officers to maintain the momentum of operations that have saved lives and helped protect America from further attacks," they said.
The former CIA chiefs countered that the cases had already been investigated during the Bush administration and lawyers had declined to prosecute all but one contractor.
"This approach will seriously damage the willingness of intelligence officers to take risks to protect the country," they said in the letter. "In our judgment, such risk-taking is vital to success in the long and difficult fight against terrorists who continue to threaten us.". . . The former CIA directors warned that Holder's decision "creates an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy" for those involved and that there was no reason to believe the investigation would be narrowly focused.
They also warned that releasing more details about interrogation methods could help al Qaeda operatives elude U.S. intelligence efforts and plan operations.
"Disclosures about CIA collection operations have and will continue to make it harder for intelligence officers to maintain the momentum of operations that have saved lives and helped protect America from further attacks," they said.
posted by TPR | 11:33 AM
2 Comments:
Another attempt to "protect" the illegal behavior of our government.
Yes, our special patented techniques (which we never use anyway) might include for example a declination of the waterboardee to an angle of 8.5 degrees rather than the world standard of 9 degrees. This super secret recipe is what makes our torture, not really torture.
And if we give away secrets like this, the whole world might explode. Indeed the universe might reverse time and in the process speed it up a zillion fold resulting in our inverting the big bang. If these super secrets are given up, the next day the whole universe would no longer exist. And we certainly can't allow that to happen. /s
Good one, M.
Unfortunately, Americans are so wrapped up in their own little world that for us to worry about torture techniques we would have to have our own people tortured. Maybe then would we understand the pointlessness of information acquired via torture and the effects it can have on human beings. But as long as we are doing the torturing, most Americans seem to be OK with it. And that's what is wrong with America, the double standards in everything from radical ideology to "pre-emptive attacks".
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