The ideological partnership between the Washington
Post and the Central Intelligence Agency is
becoming despicable. For the past several weeks,
the Post has carried a series of editorial and
op-eds that were designed to prevent the release
of the Justice Department memoranda that permitted
the use of CIA torture and abuse and to prevent
any rigorous examination of these practices
that went beyond the permitted guidelines.
Today’s Washington Post carries an op-ed
by CIA Director Leon Panetta that accuses the
congress of seeking “retribution”
from CIA officials who were simply implementing
“presidential decisions.”
Panetta’s views are similar to those
of former director Richard Helms who, in defending
the CIA’s role in overthrowing the elected
government in Chile, said that “we are
all honorable men.” The following year,
Helms was fined $2,000 and given a two-year
suspended prison sentence for lying to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
The Post and Panetta strongly believe that
Washington is too “consumed with what
the CIA did in the past” and that it is
pointless to pursue “disputes over policies
that no longer exist.” However, these
policies and the cover-up of these policies
have compromised the objectivity and independence
of the CIA.
Objective intelligence is needed to enable
policymakers to challenge the polemicists and
alarmists who exaggerate the threats to our
national security. One of the most damaging
exaggerations was the Bush administration’s
drum-beat of fear concerning Iraq’s fictional
arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in the
run-up to the Iraq War.
CIA director George Tenet was in a position
to at least try to educate the Bush administration
with the intelligence that refuted the lies
concerning WMD. Instead, Tenet said that it
would be a “slam dunk” to provide
the phony intelligence to make the case for
war, and his deputy, John McLaughlin, actually
delivered the “slam dunk” briefing
in the White House in January 2003.
Unfortunately, President Obama has made the
journey toward an investigation of torture and
abuse more difficult by appointing Panetta as
CIA director and John Brennan as deputy director
of the National Security Council. Brennan was
a major player in the era of cover-up at the
CIA, serving as Tenet’s executive assistant
and playing a public role in selling renditions
and secret prisons to the media, including the
Washington Post.
Panetta, moreover, has retained the ideological
drivers of these policies, including Steve Kappes,
currently deputy director of the CIA, and Mike
Sulick, chief of the National Clandestine Service.
Panetta takes credit in his op-ed for reporting
a secret assassination program to the congress,
but he has not addressed the fact that Kappes
and Sulick kept the program secret from the
director for more than four months. All four
of these officials tried to stop President Obama
and Attorney General Eric Holder from releasing
the torture memoranda.
Panetta has not named a new Inspector General
for the CIA, although the former IG—John
Helgerson—announced his retirement more
than six months ago. Instead, Panetta has relied
on a weak acting IG who is not up to maintaining
the independence of the office of the IG.
President Obama and Senate intelligence committee
chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., should
find it unacceptable that there is not a statutory
IG in place at the CIA at this delicate juncture.
Helgerson’s departure was particularly
untimely because he was responsible for the
only authoritative study of CIA torture and
abuse and detention policies that documented
the abuse that started before the Justice Department
sanctioned these measures and the torture that
exceeded the permitted guidelines.
Panetta correctly argues that the CIA and the
intelligence community are America’s first
line of defense, but he fails to recognize that
the abusive practices of the CIA have made it
more difficult for foreign intelligence services
to share vital information with their CIA counterparts.
CIA’s detention and interrogation programs
were hidden from foreign intelligence services—and
from our own congressional intelligence committees—and
this has created suspicion and skepticism about
CIA actions and assessments. This has complicated
the task of maintaining credible relations with
our allies in the battle against terrorism and
with our congress in its important constitutional
role of oversight.
Sadly, Panetta’s op-ed suggests that
he is a follower of Stephen Decatur, the naval
commander who won a major victory over the Barbary
pirates in 1816 and celebrated with these words:
“Our country! In her intercourse with
foreign nations, may she always be in the right;
but our country, right or wrong.” Panetta
would serve the country better if he followed
the words of Carl Schurz, a Major General in
the Union Army who was elected to the Senate,
where he proclaimed: “Our country, right
or wrong. When right, it ought to be kept right;
when wrong, to be put right.”
Melvin A. Goodman,a regular contributor
to The Public Record, is senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy and adjunct
professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.
He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army,
the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department
of Defense. His most recent book is “Failure
of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the
CIA.”
Copyright 2009 The Public
Record
