The Washington Post’s David Ignatius
simply cannot get off the wheel he spins for
the Central Intelligence Agency. Only two days
after the release of the 2004 CIA study of the
detention and interrogation program, which provides
sordid and sadistic details of an illegal and
immoral program, Ignatius still opposes any
criminal review of the conduct of CIA officers
and echoes the CIA line that it is “glad
to be out” of the interrogation business.
He even cites deputy director of the CIA, Stephen
Kappes, one of the key ideological drivers for
the policy of detention and interrogation, as
someone who “doesn’t want to have
anything to do with interrogation.”
Ignatius strongly believes that it is time
for the CIA to “get on with it,”
which was the signature line of former CIA director
Richard Helms, who Ignatius considers the “savviest
spymaster this country has produced.”
Let’s forget that Helms lied to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in 1973 on the overthrow
of the elected government in Chile and that
a grand jury was called to see if he should
be indicted for perjury.
Let’s forget that the Justice Department
brought a lesser charge against Helms, who pleaded
nolo contendere, and was fined $2,000 and given
a two-year suspended prison sentence. And let’s
forget that Helms was the major supporter of
James Jesus Angleton, the crazed head of CIA
counterintelligence for 20 years, who believed
that the KGB had successfully penetrated the
Agency.
We called Angleton “The Ghost”
when I was at the CIA because no one had ever
seen the man. And it was “The Ghost”
who befriended Kim Philby, the Soviet spy from
British intelligence, introduced him to high-level
CIA officials, and defended him to the end.
So much for counterintelligence.
In his efforts to prevent any investigation
of the CIA’s interrogation program, Ignatius
has also forgotten the lessons of the Nuremberg
Trials in 1945-1946. The International Tribunal
taught us that crimes committed by individuals
for state purposes were the responsibility of
those individuals and punishable by state law.
And, most importantly, following orders was
not a defense. But Ignatius believes that all
of the relevant evidence on torture and abuse
was seen by “career prosecutors, who decided
against bringing cases.” So, let’s
forget that the career prosecutors were employed
by the politicized Justice Department of the
Bush administration and that they reported to
a politically-appointed assistant attorney general.
Ignatius believes that investigation and accountability
will hurt the Agency. It will actually restore
the credibility of the Agency and lead to greater
cooperation from important foreign intelligence
services, which is essential to combating terrorism
and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
It was CIA crimes such as secret prisons and
extraordinary renditions that hurt the Agency,
and led to reticence about sharing intelligence.
For example, there is no intelligence service
within the European Union that would assist
in a rendition by the CIA; no EU country that
would permit the CIA to transport a prisoner
by aircraft; no EU country that would agree
to a secret prison or “black site”
within its borders.
Ignatius also reveals that he knows nothing
about loyal dissent. He argues that “questioning
presidential orders isn’t really the job”
of the CIA leadership, “especially when
those orders are backed by Justice Department
legal opinions.” This country has fought
two unnecessary wars in the past 45 years with
the deaths of more than 60,000 American men
and women simply because high-level officials
failed to expose the deceptions and manipulations
of the Johnson and Bush administrations.
In supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Ignatius and the Washington Post appear enamored
with U.S. military power, with the Post providing
few opportunities for contrarian voices to be
heard. The mainstream media, particularly the
Post, has been far too complacent in holding
the Bush and Obama administration’s feet
to the fire in the case of these wars.
Finally, Ignatius claims that the CIA resorted
to independent contractors for help in “waterboarding”
and assassination programs because of a lack
of expertise. In fact, the CIA turned to outside
help in these egregious areas because it was
trying to avoid accountability and there was
internal resistance to both programs. There
were many officers in the National Clandestine
Service opposed to the renditions and detentions
program; the Office of Medical Service had serious
problems with the waterboarding program, which
is outlined in the 2004 Inspector General Program.
Presumably, there were some greybeards around
who mentioned that resorting to Blackwater to
run an assassination program resembled the CIA’s
contacts with the Mafia in the early 1960s to
kill Castro. The CIA assassination program led
to the Church Commission hearings in the 1970s,
which placed restrictions on covert action programs
and created a congressional oversight process
that has fallen into disarray.
It is unbelievable that Ignatius could read
the chilling and appalling 2004 IG report and
not temper some of his views. His continued
support of the CIA points to fanaticism and
reminds me of Stalin’s reference to Western
journalists who defended Soviet policy—he
called them “useful idiots.”
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy and adjunct
professor of government at Johns Hopkins University,
is The Public Record’s National Security
and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years
with the CIA, the National War College, and
the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of
Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
Copyright 2009 The Public
Record
