Last week, seven former directors of the Central
Intelligence Agency, who made their own contributions
to the CIA’s low esteem over the past
35 years, asked President Barack Obama to make
sure there is no criminal investigation of the
crimes associated with the Agency’s detentions
and interrogations policies over the past eight
years.
Their letter to the president is particularly
self-serving for three of the directors (Michael
Hayden, Porter Goss, and George Tenet), who
would presumably be the subject of any investigation,
and simply self-aggrandizing for the others
(John Deutch, James Woolsey, William Webster,
and James Schlesinger), whose stewardship of
the CIA since the early 1970s has contributed
to the Agency’s loss of influence and
credibility.
The key to managing a complex organization such
as the CIA is based on the integrity and competence
of the director and his senior management. These
traits were certainly lacking during the two
decades these “magnificent seven”
were at the helm.
The letter itself represents a stunning display
of irrelevance and wrong-headedness. The former
directors argue, for example, that any reopened
investigation would damage the intelligence
community’s ability to obtain cooperation
of foreign intelligence agencies.
In fact, the opposite is the case. Foreign intelligence
agencies have been holding back their liaison
activities and their cooperation with the CIA
because of the crimes associated with secret
prisons, torture and abuse, and extraordinary
renditions. It is quite unbelievable that CIA
leaders decided to compromise the governments
and intelligence services of the European community
by locating secret prisons and using logistical
facilities within their borders. It is very
unlikely that any member of the European Union
will cooperate with such CIA activities in the
future.
The seven directors argue predictably that career
prosecutors have already investigated the relevant
cases where “Agency officers appeared
to have acted beyond their existing legal authorities,”
but with the exception of a prosecution of a
CIA contractor there was a determination that
prosecutions were not warranted. They do not
mention that a political appointee in the Bush
administration, Paul McNulty, was responsible
for these decisions and they do not refer to
the unconscionable politicization of the Bush
administration’s Justice Department.
Finally, the letter argues that any criminal
investigation would “seriously damage
the willingness” of intelligence officers
to “take risks to protect the country.”
This is arrant nonsense! One of the reasons
why the CIA had to resort to independent contractors,
particularly former military officers and enlisted
men, to staff secret prisons and conduct torture
and abuse was because of the opposition of professional
intelligence officers to the policies of the
Bush administration. An investigation would
not compromise the national security interests
of the United States, although it would cause
grave embarrassment to those who carried out
these policies and would perhaps guarantee that
these actions would never again be permitted.
It is also worthwhile to examine those individuals
who signed the letter to the president. Jim
Schlesinger abolished the Office of National
Estimates, the most prestigious Agency department
for intelligence analysis, because of its independence
and created a group of National Intelligence
Officers who would be more responsive to the
policy demands of the White House and the National
Security Council.
Upon arrival at the CIA in 1973, he assembled
the CIA’s Soviet analysts and told them
to “stop fucking Richard Nixon.”
Judge William Webster obstructed the Walsh investigation
of Iran-Contra, particularly the case against
a high-ranking operations officer who was responsible
for illegal arms deliveries to the Contras.
The officer was indicted by a Grand Jury for
making false statements and obstructing the
investigations of the CIA’s Inspector
General as well as the work of the Tower Commission,
but the case was dismissed after Webster refused
to release necessary documents.
Jim Woolsey and John Deutch were short-lived
directors who weakened the Agency’s role
in collecting intelligence and conducting analysis
in the key fields of arms control and international
terrorism. Woolsey’s unwillingness to
punish any of the eleven senior officers who
were responsible for allowing Aldrich Ames,
the notorious long-spy for the Soviet Union,
to move into sensitive clandestine positions
over a ten-year period led the Clinton administration
to force his resignation.
Deutch’s security breaches at the CIA
included the compromise of the most sensitive
clandestine operations of the directorate of
operations. Deutch had introduced sensitive
intelligence to his home computer that had been
used for accessing pornographic sites, but he
blamed others in the household for the compromise.
Tenet, Goss, and Hayden were directly involved
in the decision-making that led to the creation
of secret prisons in Europe, Southwest Asia,
and the Far East; the use of torture and abuse;
and the rendition of individuals who were guilty
of no crimes against the United States. Tenet,
moreover, was directly responsible for the false
intelligence given to the White House to support
the use of force authorization against Iraq
in 2002 as well as the phony speech given by
Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United
Nations in 2003.
Goss worked assiduously to cover-up the 9/11
accountability report of the CIA’s Inspector
General. His handpicked executive secretary,
the third highest position at the CIA, was Kyle
“Dusty” Foggo, who is currently
serving a jail sentence for steering Agency
contracts to a lifelong friend who bribed former
congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham.
Hayden entered the CIA under a cloud because,
as director of the National Security Agency,
he approved the warrantless eavesdropping program
that began after 9/11. And he left the CIA under
a cloud this year because of his success in
compromising the work of the Office of the Inspector
General.
President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder
must ignore the efforts of the former CIA directors
and many others to find the truths that would
be part of any investigation of activities that
went beyond any legal authority. Twenty-five
years ago, CIA director William Casey tried
to cover-up crimes that were committed in the
remote El Salvadoran village of El Mozote. Eventually
the Salvadoran government established a Truth
Commission to investigate the crimes that had
been dismissed by the Reagan administration.
Today, the United States needs to create a Truth
Commission to understand the crimes that were
committed over the past decade.
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
