The C.I.A.
For more than fifty years the C.I.A. has operated with almost no congressional oversight.
Bush signed a secret executive order authorizing a policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the C.I.A. is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects and transfer them to prisons in countries like Egypt, Syria, or Uzbekistan, where torture is practiced, or to secret C.I.A. prisons outside the U.S. where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.
Michael Scheuer author of “Imperial Hubris” and the former head of the bin Laden unit set up the extraordinary rendition program for the Clinton regime. However, Clinton didn’t allow the C.I.A. to torture the suspects, it was out sourced to the Egyptians, thereby technically not violating the Geneva Convention.
Chalmers Johnson, the author of “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”, insists that we need to rewrite the National Security Act of 1947, taking away all functions from the C.I.A. that involve sabotage, torture, subversion, overseas election rigging, rendition, and other forms of clandestine activity. A president should be deprived of the power to order these types of operations except with the explicit advice and consent of the Senate. The C.I.A. should devote itself to the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. We should eliminate as much secrecy as possible so that neither the C.I.A., nor any other comparable organization ever becomes the president's private army.
Paul Pillar is the first high level C.I.A. insider to speak out on the use of prewar intelligence. After 28 years with the C.I.A., Pillar retired in 2005, as senior intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. He charges the Bush administration with the selective use of intelligence about Iraq's unconventional weapons and of ignoring predictions of postwar chaos in Iraq.
Pillar has proposed the creation of an independent office, modeled on the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office, to assess the use of intelligence at the request of members of Congress. He suggested that the root of the problem might be that top intelligence officials serve at the pleasure of the president.
Bush signed a secret executive order authorizing a policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the C.I.A. is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects and transfer them to prisons in countries like Egypt, Syria, or Uzbekistan, where torture is practiced, or to secret C.I.A. prisons outside the U.S. where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.
Michael Scheuer author of “Imperial Hubris” and the former head of the bin Laden unit set up the extraordinary rendition program for the Clinton regime. However, Clinton didn’t allow the C.I.A. to torture the suspects, it was out sourced to the Egyptians, thereby technically not violating the Geneva Convention.
Chalmers Johnson, the author of “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”, insists that we need to rewrite the National Security Act of 1947, taking away all functions from the C.I.A. that involve sabotage, torture, subversion, overseas election rigging, rendition, and other forms of clandestine activity. A president should be deprived of the power to order these types of operations except with the explicit advice and consent of the Senate. The C.I.A. should devote itself to the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. We should eliminate as much secrecy as possible so that neither the C.I.A., nor any other comparable organization ever becomes the president's private army.
Paul Pillar is the first high level C.I.A. insider to speak out on the use of prewar intelligence. After 28 years with the C.I.A., Pillar retired in 2005, as senior intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. He charges the Bush administration with the selective use of intelligence about Iraq's unconventional weapons and of ignoring predictions of postwar chaos in Iraq.
Pillar has proposed the creation of an independent office, modeled on the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office, to assess the use of intelligence at the request of members of Congress. He suggested that the root of the problem might be that top intelligence officials serve at the pleasure of the president.
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