CIA: Still Out Of Control

The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena for Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA official who directed that secret video tapes of two captured terrorists be destroyed.  Those tapes contained interrogations that some have speculated show torture.

 

Mr. Bush wanted the Congressional panel to defer its investigation until an inquiry by the CIA and Justice Department is completed.  The panel's chairman refused to do so and rightly so.  Mr. Bush can get to the bottom of the destruction of these tapes if he really wanted to, just like he could have taken care and got to the bottom of the Valarie Plame case if he so had chose.  The two people involved in that case were Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, who happened to be working for the White House and were good friends of Bush.  Bush knew of their involvement, but let Ms. Plame get dragged through the coals.

 

History has proven the CIA can not investigate itself.  They cover their own tracks and flat out lie.  We know that from previous investigations.  It took the Church committee and the Iran-Contra hearings and other hearings to bring to the public the lies and dirty tricks and the violation of the law by the CIA.  The Justice Department is just as bad under this administration.  Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was one of the attorneys, along with others, who knew about those tapes according to recent reports.  A self serving statement was recently made by the administration saying that they recommended the CIA not destroy the tapes.  Recommended?  They should have told CIA not to destroy the tapes.  In fact, the President himself should have ordered the CIA not to destroy the tapes.

 

There is only one reason to destroy evidence, especially when a court ordered the CIA to preserve all records.  Why? Yea, you guessed right.  I wonder why the CIA failed to inform the courts of the tapes' existence, and like wise failed to inform the 9-11 commission.  Why?  Yea, you guessed right again.  This is the same game the CIA played during the Warren Commission's investigation of President Kennedy's death.  They withheld information from the Warren Commission that was not specifically asked for, even though they knew it related to the President's death and the investigation.  This was documented in the House hearings concerning Mr. Kennedy's death.  It really is time to break the CIA up in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.  If the new Director of National Intelligence can't control the CIA better than it is doing, that too needs to be taken care of. 

Iran: What Bush Really Knew

George Bush's rhetoric concerning Iran for the past six months is a mirror image of his rhetoric concerning Iraq during the run up to that war.  In the second instance, Bush claimed that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program; but they had not.  With Iran he said they were building nuclear weapons.  However, we found out in the NIE report released just last week that they stopped that in 2003 when they froze the program.  That was over four years ago.

 

What the news media failed to pick up on is that from 2001 to 2003, Iran was working to produce nuclear weapons and Bush was silent.  Instead, he was attacking Iraq.  The Los Angeles Times reported that when Bush came to office he was totally disinterested in Iran, this according to a CIA official.  In fact, the CIA had made up a large Iran task force of nearly 100 officers and analysts by the end of the Clinton administration.  When Bush took office, it shrank to fewer than a dozen officers.  Those resources were shifted to other targets by Bush.  It went from being focused on Iran to being switched to Iraq.

 

The NIE report released last week now catches Mr. Bush in another lie.  He said he did not know till a few days ago that Iran froze its nuclear weapons program in 2003.  This guy has lost all respect for the office of the President.  He now wants to change the subject on Iran so he is trying to demand that they reveal all their covert activity.  Mr. Bush should demand Israel, India, and Pakistan reveal all their covert activity of their nuclear weapons program as well.  Their leaders are also unstable. 

The CIA: Out of Control

The CIA is in the news and once again they are involved in a scandal, this time destroying evidence concerning videos of interrogation on al Qaeda prisoners.  Officials of the CIA told a federal court and the 9-11 commission that they had no record of the interrogation; those were lies.  

 

CIA lies, misinformation, and violation of the law go back to at least the Church committee who documented wrong doing in the middle 1970s.  One CIA director, Richard Helms, was even found guilty of perjury. 

By destroying the video of the interrogation, the CIA destroyed any torture procedure that may have been on the video.  That has been a real concern that has dogged the Bush administration because, if true, serious legal charges could be brought about.

 

One problem with the CIA today is the director, General Mike Hayden.  The director is usually a civilian so the intelligence given to a president can be clear and independent.  Being a military man, Hayden can not be independent.  The President is Commander in Chief.  General Hayden ran the super secret NSA before accepting the directorship of the CIA.  At NSA, he fully supported Bush's authorization of wire taps and warrant-less intrusions without going to the FISA court.  He has demonstrated that he is a person who can not be trusted to protect the American people's right to privacy.

 

President Kennedy was quoted as saying he was going to break the CIA up in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.  Kennedy found out about the CIA dirty tricks and that some at the CIA had their own foreign policy agenda far different than his.

 

In the case of the videos that were destroyed, it was reported that the CIA was trying to hide evidence of coercion.  FBI officials on the scene protested the tactics and then forbid its agents from taking part in such acts.

 

Congress should take away all operational functions of the CIA and leave them to gathering intelligence only.  That was President Truman's idea when the CIA was created.  Then Congress has to come down hard on the CIA and really hold them accountable for their actions.  The lies have gone on for too many years.  

The Rosetta Stone To War in Iraq (Part I)

The President of the United States, George W. Bush, knowingly misled the American people and ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  That is an impeachable offense.  The President lied when he said:  (1) Iraq has stockpiles of WMD ready to use against America or transferred to terrorists.  (2) Iraq has reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.  (3) Iraq has mobile labs that manufacture chemical and biological WMD.  (4) Iraq is an eminent threat to the security of the U.S. (5) Saddam has a relationship with Al Qaeda and the 9-11 attack.

 

The Rosetta Stone to Mr. Bush's lies are found in the reports of David Kay and Charles Duelfer.  Both had CIA connections and ran the Iraqi study group in the hunt for WMD in Iraq after the invasion.  Both had weapons inspection experience.  After their exhausting inspections in Iraq they came back and said, "we were all wrong."  Iraq got rid of its WMD after the 1991 Gulf War, 12 years prior to our invasion.  Their findings were (1) Iraq had no stockpiles of WMD.  (2) Iraq had no mobile labs to manufacture WMD.  (3) Iraq did not reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.  (4) Iraq had no ready manufacturing facilities to resume such activity.  (5)  There was no evidence of a collaborative relationship with al Qaeda and the events of 9-11.

 

Since these weapons did not exist at any time during Bush's administration, the intelligence community could not have given Bush any proof or confirmation that they did exist.  That is why Bush nor the CIA showed the people any photographic evidence of these WMD.  President Kennedy, during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, showed the American people, and the world, photographic evidence of Russian missiles in Cuba on their launch pads.  There were no doubts.

 

The President, lacking proof and confirmation that Iraq possessed WMD, decided to plant the seed in the people's mind that Iraq was involved in the events of 9-11.  Because these weapons did not exist, the CIA could not pass on any information to the U.N. inspectors, who were on the ground in Iraq, that revealed WMD, even though Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said he knew where they were located.. 

 

David Kay reported that the CIA gave him over 500 suspected sites in Iraq to inspect.  When he went over the list and report he was astonished.  Nothing was new or updated, everything was all old information with no collaboration.  The report was useless.  The CIA was clueless.  Kay and Duelfel also reported that Saddam still had the intent after the U.N. sanctions were lifted, but they found no evidence of a plan, people in place, or any structure to restart any weapons program.

 

Because Bush could not back up his rhetoric about Iraq's WMD, V.P. Cheney kept going back to the intelligence community and putting pressure on them to come up with something.  Because of this pressure, the CIA became political on the issue.  When no WMD were found, the President started to give other reasons why it was necessary to go to war in Iraq.  The gig was up.

 

Part II, coming shortly, will focus on the other Rosetta Stone to the war in Iraq and why Bush knew Iraq was not a threat to the United States.

Scott McClellan Speaks Out

Just when everybody thought the White House couldn't possibly come under any more scrutiny, it does. In a book to be released next April, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan is supposedly going to tell "what happened" concerning his and others' involvement in the Valerie Plame-CIA leak case. In an excerpt released yesterday, McClellan wrote,

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. There was one problem. It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself."

So there you have it. McClellan clearly states that indeed Cheney and Bush were involved. Today McClellan came out and said that he did not intend to imply that the President lied.....yet he DID imply that in the excerpt. In fact, not only did he imply it, he wrote it. You can go through and parse the excerpt however you like, but McClellan undoubtably did state that Bush and Cheney were involved in the cover-up.

My only question for McClellan is why did he not come out with this sooner? Why when the Libby trial was going on did he not come forth with this important piece of information? As far as I'm concerned, it was his duty as an American citizen to let the truth be known. If we have a criminal as a President, and I'm convinced we do, then the American people deserve to know. Justice deserves to be served.

One theory that many have come up with is that President Bush was lied to by Vice-President Cheney and hence that is why Bush "passed on misleading information" to McClellan. There is one flaw with that theory however. If Cheney did lie to the President, and its Cheney who is the criminal, not Bush, then when the truth came out, why didn't Bush get rid of Cheney. I know Bush is loyal, but I couldn't even imagine Bush keeping Cheney around if Cheney lied to him. That leads me to one conclusion: Cheney AND Bush were knowingly involved in the cover-up. Any sensible person can look at this situation and see that the pieces of this puzzle just don't match up unless Bush himself was knowingly and willingly involved.

So today when the editor of McClellan's book says that McClellan didn't "intend to suggest Bush lied to him," but also says that the reader can make up his or her own mind concerning Cheney's involvement, I would argue that there is no way one could be involved without the other. And by saying (to Chris Mathews) that the reader can make up his own mind concerning Cheney, the editor and McClellan are by default saying that Cheney was involved. And as I said earlier, if Cheney was involved, so was Bush. Its also interesting to note that although given the opportunity, McClellan did not come out and say that Bush wasn't involved, he just said that he didn't intend to suggest that he was involved.

I'll close by saying that I am very disappointed in the mainstream media for not covering this story the way it should be covered. Many are claiming that this is just "old news". Well I have news for them, this is not "old news". This is extremely important news that points toward our President, the leader of the free world, being a criminal. I urge the media to get this story out there to the American people. By standing by and decreeing this as "old news", the media is letting the Bush administration get away with a potential crime. I would, however, like to commend both Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman of MSNBC for giving this story proper coverage. I hope to see the rest of the media follow suit in the coming days.