Lucille
12-28-2014, 11:33 AM
http://www.strike-the-root.com/after-scrutiny-cia-mandate-is-untouched
"But as much as America’s spies might still complain about their overseers, the years since the Sept. 11 attacks have been an era of broad license — and hefty budgets — not just for the C.I.A., but also for the National Security Agency and other intelligence services. Neither the White House nor the American public has shown an inclination to change that."
But the Obama administration has made clear that it has no plans to make anyone legally accountable for the practices described by the C.I.A. as enhanced interrogation techniques and the Intelligence Committee as torture. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. this week asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to examine the report’s allegations, but the request will almost certainly be rejected.
And while Senator King called the Intelligence Committee’s report “Church Committee II,” he, like many other Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, remains a broad supporter of the C.I.A.’s paramilitary mission that Mr. Obama has embraced during his time in the White House.
During the presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama railed against the agency’s use of torture and secret prisons during the Bush administration, and shuttered the detention program during his first week in office. But he has empowered the agency in other ways — including allowing its director, not the White House, to make the final decisions about drone strikes in Pakistan.
“Many presidents tend to be smitten with the instruments of the intelligence community. I think Obama was more smitten than most,” said one former senior Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence matters. [...]
The agency carried out its first drone strike in Pakistan in June 2004, weeks after a draft of a damning C.I.A inspector general report about abuses in the agency’s secret prisons began circulating in Washington. In the months that followed, the agency began to refashion itself not as a long-term jailer, but as a secret paramilitary force that could kill terrorism suspects with little controversy.
For the C.I.A., there were far fewer political costs associated with killing terrorists than with capturing and interrogating them. There have now been more than 400 drone strikes in Pakistan, according to statistics compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the operations have had broad support among Democrats and Republicans. And the C.I.A. continues to carry out drone strikes in Yemen, despite the Obama administration’s declared intention in May 2013 that the drone program be transferred to the Pentagon.
[...]
And as America’s spying apparatus has grown larger, richer and more powerful than during any other time in its history, it has become ever harder for those keeping watch over it.
“We are 15 people overseeing a $50 billion enterprise,” said Senator King, speaking of his fellow members on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I can’t tell you I know with certainty every intelligence program this enterprise is engaged in.”
"But as much as America’s spies might still complain about their overseers, the years since the Sept. 11 attacks have been an era of broad license — and hefty budgets — not just for the C.I.A., but also for the National Security Agency and other intelligence services. Neither the White House nor the American public has shown an inclination to change that."
But the Obama administration has made clear that it has no plans to make anyone legally accountable for the practices described by the C.I.A. as enhanced interrogation techniques and the Intelligence Committee as torture. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. this week asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to examine the report’s allegations, but the request will almost certainly be rejected.
And while Senator King called the Intelligence Committee’s report “Church Committee II,” he, like many other Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, remains a broad supporter of the C.I.A.’s paramilitary mission that Mr. Obama has embraced during his time in the White House.
During the presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama railed against the agency’s use of torture and secret prisons during the Bush administration, and shuttered the detention program during his first week in office. But he has empowered the agency in other ways — including allowing its director, not the White House, to make the final decisions about drone strikes in Pakistan.
“Many presidents tend to be smitten with the instruments of the intelligence community. I think Obama was more smitten than most,” said one former senior Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence matters. [...]
The agency carried out its first drone strike in Pakistan in June 2004, weeks after a draft of a damning C.I.A inspector general report about abuses in the agency’s secret prisons began circulating in Washington. In the months that followed, the agency began to refashion itself not as a long-term jailer, but as a secret paramilitary force that could kill terrorism suspects with little controversy.
For the C.I.A., there were far fewer political costs associated with killing terrorists than with capturing and interrogating them. There have now been more than 400 drone strikes in Pakistan, according to statistics compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the operations have had broad support among Democrats and Republicans. And the C.I.A. continues to carry out drone strikes in Yemen, despite the Obama administration’s declared intention in May 2013 that the drone program be transferred to the Pentagon.
[...]
And as America’s spying apparatus has grown larger, richer and more powerful than during any other time in its history, it has become ever harder for those keeping watch over it.
“We are 15 people overseeing a $50 billion enterprise,” said Senator King, speaking of his fellow members on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I can’t tell you I know with certainty every intelligence program this enterprise is engaged in.”