Here’s what I’m wondering: When CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress last month that he and the CIA had lied to Congress in the past, was he lying or telling the truth? When an agency that is charged with providing information also gets into the disinformation business, how do you know which product is being provided to you, since they are expert at both? And if you know they have lied to you, how do you know you can trust them ever again?
The question to be asked is this: has the CIA, as a result of its complete loyalty to the regal Bush administration and thereby its participation in the cover-up of torture, as well as the providing of completely false information that was used to justify the Iraq War, become “beyond salvage”? Or can the CIA be fixed, and if so how do we fix it and even more, how do we confirm that it is fixed?
Things shouldn’t be like this. The Central Intelligence Agency was created for a definite mission that is necessary for the defense of America. For more than half a century the CIA has provided invaluable service to many Presidents and to the country. It’s stated mission and goals are lofty and admirable. So what went wrong? How can it be that one of our most dedicated, pro-American, self-sacrificing organizations finds itself cross-threaded with the United States House of Representatives and maybe the Senate too?
The fundamental problem lies not with the CIA. The CIA has tried to follow what it has been told is the chain of command, and it has done so to a fault. They just followed orders, like good clandestine soldiers. However, in this case, there was no other possible outcome because there is a fundamental flaw in the way our government is structured. The CIA serves the President of the United States. They take orders from the President – not the House of Representatives and not the Senate. However, the Congress does have oversight responsibility of the CIA, i.e, they have the authority to know what is going on in case some laws are being broken and so forth. But what happens if the President tells the CIA not to tell Congress what is going on? What if the President tells the CIA to lie to Congress? Then whose orders do they follow, the President’s or those of Congress? I believe we have excellent illustration here of the truth of the saying, “No man can serve two masters.”
It appears that the CIA Director Leon Panetta chose to follow the orders of the President. Oh, wait. Are you thinking that maybe George or Dick wasn’t involved? Could it be that good clandestine soldier Leon was just deceiving Congress for the Hell of it???? Was he just going rogue???? Right.
A Congressional investigation is almost sure to happen now. Isn’t it? I mean how could Congress not try to find out exactly what went wrong? Surely they want to know. Don’t they? They’re not afraid of what they’ll find are they?
The problem with the CIA trying to satisfy two masters is not unusual. The same is true for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. They all have a Commander in Chief, i.e. the President, and they all serve him too. This also includes all the civil servants who make up a good part of our government work force. In fact, not too many people report to Congress, do they? Which is probably why there is so much unhappiness among civil servants when a Congressman or Senator writes language in a Bill instructing money to be spent on some project that wasn’t in the “President’s budget”. It’s like the Civil Servants believe that the Congress has no right to participate in these decisions. Except that it does. It’s in the Constitution. It’s the way our government is structured. Checks and balances and so forth so we won’t have any more tyrants like King George.
Yes, although it makes a lot of government employees very unhappy, Congress does have a say. It does have authority. Our President is not a monarch – something George Bush and Dick Cheney never quite realized. It seems that these two characters happily manipulated the system, taking advantage of the delicate relationship between the powers of the Executive and the Congress….. Actually, they just steamrolled Congress, let’s face it. They got away with everything they wanted and they had people, like CIA Director Panetta, do the dirty work for them. Like lying to Congress, I’m guessing. I know – it’s a wild and crazy guess.
Now, I suppose Panetta will pay the price for his loyalty to King George Bush. On the other hand, if he didn’t lie to Congress, he probably would have lost his job a long time ago. (If my tenuous hypothesis is right, of course) Basically Leon was in a lose – lose situation from the beginning, he just didn’t know it. He thought he was doing his job, being loyal to the King… uh..President. The real problem was that the President and Vice President didn’t seem to be too loyal to the people or the Constitution, and so we were all in a lose – lose situation. And now, like Leon, we have to pay the price too.
But what about my original question? Can we trust the CIA? Yes, of course we can – just as much as we trust our President, no more and no less.
Ummm….Panetta was appointed Director of the CIA by Obama, not Bush. He has no experience at all in the intelligence community.
This hurts the credibility of just about anything negative he might say about actions taken by the CIA during Bush’s administration.
Who’s more likely to mislead Congress, the CIA or an appointee of of a man (Obama) who made has a career of blaming Bush for every problem in the world?
Thanks for pointing out my mistake. Based upon Panetta’s words, I guess we have to conclude that the lying was done by either Tenet, Goss, or Hayden – or maybe all three (maybe just two?). I suppose we also have to assume that Panetta is not lying, because if he is then maybe they weren’t…?
I’m sorry; I don’t feel any compulsion to assume that Panetta is not lying. He’s an Obama appointee and Obama has consistently blamed Bush-Cheney for nearly everything. He’d likely lie for his boss – a point you made about the CIA in the 1st place.
Of course I don’t feel any strong compulsion to assume that Panetta is “lying” either. Firstly, I don’t know his definition of “misleading” and secondly, I have far less than complete trust in the CIA to accurate report things to a “hostile” Congress.
Kind of messy isn’t it?
I just wrote about some of the CIA’s dark past in a blog.
http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/cold-war-paranoia-and-oppression/
The CIA has been involved in all kinds of atrocious activities for many many decades. Aren’t you familiar with the CIA’s involvement with helping democratic leaders be deposed and involvement with violent military groups?
I consider the CIA to be what they are: a corps of loyal American clandestine soldiers who carry out secret missions on behalf of the President. I do not hold the agents of the CIA responsible for their deeds any more or any less than I hold the U.S. military responsible for their deeds in Vietnam or Iraq. Unless the CIA has gone rogue, the principal responsibility for their actions lies with the President who directed their actions. As President Truman said, “The buck stops here.” President Eisenhower was responsible for the illegitimate, CIA-instigated overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran in 1953, and President Bush was responsible for the Army’s illegitimate invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Morally speaking, I partially agree. Too often the people who are punished are the ones who receive the orders rather than the ones who give the orders.
However, legally speaking, anyone who is involved in illegal activities is responsible whether they’re giving or receiving the orders. A soldier or a CIA has a legal responsibility to refuse orders that are illegal. The legal uncertainty comes in with the question of whether the person realized what they were doing was illegal.
If there weren’t people to follow orders, then atrocities would be avoided as if they orders were never given. That is as true of the CIA as it is of the Nazis. In fact, it’s true for anyone doing any job, but it’s particularly true in a democracy.
Specific to US law, every person of a certain and intelligence is considered responsible for their own actions except in cases of insanity. US soldiers are trained not to follow illegal orders. I know this is specifically taught to US soldiers and I’d imagine the same is true for CIA agents, but maybe not.
As for the president, I wouldn’t think he would be aware of every covert operation of the entire military and every agency. The president has advisors who spend their time with the details, and those advisors have many working beneath them. By the time it gets to the president, the information has been processed through many people. It’s probably rare for the president to have regular meetings where he meets directly with the heads of the military and the agencies, and even when this does happen they would only tell him brief highlights of their activities. The president is probably much more busy with more mundane details.
When Clinton was president he wanted to know some info that was classified as secret and he wasn’t allowed to see it. The president doesn’t know everything. It isn’t a matter of the CIA going rogue. Some things are just secret. Clinton had to pass a specific order to declassify certain info just so he himself could see it.