I apologize for the low quality of the following images, but it was the best I could do in retrieving the testimony that former CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton gave in front of the Church Committee on September 25, 1975. The testimony comes from pages 72 and 73 of The Huston Plan report. In this extended excerpt, he is being questioned by Republican Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania about a couple of instances in which he and/or some of his compatriots in the CIA had failed to inform the president of the United States about illegal activities they were carrying out related to surreptitiously opening mail and otherwise spying on American citizens. He also makes reference to toxic shellfish, which is a whole other kettle that is covered in a separate report called Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents. If you have difficulty reading the testimony, you can click on the images to embiggen. Otherwise, I direct you to the links above to pages 72 and 73.
The history here is interesting in itself, but I direct you to the portion of the testimony where Angleton is asked to explain his previous testimony in which he stated that “It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.”
You can see that Angleton had come to regret that comment and would not stand by it. After all, within the context of this questioning, Angleton wasn’t just trying to explain why he ignored the laws that Congress made; he was also trying to explain why he kept information from President Nixon and disobeyed what appeared to be direct orders not to continue opening American citizens’ mail.
And these are two different kinds of lawbreaking. It may be true that a covert arm of government cannot always follow the strict letter of the law or comply with all the disclosure requirements that Congress tries to impose on it. That’s one debate.
But it’s a different matter to argue that an intelligence arm can and should keep things from the president that the president wants to know. And it’s definitely dubious to suggest that an intelligence arm doesn’t have to comply with presidential orders.
Yet, this is how the CIA saw things up at least until the point that everything blew up in the mid-1970’s and the public became outraged about the CIA’s activities.
What I question is how much that attitude has really changed.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Torture Report demonstrates that the CIA repeated many of these behaviors during President George W. Bush’s two terms in office.
They flagrantly violated the law that Congress had created, refused to comply with oversight requirements, repeatedly misled Congress, didn’t keep the president informed of their activities, and went far beyond what was authorized (which was already torture) in carrying out their so-called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. They even spied on the Intelligence Committee staff and tried to have them arrested.
I want to know why CIA Director John Brennan still has his job. I want to know why former CIA directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden are not going to be held accountable for their actions.
But I know why.
Our leaders are afraid of the CIA.
What are they afraid of, specifically?
Are you afraid to speculate?
No. I just wonder what we’re talking about. That the CIA will release a stream of information designed to paint the president in the worst possible light? That they’ll hijack the national narrative whenever things start breaking the president’s way with selective leaks? That they’ll whisper in the ears of fully-owned journalists and media properties? A horse head in the Oval Office? What leverage do the spyboys have, exactly?
Likely depends on how resistant the President is to collaborating. Some speculate that JFK was very resistant.
He was after Bay of Pigs.
Then Obama should resign, immediately. I interpreted it the same as Chris Floyd:
Obama’s Reaction to the Senate Report: Torture is Good
And as regulars here know, I do not like Glenn Greenwald and find him authoritarian in his own right. But I also think he’s right here:
Like or not like, what has that to do with anything about Glenn Greenwald. Oh, he’s authoritarian. Would you kindly elaborate on that astounding statement.
Not particularly, as most (all?) of us are authoritarians in our own right; for example, I want guns to be melted down and never heard from again, and for them to be taken from the police.
However, with GG, it comes down to the Snowden leaks, and tangentially free speech. His obsession with BlackWaterDog, someone with no influence, says it all.
The other stuff has have been documented by Chris Floyd, Arthur Silber, and Tarzie
His obsession with BlackWaterDog, someone with no influence, says it all.
The other stuff has have been documented by Chris Floyd, Arthur Silber, and Tarzie.
I think BWD has an obsession with Greenwald. It started back in the days of calling him, among others, an EmoProg. Lets not forget BWD helps operate a website that venerates the President to the extreme. Also, Tarzie has an obsession with Greenwald. Anyway, maybe Greenwald is just returning the favor. No idea.
The question to my mind is, ‘Why do the political officials want this ‘dirty work’ done?’ In this case, the dirty work pretty clearly–and predictably–undermined national security. Is it a psychological urge to be tough, with a big swinging dick? Is there a tremendous institutional impetus?
Have the various covert agencies truly chalked up lots of Secret Victories? Where’s the balance sheet? Does the pit bull actually scare off burglars? Or just maul the neighbor’s kid?
Two more, because on the issue of torture Sully is worth reading:
John Brennan Is Still Lying
And Peter Beinart Torture Is Who We Are:
A shame that Sully and Beinart were gung-ho for invading Iraq and taking out the arch-enemy Saddam. That they forgot all that history of what happens when the US engages in unilateral wars for oil, land, etc. in real time when the decision matters most. Doesn’t require a genius or even anyone with much historical knowledge (more true today with the Google and internet) to critique after the fact when their splendid little war is obviously FUBAR. I’ve known bartenders that exhibit more insight and understanding than either of those two do.
WRT GG, he didn’t in 2002-3 have the stature of Sully or Beinart as a pundit. He was still in his mostly lawyer phase. His failure to see through the GWB/Cheney gossamer veil is closer to John Dean’s similar failure. Except Dean’s was worse b/c he had experience with government lies. I’m not inclined ever to overlook their gross error to what was a simple question. Didn’t help that both rationalized their error instead of owning up to their cognitive limitations and seeking to fix themselves.
Well I wasn’t really citing that GG’s past, more the most recent dust-up with Snowden et al.
Anyway, I don’t feel like discussing that here, as it would be off-topic, and on this topic GG is correct.
And Obama resigning would accomplish what exactly? Beyond making the American right sing and dance and party like it’s 1999.
As far as I can tell about the only thing the CIA is good at is lying with impunity. Obviously they are also good at breaking the law with impunity, but that goes without saying.
Agreed. The whole operation seems so sloppy. They torture a little over 100, a few die, but a majority live to some day detail their treatment. Oh, and lets not forget the 1200 pictures documenting what was done. Please, what or who were those photos for?
Not buying that the CIA hid anything from Bush/Cheney or was not operating under orders. The OLC torture approval memos weren’t sent via a pneumatic tube from the bowels of Justice to the bowels of the CIA. Cheney was frequently at Langley.
The only senior person that may have been kept out of the loop was Colin Powell.
Phillipe Sands has documented that the torture orders in the military trickled down from on high.
So…Booman.
You want to know:
Sure, they have damaging intelligence on everybody from the Senate pages right on up to and including every president and cabinet member since at least LBJ. Big-time politics is a rough business. Bet on it. But that’s not all that’s going on. The whole presidential system for the past 50+ years has been more and more built upon the concept of plausible deniability. The buck never stops at the top. But…and you can bet on this as well…every president during those 50+ years (with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter, in my own opinion) signed off during secret, private meetings on criminal activities that were carried out by the CIA and its other satellites.
People use the “for the good of the country” excuse not to criminalize the presidency, but the possibility always exists. Mess with the CIA bosses…bosses that successive presidents installed in full knowledge that those people would take criminal actions “for the good of the country”…and you are messing with the presidency.
The presidency is like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny all rolled up into one supermyth for so-called grownups. It is sacrosanct unless a president goes rogue and in some way threatens the CIA/PermaGov hegemony. Then? Then things like what happened to JFK, Nixon (and again possibly Carter and probably Clinton as well) occur. One way or another, they get non-personed.
John Brennan still has his job and George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden are not going to be held accountable for their actions because it threatens the presidency to take action against them. Without that supermyth, the whole political U.S. house of cards would fall apart.
Bet on it.
Nothing is going to change until some sort of serious breakdown occurs, and the odds of things changing for the better in a real societal emergency are nil or worse.
So it goes and let us pray.
Later…
AG
AG
Not a rogue elephant. The government.
“But in the final analysis, it’s [creeping fascism] based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we’ve built since 1945, the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we’ve seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society.
“Of course, you can’t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can’t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won’t be there. We won’t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We’re not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn’t the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.” -Jim Garrison, 1967
And our leaders like the illegal and unconstitutional power and “flexibility’ that the intelligence community and covert intelligence and military (DoD) operations give them in their “practical’ responses to situations.
Secrecy corrodes democracy because it make a farce of transparent action. And Congress abdicated its responsibility of oversight at two points–when they allowed the CIA accounting to be invisible from even them and when they reduced the number of members of Congress with access to the CIA and its information to only the Intelligence Committees and then in some situations only to the Gang of Eight.
In 1947, Congress created a monster. The question is whether Congress can now undo that folly.
Given the failure of the Church Committee to check it, we are likely stuck until there is some major political transformation in the United States. And the momentum behind transformation at the moment seems to empower the CIA instead of check it.
“Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.”
-Frank Zappa
That would make the CIA the President and CEO of the MIC.
And Obama is the groom on top of the wedding cake.
How big is your slice?
“It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.”
Just last week I came across this same Angleton quote while reading JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.
As other reviewers have noted, this is more a history book than a conspiracy book, and a big part of the history it covers is the CIA’s counterintelligence department headed by James Angleton.
Interestingly. just one paragraph after saying “the CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime [assassination of JFK],” the author launches into the background and disturbing career of Angleton.
Frightening read and a powerful book, regardless of whether there was or wasn’t a conspiracy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_and_the_Unspeakable]