April 26, 2007
A CIA Man Speaks His Mind on Secret Abductions
...during an April 17 joint hearing of two House Foreign Affairs committees..on the Bush administration’s “extraordinary renditions” program...
(Michael) Scheuer (he CIA officer who launched the program in 1995 under the Clinton administration) stoutly defended the abduction program and attacked its critics.
Briskly reading a prepared statement, the bearded erstwhile operative denounced the parliamentary report, calling Europe “the earth’s single largest terrorist safe haven.”
“ The EU’s policy of easily attainable political asylum and its prohibition against deporting wanted or convicted terrorists to countries with the death penalty have made Europe a major, consistent, and invulnerable source of terrorist threat to the United States,” he asserted.
But Scheuer’s main intent seemed to deflect criticism from the CIA and lay it at the feet of senior White House officials and CIA lawyers, who he said approve every snatch proposed by the counterterrorism unit.
In doing so, he provided listeners with a rare public glimpse into what one long-ago CIA official-turned-critic, Victor Marchetti, called the “clandestine mentality,” an anything-goes mindset that separates CIA people from their brethren in the FBI, a law enforcement agency, and the Pentagon, whose spies for the most part are bound by military oaths.
"Each and every target of a rendition was vetted by a battery of lawyers at CIA and not infrequently by lawyers at the National Security Council and the Department of Justice,” he said, following “a written brief citing and explaining the intelligence information that made the rendition target a threat to the United States and/or its allies.”
“If mistakes were made,” he went on to say, “I can only say that that is tough, but war is a tough and confusing business .”
Protecting Americans “should always trump other considerations, especially pedantic worries about whether or not the intelligence data is air tight.”
The CIA , he added, is not “in the business of cleaning up afterwards. We’re in the business of pre-emption.”
But, (the hearing’s chairman, Massachusetts Democrat Bill) Delahunt persisted, “What about those who are clearly eventually determined to be innocent?”
“Mistakes are made, sir.”
“Mistakes are made.”
Scheuer said. “They’re not Americans, and I really don’t care.” He spread his arms, smiling. “It’s just a mistake.”
“And if they’re not Americans,” Delahunt persisted, “you really don’t care.” He shuffled some papers. “That’s very interesting.”
more http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002494626.html
via Secrecy News
~Performance art. No pies were thrown.
Some of the old alcoholic, sans prostate, CIA goons are freakin' hilarious. They still enjoy frightening women & children, scaring the rubes.
When it was over most of the audience felt like they'ld been pissed on.
Then again Mr. Schuer's crazy talk may have been to obscure his revelation of the various federal agencies involved in the Bush administration's secret rendition program.
>compare & contrast
U.S. Agents Interrogating Terror Suspects Held in Ethiopian Prisons | IHT
thanks Conscientious
[photo not w/above]
Posted by Stubbornson at April 26, 2007 11:30 AM