Comments on: “Certain Officers”

By: robspierre

robspierre — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:31:40 +0000

A real Congress would cut off all funding for the CIA effective immediately. It would then repeal the enabling legislation that create dthe CIA and set about breaking up the Agency and distributing viable parts to other federal entities, such as the State Department and the individual armed services.

Nothing less will do if we are going to force this renegade state-within-the-state to act within the laws and in accordance with the will of the people.

By: jdpriestly

jdpriestly — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:28:42 +0000

Andrea Mitchell is completely unreliable, but then she may have reliable sources. Greenspan is a fallen man. He sold his honor and intellectual integrity for the position at the FED and the accolades of Republicans. I hope he was handsomely paid for his sins. Surely, he knew what he was doing to the economy.

By: fatster

fatster — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:46:28 +0000

Yay, Bob! That’s beautiful.

By: james

james — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:42:54 +0000

Richard Helms basically laid out the agency’s attitude toward lying when he was committing perjury during the Church hearings. He said CIA officers would not be required to tell the truth most likely because duplicity is a way of life for that agency and its people with very few exceptions.

And mamayaga@60, if you really really believe that Obama is going to do anything to undo all the egregious crimes of the previous administration instead of further advancing the corporatist agenda, I want to see your face when he eviscerates Social Security because that was the main reason Wall Street supported this man.

You don’t regain your place in the world by refusing to prosecute blatant war crimes, crimes under both international law and your own statutes. You retain the crown of hypocrisy which this country has worn so well for so long.

By: mamayaga

mamayaga — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:27:42 +0000

Ever since Obama and Holder started their egregious tap dancing about accountability and transparency while doing all they can to keep Bush crimes covered up, I have suspected that when they came into office they discovered that those crimes were even worse — way worse – than what we already knew about or surmised, and realized that if it all came out it would cause an international firestorm that would completely preempt all other business for months. It’s not as if new revelations that our government carried out torture and spied on us will make more than a marginal impact — particularly given how blase the media is about these things. It must be something new (Cheney ordered Bhutto’s assassination, perhaps?) or much more outrageous than what’s already known (we still haven’t heard about the child rapes Hersh hinted at), and yes, I think it’s bubbling to the surface. Obama just wants to get health care reform passed before it explodes.

By: maryo2

maryo2 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:05:45 +0000

The video is available at MSNBC KO. Here exact words at 5:37 are “It’s covert. I haven’t yet uncovered that.”

By: valletta

valletta — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:24:23 +0000

It’s late in the thread but Jan Shakowsly was just on MSNBC and said it was a program “they knew NOTHING about” prior to the latest briefing.

By: wagonjak

wagonjak — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:21:28 +0000

“So if just “certain officers” have been lying to Congress, what are we going to do about it?…”

Short answer…NOTHING… “we” don’t have the power to do anything about it, and Congress doesn’t have the guts to do it…

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:49:02 +0000

Because I’m a cynic, I’m going to toss out the possiblity that what Panetta has told them about involves something that is likely to come out in the future in a sideways fashion and the CIA is only now fessing up bc they are concerned that it will come out anyway. So I’m thinking something that involves one of the cases on the burners - Siddiqui, Arar, el-Masri, Binyam Mohamed, Padilla. That’s only spec, but that would be my area of spec. The UK, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc. are all primed on lawsuits and while those may come to nothing much, things may leak out with them. Plus the UK parliament (probably seeing a chance to forever bury Blair, but still) is pushing on a lot of fronts and that is probably more likely to result in some pieces coming out. Pakistan’s Chief Judge has been pushing on info involving those who were originally disappeared by the Paks for the Americans and for the transfer of Siddiqui back to Pakistan for that matter.

I think the only reason Panetta would be further fleshing out to Congress or fessing up to soemthing to Congress from times that preceded him would be if there was a chance that it was either going to come out anyway or was going to have to be addressed in private sessions as a reason for other activities that are going to have to be taken as a result of the old info.

I’m thinking not JSOC bc it wouldn’t really be the CIA’s responsibility to brief Congress on Cheney’s military assassination squad if that exists/exised. That would be the miltiary’s responsbility and it is something CIA SHOULD do if they know about it, but it’s not their bailiwick and responsiblity.

By: maryo2

maryo2 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:47:55 +0000

In fact, Andrea Mitchell’s exact words, which she quickly changed, were very close to this:

KO: Do we know what the CIA lied about?
AM: No, it is still covert…(err um) I… We, the media, do not know what it was about.

It seemed that she suddenly wanted to define the word “covert” to mean “unknown” as opposed to “concealed.” I think it was an accidental slip of the tongue and she knows it is about reporting on a covert operation.