The historical failure of Americans to acknowledge our tradition of torture creates a straight line from the first image to the second.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana
In the final days of November, 1975 The Senate Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Chaired by Senator Frank Church it came to be called the Church Committee, released a report that said the U.S. government had plotted to kill world leaders. Namely Fidel Castro of Cuba, a dictator brought to power by the CIA and Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Republic of Congo, who was overthrown with the help of the CIA only twelve weeks after taking office. Castro survived and Lumumba did not. In 1976 the CIA either trained or assisted assassins as they planted a car bomb in the car of Orlando Letelier. A bomb that would also kill an American woman, Ronni Moffitt, and seriously injure her husband. This happened on American soil. ?The Church Committee also revealed that from at least 1950 to 1973 the CIA and FBI admitted opening and photographing over two hundred thousand pieces of mail in direct violation of the 4th Amendment.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,?against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The 4th Amendment
The Castro report was issued by the Church Commission on 21 November, 1975 and not much has changed since then as the video below explains:
Today the committee with the long name has been renamed the Senate Intelligence Committee and is chaired by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA). You may remember that the Senator from California had some trouble with the CIA recently because the agency was caught hacking into Senate computers to spy on the work her committee was doing.
“If people knew the details of what they actually did to hack into the Senate computers to go search for the torture document, jaws would drop.” Senate Staffer
It appears the CIA criminally impersonated Senate staffers to gain access to the work the Senate was doing on the effectiveness and legality of torture the CIA admits it did.
So to recap: The Senate has the authority to oversee the CIA. In doing that job the Senate has repeatedly discovered the CIA engaging in criminal behavior, murdering foreign leaders, American citizens, and we can only imagine what else. ?As we have covered before at Liberal America the CIA’s failure has already been documented by the United Nations?so this report, no matter how damning cannot cover much ground that has not already been revealed.
“It makes a lot of people who did really bad things look really bad, which is the only way not to repeat those mistakes in the future. The public has to know about it. They don’t want the public to know about it.” Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.)
The “they don’t want the public to know” Senator Rockefeller is referring to is not the CIA. It’s the White House. According to The New York Times?several Democratic Senators feel the White House is trying to censor a document that will make the CIA and the previous occupants of the White House look bad. They feel that President Obama is trying to, “run out the clock” by waiting until the Republicans take control of the Senate and that they will then “kill” the report.
“We share the Intelligence Committee’s desire for the declassified report to be released, and all of the administration’s efforts since we received the initial version have been focused on making that happen while also protecting our national security.” Shawn Turner, White House Spokesman 2014
“President Ford?criticized the decision to release the report, claiming that it would do “grievous damage to our country” and would be used by “groups hostile to the United States in a manner designed to do maximum damage to the reputation and foreign policy of the United States.” ?This Day In History?1975
Former CIA Director, Michael Hayden, has used a two prong attack against the report. He claims that the information in the report will endanger American lives and that torture worked. It seems rather obvious that American lives are in more danger because everyone knows we did, and assumes we still do, torture people. ?The American people would be safer if the world knew we did not torture and did not condone it. Secondly Director Hayden asks us to believe him when he says torture works when the evidence overwhelmingly shows that it does not. His statement that “torture works” actually makes Americans less safe because it encourages terrorists and others to torture thinking it will provide them accurate information. So he has put our soldiers, our NGO (non governmental organizations) staffers and volunteers in danger by his blatant lie.
We would do well to remember the words of one of our most brilliant founding fathers:
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ?Benjamin Franklin
We already know that the CIA and its sister organizations care nothing for our rights, for our lives, or for our safety. It isn’t clear what their purpose for existing even is anymore. What we do know is that the best way to preserve our rights is to insist that the human rights of those we call “other” or “terrorist” are also protected. We claim to believe our system is the best in the world. If it is we need to prove it by our actions. “America doesn’t torture” (a claim made by both President Obama and Bush) needs to be more than a line in a speech. It needs to be reality.
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