And then within a few minutes George Tenet showed up with the - TopicsExpress



          

And then within a few minutes George Tenet showed up with the spellbinding news that high level Al Qaeda operatives had revealed under interrogation, he said -- no revealing that he was being tortured at the time -- that hed revealed significant contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Husseins operatives in Baghdad. This was a flat-out lie. We later learned it was Sheik Al-Libi, we learned he was being tortured, no US personnel were even present, and that in a week to ten days he recanted what hed given under torture. So this is the kind of thing that was happening when I was out at the CIA for five days and nights with these people who are now trying to tell the American people that they are competent and they were telling the truth. ↓ Story continues below ↓ HAYES: So I just want to clarify here. So you didnt know about the program, the Secretary didnt know about the program and it looks like Condi Rice didnt know about the program. There were a lot of people at the highest levels of government in the executive branch who were not read in to the fact that we were torturing people. WILKERSON: I think thats true. Ill go out on a limb and Ill say the only person who was completely read in and no one knows all the details, but the one who was read in on both the need for the law to cover their rear ends and the need to continue the program because it was effective was Richard Bruce Cheney. He was the man in the shadows orchestrating all of this from his position in the White House. And he has appeared on every cable news channel since he left office, treated as though he is a legitimate commentator about matters of national security. Ill go out on a limb, too. Ill say that based on this report alone, the CIA should be entirely disbanded and cease to exist as an entity. Then the public should be fully informed as to every operative at home and abroad who has ever been a part of this agency, because it has created monsters. When those monsters retire or leave their posts with the CIA, they live in your neighborhoods, shop in your markets, and get jobs as security experts, poisoning our politics and maybe even running for office. But you wont know that, because CIA operatives identities are mandated to remain secret by law. If Republicans in Congress want so badly to repeal something, they should consider repealing all sections of law that birthed the CIA. If theyre so desperate for hearings, they should consider holding hearings geared toward making torture a capital crime, whether performed by the CIA or the U.S. military. We all have to wear the taint Richard Bruce Cheney brought down on us with his full-throated endorsement of inhuman and evil methods of causing pain, humiliation and harm to other human beings. Its wrong that theres no consequences for those who perpetrated it, and its wrong that Cheney isnt languishing in a privatized prison somewhere. Tags: Chris Hayes, CIA torture program, cia torture report, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Dick Cheney Like · · Share Lauren Swick likes this. Mark Stephen Colucci Write a comment...
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 11:39:26 +0000

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