…CIA Headquarters
It´s laughable that the Republicans in Congress are questioning that the CIA, with their tainted history, could have actually lied to Nancy Pelosi.....
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/22/090622fa_fact_mayer.
For weeks now, the far right radio and TV talkers, as well as the Republicans in Congress, have continued to give House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi a hard time for accusing the CIA of “misleading her in a 2003 briefing about using torture techniques on suspected terrorist detainees“.
And the big hubbub got even bigger when the current CIA Director, Leon Panetta, said that, “It hurts the country when the Congress and the CIA don´t feel like they are being good partners.”
What is so confusing about all this is that it is well known that the CIA has a long history of not being truthful with those in the US Congress. In fact, it has been a problem for years with the heads of all of the US intelligence agencies, that at one time or another, they will not be completely up front in their briefings to Congress.
People don´t seem to realize that the job of a spy agency is to know how to “lie, cheat and steal” in order to just do their jobs. As per a former Deputy Secretary of Defense, “The CIA is an organization that thrives on deception.”
The CIA was formed at the beginning of the Cold War, way back in 1947. The long-time US Senator, John Stennis once advised: “Make up your mind that if you are going to have an intelligence agency, you protect it as such, and you shut your eyes some, and then you take what is coming.”
It´s interesting when one looks at the CIA´s “not so stellar history for truth-telling“, and then the “neo-cons” make all this noise that someone might actually have the gall to accuse a government spying agency of not being completely truthful….? Please, give me a break!
Has everyone forgotten the former CIA Director, Richard Helms, who received a two year suspended sentence in 1977, on a federal charge of lying to Congress about President Richard Nixon´s order for the CIA to overthrow the government of Chile? Helms admitted that he was under oath to tell the truth, but he felt that as the head of the CIA, he was also obliged to keep the country´s secrets.
Robert Gates, the current Defense Secretary was also the number two man to Ronald Reagan´s CIA Chief, William Casey. Gates has admitted that Casey foiled the Congress for six years. Per Gates; “Casey was guilty of contempt of Congress from the day he was sworn in.”
Casey´s senior officers always testified evasively and the final effect was what became known to the public as the Iran / Contra affair. This was the CIA program where the United States was caught shipping weapons to Iran, skimming the profits off and sending those profits to the anti-communists fighting in Central America.
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