The CIA Is Worried: Will Obama Actually Hold Them Accountable?

[kpete]

The CIA Is Worried: Will Obama Actually Hold Them Accountable?

Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo at 3:25 PM on November 10, 2008.

The Torture Memo of 2002 was written at the CIA's request that Bush "get their backs." Now they're asking if Obama will.

According to CQ, the CIA is worried that Obama won't "have their backs" when they do something wrong:

"I was with a group of intelligence officers today," Roger Cressey, a counterterrorism official in the Clinton White House, said on MSNBC Thursday night, "and I think the most important thing for the president to say is, 'We've got your back.' That 'we want you to take risks -- risks that conform with our law and our values as a country.'

"What the intelligence community is afraid of more than anything is the game of 'Gotcha,'" Cressey said. "Which is, if they make a mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, the White House doesn't support them, they're left out to dry, and Congress crushes them. And then you get into that risk-averse mentality, which we saw for awhile. So that is what they want. They want support, so they know that the president is going to be behind them. But also that he's going to lead them."

..................

The CIA will put a lot of pressure on Obama over this. They even got the ambitious wimp McCain to vote against the Field Manual (anti-waterboarding) bill, despite what it might do to his reputation, on the heels of his earlier cave-in on the Military Commissions Act. They are dead serious about being allowed to do what they feel "needs to be done" with the full backing of the president. And they always hold the security of the United States hostage when they do it ("we'll become too 'risk averse' and then you'll all die!")

Up until now, we have been dealing with electoral necessities (or what the Democrats perceived as being electoral necessities.) Now we are going to see perceived institutional necessities coming to the fore and the Democrats are going to have a much different relationship with these issues than they had before.

On torture, there can be no more blurring of definitions. There is plenty of scholarship that shows that there are better ways of obtaining reliable intelligence. Torture is not only immoral, it's lazy and counterproductive -- and is likely used most often out of some misplaced notion that being known to be brutal and ruthless is helpful to America's reputation. That is wrong. The CIA needs to know up front that Obama will not have their back if they engage in torture -- and that the torture legal framework under Bush is no longer operative in any way. There really is no other choice on this and I expect that he will do it. He knows very well that his foreign policy will be in complete shambles the minute it is leaked -- and it will be -- that the Obama administration has sanctioned torture, either through commission or omission. His great opportunity across the world to prove that America has changed will be lost.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000002984384&referrer=js

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/106419/the_cia_is_worried%3A_will_obama_actually_hold_them_accountable/

[Parche]

1. CIA was responsible for 9/11

Why help them?

[aquart]

2. Excuse me? They gave Bush the info. He ignored it.

[Parche]

9. CIA Has power beyond everyones wildest dreams

They can do anything, and make anything happen...........

[Kip Humphrey]

10. ...and consequently, the CIA ignored it. also even though they knew and/or expected.

[wildbilln864]

4. Yep, that's what I suspect also. nt

[annabanana]

6. "running around with their hair on fire"

trying to get his attention...

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. I am not sure Ray McGovern agrees with that

[Parche]

12. I do

They can do almost every covert thing in the book.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. Do you work for the CIA?

Ray did.

That was my point.

[Parche]

17. I Know he did

And I hear you, but I have this feeling that they were totally responsible for that

And my 'feelings' are always right

[annabanana]

3. It is important to remember the distinctions.. the bill B*sh VETOED

would have eliminated the fig leaf being used to cover torture.. If this is the way they want Barack to "cover their backs" I most sincerely hope he demurs.

[Lerkfish]

5. let us not forget that Bush/Cheney threw the old guard CIA out on the street and

replaced them with neocon loyalists. It was the night of the long knives for career spooks.

the ironic thing is that the neocons wanted the CIA to do things even the CIA didn't want to do.

[annabanana]

7. I'm not entirely convinced that the "old guard" was all that

professional either.. They just answered to different masters.

[Lerkfish]

14. absolutely, the old guard was already distasteful, but what the distasteful find distasteful

is rather scary.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. The CYA were frustrated with the Bush administration

It was Bush and his Neocons who pushed the agenda for war, torture and perhaps 9/11. The CYA don't act independently.

[4lbs]

13. So making sure that our people don't engage in torture and make up intelligence shit

like that yellowcake from Africa means the POTUS doesn't have their back?

:eyes:

[unhappycamper]

15. Ahhhhh? Excuse me?

Torture is wrong.John Yoo or not. Period.

[HooptieWagon]

18. Torture is wrong, and the intelligence it generates is unreliable.

Torture should not be permitted by the Obama Administration. And, those who committed torture under the chimp administration should be threatened with prosecution under war crimes unless they cooperate in the prosecution of those who gave the orders.

[rucky]

19. So if you were Obama, how would you clean house

without stirring a coup?