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Today's
Stories
December
4 / 6, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Politicize the CIA? You've Got to
be Kidding
December
3, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Lie Then Escalate
Ben
Tripp
Fun With Boycotts: How to Shop in a
Time of Crisis
Joe
Allen
Murder in El Salvador: the Assassination of Teamster Organizer
Gilberto Soto
Matthew
B. Riley
Human Rights Court Fails Lori Berenson
Meir
Shalev
In the End, It is the Violin that Wins
Bob
Wing
The White Elephant in the Room: Race and Election 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
When McCain Bit His Tongue
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The EU, the US, Israel and Iran
December
2, 2004
Tito
Tricot
No Justice in Chile: I'm a Torture
Survivor in a Country Where Torturers Still Run Free
Behzad
Yaghmaian
The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and Muslim Migration
Dr.
Susan Block
Lana and Me: Meetings with Remarkable Apes
Frank
/ Chowkwanyun
Liberalism and Its Bounds
Lee
Sustar
Standoff in Ukraine: the Bad v. the Corrupt
Patrick
Cockburn
Another Grim Record in Iraq
Mark
Engler
Seattle at Five
Michael
Donnelly
Something Stinks in South Bend: the Firing of Tyrone Willingham
Nate
Collins
The Bay Area Mall on an Ohlone Burial Grounds
Saul
Landau
The Assassination of Danilo Anderson
December
1, 2004
Phillip
Cryan
Associated with Whom? Rightist Bias
in Wire Coverage of Colombia
Dave
Zirin
What's the Matter with "Leon"?:
Budweiser's Racist Commercial
Ghali
Hassan
Iraq's Health Care Under the Occupation:
200 Children Die Every Day
Donna
J. Volatile
Beware Western Nations Threatening "Democracy"
Patrick
Cockburn
How Saddam Tried to Arm the Insurgency
Nick
Meo
Chemical War Over Afghanistan
Mike
Ferner
The Battle of Toledo
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Shame and Determination on Global AIDS Day: 40 Million and Rising
Kathy
Kelly
Looking the Other Way: the Real Crimes
of the UN in Iraq
November
30, 2004
Jennifer
Van Bergen
The Veil of Secrecy
Toni
Nelson Herrera
Meeting Kurtz: When Art is a Crime
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Bush Delusions: Successful at Incompetence
Patrick
Cockburn
The Insurgency Strikes Back: There Are No Safe Havens in Iraq
Chuck
Munson
WTO Protests Five Years Later: Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization
Movement
Adam
Williams
Citizenship Sold: Back to Business in Indiana
Gregory
Elich
A Dangerous Turn in the US Plans for
North Korea
Website
of the Day
Read Lynne Cheney's Lesbian Novel Online!
November
29, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Blowback in Ukraine: The Hand of
the CIA?
Omar
Barghouti
"The Pianist" of Palestine:
Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint
Mike
Whitney
The US Media and Fallujah: How to
Market a Siege
Uri
Avnery
The Abu Mazen Style: "Give Me
Some Credit!"
Matt
Vidal
Globalization and Economic Inequality: a Look at the Numbers
Patrick
Cockburn
An Interview with Iraq's Foreign
Minister
Alan
Farago
Sex Change and Salvation: God, Girly Men and Endocrine Disrupters
Justin
Huggler
Bhopal 20 Years Later
Antony
Loewenstein
How Australia Reported Arafat's Death and Legacy
Gary
Leupp
Ukraine: Poll Results Aren't the Real
Issue
Website
of the Day
Mosul: Images from a Kill Zone
November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
November
26, 2004
Peter
Feng
Gavin Newsom: Man or Machine?
Greg
Moses
It's the White Vote, Stupid
Liaquat
Ali Khan
The Devil's Work: Bush's Minority Appointments
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should Be Banned from Canada: a Memo to the Ministry
of Immigration
Dave
Lindorff
Nation of Sheep, Turkey of an Election: Urkrainians Show the
Way
Gary
Corseri
When Black Friday Comes...
Paul
Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Conservatives?
Website
of the Day
Iraq Pipeline Watch
November
25, 2004
Willliam
Loren Katz
Giving Thanks to Whom?: "Thanks
to God We Sent 600 Heathen Souls to Hell Today"
Mitchel
Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving
Mike
Ferner
An Uncommon Mom
November
24, 2004
Gila
Svirsky
License to Kill: the Example of Violence
is Set by the State
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The
Other Mess in Congress
Christopher
Brauchli
The Company He Keeps: the Syndicate of Tom Delay
Dave
Lindorff
Double Standards on Exit Polls: Hypocrisy Sans Irony
Ron
Jacobs
The Occupation of Iraq is the Root of t he Problem
Ken
Sengupta
Witnesses: War Crimes in Fallujah
Diana
Barahona
The Final Holocaust or Why I Voted for Ralph Nader
John
L. Hess
Safire the Shameless
Jason
Leopold
Did Harvard Hire (Another) War Criminal?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Mark of McCain: the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear
War
Map
of the Day
Now and Then: 2004 v. 1860
November
23, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
Bush and Uribe at the Beach
November
22, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage
in Detroit
Paul
Craig Roberts
On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again?
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada
Kathie
Helmkamp
Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill
Ken
Sengupta
The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place
in Iraq"
Mike
Whitney
Greenspan's Hammer
Roger
Burbach
Why They Hate Bush in Chile
Website
of the Day
Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?
November
20 / 21, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Poisoned Chalice
Todd
May
Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear
Abbas
Ahmed Ibrahim
The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account
Kevin
Zeese
Mishandling Nader
Landau
/ Hassen
After Arafat
Tom
Barry
The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley
Fred
Gardner
Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd
Justin
E.H. Smith
Triumph of the Will: the Sequel
Carl
Estabrook
Where We Are Now
Gary
Leupp
Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue
Dave
Lindorff
Apocalypse Soon
Jenna
Michelle Liut
Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower
and Lives
Mickey
Z.
The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William
Blum
Greg
Moses
The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America
Sharon
Smith
Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now?
Ron
Jacobs
Sandwiches and Car Bombs
Ben
Tripp
Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days
Richard
Oxman
Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules!
Gilad
Atzmon
Politics and Jazz
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon.
Website
of the Day
Voice of the Forest
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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Weekend Edition
December 4 / 6, 2004
Politicize
the CIA?
You've
Got to be Kidding!
By
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
No alien penetration, or treachery of
double agents, have ever done nearly as much damage to the CIA
as the infighting consequent upon the arrival of each new Director,
charged by his White House master with cleaning house and settling
accounts with the bad guys installed by the previous White House
incumbent.
Bush's new director, former
Republican Florida rep Porter Goss and his team of enforcers,
rampage through the corridors of CIA hq at Langley. Goss was
once an undercover CIA officer so there's probably a personal
edge to his mission of revenge, as he strikes back at the dolts
who nixed his expense accounts or poured scorn on his heroic
endeavors in the field.
But Goss's most pressing task
is to exact retribution for the stories emanating from the CIA
in the months before the election suggesting that the Agency's
measured assessments of the supposed WMD presence in Iraq were
perverted by the war faction headed by (vice) president Cheney.
Goss and his hit team have
acted swiftly. In early November the CIA's number 2, John McLaughlin,
resigned, followed days later by the Agency's top man on the
clandestine side, Stephen Kappes and his number 2, Michael Sulick.
And, no surprise, into retirement goes Mr "Anonymous",
Michael Scheuer, leader of the CIA unit hunting Osama bin Laden.
I'm with Goss on that one. Scheuer probably spent most of each
day hunting down his next book advance and kibbitizing about
royalties from Imperial Hubris with his true "Controls"
at Brassey's Inc, owned by shadowy Books International.
So Goss will exact vengeance,
spill blood,leak to favored journalists and deliver Bush daily
intelligence briefings tailored to meet the expectations of
his patron.
Of course there's a portentous
uproar and wringing of pious hands as the cry goes up that the
abilities of the Agency to collect and analyze useful intelligence
are being compromised by what Jason Vest in The Nation was pleased
to call "unparalleled" political partisanship. "We
need a director," cries Jay Rockefeller, ranking Democrat
on the Senate Intelligence Committee, "who is not only knowledgeable
and capable, but unquestionably independent".
There's nothing new in all
this. Permit me to take you on a brisk tour of CIA Directors.
Before Goss we had George Tenet, a former Congressional staffer
so eager to please Bush that he uttered the imperishable words
"slam dunk" about the supposed ease of making a case
for Saddam's WMD.
Tenet, whose political agility
is advertised in the fact that he was one of the longer serving
DCIs,supplanted John Deutch, an MIT prof who divided his brief
sojourn as director between downloads of the Agency's darkest
secrets onto his personal laptop, business ventures with a revolving
doorman from DoD, William Perry, and excursions to town meetings
in Los Angeles, claiming to black audiences that the CIA had
no role in funnelling cocaine into the nation's ghettoes. Among
the few secret files Deutch apparently failed to download onto
his laptop were materials later excavated by the CIA's own inspector
general, Fred Hitz, establishing CIA complicity in the cocaine
trade.
Deutsch's predecessor was
Jim Woolsey, unusual for someone in the Clinton-Gore milieu in
having no conspicuous record of marijuana consumption, hence
a security clearance, thus qualifying him as the nation's top
spy. Clinton and Gore mostly liked Woolsey for political reasons,
because he had street cred with the neocons (who used to sail
under the flag of "Jackson Democrats"). Woolsey later
became a prime lobbyist for attacking Iraq.
DCI before Woolsey was Robert
Gates, a cat torturer/ drowner in his youth, creature of Bush
Sr's administration, in trouble for lying to Congress; before
him William Webster, brought in as air freshener after William
Casey, one of the most consummate scoundrels ever to run any
government agency in the entire history of the United States.
Casey was Reagan's campaign bag man, then given the CIA with
the prime function of misrepresenting the threat posed by the
Soviet Union and nearer at hand, Nicaragua.
Casey dislodged Jimmy Carter's
man, Admiral Stansfield Turner, a relatively honest fellow. Turner,
roasted for firing many in the CIA "old guard" of that
era, took over as CIA chief from Bush Sr, who, like JFK, sanctioned
a Murder Inc in the Caribbean, and who wilted under pressure
from the Jackson Democrats, aka the Military Industrial Complex.
It was Bush who appointed the notorious "Team B" to
contradict previous in-house CIA analyses suggesting the Soviet
threat was not as fearsome as that depicted on the cartoon (aka
editorial) page of the Wall Street Journal.
Bush's predecessor as DCI was
William Colby, a CIA careerman mostly famous for running the
Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, battling with the CIA's
crazed counter-intelligence czar, James Angleton and testifying
with undue frankness in the Church congressional hearings into
the CIA. In retirement Colby continued his career as a conspiracy
buff, probing the suicide of Clinton's counsel Vince Foster for
his newsletter. Colby finally stepped into his canoe on Maryland's
eastern shore after a dinner of clams and white wine and turned
up drowned a few days later.
Colby replaced James Schlesinger
who ran the Agency for a few months in the midst of the Watergate
scandal. Ray McVicar, a 27-year career analyst with the CIA,
now retired, remembers how he and his Agency colleagues were
taken aback when Schlesinger announced on arrival, "I am
here to see that you guys don't screw Richard Nixon!" To
underscore his point, McGovern recalls, Schlesinger "told
us he would be reporting directly to White House political adviser
Bob Haldeman and not to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger."
We'll stop with Schlesinger,
but you get the idea. There's nothing new about the "political"
appointment of Porter Goss, who least has the agreeable distinction
of owning an organic farm in Virginia where tiny donkeys run
herd on hairy sheep from Central Asia, and chickens lay green
eggs, thus reduplicating the Agency's most expensive op ever,
the Afghan caper, where the CIA supervised the mujahedeen at
a cost of $3.5 billion, and launching Osama bin Laden on his
chosen path.
Most intelligence is worthless,
and with the scant truthful stuff rapidly deep-sixed. Whatever
makes its way onto the desks of presidents or congressional overseers
is 100 per cent "political". Anyone who wants to find
out what's happening in the world would be better advised to
ask a taxi driver.
Footnote: I wrote this column
for The Nation print edition that went to press last Wednesday.
The previous week the Nation ran an odd piece by Jason Vest claiming
that the previously politically neutral post of the DCI was now
being disfigured by an "unparalleled" political appointment.
Vest appeared to claiming that the evictions of the chief and
assistant chief of the CIA's clandestine wing, Sulick and Kappes,
were somehow a blow to the forces of decency. It's surely no
function of left commentary to start supporting any faction on
the covert side of an agency that has carried out assassination,
terrorism and torture as a matter of routine policy for the past
55 years.
CounterPunch's editorial position
is that the more overt the political reconfiguring of the Agency
by each new director, the better off we are. Let's suppose that
one day a leftist president settles in behind his desk in the
Oval Office, sticks a portrait of W.E.B. DuBois on the wall and
then reaches for the phone, fires the heads of the CIA's covert
side, appoints no successors ande shifts the entire complement
of covert officers into monitoring soil erosion in the Great
Plains, a real national security threat. Wouldn't that be a step
forward?
Weekend Edition
Features for November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
|