They deliberately fomented and exploited fear to secure acquiescence to a policy of militarist violence abroad and far-ranging attacks on democratic rights at home.
What role the CIA itself played in allowing and even facilitating these attacksattributed to the agency s former "asset Osama bin Ladenis no doubt another area of the past from which Panetta would like to move on.
Panetta cites his trip to Capitol Hill in June to inform intelligence committees about a secret programreportedly involving the formation of assassination squadsthat had existed for seven years but had never been disclosed to Congress. The CIA director complains that "rather than providing an opportunity to start a new chapter in CIA-congressional relations, the meeting sparked a fresh round of recriminations about the past.
The revelation reignited charges by the Democratic leadership that it had been lied to and misled by the CIA under the Bush administration. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a former top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, had claimed in May that she was never informed of the agency s waterboarding of detainees. In response, Panetta issued a statement to CIA employees essentially calling the speaker a liar.
The dubious character of Pelosi s claim notwithstanding, Panetta s public rebuke to an elected official standing second in the line of succession to the White House is a telling demonstration of the role of the intelligence and military complex as a powerful and increasingly autonomous state within a state.
Panetta goes further in his column: "Intelligence can be a valuable weapon, but it is not one we should use on each other. As the president has said, this is not a time for retribution. Debates over who knew what whenor what happened seven years agomiss a larger, more important point: We are a nation at war in a dangerous world ...
There is a chilling quality to this assertion, couched in the "nation at war rhetoric that was the stock-in-trade of Bush, Cheney and Co. Intelligence is a weapon that "we the CIA and Congressshould not "use on each other. Is Panetta threatening Congress? The statement can be taken as a warning to Pelosi and others that unless they back off from any investigation of the agency s crimes, it has the means to retaliate.
There is every reason to expect the Democrats in Congress to comply, just as they have been complicit in carrying out two wars of aggression and the enactment of a raft of legislation setting up the framework for a police state.
Neither the Obama administration nor the Democratic-led Congress will defend democratic rights or carry out the essential task of holding accountable those responsible for aggressive war, torture and other crimes. On the contrary, they are continuing these heinous practices in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the prisons at Guantà namo, Bagram and elsewhere.
These tasks can be realized only through the independent political mobilization of the working class in struggle against both political parties controlled by the financial elite. Only such a movement of working people can lay bare the illegal actions of the CIA and other US spy agencies and bring to account those who ordered them, including through the criminal investigation and prosecution of Bush, Cheney and others complicit in the crimes of the last eight years.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
