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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 8/27/14

Former CIA Lawyer Defends Torture in Der Spiegel Interview

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Message Eric London

More recently, the Obama administration has been delaying the release of a still-classified Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture that is widely expected to reveal state torture on an even broader scale than is currently known.

Obama allowed several of the architects of the state torture program to secretly view and redact the Senate report before its release. Rizzo himself was not amongst those given access to the document, a slight against which he indignantly protested.

Nevertheless, Rizzo is sufficiently confident that he faces no legal threat from the Obama administration, Congress or the courts, and can rely on the American media to cover up his crimes, that he boasts of his role in the torture program to a major international publication. The interview is, in fact, part of a publicity campaign to promote his new book about his years with the CIA.

That his confidence is well placed is demonstrated by the failure of any major US media outlet to report his interview with Der Spiegel .

The full complicity of Obama in the methods of torture and illegal detention pioneered by his predecessor is chillingly underscored by one exchange in the interview. Der Spiegel asks whether "the presidential directive you wrote with George Bush which allowed the targeted assassination of terror suspects" is still in effect. Rizzo replies: "It was signed just a few days after Sept. 11 and, as far as I know, it is still in effect today."

Rizzo attempts to foist the blame for the torture and state assassination programs on the American people. When asked about the White House's post-September 11 decision to authorize the CIA to "do whatever is necessary" to halt the ostensible terrorist threat, Rizzo says "the phrase is a characterization of the atmosphere and the consensus in the country."

This is a lie. All of these programs were instituted secretly, behind the backs of the American public, precisely because those implementing them knew they would be massively opposed.

Rizzo's interview should be taken as a warning to the working class. It reveals the prevalence within the highest echelons of the American state of fascistic elements who would have had no problem serving as functionaries of Hitler's Gestapo or SS.

The development of a mass movement of the working class in defense of democratic rights must assume as one of its major tasks the prosecution and conviction of political criminals such as John Rizzo, John Brennan, Dick Cheney, George Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft and George W. Bush, and their continuators, beginning with Barack Obama.

Crossposted from wsws.org

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Eric London writes for the World Socialist website, wsws.org, published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, ICFI)  

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