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Comment by corey_moncure | Hacker News Reader

This audio segment from The Intercept is highly relevant and illustrative of how this all came to be.

My favorite sound bites are "In one e-mail with the subject 'Torture Update'", and "We will not be briefing the president on this".

At one point, the CIA and Senate had mutually filed criminal prosecution referrals against one another over the cover up.

https://theintercept.com/2019/12/04/george-bush-barack-obama...

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Somehow that was even more disturbing than the president orchestrating it. It indicates that the CIA is a rogue* agency that is insulated enough from the political system that it can basically do what it wants, and what it wants is rooted in base aggression devoid of even evidence based approaches (their own data showed torture didn't work).

If the president doesn't know, doesn't authorize programs that are this controversial, it means they are a decoration and the political system is a sham.

* rogue meaning autonomous from political control, not necessarily that it is doing anything to contradict the imperatives of the empire.

rouge meaning the powder you apply over foundation that makes it red.

One day I will learn to spell. Thank you.

Rogue is probably the most commonly misspelled 5 letter word, thanks to World of Warcraft.

I suppose, when one lacks the integrity to even blush, one fakes it.

I don't even know how Alfreda Frances Bikowsky still has a job .

To quote The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals:

… was reviled by some male colleagues for what they described as her aggression.

… Coworkers said she had no reason to be present during {Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s} interrogation. She was not an interrogator. “She thought it would be cool to be in the room” a former colleague said. But ironically her presence during Mohammed’s ordeal, sources said, seemed to anger and strengthen his resolve, helping him to hold out longer against the harsh tactics used against him.

Gina Haspel was made the Director of the CIA, and she was instrumental in the torture program.

I don't know her, and I'm not inclined to acknowledge her importance in being able to decide anything of value.

Edit: I also doubt how instrumental anyone can be in torture beyond the implements.

Haspel was present at one of the key extraordinary rendition black-sites in Thailand and was involved in the extralegal destruction of the video evidence.

It can't be extralegal if she wasn't prosecuted for it. I think she is just a very tiny cog in a very big machine, a figurehead to throw under the bus if something goes wrong.

She is no more responsible for torture than a janitor who may have also been present.

If you're ordered to do something illegal and you do it... you still were instrumental in doing something illegal...

Torture is illegal. Destroying records on torture with the permission of supervisors is not as there is no international requirement to preserve evidence of war crimes.

>Destroying records on torture with the permission of supervisors is not as there is no international requirement to preserve evidence of war crimes.

The act could be considered obstruction of justice making it a federal crime.

There could be some hidden complex series of pained logic to justify destruction of evidence, so I am hesitant to judge on the matter.

At this point the CIA is really best viewed as an organized crime syndicate with the blessing of the government and ruling class. The other thing to help understand the situation is that due to Epstein-style kompromat it possesses on that ruling class, the CIA sits above the POTUS in the US power structure.

It is alleged that the CIA was involved with Epstein. At the very least, the guy that got him his job teaching at Dalton, Donald Barr, [0] was ex-OSS, and the father of William Barr, ex-CIA [1] and the current Attorney General.

[0] https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/the-epstein-barr-proble...

[1] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-is-william-barr-5-thing...

There are multiple incidents like this in Tim Weiner's opinionated history of the CIA Legacy of Ashes. It's not exactly a neutral presentation of the facts, but it's based on extensive research and newly declassified data, and to my knowledge no-one has disputed any of his facts.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/970488.Legacy_of_Ashes

If you only diagnose livestock from the mouth and don't bother to lift the tail to see what's coming out the backside because its too odious, then yeah, the expected outcome is going to be bad.

So I don't buy that the CIA was rogue. I just think they had don't ask/don't tell approval from Bush/Cheney during this time. IOW: "I won't ask what you're doing as long as you don't tell anyone."

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