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TechnoratiIntel Panel: CIA Misled Lawmakers On Torture, Other Issues
The CIA misled Congress about its torture program and other issues, the House Intelligence committee has concluded.
In a hearing of the House Intelligence committee this afternoon, Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jan Schakowsky, both Democrats, pointed to at least five instances going back to at least 2001 in which the C.I.A. withheld information from or lied to Congress.
Schakowsky said that a committee probe had found that the CIA is afflicted by a "large disease" of misleading and even lying to lawmakers about intelligence activities.
Earlier this year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged that the agency had lied to her about its enhanced interrogation techniques program, during a September 2002 briefing -- provoking outrage from Republicans. But that episode was among the examples that Schakowsky and Eshoo pointed to today.
- Another concerned the top secret program to assassinate al Qaeda operatives which CIA director Leon Panetta first told Congress about in June.
- A third concerned the CIA's 2005 destruction of videotapes showing the interrogation of al Qaeda operatives.
- And a fourth, already known, related to the shooting down of a plane carrying missionaries over Peru in 2001, information about which was concealed form Congress.
In response, a CIA spokesman did not specifically challenge the committee's findings, telling The Hill:
It is the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to be clear and candid with the United States Congress. Director Panetta has made a relationship of trust, confidence, and respect a top priority.
12 Comments so far
Show Allhow could a politician not recognize a lie?
Just take a look at the people who have been involved with the CIA over the past 50 years and their nefarious dealings of coup d'etats, drug deals, and assassinations in foreign countries and it will tell you all you need to know. They have a blank check with no accountability or transparency. Karzi's brother in Afghanistan, a known drug lord who has been on the CIA's payroll for many years is just the latest example. They are rogue government unto themselves and the last guy that said he would smash them into " little pieces" was assassinated. Congress has not been misled for the past 50 years...they have been complicit, quislings!
As I read James Douglass's, "JFK, The Unspeakable", I suspected what he had written, he just researched and came up with "Why he had to die?" If every American read his book, the American People would realize that the CIA was designed to always lie to Congress and anyone that the CIA suspected was a "Pinko Commie" and the House of Representatives is considered "Pinko Commie Territory"........
Beyond a doubt, the CIA was responsible for the Kennedy Assassination.....and from then on Government Policy was their's to design......anyone getting in the way was either: threatened or killed via: suicides, sudden heart attacks, car accidents, plane accidents, or just assassinated.
These were CIA operatives: Lee Harvey Oswald, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, The Taliban, Jundullah.........Give me a break, Does anyone believe that Congress is going to do anything about a renegede agency that has now gone Off Book with Blackwater as one of its Off Book operations....and many other groups with former CIA officials as their leaders like Blackwater's Cofer Black?
The white house was pushing the "harsh" interrogation, I wonder if the tapes were made to show white house people that the CIA was really doing as asked? Were the tapes shown to Cheney and or Bush? Were the tapes torture porn?
Elected members of congress represent the citizens who elected them. No one elected the CIA. Lying or deceiving congress is intolerable and dangerous.
The only thing that Congress can do is to whine???
Congress can stop funding these homocidal liars!!!
I think the lawmakers are too stupid if they did not realized they were mislead....
OK, so who is in charge?
It's not Obama. He says he only looks forward never behind or to the left or right. Besides he is spending most of his time begging banks to start lending to real people (see Huffington http://bit.ly/15bG0x) and he's full of hope they will listen to him if he whines enough but in the meantime send him more money (see Nader http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/27) he's always broke.
It's not Congress, everyone either lies to them, refuses to testify before them or if they do testify cover them in so much in baffle-gab the poor dears are befuddled for years afterward.
It must be the secret police aka the CIA/NIA/FBI. they see, hear and know all which makes them in charge doesn't it, otherwise what type of democracy would put up with their nonsense. Bananas haven't started grow between the Mexican and Canadian borders have they?
Bingo!
"Bananas haven't started grow between the Mexican and Canadian borders have they?"
I've seen them growing in New Orleans, but then that's an example of third world status.
The pathetic aspect of this is that everyone knows that secret ops of a very ugly kind have virtually always existed as optional operating policy of the US government (and others).
it was a "large disease" from the beginning. now it has metasticized, supported by unprecedented institutionalized funding from every corner in a psychopathology of rationalizations
The first casualty of war is the truth
War is not the answer
Well said. There isn't a politician alive who believes these agencies are ethical. They have their own agenda and it certainly is not freedom, liberty and democracy.