Torture Report: Another Episode in CIA's History of Violating Oversight (by Loch K. Johnson)

[bobthedrummer]

Loch K. Johnson served as a special assistant to Senator Frank Church during the intelligence "investigations" in 1975, and also was a consultant to Representative Les Aspin, Chair of the Aspin-Brown Committee on Intelligence in 1995. This article was posted 12-15-14 on World Politics Review.

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/14659/torture-report-another-episode-in-cia-s-hiight

As a survivor of criminal domestic programs during the 60's and 70's I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about the complete lack of accountability that continues to harm so many citizens in so many ways.

We do torture, in places like Homan Square, psychiatric wards, religious compounds and many other places here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

There is quite a dark history about torture in the criminal domestic "surveillance" programs of America. Let's talk about it in this thread.

[OnyxCollie]

1. More from Loch Johnson.

Legislative Reform of Intelligence Policy
Loch K. Johnson
Polity, Vol. 17, No.3. (Spring, 1985), pp. 549-573.

I. Era of Trust

Following its establishment by the National Security Act of 1947 (with amendments in 1949; 63 Stat. 308, 50 U.S.C. 403 a-n), the CIA and other intelligence agencies received only scant attention from Congress for almost three decades. Intelligence operations were thought to be "apart from the rules" and beyond congressional scrutiny.1 Solicitous of "national security" and impressed with forceful CIA Directors, such as Allen Dulles (1953-61) and Richard Helms (1966-73), Congress did not desire responsibility, or even information, concerning the CIA'S covert operations. As Senator Frank Church (D, Idaho, 1957-81) once recalled, some of his colleagues took the position that "we don't know what's going on and, furthermore, we don't want to know." 2 Uneasiness over inadvertent security breaches reinforced this inclination toward self-imposed ignorance. Consider also that legislators could not publicly discuss any work they might do in the field of intelligence. Consequently, they could not claim credit, and their constituents' appreciation, for their intervention.3

This legislative quiescence was disturbed occasionally by a malfeasance or incompetence too blatant to ignore, such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 and the National Student Association flap in 1967.4 There would then be critical speeches on the floor and a hearing or two but no agreement to enhance congressional oversight of the intelligence agencies. Toward this end over 200 resolutions were introduced in Congress between 1947 and 1975 but few ever emerged from committee.5 Of these, four appear to be noteworthy. In 1956 and again in 1966, a small band of senators tried to create an intelligence oversight committee that would go beyond the small and inactive CIA oversight subcommittees already in existence in each chamber. In both instances, the measure lost by a wide margin. Then in October 1974, a few senators (led by James Abourezk, D, South Dakota, 1973-79) introduced a bill to prohibit CIA involvement in covert action, and to limit the Agency strictly to intelligence gathering and counterintelligence. This measure, too, lost by a lopsided margin.

~snip~

By 1978, the proposed charter (S.2525, introduced on February 9, 1978) had grown to more than 200 pages of restraints. Its many detailed provisions included guidelines prohibiting any covert action that entailed:

support of international terrorist activities;
mass destruction of property;
creation of food or water shortages or floods;
creation of epidemics of diseases;
use of chemical, biological, or other weapons in violation of treaties or other international agreements to which the United States is a party;
violent overthrow of the democratic government of any country;
torture of individuals; or
support of any action, which violates human rights, conducted by the police, foreign intelligence, or internal security forces of any foreign country (Section 1352) .12

For most members of Congress and the executive, this seemed to go too far into the realm of congressional "micromanagement." 13 The accommodation worked out between the branches through the framework of E.O. 12036 and the new oversight committees was still too slender a reed to support such an imposing edifice. The quest for the great charter failed.14

~snip~

Key members of Congress were reluctant to exercise their watchdog powers. If anything, Congress served chiefly to shield the intelligence agencies from outside scrutiny and criticism. John Stennis, (D, Mississippi, 1947- ), then Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee for CIA oversight, said in 1971 : "You have to make up your mind that you are going to have an intelligence agency and protect it as such, and shut your eyes some and take what is coming." 22

[Judi Lynn]

2. Monstrous. Sane, wholesome people would never take this path. Nothing can justify it. n/t

[bobthedrummer]

3. Church Committee Boxed Files (Mary Ferrell Foundation)

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/docset/getList.do?docSetId=1015

Prisoner Abuse: Patterns From The Past (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 122)
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122

Defining torture (International Rehabilitation Council For Torture Victims/IRCT)
http://www.irct.org/what-is-torture/defining-torture.aspx

Some forms of non-consensual human experimentation have been recognized as torture, particularly in the neurosciences.

Mind Justice
http://mindjustice.org

Yet there has been no accountability of torture policy makers in our nation, moreover, the whistle blowers and their supporters usually are targeted and neutralized.

I am a survivor of COINTELPRO's, Operation CHAOS and a lot of other criminal "surveillance" programs that began more than 50 years ago when I was put on various "lists" as a high school student, musician and activist in Milwaukee.

[bobthedrummer]

4. Some more history that is still LBN here in the HOMELAND

Let's begin with what John Brennan's Agency has in it's library, which is far different from what those of US targeted by the various criminal domestic programs experienced "so long ago". Well what do you know, the weekend crew there may have changed the address after I read it. Do your own search DUers, the author and title are correct and it was declassified in 1994. It was mostly critical of Seymour Hersh.

Intelligence Reform in the Mid-1970's (1976 Timothy S. Hardy/CIA/ declassified 1994)
http://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent_csi/vol20no2/html/v20i2a01p_0001.htm#top

it is also referenced here
http://intellit.muskingum.edu/reform_folder/2reform70s.html

Compare the above to this excerpt from the 1976 book The Lawless State by Morton Halperin, Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage, Christine Marwick (Third World Traveler)
The CIA-at Home
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/NSA/CIA_Home_LS.html

Of course there were many other domestic programs then (not as sophisticated and privatized as today) like John Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO's
COLINTELPRO Resources (Freedom Archives)
http://www.freedomarchives.org/Cointel_Resources.html

So let's discuss how torture and extrajudicial execution in The United States of America continues today.

[bobthedrummer]

5. What are the 10 most prevalent forms of torture and why? (by Josh Clark & Jonathan Atteberry

3-12-2008 How Stuff Works article)
http://science.howstuffworks.com/five-forms-of-torture.htm

Many of the non-lethal weapons have been used to torture, the research and development of some of these systems goes back to the MKULTRA programs. Below is the DoD's Non-lethal site.
http://jnlwp.defense.gov/Home.aspx

You can add something to this thread, dear reader, can't you?

[bobthedrummer]

6. Passover/Easter kick for participation, comment and visibility about American torture policies

The Torture Doctors (Scott Horton 11-4-13 Harper's)
http://harpers.org/blog/2013/11/the-torture-doctors-2