Who's Afraid of the CIA? (Common Dreams)

[struggle4progress]

WASHINGTON - May 19 - ... Wilkerson accused Cheney of being involved in a series of actions, including authorizing the torture of Al-Qaeda suspects, to justify the war in Iraq.

On May 17, Liz Cheney accused Wilkerson, the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, of creating a "cottage industry" making up "fantasy stories" about her father on the George Stephanopoulos Show.

However, McGovern, retired CIA analyst, says that former President Bush "deputized" Cheney in ordering the CIA to treat and torture prisoners to obtain information about connections between Sadaam Hussein and Al-Qaeda and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.

"Dick Cheney was the acting president, Dick Cheney told <former CIA Director> George Tenet what to do and George Tenet said, 'Yes, sir how high would you like me to jump? You want weapons of mass destruction, no problem, I'll serve them up to you,'" McGovern says.

McGovern also says that The National Security Act of 1947 gave the US President almost complete control over CIA operations. "<That act> says the director of intelligence shall perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence as the head of the National Security Council shall direct," McGovern says. "Who's the head of the National Security Council? The President. Is there any vote? No, the President decides. That gives the President, and I use this word carefully, the power to have his own Gestapo. The only check on that is to have a kind of director that will say, 'No, I won't do this kind of thing,' or a Congress that's supposed to have an oversight role, but in the last years, has had this overlook role and we know the result of that. It's a structural flaw, a structural flaw, in the role of the intelligence apparatus of our country, but there's also a premium on character. I've worked with nine CIA directors, and most of them stood up to this schizophrenic, two-headed approach. Most of them had integrity. The last couple have not had any integrity" ...

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/05/19-15