Bush visits the CIA: reassuring America’s Murder Inc.

[IndianaGreen]

Bush visits the CIA: reassuring America’s Murder Inc.
By Patrick Martin
9 March 2005

President Bush’s visit to CIA headquarters last Thursday was an effort to assure the officials and agents of the chief US spy agency of continued White House support. His trip followed press reports of growing concern among career CIA officers that they could face discipline or even prosecution for the torture of prisoners detained as part of Bush’s “war on terror.”

Congressional Republicans have rejected calls for special hearings of the House and Senate intelligence committees to review the mounting evidence that kidnapping, torture and even murder of prisoners is standard practice for the CIA. Only one CIA agent, contract employee David Passaro, has been charged with a crime related to post-9/11 activities—in his case, the killing of a prisoner in Afghanistan who was beaten to death.

At least one other CIA officer is under investigation for a killing at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The CIA station chief in Baghdad was removed from his post in December 2003, the New York Times reported February 28, at least in part because of the death of two prisoners who had been interrogated by agency employees. The same article in the Times revealed: “The agency has referred some cases to the Justice Department for a review of possible criminal charges under the federal torture law, which forbids extreme interrogation tactics, and under civil rights laws more commonly used in police brutality prosecutions.”

The two Iraqi deaths were those of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in a shower room at Abu Ghraib prison on November 4, 2003, and Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who was beaten and asphyxiated. In both cases, military personnel have been charged with directly inflicting the fatal injuries—al-Jamadi was struck repeatedly on the head with rifle butts by Navy Seals, while Mowhoush was shoved into a sleeping bag head-first by Army intelligence officers and suffocated. CIA interrogators, however, were present and participating in both incidents.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/cia-m09.shtml

[Sandpiper]

1. Looks like their little black op in Lebanon

Has blown up in their face.