The CIA's History of Bamboozling The Congress

[laststeamtrain]

The CIA's History of Bamboozling The Congress
Written by Melvin A. Goodman
Friday, 22 May 2009 13:02

<snip>

n 1973, CIA director Richard Helms deceived the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refusing to acknowledge the role of the CIA in overthrowing the elected government in Chile. Helms falsely testified that the CIA had not passed money to the opposition movement in Chile, and a grand jury was called to see if Helms should be indicted for perjury.

In 1977, the Justice Department brought a lesser charge against Helms, who pleaded nolo contendere; he was fined $2,000 and given a suspended two-year prison sentence. Helms went from the courthouse to the CIA where he was given a hero’s welcome and a gift of $2,000 to cover the fine. It was one of the saddest experiences in my 24 years at CIA.

In the new Ford administration, Secretary of State Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and White House chief of staff Cheney orchestrated phony intelligence for the Congress in order to get an endorsement for covert arms shipments to anti-government forces in Angola.

<snip>

In the 1980s, CIA director William Casey and his deputy, Bob Gates, consistently lied to the congressional oversight committees about their knowledge of Iran-contra. Senator Daniel Moynihan (D-NY) believed that Casey and Gates were running a disinformation campaign against the Senate intelligence committee. Casey even managed to alienate Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), a pro-intelligence, conservative senator who typically walked through barbed wire for the CIA.

Gates’ lies on Iran-contra led to the Senate intelligence committee’s unwillingness to vote him out of the committee in 1985, when he was nominated to be CIA director by President Ronald Reagan. Gates was nominated again in 1991 and this time he was confirmed, but not before the hearings produced rhyme and verse on Gates’ tailoring of intelligence to fit the biases of Bill Casey.

<snip>

The greatest CIA disinformation campaign in the congress took place in 2002-2003, when CIA director George Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, consistently lied about Iraqi training for al Qaeda members on chemical and biological weapons as well as the existence of mobile labs to manufacture such weapons.

<more>

http://www.pubrecord.org/commentary/916-the-cias-history-of-bamboozling-the-congress.html

Author: Melvin A. Goodman, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

[bemildred]

1. Congress likes being bamboozled, that's the problem.

Congress is the 800 pound gorilla, the sovereign agent in the US' political system, and it wants to act like Mary Poppins and be fed happy talk and be bamboozled all the time. If you want to be bamboozled, are you really being bamboozled?

[Demeter]

2. Congress = Disengenuous

So very inappropriate for a bunch of rich old guys.