Ray McGovern: Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

[marmar]

Published on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

by Ray McGovern


In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors-the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to "reverse Attorney General Holder's August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations."

Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation-as he was against release of the Justice Department's "torture memoranda" of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all-the President's pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard "error" when the President said "era."

As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned. No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyers and wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest-not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.

Three of the seven-George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden-were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: "There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused."

When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory "respect" for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, "I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build." .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/29-8

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[27inCali]

5. a lot of people just aren't ready to open their eyes

quite that wide yet.

but you aren't alone.

[unblock]

2. shrub certainly wasn't afraid of the cia.

which probably says quite a lot about poppy and cheney's control over the the cia.

[Way2go]

3. How do you know that? nt

[Doctor_J]

8. His Pappy was an OG in the Gangster State we now inhabit

Compare how many Bush family members that have died violent/suspicious deaths compared to their enemies

[avaistheone1]

19. Cheney wasn't afraid to push around the CIA, and get them to do his bidding.

[BunkerHill24]

4. Mr. McGovern was a cia analyst for 27 years...he sure knows what he's referring to here. n/t

[bemildred]

6. Are Emperors afraid of the Praetorian Guard? nt

[AwakeAtLast]

7. I think they have certain "evidence"

that they show each new President, letting them know who's in charge.

[MinM]

9. The CIA has often run an agenda counter to what the President wished...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=369694&mesg_id=369971

The CIA was clearly not created to serve only the President. It was created to serve the interests of Wall Street, and if you follow their pattern of covert action around the globe, you'll see who benefitted. The Guatemalan coup in 1954 benefitted the United Fruit Company. The Iranian coup in the early fifties benefitted the oil barons (access to oil was listed as the first explicit goal of the coup in the summary of that operation.) The CIA was created from the OSS, itself a creation not of the government so much as of Wall Street. The top officers all came from children of lawyers, bankers, and other money men. The OSS's nickname was "Oh So Social" due to its high profile roster.

The CIA has often run an agenda counter to what the President wished. This is easy to document in the Kennedy administration - they were at odds at nearly every turn. But it wasn't only the Kennedy adminstration that had difficulty with the CIA.

Under the Eisenhower administration, for example, Eisenhower was set to meet with Khrushchev to discuss a mutual reduction in arms. The CIA didn't want to see any such accommodation. So in express defiance of Eisenhower's request that no such flights be made, the CIA flew the U2 over the Soviet Union. As the "official" story goes, the Soviets shot it down. As people close to those events have said in print and elsewhere, there's good evidence that the flight was deliberately sabotaged by the CIA so that it would crash over the Soviet Union, preventing a peace treaty. Even CIA director Allen Dulles stated the plane was not shot down. As Dulles testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 31, 1960:

"We believe that it was not shot down at its operating altitude of around 70,000 feet by the Russians. We believe that it was initially forced down to a much lower altitude by some as yet undetermined mechanical malfunction." ? "It is obvious to us that the plane was not hit. If the plane had been hit by a ground-to-air missile, in our belief, it would have disintegrated."

While Eisenhower later claimed responsibility for the overflight, the evidence is strong that he was surprised, and upset, that the CIA would risk upsetting the all-important peace conference. I believe that incident is part of the reason Eisenhower gave us that famous warning as he prepared to leave office...

http:http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/80


The CIA essentially blackmailed itself into existence...
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/140


DCI #12 may have aided the premature political demise of POTUS #39
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7331441&mesg_id=7333034

[winyanstaz]

14. Well if they are not afraid of them..they should be.

They are out of control and have been out of control since before Kennedy was murdered.

[MinM]

22. President Harry S Truman: Limit CIA Role to Intelligence

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x506785

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x106117

Republic of Money: Dulles, DuPont, Brown Brothers, CIA: Pt. 1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7346780

[MinM]

23. Bill Casey was one of the key men in the acquisition of media after WW2

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10799

Bill Casey was one of the key men in the acquisition of media after WW2. It was one of his proteges (a young German immigrant to the US) who was sent back to Germany after the war to take over Bertelsmann and build it up. Rupert Murdoch was very tight with Ted Shackley, which is how he got launched on his global acquisitions and has now taken over the WSJ. Murdoch was running a failed national newspaper in Australia while Shackley was station chief in Oz. Then suddenly he becomes a US citizen literally overnight and goes on an endless buying spree. Shackley's pockets were infinitely deep. At the time, Murdoch was facing the likely closure of his newspaper THE AUSTRALIAN. His ticket out was Shackley. This also explains why Murdoch was allowed to break all the rules in acquisition of media in America...

How William Casey was Silenced - The Education Forum

In May 1986 Gene Wheaton told William Casey, Director of the CIA, about what he knew about the Iran-Contra operation. Casey refused to take any action, claiming that the agency or the government were not involved in what later became known as Irangate.

Gene Wheaton now took his story to Daniel Sheehan, a left-wing lawyer. Wheaton also contacted Newt Royce and Mike Acoca, two journalists based in Washington. The first article on this scandal appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on 27th July, 1986. As a result of this story, Congressman Dante Facell wrote a letter to the Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, asking him if it "true that foreign money, kickback money on programs, was being used to fund foreign covert operations." Two months later, Weinberger denied that the government knew about this illegal operation.

Charles Allen, a national intelligence officer for counter-terrorism, went to see Robert Gates on 1st October, 1986, and told him that he believed that the proceeds from the Iran arms sales may have been diverted to support the contras. Gates then passed this information onto Casey.

On 5th October a Sandinista patrol in Nicaragua shot down a C-123K cargo plane that was supplying the Contras. Eugene Hasenfus, an Air America veteran, survived the crash and told his captors that he thought the CIA was behind the operation. Two days later, Roy Furmark, who was currently working for Adnan Khashoggi, told Casey that his boss was owed $10 million for his role played in the arms-hostages deal. Furmark also claimed that the man behind the deal was Oliver North...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Casey

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcaseyW.htm

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile7.html

http://www.ratical.com/ratville/CAH/AOPof911p11.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963075,00.html

[bertman]

10. Yes.

[CRH]

11. They should be, ...

because they have very little control and very little oversight. What little oversight there is, is neutralized by an ineffective congress, who couldn't spot a lie if it bit them in the butt.

On more than one occasion the CIA has set into motion coups and other geopolitical conditions, without presidential or congressional knowledge.

It has often been written Kennedy was very unhappy with the CIA cowboys plotting their own foreign policy in Cuba and Viet Nam just to name a couple of situations.

The potential for the CIA to subvert a president or act completely independent of formal instruction, is more than just possible, it happens.

[loudsue]

12. Kickin' this thread...

This is a huge problem for the entire world...the U.S. CIA. I'm more than certain Obama was warned, early and often, as was John Kerry. Does anyone remember how Ross Perot suddenly called off his presidential campaign when he was gaining so much ground back in the day? Then, he called it back ON? I have ALWAYS thought that he got his warning, and he was saying things that I'm sure any CIA upper echelon didn't want to hear (Bush?) .

Somehow, some day, this group of mafia thugs will have to be reeled in.

[scentopine]

13. Like Wall Street - too big to fail, we fear them, so we throw money at them -nt

[defendandprotect]

15. Timely article . . . back later to ead it all --

[defendandprotect]

16. kick

[DeSwiss]

17. Of course.

The Presidency has become largely a ceremonial post.

[yurbud]

18. kick

[sulphurdunn]

20. Two Things I know

1. Daley Plaza was a perfect motorcade ambush site, which the Secret Service could not have failed to notice. Yet, no rooftop or building security was provided there.
2. On 9/11, NORAD utterly failed in its primary mission of protecting North American airspace. A mission for which it had trained 40+ years.

[Myrina]

21. kick

n/t