Panetta Vilified By Liberal Contempt

by Rich Lowry - August 25, 2009 - Washington Post

In response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, a judge ordered the administration to release a 2004 CIA inspector general report about interrogation practices.

Although often discomfiting reading (one incident involved a power drill), the report also outlines the CIA's nearly obsessive quest for legal guidance and its intolerance for unauthorized methods as piddling as blowing cigar smoke at detainees.

Consider the fate of the CIA officer who used a gun to frighten Abd al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing.

He did it in 2002. The agency immediately called him back to headquarters. He faced an internal accountability board, suffered a reprimand and eventually resigned.

Did you know that threatening someone known to be a terrorist is "torture"? You can''t even say that you might harm them, or God forbid, blow cigarette smoke in their eyes. Rather than praise for getting information without actually harming someone - you can have your career destroyed instead. I didn't know this. I believe Democrats are gutless pansies and they wish to render gutless our own attempts to defend our nation. It is for that reason the CIA is being stripped of the right to interrogate people and this effort to interrogate is being handed to the White House. That is correct. The political White House which has already this year labelled people who rage against a health care bill they disagree with as "domestic terrorists" - will take over interrogation of potential spies and terrorists to assure that we don't intimidate them into saying anything worthwhile.

The reaction of left wing writers has been frustration over the go slow process Obama and Holder have launched. They have already "convicted" the Bush appointees and CIA agents and they want the show trials to start right now. Welcome to socialist America. For those who think that Attorney General Eric Holder is doing this without Obama support, I remind people of the KJFK radio interview between then Senator Barack Obama and host Christiane Brown back during the campaign.

OBAMA: Well one of things that I’ve said, and I’ve said this repeatedly publicly, since I taught constitutional law for ten years is that...one of my first acts as president is going to be call in my new attorney general to review every single executive order that’s been issued... to overturn those that are undermining the Constitution, undermining our civil liberties, that are promoting this cockamamie theory of Unitary government, that says that somehow the executive branch does not need to obey the Constitution…uhh

BROWN: But, but Senator Obama forgive me…

OBAMA: Let, let me finish…and during that process of review, if it’s determined that laws have been broken, then obviously accountability would be part of my Attorney General’s job.

Holder is not doing this against Obama's wishes. Obama is simply exercizing his usual technique of taking both sides of every issue. You can never tell what Obama means until you see what actions his administration takes. Holder is doing what Obama wants, what he said he wants as Obama himself points out... repeatedly.

Meanwhile the man who is charged with running the CIA, left wing political operative Leon Panetta, is reduced to pleading with CIA agents not to panic over White House plans to investigate them for criminal conduct. That is clearly the meaning you get from his letter this week to the CIA personnel.

The article Please Don’t Panic by Jennifer Rubin has just appeared in Commentary Magazine. It quotes the following from Panetta to his agency, the CIA:

As Director in 2009, my primary interest—when it comes to a program that no longer exists—is to stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given. That is the President’s position, too. The CIA was aggressive over the years in seeking new opinions from the Department of Justice as the legal landscape changed. The Agency sought and received multiple written assurances that its methods were lawful. The CIA has a strong record in terms of following legal guidance and informing the Department of Justice of potentially illegal conduct.

Yet, no matter how many times Obama states he does not "want" to go after the CIA and Panetta parrots that intention with "sincerity", both their words and actions make a mockery of the claim. It is interesting how Panetta's letter emphasizes that the CIA is no longer interrogating spies and terrorists (see above - it has now been moved into the White House). On issue after issue Barack Obama has said one thing and yet acted exactly the opposite. Obama may have slipped out of town the day before his Attorney General started this prosecution of the CIA, but no one has any doubts about the source of the action. It is one more attack on our nation's security agencies from Barack Obama, the master of Alinsky deceit.