The CIA’s Global Torture Operations

Disclosure under Barack Obama, the Most Secretive President in U.S. History

By Joachim Hagopian

Journalist Mai Bei, (Yahoo News) is reminding America of its recent dark past vis-à-vis that longtime rogue agency the CIA’s global torture operations during that rogue regime of the Bush administration.

The plot thickens with the Senate Intelligence Committee strongly in favor of declassifying its five years in the making, 6,700 page report bringing to light in graphic criminal detail the plethora of Geneva Convention and international law violations committed by overzealous CIA henchmen in their quest to torture information out of thousands of detainees the world over “fighting” America’s so called war on terror. Today’s article attempts to create high drama Washington-style by hyping up anticipation of an executive-legislative showdown between how much of the CIA’s dastardly deeds should be disclosed to the waiting American public.

Pressure is mounting on our current beleaguered president known for his disastrous foreign policy on the heels of the exact same disastrous foreign policy launched by the war criminal neocons before him.As a recent backdrop leading to this latest theatrical release of government-gone-bad is the back and forth sniping charges between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA, both accusing the other of illegal spying.

Committee Chair Diane Feinstein (D-CA) had long been cozy with protecting CIA secrecy and criminality right until she learned that Director John Brennan’s CIA was busily violating her committee’s privacy. She had no problem with the American public’s privacy constantly violated in act after unconstitutional act or for that matter any world citizen’s right to life being destroyed in the name of national security. But her ire was hypocritically provoked when the CIA no doubt got up too close and personal on her naked body politic and she did not like it one bit.

Then lest we forget we had President Obama campaigning on the promise once Bush was gone to be the most open, honest and transparent presidency in US history. What does he do? He proceeds to become the most secretive president in US history, racking up more cover-up scandals, more charges of espionage, more press harassment and more denials of Freedom of Information Act requests than all previous presidents combined! A Time Magazine article earlier this year noted:


Barrack Obama has given a whole new meaning to the expression “double-speak,” raising it to rarefied heights even his court jesting predecessor filled with his bumbling rendition of boldface lies and deception could never outdo. The man that raised not just America’s hopes but the entire world has the record of a proven imposter and fraudulent traitor to the American people.
“The administration cited national security concerns a record 8,496 times as an excuse for withholding information from the public, a 57% increase from the year before.”But then his oligarch puppet masters are not just pulling his strings but all three treasonous branches of government as well. The joke of a corrupt and oligarch owned two party system lining its greedy pockets with the three ring circus of shadowy, shady lobbyists, Congress and think tank provocateurs, slithering amorally in and out of public life all to ensure that their puppet masters are fully obeyed and loyalty to them at all cost is maintained. The ideological dogma-quagmire of Republicans versus Democrats’ buffoonery is mere slight of hand, carefully orchestrated design. Meanwhile, the cherry picked judicial branch from the Supreme Court on down ensures every key decision pays homage to their masters as well.

So with everything so stacked against the lowly public citizens whose Constitution they lied under oath to protect, every branch of US government holds Americans in bold, in-our-face contempt. Why is there even a question being raised by a mainstream press insider about disclosure of criminal CIA behavior when even a half awake public already knows the score – secrecy in the name of national security rules the world. Theft in the name of national security rules the world. And death and destruction all around the world in the name of American Empire security.

The pretense of intergovernmental conflict over throwing a bone of reality to a truth-starved public is an affront to Americans’ intelligence. And even more insulting is the implicit reasoning that would have us citizens concluding that just because illicit torture never even worked as far as providing any relevant or useful information that helped the US “win” its war on terror, the biggest lie is asserting that torture because it was so against the law no longer is even happening just because our President says so.

Then this so called issue of invoking Senate Resolution 400 passed in 1976 creating the Senate Intel Committee has only been feebly threatened in the past to finagle grandstanding leverage against former presidents to nudge them a little closer toward honesty with the public. But not once has this little known provision been formally used and implemented to out a president on any real full and honest disclosure. It afforded the Senate the power to declassify information without the president’s approval. Though the stage is being set to send mainstream media into fulltime speculation spin, with such statements from today’s article as:

But of course full declassification is precisely what is always avoided at all cost. Beyond the veneer of superficial appearance, the executive and legislative branches have always covertly worked their shady backroom deals out privately amongst themselves, far removed from the public eye of awareness, much less accountability, and that’s of course how it will stay.
“If the president didn’t object in writing within five days, the full Senate would then weigh the report in closed session and vote on whether to unilaterally declassify it.”Again Bai’s article makes reference that Obama will most likely reveal his heavily censored version of a generalized, ultra-brief summary that the CIA during the neocon regime engaged in some distasteful behaviors, slipping it by Americans busily “tanning themselves at the beach this summer.” What is most certain is Obama’s loyal deference to more secrecy in the name of national security ad nauseum.

And as such, those 6700 pages of colorful twisted accounts of such criminal barbarism as water boarding victims to death by drowning, ripping out their fingernails, electrocuting their gonads, those kind of unsavory details will in good taste be conveniently omitted. One more sure thing prediction to come out of all this when our psychopathic president does finally go through the motions of public disclosure. He will promise (which in double-speak means lie) that no US agency now resorts to such inhumane internationally outlawed practices of torture under his clean-cut watch.

Please Mr. President, spare us, for we know better. You are enshrouded in deceit up to your ears, and so is your entire government enshrouded in deceit as the American public is on to you like never before.

So as the apartheid US Empire allows its apartheid Israeli ally to genocide Palestinians in Gaza while trumping up another false flag with Putin and his east Ukrainian cronies downing that Malaysian flight, we are all reminded of the false flag evoked nearly a year ago when you Mr. President and your three blind henchman Kerry, Hagel and Dempsey fell on your faces trying to convince the world that Syria’s Assad launched that gas attack in the Damascus suburb.

We saw through your lies then and will see through them again. You have no credibility left with the American public, much less the world. Your ploy to obediently ignite World War III per oligarch order to get to Iran through Syria on your way past Russia and China is the only thing transparent about your presidency.