Panetta: ‘Reality’ of 9/11 excuses Bush scandals
Steven C. Webster
The Raw Story
CIA director and Democratic appointee Leon Panetta, in an article published Sunday, said Democrats must recognize that the “reality” of 9/11 is what drove the conduct of the George W. Bush administration in the months following September 11, 2001, which somehow should justify not looking into suspected crimes.
He added, in an apparent warning to the House Intelligence Committee, that “focusing on the past” could hurt the CIA’s core mission amid a climate of recriminations over its practices.
“I’ve become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action,” Panetta opined in the online edition of The Washington Post.
“In our democracy, effective congressional oversight of intelligence is important, but it depends as much on consensus as it does on secrecy,” he continued. “We need broad agreement between the executive and legislative branches on what our intelligence organizations do and why. For much of our history, we have had that. Over the past eight years, on specific issues — including the detention and interrogation of terrorists — the consensus deteriorated. That contributed to an atmosphere of declining trust, growing frustration and more frequent leaks of properly classified information.”
Several paragraphs later, he appears to offer a blanket excuse for torture, CIA black sites, kidnapping, indefinite detention, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and warrantless spying, among a litany of other notable scandals.
(More here.)
The Raw Story
CIA director and Democratic appointee Leon Panetta, in an article published Sunday, said Democrats must recognize that the “reality” of 9/11 is what drove the conduct of the George W. Bush administration in the months following September 11, 2001, which somehow should justify not looking into suspected crimes.
He added, in an apparent warning to the House Intelligence Committee, that “focusing on the past” could hurt the CIA’s core mission amid a climate of recriminations over its practices.
“I’ve become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action,” Panetta opined in the online edition of The Washington Post.
“In our democracy, effective congressional oversight of intelligence is important, but it depends as much on consensus as it does on secrecy,” he continued. “We need broad agreement between the executive and legislative branches on what our intelligence organizations do and why. For much of our history, we have had that. Over the past eight years, on specific issues — including the detention and interrogation of terrorists — the consensus deteriorated. That contributed to an atmosphere of declining trust, growing frustration and more frequent leaks of properly classified information.”
Several paragraphs later, he appears to offer a blanket excuse for torture, CIA black sites, kidnapping, indefinite detention, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and warrantless spying, among a litany of other notable scandals.
(More here.)
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