Mumia Abu-Jamal: The Crimes of the CIA
News Item: Spokesman for the CIA announced today that the American spy agency engaged in a series of improper, and illegal acts during the 1970's. According to documents released from the era, the nations' spy agency snooped on American dissenters, spied on U.S. journalists, and once tried to hire someone to kill Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. The spokesman assured reporters that was the 'old days', when things were done without proper oversight. "Things are different now," the unidentified CIA spokesman noted.
That was the impression from several recent articles on the U.S. government spy agency.
The articles almost went out of its way to leave the reader with the impression that this was a distant, almost historical revelation. Surely this didn't happen in our day, because of something called 'oversight.'
To anyone who has dared to look beneath the headlines, and who has dared to ask questions, the revelations are nothing short of astounding.
There are several published sources that show us that the CIA has violated both U.S. and international laws for generations, and is still doing it today!
The most remarkable source is the CIA itself, in it's reports to the U.S. Congress.
According to a report by the house Intelligence Committee, the Agency commits hundreds of crimes - hundreds - every single day!
And this is a conservative estimate.
Investigative journalist John Kelly, in an essay entitled "Crimes and Silence: The CIA's Criminal Acts and the Media's Silence", published in the anthology Into the Buzz saw: Leading journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press. ED, by Kristina Borjesson (Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus Books, 2002, tells us:
The report was the first official admission and definition of CIA covert operations as crimes which the committee, without explanation, equated with essential national security operations.
In other words, the national security of the United States requires that more than one hundred thousand extremely serious crimes be committed every year.
The committee expressed no legal or ethical concerns about these crimes. On the contrary, CIA offenders were portrayed as potential hapless victims of sinister foreign authorities opposed to their lawbreaking.
"A typical 26 year old, GS-11 case officer, "reads the study, "has numerous opportunities every week, by poor trade craft or inattention, to embarrass his country and President and get agents imprisoned or executed."
But, you would argue, doesn't this very congressional report prove that there is oversight? Hardly. For Kelly goes on to write that in 2000, President Clinton signed into law the Intelligence Authorization Act, which immunizes the CIA from violating International Laws and Treaties. In fact, It's a law to violate the law!
Some oversight.
This is something straight from the Nazi playbook. If the State declares it lawful, then nothing is a crime.
We need look no further than the work of the late Gary Webb, who brilliantly documented the CIA's role in domestic drug trafficking.
His reward for such groundbreaking reporting?
A professional death sentence ( and perhaps, suicide.)
The media defenders of the Agency attacked him with a vengeance, and his paper let him go.
We've just been speaking in generalities. The CIA has committed murders, drug trafficking, assassinations of heads of state, removal of governments, takeovers of labor unions, destruction of democracies --you name it.
It didn't stop in 1975, any more than the attempted assassination of Castro stopped at one try.
It continues to this very day.
-(c) '07 maj
[Sources: 1) K. Borjesson, ed;, Into the Buzz saw....: 2) Donner, Frank. The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System (N. Y.:Vintage/Random Hse., 1981) 3) Nieto, Clara. Masters of War: Latin America and U.S. Aggression )From the Cuban Revolution Through the Clinton Years.) (N. Y.: 7 Stories Press, 2003): and 4) Zepezauer, Mark. The CIA's Greatest Hits (Tucson, AZ: Odinian Press.
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