The Bin Laden outrage nobody is talking about: What the government’s OBL “treasure trove” really rev

[deminks]

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/21/the_bin_laden_outrage_nobody_is_talking_about_what_the_governments_obl_treasure_trove_really_reveals/

About 10 days ago, Seymour Hersh wrote a story claiming much of what the government has told us about the Osama bin Laden raid was false. Among other claims, Hersh said the government had exaggerated the “trove” of intelligence seized from bin Laden’s compound. “We were told at first,” Hersh quoted the primary source for his story, “that the Seals produced garbage bags of stuff and that the community is generating daily intelligence reports out of this stuff….But nothing has come of it.”

Wednesday morning, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released what it calls a “sizable tranche” of documents it explains were seized from the compound. That “sizable tranche” consists of just 409 documents, of which only 103 were previously considered classified. (That ODNI calls this to be “sizable” may support Hersh’s claim there was less information than claimed.)

(snip)

So America’s spooks have released a bizarrely-organized group of bin Laden materials, using a pre-embargo release to over-emphasize how much OBL wallowed in conspiracy theories (though he did do some of that), but they insist this is not an attempt to spin Seymour Hersh as a conspiracy theorist.

(snip)

Perhaps most interestingly, the counter-conspiracy spooks have stuck the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on CIA’s Project MKUltra in with the books it claims to be conspiracy theories rather than in the “publicly available US government documents” category. The Senate held the MKUltra hearing in 1977 after new information — in addition to information previously exposed during the Church Committee — showed that CIA had conducted human experimentation with drugs like LSD to attempt to exercise mind control. “We also need to know and understand what is now being done by the CIA in the field of behavioral research to be certain that no current abuses are occurring,” Senator Daniel Inouye introduced the hearing, before asking CIA Director Stansfield Turner to explain why these materials hadn’t been previously disclosed. “The reappearance of reports of the abuses of the drug testimony program and reports of other previously unknown drug programs and projects for behavioral control,” Inouye continued, “underline the necessity for effective oversight procedures both in the executive branch and in the Congress.”

So at one level, the hearing report is yet another example of Congress futilely trying to rein in the CIA after learning it had engaged in illicit, unethical, and illegal activities. But the inclusion of the MKUltra hearing report on bin Laden’s bookshelf is notable for another reason. The CIA’s recent torture program — to which 14 of bin Laden’s top associates, along with some innocents and looser affiliates of al Qaeda, were subjected — is the institutional descendant of the MKUltra program.

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Funny, too, that bin Forgotten and his reading list are resurrected just in time for the Patriot Act vote. like Old Times.