In Defense of the Speaker of the House

[Octafish]

From DUer Debra-Conway's JFKLancer.com, an important observation about who really oversees and controls the nation's covert action apparatus:

In Defense of the Speaker of the House

William E. Jackson Jr.
Posted: May 16, 2009 12:35 AM

As of May 16, several national newspaper and television headlines were adopting an accusatory tone critical of Speaker Nancy Pelosi that undoubtedly tickled the actual authorizers (Vice President Cheney et al) and the actual practitioners (Central Intelligence Agency) of torture during the previous administration, 2001-2009. For example: "CIA Director Panetta Rebuts Pelosi's Charges," Washington Post, May 16.

Having worked for a Senate leader on Capitol Hill, I can attest that--when leaders of Congress are notified of major covert operations--the briefings are often incomplete at best and are sometimes prone to gloss over what is really going on. A full briefing on relevant CIA activities is seldom guaranteed.

William E. Jackson Jr. wrote a column on the press and national security for "Editor & Publisher Online" from 2003 to 2007. He served in the Executive Office of the President under President John Kennedy in 1963. He taught government and politics at UNC-Charlotte, and Davidson College. From 1974-77, he was chief legislative assistant to the U.S. Senate majority whip; and was the executive director of President Carter's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, 1978-80. He has been a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution, and the Fulbright Institute of International Relations. In addition, he produced and hosted the political talk show "Crosshairs" on Adelphia cable television, 2000-2003. Jackson resides, and writes, in Davidson, N.C.

SOURCE: http://jfklancer.com/blogger/jfkblog.html

My take-away: The crooks and traitors always blame the victim.

There's seldom, if ever, a disparaging word on Corporate McPravda for Cheney, the Reich or PNAC.

Why is that?

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Let me be the first

After all, it's Nancy Pelosi and DU.

:popcorn:

--d!

[Octafish]

3. CIA runs the media.

Here's a recent post on the Company's Disinfotainment role from DUer NNN0LHI:

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

For all intents and purposes, they run the messaging.

My take: If you control what We the People think, you can control what We the People do.

[omega minimo]

14. The media controls IF people think

[bottomtheweaver]

2. "The crooks and traitors always blame the victim."

Nicely put! They've been getting away with it too for 62 years but let's hope their reign of terror is coming to an end.

[Octafish]

5. It's in their DNA -- Conspiracies In Action

Aren't domestic operations by the CIA against the law?

A Report on CIA Infiltration and Manipulation of the Mass Media

By Ashley Overbeck
September 1999

Should CIA agents be allowed to pose as journalists to further the aims of their clandestine activities?

Members of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on the future of U.S. intelligence in the post-Cold War world say yes, and a CIA official recently came forward to admit that the Agency already occasionally does so despite regulations barring the practice. But is this a breaking story or just the latest chapter in a spy story that traces its roots back to the 1950's? While they may act like strangers in public, the press and the CIA have a sordid past that spans more than four decades.

The CIA-Press Connection in the 1950s and 60s

The CIA-press connection traces its roots back to the early days of the Cold War, when Allen Dulles (who became CIA director in 1953) began courting the nation's most prestigious journalistic institutions for Agency operations. The mood of the day precluded the need for secretive infiltration, as Carl Bernstein points out in his 1977 expose on the topic. "American publishers, like so many other corporate and institutional leaders at the time, were willing to commit the resources of their companies to the struggle against global Communism," he writes. "Accordingly, the line separating the American press corps was often indistinguishable."

That's not to say that reporters acted as spies in the James Bond sense. Media outlets offered services that fell into the broad categories of providing "cover" for CIA operatives (i.e. jobs and credentials) or sharing information gathered by reporters on staff.

While the Agency ran a formal training program in the 50's that attempted to teach rank-and-file agents to be reporters, this was among the least common of the more than 400 relationships with the press described in CIA files. Most involved were journalists before their involvement with the CIA began.

CONTINUED LYING…

http://www.geocities.com/cpa_blacktown/20000318mediaoverb.htm

Aren't secret government propaganda operations against the law?

Perhaps the USA PATRIOT Act makes exceptions.

[bottomtheweaver]

18. I suspect the CIA has been conducting domestic operations

since it was founded. You'd likely know more, but I also suspect there was some kind of official or unofficial outfit running domestic hit jobs even before the CIA got its pipeline to the Treasury in 1947. The 1927 Bath township school bombing in Michigan is what makes me think so. And hell yes, every particle of it has been grossly illegal. I also think the current alignment of planets -- Dem House, Senate, and WH, with smoking torture guns all over the place -- is a rare opportunity to expose the whole scam for the crime it is, so I hope we can keep the pressure on in every possible way.

[L. Coyote]

8. *** Congress Investigating Documented CIA Lying *** = "weeks ago"

REC it: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5682421

This BIG news today from The Ed Show on MSNBS:

Congress Investigating Documented CIA Lying
VIDEO here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x314073

No wonder the Rs are playing a pre-emptive 'Convict Pelosi' media spin game!
Bush liars are already targets of a Congressional inquiry in process.

Rep. Jan Schakowski, Intelligence Comm., Chair of the Oversight and Investigations Sub-Committee,
instructed the Intelligence Comm. staff "weeks ago" to begin considerations
for "a thoughtful and reasonable and responsible inquiry."

Rep. Jan Schakowski:
"On our subcommittee we are beginning an inquiry into a situation ...
initiated by the ranking minority member to look at a situation where the CIA
did mislead the Congress ... a documented issue of the CIA misleading the Congress ..."

[indepat]

4. While this is much ado about nothing, let me proffer that taking impeachment off the table is

indefensible. :P

[Octafish]

6. That made me FURIOUS.

The only explanation -- after tossing out, Hemlock Stones-like (“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”) -- is the NSA has evidence Bush and Company used to blackmail her.

Details on what Sen. Frank Church was talking about in '75 -- turning the power of the NSA and CIA to undermine and smash any political opposition:

Frank Church and the Abyss of Warrantless Wiretapping

That's why I ask: Who controls CIA?

[tomp]

9. i've said it before and i'll say it again:...

...real patriots are not susceptible to blackmail. real patriots do the right thing for the country no matter what.

[omega minimo]

15. and what was it they had/have on her that continues this charade?

[gordianot]

7. Knowing how Republicans like to stick to a script, this script was written in advance.

I have the impression Nancy Pelosi knew she had a defense when she stated she was not briefed on water boarding. What we have not really heard regarding this meeting is who else was in the room or even for sure which room it was in. Surely Nancy's briefing was not delivered solely to her and Graham. At some point Democrats are going to have to use the bully pulpit and throw caution to the wind.

[Octafish]

11. Russ Baker's WhoWhatWhy.com adds to that...

From the WaPo, of all things, and David V. Johnson:

Has the CIA lied to Congress?

By David V. Johnson on May 19, 2009

Russ recently suggested that we need an investigation of the congressional briefing process. As we continue to follow the political fight between Congress and the CIA, let us not forget the story of Mary McCarthy.

A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate staff in a secure room of the Capitol last June, promised repeatedly that the agency did not violate or seek to violate an international treaty that bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, during interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and elsewhere.

But another CIA officer — the agency’s deputy inspector general, who for the previous year had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan — was startled to hear what she considered an outright falsehood, according to people familiar with her account. It came during the discussion of legislation that would constrain the CIA’s interrogations.

That CIA officer was Mary O. McCarthy, 61, who was fired on April 20 for allegedly sharing classified information with journalists, including Washington Post journalist Dana Priest. A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that “CIA people had lied” in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading. . . .

In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the CIA’s detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat.

SOURCE: http://whowhatwhy.com/2009/05/19/has-the-cia-lied-to-congress/#more-702

Plausible deniability is always present in Company Ops. That holds in matters to do with the media.

If We the People are to have even a tiny chance, it will require the Bully Pulpit. And that's where President Obama comes in. I hope.

[dmr]

10. "Admit nothing, deny everything & make counter accusations"

I had to write those words down when I heard Jesse Ventura say this last week on Larry King. He was referencing that a good SEAL admits nothing, denies everything and makes counter accusations.

I thought to myself that, damn, this must be the psych-ops of the Republican party, and it certainly fits the CIA.

You can listen here. at about 4:20

[UTUSN]

12. My 1st thought when PELOSI started getting swiftboated was, WHAT's WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?!1

The actual, hands-on torturers have got a get-out-of-jail-free card. The most the lawyers MIGHT get is a bar association thingy, if anything. Shrub-CHEENEE will certainly not get anything done to them. And yet Nancy PELOSI is being raked over the coals and might pay a high price?!1

Others here have said it over the past week or so. I've e-mailed the Morning Scab circus, yet the sideshow distraction rolls on and on.

I liked Jesse VENTURA for the first time yesterday when he totally PWNED the HASSELBECK on The View. She kept trying to shut him down and he never let her until he SAID it: "We Navy SEALS were waterboarded in training and IT IS TORTURE. I would PROSECUTE AND JAIL the ones who tortured, the ones who (made it policy), and the ones who ORDERED IT."

Previously I've pegged him as a spoiler just this side of NADIR, but his voice like a two-by-four-to-the-head has got it right this time.

SCABorough went after him (not to his face, of course) this morning, saying that VENTURA was a nobody who "took two million bucks from MSNBC to do ONE show that was a total failure" ---and this is relevant to what he said beCAUSE?????????!1

[Wednesdays]

13. K&R

:kick:

[opihimoimoi]

16. K&R Good one Octafish....The Pubs are ruthless and dirty....The Bullies need TARGETS for their own

agenda.....

They have been reduced to sleeping with eyes wide open...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9G90h-ay2U

The Pubs SLEEP TONITE by the TOKENS

[lefthandedlefty]

17. I guess it is payback for taking impeachment off the table

and a bonus for taking single-payer off the table.Maybe what she knew is what Bush and Cheney were blackmailing her with all along.Does that make any sense?

[robertpaulsen]

19. There is no question that the CIA lies to protect their interests.

Were you laughing as loudly as I was when that reporter at the press conference asked Pelosi, with amplified incredulity, "Are you saying that the CIA actually lied to you?" As if God fumbled in the end zone. But Pelosi is ignoring the full context under which she was misled: the CIA was completely pigeonholed by the OVP through the pressure of the Office of Special Plans into making every possible piece of "evidence" conform to a bullshit narrative where al-Qaeda and Iraq were bosom buddies.

By placing the focus of the scandal on the CIA, Pelosi is playing right into Cheney's hands by taking the focus of Congress and the Beltway Media Blitz off the real instigators of this Deep State Scandal and into the same institution that Bush/Cheney tried to scapegoat when the truth came out that the al-Qaeda/Iraq alliance was non-existent. Any "independent commission" that focuses on the CIA and ignores the OSP will be guilty of the same miscarriage of justice.

Also I believe you are correct that there is some level of blackmail going on which would explain the impeachment is "off the table" stance from 2007-2009. I believe that blackmail ties in with AIPACgate, which also explains why investigating the claims of Sibel Edmonds and ungagging her also turned to be "off the table" under Pelosi's watch.

[goclark]

20. K and R

[democracy1st]

21. K & R

[robertpaulsen]

22. Morning kick for a great thread.

:kick: