Coleen Rowley LTTE in Today's New York Times: "Shredding The Evidence Is Always A Clue"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/opinion/l11cia.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Destroyed: The C.I.A. Torture Tapes

Published Dec. 11, 2007

To The Editor:

Re “C.I.A. Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations” (front page, Dec. 7):

You don’t need to have worked as an F.B.I. agent for 24 years as I did to know that shredding the evidence is always a clue.

What’s the common thread underlying the C.I.A.’s destruction of videotaped harsh interrogations in the midst of ongoing legal inquiries; President Bush’s last-minute commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence; the millions of White House e-mail records missing in violation of the Presidential Records Act; and the administration’s current push to give immunity to the telecommunication companies suspected of engaging in illegal eavesdropping and surveillance of Americans?

Clearly, the only way the Bush gang can protect itself now from accountability is to suppress the truth. To do so, officials must destroy hard evidence and, at the same time, protect and immunize those who followed their illegal orders.

Their contempt for the rule of law cannot get much worse. They learned from Nixon’s Watergate, and they’re trying not to leave any Oval Office tapes around.

Coleen Rowley
Apple Valley, Minn., Dec. 7, 2007

Coleen Rowley (born December 20, 1954) is a former FBI agent and whistleblower, and was a candidate for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, one of eight congressional districts in Minnesota in 2006. She lost the general election to Republican incumbent John Kline.<1>

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Rowley wrote a paper for FBI Director Robert Mueller documenting how FBI HQ personnel in Washington, D.C., had mishandled and failed to take action on information provided by the Minneapolis, Minnesota Field Office regarding its investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. This individual had been suspected of being involved in preparations for a suicide-hijacking similar to the December, 1994, "Eiffel Tower" hijacking of Air France 8969. Failures identified by Rowley may have left the U.S. vulnerable to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Rowley testified in front of the Senate and for the 9/11 Commission about the FBI's internal organization and mishandling of information related to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Director Mueller and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) pushed hard and got a major reorganization, focused on creation of the new Office of Intelligence at the FBI. This reorganization was supported with a significant expansion of FBI personnel with counter terrorism and language skills.

Rowley retired from the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency.

Mrs. Rowley jointly held the TIME "Person of the Year" award in 2002 with two other women credited as whistleblowers: Sherron Watkins from Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.

(wikipedia)

[Lint Head]

1. Stone walling. Cover up. Destroying evidence.

Impeding justice. Obstruction of justice. Out right lying. What else is needed to put these criminal assholes away? :dem:

[chelaque liberal]

3. Good for her for speaking up.

[krispos42]

2. I still have her bumper sticker on my car...

Go Coleen!

[Octafish]

4. Coleen is the BEST!

She would make an OUTSTANDING Attorney General.

[gratuitous]

5. Knocked that one out of the park, didn't she?

I wonder why a retired FBI agent can write better than so many professional journalists, who can't remember a damned thing about this administration's long list of crimes and dubious explanations. Every new crime by the Bush administration that comes down the pike is treated like an entirely new event, with no precedent, and no pattern of criminality to go on by our somnambulent bulldogs of the Fourth Estate.

But I'm sure they'll wake up soon enough when the Democrats reassume the White House. Then, by golly, they'll once again be able to parse every word, divine every intention, and brilliantly deduce every inference of every pronouncement made by the Democratic White House. And dang, if every one of them doesn't expose the Democrats as lying hypocrites, bordering on the illegal if not outright criminal. They're stirring even now.

[Peace Patriot]

6. "She lost the general election...". Hm-m. Did she?

We really have to start putting inverted commas around the words 'lost' and 'won,' when we are discussing an election system...

...with highly insecure and insider riggable voting machines...

...run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code...

...owned and controlled by rightwing, Bushite corporations...

...with virtually no audit/recount controls...

...as is the case in Minnesota and throughout most of the U.S. We, the people, have entirely lost control of the vote counting, which is no longer conducted in public. It is a secret corporate activity. So how can we say whether someone 'lost' or 'won'? It can't be proven. They've gotten rid of the evidence. So the least we should do is this: "She 'lost' the general election...". Better yet: "She 'lost' the general election in a highly non-transparent vote counting system run on 'trade secret' code controlled by rightwing corporations."

We need to resist this fascist coup PSYCHOLOGICALLY, as well as every other way. We need to NOT repeat their lies, memes, disinformation, psyops and sneaky and pervasive delusions. One of them has to do with who wasn't 'elected,' and who, allegedly, was.

Colleen Rowley herself says that getting rid of the evidence is a red flag. Consider our election system, in which the Bushites and quite a number (majority) of our Democratic leaders got rid of the evidence. The worst of it: Electronic voting machines with no ballots, nothing to count or recount; your votes are mere electrons, easily subjected to a few lines of vote stealing code. And even the systems with ballots contain "trade secret" code, as do the central tabulators, and laughable audits (1% is a joke) that cannot detect fraud. They fast-tracked these extremely riggable machines all other the country, to 're-elect' Bush/Cheney--and keep the war lard flowing--and to keep people like Colleen Rowley out of Congress.

The lack of provability in our elections is just as much of a red flag as the Bushites burning hard drives, shredding documents, 'disappearing' emails, erasing torture tapes (and slicing up 9/11 air traffic controllers' tapes as well), and using national security secrecy to hide massive thievery, corruption, treason and conspiracy.

One could say it's even worse, because it prevents the change of course that democracy is supposed to provide, when things get this bad. It prevents us from throwing the bums out, and electing honest leaders. It is the one form of "shredding of the evidence" that simply cannot be tolerated, because it not only obstructs justice, it destroys the very government system that makes justice possible.