Laura Rozen: "Designated CIA surrogate? So Mr. Kiriakou would seem.".

[laststeamtrain]

Designated CIA surrogate? So Mr. Kiriakou would seem.

Update: To elaborate, I suspect but don't know that if a recent former CIA op as he was appears on network TV news in a concerted fashion -- ABC, NBC, also Post, etc. -- with a message that a) he didn't torture b) good we're having this discussion c) it worked this one time d) we shouldn't do it anymore but was effective at time and stopped a gazillion attacks e) it was all authorized up and down the line, including by high U.S. officials (how would he know that?) then it would seem to me highly plausible his media appearances are not only tolerated by CIA HQ but he's some sort of surrogate being put forward to some degree with an approved message. And I believe he represents Hayden. No coincidence he appeared the night before and day Hayden goes to testify at SSCI and tomorrow before HPSCI. (Such an impression has been influenced by the correspondent cited here.)

Update 2: Apparently not! People at Agency upset about him going on TV, a source says. "No way" that he's any sort of approved surrogate. Kiriakou was, according to this souce, "a ground branch person, the paramilitary staff, he's ... a former military guy who comes in with military skills to do training of foreign military." Why was he used to interrogate Zubaydah? "Because he was available." Most controversial at the Agency are Kiriakou's statements about waterboarding. ' ... The American public has already decided they call this torture. Doesn't matter how times you say it doesn't have any lasting effects, it just scares people.' Agency apparently very angry about Kiriakou's appearances on TV and threatening to trace him down. Isn't there anyone politically sophisticated enough at the top layers of the Agency to get that this guy's message may be ultimately useful to Hayden, I asked? There are, this source says, but they don't ever touch the parts of the process that work to counter the type of comments Kiriakou making. "He seems like a decent kid," he says. But he worries he's "going to get burned."

Posted by Laura at December 11, 2007 10:13 AM
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006838.html

[TomInTib]

1. I was thinking about this earlier today.

Kiriakou is just waaay too convenient, a short-circuit diversion.

[EFerrari]

4. I had a different thought. I thought, this time, the intelligence community

isn't going to take the fall.

[yardwork]

2. oh what a tangled web we weave...

I don't have a reason to believe anything any of these people say. What I do believe is this:

1. The U.S. government has been using the CIA and paramilitary organizations to terrorize populations through the use of torture at least since the early 1960s. The CIA has handbooks on torture techniques.

2. The Bush administration is on record stating that torture is acceptable. We have Gonzalez's memos to this effect.

3. We have all seen photos of prisoners being tortured by U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib, and we have eyewitness accounts of similar torture in Guantanamo Bay. The few U.S. troops prosecuted for these obvious war crimes stated that shadowy U.S. personnel were present and told them to commit these acts. Those shadowy personnel were given immunity from prosecution, which tends to support the U.S. troops' accounts, imo.

4. A Blackwater employee was found guilty in a North Carolina court of law for beating to death an Afghan prisoner, a sheepherder who voluntarily came to a U.S. base to be questioned. He was "questioned" to death. I sincerely doubt that it was an isolated case.

5. I have no reason to doubt Sy Hersh's reports about the photos, audio tapes, and videotapes of torture being inflicted on prisoners in Abu Ghraib by U.S. troops and operatives. Hersh reported that these include children being sodomized in front of their mothers, women being raped, and prisoners being tortured to death. The fact that the Iraqis have come to hate the American occupation and are willing to do anything - include suicide bombs - to get us out tends to reinforce the fact that we have been doing terrible things to them in their country.

6. The Bush administration has admitted to "extraordinary renditions" of prisoners to other places around the world. The few individuals who have emerged from these prisons report physical and mental torture at the hands of their U.S. captors.

7. The Bush administration has removed the right of habeus corpus and refused to allow prisoners in Guantanamo Bay or other prisons the right of any attorney, the right to trial, or the right to be charged with a crime, in total defiance of not just the U.S. Constitution but 1,000 years of western law.

What else do we need to know?

[EFerrari]

3. This denial means his account must be true. n/t

[alstephenson]

5. I've seen this guy twice on TV now, and

something just doesn't jive. I'm not sure what it is, but I think there is much more to the story.

[L. Coyote]

6. My reaction was, "How quickly the fall guy appeared. This must involve Bush."

And, on further reflection I wondered if the video was a live feed to commanders, esp. "The Decider," and I wondered if they participated in the torture.