Three paragraphs reads: The Church Committee’s revelations about the abuses committed by the intelligence community — and a parallel House investigation led by Representative Otis G. Pike of New York — came at the end of America’s wrenching military involvement in Vietnam, and during a period of détente with the Soviet Union. The disclosures of C.I.A. assassination schemes and spying on Vietnam War protesters fueled a post-Watergate fury among many Americans who had grown cynical about secret plots hatched in Washington. The grim details, shocking at the time, led to a gutting of the agency’s ranks and a ban on assassinations, imposed by President Gerald R. Ford. They also led to the creation of the congressional intelligence committees and a requirement that the C.I.A. regularly report its covert activities to the oversight panels. By contrast, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s recent report on C.I.A. excesses since the Sept. 11 attacks arrived in the midst of renewed fears of global terrorism, the rise of the Islamic State and grisly beheading videos of American hostages. Paragraph reads: But the Obama administration has made clear that it has no plans to make anyone legally accountable for the practices described by the C.I.A. as enhanced interrogation techniques and the Intelligence Committee as torture. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. this week asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to examine the report’s allegations, but the request will almost certainly be rejected. Three paragraphs reads: During the presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama railed against the agency’s use of torture and secret prisons during the Bush administration, and shuttered the detention program during his first week in office. But he has empowered the agency in other ways — including allowing its director, not the White House, to make the final decisions about drone strikes in Pakistan. “Many presidents tend to be smitten with the instruments of the intelligence community. I think Obama was more smitten than most,” said one former senior Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence matters. “This has been an intelligence presidency in a way we haven’t seen maybe since Eisenhower.” The C.I.A. had shifted from capturing and interrogating terrorism suspects to targeting them with armed drones even before Mr. Obama came to office. It was a tactic championed by Congress at the same time that lawmakers were beginning to criticize the agency’s detention and interrogation program. The agency carried out its first drone strike in Pakistan in June 2004, weeks after a draft of a damning C.I.A inspector general report about abuses in the agency’s secret prisons began circulating in Washington. In the months that followed, the agency began to refashion itself not as a long-term jailer, but as a secret paramilitary force that could kill terrorism suspects with little controversy. Paragraph reads: John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, said during his confirmation hearing in 2013 that he wanted to refocus the agency on traditional missions like espionage and analysis. But the effort has been slow going for a number of reasons. For instance, the congressional intelligence committees have vigorously tried to block transferring drone operations to the Pentagon — fighting to keep the C.I.A. in control of aspects of the program. nytimes/2014/12/27/us/politics/after-scrutiny-cia-mandate-is-untouched-.html?_r=0
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 00:56:33 +0000