20080104 Wall Street: Journal Criminalizing the CIA

Wall Street: Journal Criminalizing the CIA

I could not agree more… “So here we go again, ringing up CIA agents who thought they were acting in good faith to keep the country safe… But why should any future agent take any risks to gather information, or pursue an enemy, if he thinks he is likely to have to answer to some future prosecutor for his every action?”

Criminalizing the CIA

January 4, 2008; Page A10

REVIEW & OUTLOOK by The Wall Street Journal

When news broke that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of a couple of early terrorist interrogations, Democrats in Congress demanded a criminal investigation. Now that Attorney General Michael Mukasey is obliging, they still aren't satisfied. So here we go again, ringing up CIA agents who thought they were acting in good faith to keep the country safe.

On Wednesday Mr. Mukasey assigned prosecutor John Durham, a 25-year Justice Department veteran, to investigate if CIA agents committed a crime when they destroyed the tapes in 2005 under orders from the then-head of the covert Directorate of Operations. But that isn't enough for John Conyers (D., Mich.), who wants a full-blown "special counsel" to wade into the CIA's covert-ops division and deliver a public excavation…

[…]

The interrogations also took place at a time -- starting in 2002 -- when some Members of Congress were regularly briefed on the CIA practices, including "waterboarding." Among those briefed were Jay Rockefeller IV and Nancy Pelosi, neither of whom saw fit to object to the methods. We are now in a different political place, and in a different election year, and these same Democrats want to join the left in accusing the Bush Administration of "torture" and a cover-up.

The Bush Administration is already on its way out, so the real damage here may be to our ability to gather future intelligence no matter who is President…

[…]

One of the stock criticisms of the CIA after 9/11 is that the agency played it too safe in pursuing al Qaeda. But why should any future agent take any risks to gather information, or pursue an enemy, if he thinks he is likely to have to answer to some future prosecutor for his every action?

As for the tapes, no doubt the agency now wishes they had never been made, much less destroyed. But the irony is that their destruction might well have saved the U.S. from the embarrassment of having them leaked to the world and turned into a propaganda victory for our enemies…

[…]

Yet instead, we are now unleashing prosecutors against agents who on the evidence so far were acting not to pursue some political agenda but to defend the nation against its most ruthless enemies. We hope Mr. Durham understands the difference, and that we don't cripple the very spooks we need to fight the war on terror.

Read the entire opinion here: Criminalizing the CIA

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