CIA Director Leon Panetta says he is not going to penalize agents who tortured prisoners if they “were doing their duty,” explaining, “If you have a President who exercises bad judgment, the C.I.A. pays the price.” 

 In an interview published in the June 22^nd issue of The New Yorker magazine, Panetta acknowledged to reporter Jane Mayer the CIA may still employ some people tainted by the torture program. Nevertheless, Panetta said, “I really respect the people who say we shouldn’t have gotten involved in the interrogation business but we had to do our jobs.”

 

This defense, of course, recalls the one used by Nazi Adolf Eichmann, the Holocaust architect responsible for sending countless European Jews to extermination camps. Eichmann said he was just following orders and Panetta implies CIA agents that tortured were just following orders from the Bush White House. Eichmann was found hiding in Argentina and taken to Israel, where he was tried, convicted, and hanged in 1962.

 

Not only is Panetta excusing CIA criminals but Mayer writes, “Panetta, for his part, has been persuaded that renditions are a tool worth keeping…Panetta told me, ‘The worst part of rendition was rendition to a black site. That will not be the case anymore. If we render someone, it will be to a country with jurisdiction over that individual.’”

 

“The Obama Administration,” Panetta says, will take precautions to insure that rendered suspects are treated humanely, as the law requires,” Mayer writes. She quotes Panetta as saying, “I’ve talked to the State Department, and our people have to make very sure that people won’t be mistreated. Some places, obviously, it’s more difficult to do. But we’re going to have to press to make sure it doesn’t happen, because it would fly in the face of everything the President has said we stand for.” 

 

To which Mayer adds, “The Bush Administration professed to be taking similar precautions.” Mayer notes during the Bush years, “some of the most horrific allegations of abuse were made by detainees rendered not to black sites but to Egypt, Syria, and Morocco.”

 

Panetta seems to ignore that rendition on its face is a violation of Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, ratified by the U.S. in 1994. As Wikipedia notes, “Rendered suspects are denied due process because they are arrested without charges and deprived of legal counsel.”

 

Panetta told The New Yorker, “I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt…If they do the job that they’re paid to do, I can’t ask for a hell of a lot more.” Mayer points out, “His words echo those of President Obama, who on April 16^th promised immunity from prosecution to any C.I.A. officer who relied on the advice of legal counsel during the Bush years.”

 

Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel pointed out that this is a low standard, given that “what the Justice Department approved was outrageous.”

 

Panetta further told Mayer once he felt confident that there was no criminal liability inside the CIA he “didn’t want to spend a lot of time dealing with the past and what mistakes were made.”

Under “extraordinary rendition,” alleged terror suspects have been abducted by the CIA and flown to be tortured (and/or murdered) in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Jordan and Uzbekistan, among other places. The practice was started in 1996 under President Bill Clinton and vastly expanded by President George W. Bush after 9/11.

Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Council director, and counterterrorism boss Richard Clarke, have been identified as having approved extreme rendition. Clinton, of course, is also culpable. Italy would like to lay its hands on 22 C.I.A. agents who abducted Milan resident cleric Hassan Osama Nasr for torture in Egypt.

CIA pilots involved in extreme rendition flights, as well as their boss, former CIA Director Porter Goss and CIA ex-counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black could also be called to account if the Obama Administration changes its mind about not “looking backward.” Recall Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA operatives from any law banning torture and Black told Congress, “After 9/11, the gloves came off.” Any European officials who transferred suspects to the CIA are also culpable.

If President Obama does not prosecute CIA agents and others who tortured, he will be in violation of the torture convention which, Mayer says, “requires a government to prosecute all acts of torture; failure to do so is considered a breach of international law.”

June 25th is Torture Accountability Action Day, one that will see demonstrations in many cities, including Washington, D.C., by Americans who still believe in enforcing the laws, even if President Obama does not. 

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(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based director of the Anti-War News Service(AWNS). He formerly worked on major dailies including the Miami Herald and Chicago Daily News and reported regularly for wire services. To comment or contribute to AWNS contact him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com. )

Author's Bio: Sherwood Ross has worked as a publicist for Chicago; as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and workplace columnist for Reuters. He has also been a media consultant to colleges, law schools, labor unions, and to the editors of more than 100 national magazines. A civil rights activist, he was News Director for the National Urban League, a talk show host at WOL Radio, Washington, D.C., and holds an award for "best spot news coverage" for Chicago radio stations for civil rights reporting. He is the author "Gruening of Alaska,"(Best Books)and several plays about Japan during World War II, including "Baron Jiro," and "Yamamoto's Decision," read at the National Press Club, where he is a member. His favorite quotations are from the Sermon on The Mount.

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