DON'T LET CIA LOOSE AGAIN

Thursday, September 20, 2001 - In the July/August issue of the Atlantic,
former CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht said America's counterterrorism
program in the Middle East is "a myth."

He quotes a cocky Richard Clarke, counterterrorism czar for the Clinton and
Bush administrations, saying that Osama bin Laden and his followers stay
awake nights "around the campfire, worried stiff about who we're going to
get next."

As if.

Just weeks later, the inadequacies of the U.S. intelligence operations are
common knowledge. And instead of addressing the institutional deficiencies,
leaders have called for measures to release the agencies from the shackles
of ethical behavior.

Some changes may be necessary. But before we give free rein to the FBI, the
CIA and their contract operators around the world, let's take a flashback
down memory lane and revisit some of the reasons why congressional
oversight of the intelligence community was imposed in the first place.

Back in the 1950s, Project Bluebird/Artichoke exposed hundreds of unwitting
subjects to mind-control experiments involving hypnosis, drugs,
electroshock, radiation and other tactics. Among other atrocities, it
resulted in the death of Dr. Frank Olson, a civilian employee of the Army,
who jumped from the 10th floor of a hotel in New York after a CIA agent
slipped 70 micrograms of LSD into a glass of Cointreau.

The 1954 military coup in Guatemala, involving several assassinations, also
was the work of the CIA.

The 1960s brought Operation Pluto, a failed program to recruit, train and
direct Cuban exiles in an attempt to overthrow Castro timed to occur just
before the 1960 presidential elections.

Then came Operation CHAOS, a domestic spying program. Agents infiltrated
civil rights organizations and groups on American college campuses. They
wiretapped journalists, opened mail and engaged in dirty tricks, including
violent protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The 1970s brought the $8 million CIA campaign to oust elected Chilean
president Salvador Allende and the CIA's secret military support of the
UNITA faction in the bloody Angolan civil war.

But wait, there's more.

Even after President Ford ordered an end to assassinations of foreign
leaders and Congress prohibited domestic surveillance by the CIA, the
abuses continued.

In the 1980s, we had the CIA training and arming contra rebels in Nicaragua
and the illegal sale of arms to Iran to finance contra operations. In the
midst of all this, a CIA airplane carrying 256 U.S. servicemen crashed in
Newfoundland. It was determined to be an act of sabotage by Islamic Jihad
after the U.S. welshed on one of the arms deals to Iran.

And while some leaders have ridiculed measures to limit employment of
"human rights violators" by the CIA, it's worthwhile to recall that
enabling lawless scum has its consequences.

Among the many recipients of the CIA's largess over the years are such
celebrity outlaws as Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega; the architect of
Chile's notorious death squads, Augusto Pinochet; and none other than Osama
bin Laden, employed by the CIA for 15 years to organize resistance to the
Soviets in Afghanistan.