About the Author
The Author
Andrew Heyman lives and works in Seattle Washington USA. His true vocation is political writing and agitating for the radical idea that a society that is governed by, and serves the needs of the people is best.
Andrew is also the member of a wonderful family with his loving wife, Pam, and the proud father of 2 wonderful children, Josie and Adam. They all keep him from becoming immersed in blogging to an unhealthy degree, and remind him of why he cares about what is going on in this world in the first place.
You can email him at kiacyclic-AT-gmail.com.
CIA Investigating Its Own Internal Investigator
If you need anymore evidence that the Bush administration has turned the federal government into one big politburo for the neo-cons, here it is:
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.
A small team working for General Hayden is looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.
The review is particularly focused on complaints that Mr. Helgerson’s office has not acted as a fair and impartial judge of agency operations but instead has begun a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs.
Any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would be unusual, if not unprecedented, and would threaten to undermine the independence of the office, some current and former officials say.
The "overview" is being conducted by a lawyer that is closely connected to Gen. Hayden during his tenure at the NSA (Hayden you might remember was the guy who also instituted the NSA's illegal spying program).
Nice.
This move especially smacks of internal retaliation because there is already a system for agencies to complain about their inspector generals and hold them accountable:
Under federal procedures, agency heads who are unhappy with the conduct of their inspectors general have at least two places to file complaints. One is the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which oversees all the inspectors general. The aggrieved agency head can also go directly to the White House.
If serious accusations against an inspector general are sustained by evidence, the president can dismiss him.
But that isn't what this is about. It is about trying to shut-up an IG who was working to expose the CIA's illegal rendition/black site prison program. Scrutiny of that program also suffered recently when the Supreme Court recently refused to hear the case of a German citizen who was abducted, tortured, and then released by the CIA.
And let's not forget the latest set of "torture memos" that revealed that even after a new 2005 law prohibiting "inhumane and degrading" treatment of prisoners, the Bush administration continued to tell intelligence and military operatives basically ignore the law.
In short folks, the immoral cabal of neo-con freaks that want to turn America into a brutal authoritarian police state, are still hard at work.