John Brennan and the CIA
Unless the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency changes course, the CIA cheap Canada Goose is going to face buy canada goose jacket cheap a season of cynicism and suspicion next November when the 50th anniversary of the assassination Canada Goose online of President John F. Kennedy approaches and the public learns that the agency is withholding from public view more than 1,100 documents related to his assassination.
cheap canada goose uk What will John Brennan do? That’s a fair question for President Obama’s nominee for CIA director at his upcoming confirmation hearings where issues of transparency and accountability are likely to dominate. government’s drone Canada Goose Jackets war against suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Brennan won kudos for his candor from supporters of the drone war, while critics found his claims of „moral rectitude“ to be dubious in the absence of any checks on his power to target suspected terrorists (and inevitably innocent bystanders.) cheap canada goose uk
buy canada goose jacket cheap Brennan’s confirmation hearings are a rare opportunity for the Congress to hold the Executive Branch accountable for its secret actions. citizens suspected of terrorism. buy canada goose jacket cheap
The overarching issue at stake in Brennan’s confirmation is official secrecy in the name of national canada goose clearance security. Do the White House and national security agencies acknowledge any limits on their powers of official secrecy? How can a self governing democracy prevent the abuse of power without disclosure and accountability?
canada goose The JFK assassination story provides a useful benchmark in this debate because it is one area where a broad Canada Goose Parka consensus holds that secrecy is not appropriate. If the Congress yokosukabase wants to demonstrate that it has the power to insure accountability at Obama’s CIA, the JFK assassination records are a good place to start. canada goose
canada goose store Congress did just that in 1992. In response to the furor raised by Oliver Stone’s JFK, a Democratic Congress unanimously approved the JFK Records Act mandating „immediate“ disclosure of all canadian goose jacket of the government’s JFK files. Bush, signed it into law. canada goose store
The Act created a civilian review panel, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), to redress excessive secrecy surrounding the government’s assassination related records.
Canada Goose online To its credit, the CIA cooperated and the ARRB won generally high marks from scholars and public interest groups. national security. Canada Goose online
uk canada goose The new JFK canada goose coats on sale records go along way toward establishing a measure of historic accountability by providing a sobering new perspective on the causes of JFK’s death. national security agencies have ever Canada Goose sale acknowledged. uk canada goose
canada goose clearance Contrary to what the Warren Commission told the American people in 1964, the CIA monitored the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, constantly canada goose coats from October 1959 to October 1963. Indeed, one CIA cable not fully declassified until 2001 shows that Oswald’s travels, politics, and state of mind were canada goose store the subject of discussion among senior agency officers just six weeks before JFK was killed. These officers (identified by name on the last page of the cable) concluded that Oswald was „maturing.“ canada goose clearance
canada goose factory sale This reassuring and inaccurate message kept the CIA’s Mexico City station in the dark about the fact that Oswald had gone public with support for a pro Castro group and had recently been arrested for fighting with anti Castro exiles in New Orleans. In Washington, a senior FBI official responded to one version of the CIA’s benign assessment by taking Oswald’s name off an „alert“ list of people of special interest to the Bureau. government relaxed its surveillance of Oswald in the same week that he made his way to Dallas. canada goose factory sale
canada goose uk outlet Forty four days later, JFK was shot dead, allegedly by the „maturing“ Oswald. canada goose uk outlet
Whether canada goose outlet this cable embodies CIA Canada Goose Outlet incompetence or treachery is still a matter of debate. What is certain is that canada goose deals after JFK’s death, CIA officials manipulated intelligence to plead a false ignorance about Oswald’s travels and contacts. They relied on official secrecy to evade accountability and retain their positions of power. This same manipulation of intelligence and evasion of responsibility would recur at the CIA in the Iran contra scandal of the 1980s and the buy canada goose jacket run up to the war in Iraq and its disastrous aftermath.
Canada Goose sale But the congressional mandate of full JFK disclosure did have benefits, if only belatedly. The new records have enhanced public understanding of the JFK story by revealing a middle ground in the perennial debate between conspiracy theorists and anti conspiracy theorists about who was responsible for JFK’s wrongful death. Canada Goose sale
canada goose black friday sale This is where Brennan comes in. The CIA retains at least 1,100 JFK documents that it says it will not release in any form. government’s last officially recognized batch of JFK secrets. With the creation of the National Declassification Center (NDC), the Obama administration is now pushing an ambitious campaign to release 404 million unnecessarily secret government documents by 2014. These JFK records are an obvious candidate for review and release. Does the next director of the CIA agree or disagree? canada goose black friday sale
buy canada goose jacket The public’s preference is clear. When the NDC solicited comment, more people cited the JFK records as a declassification priority than any other group of records. buy canada goose jacket
canada goose coats But when CIA refused to review the records, the NDC hastily repudiated the public input it had solicited. At a public meeting last August, the director of the NDC announced the 1,100 JFK records would not be reviewed or released until 2017, and maybe not then. canada goose coats
An all too familiar fog of secrecy has descended on the subject. At the August meeting, a CIA representative to the NDC brazenly refused to answer any questions from the public about the agency’s JFK records. In a dubious display of the art of Washington back scratching, canada goose black friday sale the general counsel of the National Archives, Gary Stern, stepped up to the podium and mouthed the CIA talking point that the agency doesn’t have the „sufficient time or resources“ to review these ancient records. (You can view video of the August event here. Stern speaks around 1:35:00.)
But on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, the CIA is not going to be able to palm off questions about its peculiar priorities on junior bureaucratic enablers. The agency publicly boasts that it is supporting the NDC by declassifying records related to Berlin Wall crisis of 1961 and the massacre of Polish military officers in the Katyn Forest in 1942.
canada goose uk black friday That argument is not likely to impress the Kennedy family, much less an already suspicious public. (A 2003 Gallup poll found 34 percent of respondents thought the CIA was responsible for JFK’s assassination.) Indeed, insisting on eternal JFK secrecy at this late date is a recipe for more controversy, conspiracy mongering, and suspicion. canada goose uk black friday
canada goose clearance sale There is no need for John Brennan to defend the indefensible and there is no need for the Congress or the public to accept anything less than full disclosure around JFK’s assassination. Rather, there is a simple and popular way for Brennan to uphold the principles of transparency and accountability: Commit the CIA to releasing its last JFK secrets in time for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination next fall canada goose clearance sale.