MUMIA: Crimes of the CIA--June 28 '07

THE CRIMES OF THE CIA

By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 6/28/07]

News Item: Spokesman for the CIA announced today that the American spy
agency engaged in a series of improper, and illegal acts during the
1970's. According to documents released from the era, the nations' spy
agency snooped on American dissenters, spied on U.S. journalists, and
once tried to hire someone to kill Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. The
spokesman assured reporters that was the 'old days', when things were
done without proper oversight. "Things are different now," the
unidentified CIA spokesman noted.

That was the impression from several recent articles on the U.S.
government spy agency.

The articles almost went out of its way to leave the reader with the
impression that this was a distant, almost historical revelation.
Surely this didn't happen in our day, because of something called
'oversight.'

To anyone who has dared to look beneath the headlines, and who has
dared to ask questions, the revelations are nothing short of
astounding.

There are several published sources that show us that the CIA has
violated both U.S. and international laws for generations, and is
still doing it today!

The most remarkable source is the CIA itself, in it's reports to the
U.S. Congress.

According to a report by the house Intelligence Committee, the Agency
commits hundreds of crimes - hundreds - every single day!

And this is a conservative estimate.

Investigative journalist John Kelly, in an essay entitled "Crimes and
Silence: The CIA's Criminal Acts and the Media's Silence", published
in the anthology Into the Buzzsaw: Leading journalists Expose the Myth
of a Free Press. ED, by Kristina Borjesson (Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus
Books, 2002, tells us:

"The report was the first official admission and definition of CIA
covert operations as crimes which the committee, without explanation,
equated with essential national security operations. In other words,
the national security of the United States requires that more than one
hundred thousand extremely serious crimes be committed every year. The
committee expressed no legal or ethical concerns about these crimes.

"On the contrary, CIA offenders were portrayed as potential hapless
victims of sinister foreign authorities opposed to their lawbreaking.
'A typical 26 year old, GS-11 case officer,' reads the study, 'has
numerous opportunities every week, by poor trade craft or inattention,
to embarrass his country and President and get agents imprisoned or
executed'."

But, you would argue, doesn't this very congressional report prove
that there is oversight? Hardly. For Kelly goes on to write that in
2000, President Clinton signed into law the Intelligence Authorization
Act, which immunizes the CIA from violating International Laws and
Treaties. In fact, It's a law to violate the law!

Some oversight.

This is something straight from the Nazi playbook. If the State
declares it lawful, then nothing is a crime.

We need look no further than the work of the late Gary Webb, who
brilliantly documented the CIA's role in domestic drug trafficking.

His reward for such groundbreaking reporting?

A professional death sentence (and perhaps, suicide.)

The media defenders of the Agency attacked him with a vengeance, and
his paper let him go.

We've just been speaking in generalities. The CIA has committed
murders, drug trafficking, assassinations of heads of state, removal
of governments, takeovers of labor unions, destruction of
democracies--you name it.

It didn't stop in 1975, any more than the attempted assassination of
Castro stopped at one try.

It continues to this very day.