The CIA Doesn’t Tell The Truth–Big Deal, Right?

By Michael Scherer | @michaelscherer | November 5, 2009 | +

The Central Intelligence Agency recently agreed to pay $3 million to a former Drug Enforcement Agency official, Richard Horn, whose home was wiretapped in Rangoon, Burma, under apparently illegal conditions. That’s one thing–a squabble in a distant country over turf between the CIA and the DEA that led one official to bug another official. But here is another: CIA lawyers subsequently misled a U.S. court about the covert status of one of the CIA officials responsible for the bugging, so that the case against him would be thrown out of court under the so-called “state secrets” privilege. That is, it seems to me, a much bigger thing. The government doesn’t get a free pass for lying in a court of law.

Associated Press reporter Nedra Pickler explains the sequence of events:

Horn sued [The CIA's Arthur] Brown and [Franklin] Huddle in 1994, seeking monetary damages for violations of his civil rights because of the alleged wiretapping. [CIA Director George] Tenet filed an affidavit in 2000 asking that the case against Brown be dismissed because he was a covert agent whose identity must not be revealed in court. [U.S. District Judge Royce] Lamberth granted the CIA’s request and threw out the case against Brown in 2004.

But Lamberth found out last year that Brown’s cover had been lifted in 2002, even though the CIA continued to file legal documents saying his status was covert. The judge found that the CIA intentionally misled the court and reinstated the case against Brown.

The former acting CIA general counsel, John Rizzo, said in a court filing that the CIA’s office of general counsel did not know Brown’s cover status changed until 2005, three years after the fact. Rizzo said that one CIA attorney, [Jeffrey] Yeates, knew about the change but did not tell the court or his supervisors.

Brown disputes Rizzo’s account. In a statement to the court, Brown says that he met personally with two other CIA attorneys, Robert J. Eatinger and John Radsan, in 2002, within a few months of the CIA rolling back his covert status and notified them of the agency’s action.

Meanwhile, the ACLU has released a video documenting the lives of several former Guantanamo/CIA detainees, who have since been returned to their homes. It is a harrowing thing.

Related Topics: cia, guantanamo, Uncategorized

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sacredh

The CIA lies? Spooky.
gysgt213

The government doesn’t get a free pass for lying in a court of law.
.
I don’t have the time or the legal background to tell you if its okay for the CIA to lie or not. Because lords knows they have never ever done this type of thing before. Lying to congress or the courts. GTFO! Why don’t you dial up a member of congress and check.
sacredh

The next thing you know Pelosi is going to claim the CIA misled her.
constantweader

Thank you for posting this horrible video & thanks to the ACLU for producing it. I’d like to see Dick Cheney & John Yoo & Richard Addington & the whole gang of torture advocates locked up in a room & forced to listen to this video over & over again with the audio on high. Maybe President Obama & AG Holder should spend a day or two there, too, since they seem so bent on protecting the torture facilitators.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com
pafro

Don’t forget that a whole bunch of CIA agents just got convicted in Italy of crimes for kidnapping someone off the streets.
gysgt213

“The government doesn’t get a free pass for lying in a court of law.”
.
Michael-Well, what do they get then? Because the collective wisdom both the current and previous administrations is that no one should ever be punished ever, let alone investigated. Of course if you are low enough in the food chain than you certainly can be tossed over board. We have seen that happen before.
queencersei

How about dismantling the CIA and building a new intelligence agency from scratch? Now that is change a lot of us could believe in.
queencersei

A conviction is one thing. Don’t hold your breath waiting for any of them to serve any actual time, in Italy or the United States.
stuartzechman

How about Congress legislating and end to the “the so-called ‘state secrets’ privilege” so that the Executive isn’t de facto free to break Congress’ laws without the judicial check intended by the framers of our Constitution?
Art Pepper

Thanks for posting this Michael. It was sickening to watch the cognescenti pretend they were shocked when Nancy Pelosi suggested that the CIA might occasionally be less than honest.

but re:

The government doesn’t get a free pass for lying in a court of law

Well, yes it does.
cfukara

Course: Democracy and the Rule of Law 100-1/2

Quiz I:
Complete the following sentences:
1) If anyone merely abducted an a USA citizen from USA or anywhere in the world – let alone rendered him/her unto torture – the USA would ……

2) If any foreign government or its agency played any part in the abduction a citizen of the USA from the USA or its territories or anywhere in the world and rendered him/her unto torture in any country – the USA would ……
cfukara

Heard on a public radio channel: The CIA was created to violate international law … (or was it the sovereignty of nations?)
cfukara

So the way to reconcile the existence of the CIA and our (especially POTUS BHO’s) vigorous promotion of “international law”, “anti-terrorism” and a “respect for the sovereignty of other nations” is to lie about our unsavory activities – whenever we run out of a, as Nixon would put it, “plausible denial”.
rustyreturns

Well one thing is for sure, when the planes start crashing into more buidlings someday. More American lives are lost to terrorists, the ACLU MIGHT be there for you to seek out justice and restitution.
.
The world is a big bad evil place. There are people out there with not so great intentions. Some even want to kill you or your children.
.
We can surely count on the ACLU to protect the criminals, sympathizers and other nay-sayers. We can even count on the ACLU to back the total destruction of the contstitution and protection of AMERICAN people.
.
May God bless the ACLU, and may God also send the next plane into their office buidling.
shepherdwong

You know how to tell if the CIA is lying? Their HUMINTs are moving.
palininatowel

Whatever you do, rusty, don’t go outside while Obama is still president.
shepherdwong

So you’re a paranoid, liberty-hating, authoritarian-following, wingnut. We get it.
stuartzechman

The ACLU is there to protect you from Obama, Rustydog, don’t you get it?
.
Remember the Big Government that wants to deprive you of your rights…your “American Civil Liberties”, as it were?
.
That’s what the ACLU is doing; fighting to keep the State from growing into the kind of Kremlin that you’re afraid of. They make sure that the government –Obama’s totalitarian, Marxist-socialist-fascist, czar-ridden government– doesn’t just get to wave the National Security card, and get a free pass to do whatever they want, whenever they want, with nobody ever the wiser.
.
How you got on the other side of people who just want to keep Big Government off the backs and out of the private lives of the American people is beyond me, Rustydog.
.
Don’t you believe in smaller, more manageable, more accountable government?
shepherdwong

Give it up, Stuart. These are people who believe corporations are the great and wholly beneficial engines of progress in society and ACORN and liberal power (whatever that is) are the threats to democracy. You could say that their defining characteristic is never understanding who their real friends and enemies are.
sacredh

And may the ACLU (and God to a lesser extent) protect us from patriotic Americans that would advocate the genocide of an entire race. The Japanese for example. Sound familiar rusty?
kbanginmotown

Thursday…ever fallen in love….
sacredh

It had slipped my mind, but not another morsel for the little buggers.
stuartzechman

Because you quoted Pete Shelley, I’ll retire from debate for the day.
http://fredtopeka.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/but-its-a-state-secret/ But it’s a state secret « Petunias

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