ACLU, the CIA & The Black Stars

Okay, so this has little to do with Las Vegas but I've got friends in 'the intelligence community' as it is euphemistically called. In a former life, I was involved with people who professionally spy upon others and collect information which is not public (vague enough? hope so). They cannot speak out for themselves for obvious reasons. But I can't remain silent to their torture.

You have to understand the mindset of the people who leave the safety of their suburban lives and their twitter accounts and usually even the comfort of the United States and all of the freedoms we enjoy (like being able to drink where you want, travel on any road, rent a car and just drive or hit on attractive women in a hotel without having to worry about whether they are really bait). When people sign on to work for the clandestine services within the CIA, the military or the other few agencies which operate people abroad, you basically are putting your own life in a box somewhere back home and becoming another identity. And the identity which you become no only doesn't exist but it also doesn't have any of the comforts or the protections that Americans take for granted. If you walk down a street and a police officer stops you, most Americans are cooperative because they know that there are limits that the cop has to follow and the concept of being robbed or just beaten and throw in the back of a truck never cross your mind. That safety and the rules of society are not luxuries that our foreign operators have. They have two things they can rely upon: their case officer and their training. If you can count luck, then make it three things but the last one isn't exactly reliable.

We routinely ask people to travel around the world and put themselves in places where they are at risk of not just death but of brutal torture prior to death. They are asked to place themselves not just in danger but also in positions where their friends, family and associates will be punished, tortured or killed in order to gain their confession and cooperation against America. This isn't Jack Bauer stuff. This is real life. There are real people who are loyal Americans who volutarily do this stuff at first for their Flag and Freedom, later for their fellow Agency employees/friends and the protection of decent and good people they come into contact with along the way and then, finally, they risk all this because they know there is a gigantic battle between good and evil going on all the time. No matter where in the globe you are there are just plain evil people and there are people who aren't doing anything other than trying to live their lives and raise a family and the evil people are dead-set on trying to prevent that or use those innocent people as leverage to get more power.

No matter the continent, the United States has been sending some of our most capable and fascinating people for the last 60 years to integrate themselves into societies which are far difference and less kind their ours. We've sent these people there because we needed information, leverage, influence or sometimes just as assessment of who is friend and who is foe. And since at least the early 1950s, we've had people lose their lives trying to do their jobs in some God forsaken places like Tibet, Sri Lanka, Angola, Afghanistan, Chile, Mongolia, Malaysia and anyplace else you can think of including Ireland, Greenland and Canada.

We ask people to give up their own lives to help us gather information, find friends of freedom and democracy and influence the outcome of events so that they either help America or forestall the help of our enemies. In some cases, our government has asked people to do things which were just plain wrong and stupid. And in far more cases, our government asked our people to do things which seemed rational, logical and strategically beneficial but later turned out to be short-sighted and damaging not just to US interests but to the local population (not all 'community activists' become benign leaders like we hope but instead turn into brutal dictators).

But regardless of whether the decisions made in Washington D.C. are smart or stupid, the people in the field carry out those orders. They put their own existence on the line to do what they believe or are led to believe is going to make America safer and lead to the stability and freedom of the people amongst whom they are operating. Virtually never do our people in the field decide on their own what the global vision is that they need to enact and then take action locally to set up the chain of events to bring it about. Our people in the field rely upon the decision makers at the top being sane, rational and, above all else, acting in the best interests of America.

We have always had Americans who were willing to risk their lives for their country. We've had it since the Revolution in the 1770s and we hopefully always will. Not every country can say this. And no other country has sent so many of its own children off to fight battles outside it's own borders in order to promote the freedom of total strangers. Our foreign service operatives and operators are no less valorous than our Navy Seals, Marines, Army Rangers or Air Force fighter jocks.

Just this week, we've seen a complete but not unexpected betrayal of our people serving around the world by those people at the top in Washington D.C. For political ideology, the people out there risking their lives have been determined to be pawns not to promote freedom, democracy or safety of American interests but for the promotion of political power and punishment of political opposition.

The ACLU has issued FOIA requests for pictures from the abuse by some of our servicemen and women at Abu Ghraib. The embarrassment for all American servicemen in the military and every other government agency which operates overseas is not enough for the ACLU and their allies who seek to immasculate American power and influence. This is not a new fight. What is new is having the President of the United States essentially open the door to the ACLU and Americas enemies and offer to serve them tea and crackers while they examined the body of the CIA to find places to insert the Kevorkian IV drip.

Earlier this week, our President stood in the lobby of the CIA building and gave a speech to a hand-selected group of CIA employees (have not doubt my innocent friends, the people who he spoke to in person where selected by political registration and not collected randomly by the various hallways of the Agency. You can't guarantee a gyrating Jonas Brothers like audience unless you get to choose who sits in the front rows). The speech he gave was the CYA he felt he needed after essentially sticking the Presidential shiv into the back of the CIA. The public impression given by the media that his speech was gloriously and enthusiastically embraced by the CIA employees was part of the political stunt. Considering that the CIA actually teaches their own operatives how to create political stunts like this makes it even amusingly ironic that their own tradecraft was being used to mask the treason committed against them. But as President, the people at the CIA aren't entitled to decide whether or not the policy is correct or not. They didn't get to decide last year, the year before, in 1984 or 1964. They carried out orders and creatively went about trying to accomplish the tasks they were assigned.

Utterly lost on our childishly innocent President was that his photo op propaganda event had as its backdrop the wall which holds the black stars which represent those fallen CIA operators who have anonymously given their lives for America and under the orders of American Presidents. While the President was explaining to the public and his CIA employee groupies how the bloodletting they were undertaking was actually 'good' for the agency, he was oblivious that the only healthy blood which has been spilled by the agency had already occurred and the small black stars on the wall behind his halo covered head represented that sacrifice.

For the victims of the war against the CIA by those enemies being enabled by the President, there will be no black star. There will be no glory or respect of their peers which can be talked about even in the CIA cafeteria for fear that those conversations of reverence might be overheard. The next fallen members of the CIA and our other foreign services will be political sacrifices who will not have fallen to promote freedom, democracy or American survival. They will be sacrified in order to offset American power.

Think for a moment that you are currently stationed in a place like Ukraine. Ukraine is a country current under active attack by the Soviets through economic and other 'active measures' as the Soviets called them. Ukraine is a domino which leads to the ocean that separates the Soviets natural gas pipeline from the ships which bring it to Europe. Ukraine defied its Soviet leaders in the last decade and claimed it's own independence. Despite an assassination attempt on its Presidential candidate in the recent past, Ukraine is still being actively assaulted in an effort to overthrow its government and install a Soviet puppet who will break it away from the West and expand Soviet power and influence.

As an American operator in the Ukraine, you will have no doubt what happens if Ukraine falls to the plans of the Soviets. America loses an ally. Europe loses a possible member of vast economic and strategic importance. And the Soviets gain the ability to extort Europe for a generation and manipulate the price of oil and natural gas which harms American economic power and American consumers who has never been to, seen or even spoken the word 'Ukraine'. Oh, and the Ukrainian people become essentially slaves like the people in Venezuala, western Georgia, Cuba or Tibet. They lose their freedom and America loses more credibility and respect in the world because we sat by idly or ineptly as a democracy falls to Fascism and Socialism (which always go hand in hand).

As an American operator, how much are you willing to do to prevent Ukraine from falling into Soviet hands again? Are you willing to blackmail a corrupt political official to prevent him from handing defense secrets to the Soviet agent? Blackmail is illegal in the Ukraine just like in virtually every other country but you know that blackmail is the only way you will stop the treasonous act from being committed and harming not just Ukrainians but also America and its interests. This isn't some hypothetical scenario. This happens every single day somewhere in the world. Our people are forced to fight fire with fire in places where the locals are either oblivious or too weak to stop it from happening.

What do you do as an American agent? Do you do what you were trained to do and stop the Soviet antagonist from accomplishing his goal and breaching the defenses of the Ukraine which will lead to their military compromise and eventual destruction as a democracy?

Ultimately, your decision is always going to be YES. But whether or not you act on your decision now has a new and unwelcomed political calculation. If you DO take the necessary action to prevent a Ukrainian official from committing treason, will your immediate superior stand behind you? If the Soviets use one of their flunkies in the UN to complain and file a charge at the Hague and accuse you of being a provocateur against the Ukrainian people, will your government even acknowledge your existence and fight to prevent a witchhunt?

And in the Obama-era, those operators spread across the world right now are thinking - Hell, No! Regardless of whether your actions are right, righteous, correct and ordained by God Himself, your own White House might issue an order through one of their many, many lawyers that in order to save face you are going to be sacrificed and allowed to swing on the gallows in some craphole third world country like The Hague after having been judged by a group of socialist do-gooders who've never put their own lives, careers or even comfort on the line to keep that continent out of the hands of tyrants.

After you've spent years or decades operating with the sole purpose of protecting America and it's allies around the world, you've discovered that you are expendable and that your country doesn't value the training you've received or the skills your acquired. You have become a relic and not the kind which people put in museum and marvel at for generations to come. You are the kind of relic like John Wayne Gayce memorabilia which will be treated with derision and disgust.

So you are now looking to do anything other than continue putting yourself at risk for a bunch of lawyers. You aren't working for the President of the United States anymore or even America - you are working for White House and CIA lawyers. And there is nothing you do which is worth risking your life or freedom for if you will be judged only by lawyers. So you are looking to get th hell out.

Does the ACLU think that companies like Blackwater spring up out of the militia movement? Or just profiteers? (Actually, they probably do think that). Blackwater and the many private intelligence companies which spring up actually are comprised of former intelligence agents, analysts and handlers who are no longer willing to risk their lives, freedom or pensions on the whim of a lawyer who takes his orders from a politician who has no honor.

There were virtually no stories written in the major publications or newspapers in America back in the early 1990s after the Black Hawk Down incident detailing how thousands and thousands of junior and mid-level officers and highly trained NCOs decided to leave the military. We lost nearly a generation of our best trained operators and experience war practioners because they simply were unwilling to put it all on the line for a President which they do not believe was willing to reciprocate. Those who could leave mostly did. And we spend years training those people and bringing them to the level where they could swifty and effective bring destruction and death to our enemies. And then with just a single thoughtless action, a President of the United States declared those servicemen basically expendable and an extention of the bureaucracy which the military was going to become.

This week, we are seeing the CIA being given the same treatment by a President who neither understands nor appreciates what the agency can and does do for America. No success is worth acknowledging or validating but every mistake or error will be punished as though it were an act of treason. In fact, treason is less damaging because at least you get lawyers who are happy to defend you if you seem to want to betray your country. But for those people who are willing to put themselves into danger in order to promote their country it's an incredibly cruel joke. We no longer have those type of people working for the State Department for the most part because it's been publicly known that since at least the 1970s the State Department was more interested in its own political protection than in accomplishing the goals of any American President.

When you know that your own President is willing to hand you over to your enemies, who are you fighting for? Why are you will putting it on the line? Can you try to just keep your head down for four years and hope that the guy gets defeated in the next election? What is something goes wrong somewhere and my name is in a file when it happens? What if my station chief gets blamed for something and decides to claim that he never issued the order? What if the agency bosses get called up to The Hill and they need to give up somebody to avoid seeing their own heads rolling down the Capitol steps?

This is what goes through the mind of our government employees who are most at risk from the wrath of the ACLU and Americans enemies. The people who risk the most and do the most good are the ones who have to be the most worried when the political class decides to 'confess their sins' publicly and make themselves seem righteous. The ACLU will be holding press conference with blown up photos of anything which make America look bad. They will be doing the handiwork that our enemies could never accomplish with the help of the US government. And our enemies will use our own supposed penitence as the evidence the American is evil and the recruit tool which is most successful will be the documents and photos which comes from the ACLU press conferences. And the ACLU doesn't care in the slightest. They don't care that over the next generation Americans will be tortured and killed overseas by enemies who will be holding copies of these pictures and documents.

It is as if you raised a child and spent every day of that child life reminding it that it was a mistake. And when the child went off to school, you told the school prinicipal that the child wet the bed. And when the child went to play with a friend at the park you made sure that the childs friend knew that you never really planned on giving birth to your child. And when your child tried to get into college, you sent a separate notice along with their application letting the college know that your child was a mistake, wet his bed and was frequently late for school back in the 8th grade. Do you think your child would think you did this for their benefit? Do you think that the people your child came into contact with would think well of your child after hearing his own parent chronical their shortcomings? Of course not, but if you were an evil parent that would have been your goal.

Make no mistake. The current President isn't help Americans reputation abroad. He is not 'stopping future abuses'. He is conducting a publicly flogging to appease the angry crowd on the Left and convince our enemies that He isn't like those other Presidents who were going to oppose them. Our enemies don't think better of us when we confess our mistakes or wrongdoing. Can you name a country who we've confessed a sin to who doesn't use it against us constantly? Nobody can. It's baby boomer fiction that by confessing your sins they cannot be used against you. In the adult world of foriegn policy, your confessions weight twice as much as the accusations of the sin. Nobody forgives and nobody forgets. Only the naive or weak offer to confess. And there is no nobility in confessing sins to people who want to see you destroyed. The Devil doesn't want your contrition - he wants your soul.

There will be wonks and appeasers out there who will say 'We need to expose the corruption' or 'We need to be accountable' or 'We need to end torture'. yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's pretend that is what you really care about. Do it without the witch trials. Do it without putting the innocent people at risk. Do it without handing over our people to their enemies.

This has little to do with torture or accountability. The people who were found to have broken laws were punished. They embarassed not just themselves but everybody else who wore a uniform or worked under our flag. But to basically label everybody as serial torturers is about destroying the intelligence community and our military. The ACLU has absolutely no interest in seeing America defend itself and it proves it every time by releasing any evidence they get directly to our enemies as soon as they can. Does Al Qaeda need to have operatives in our government? How about the Chinese or soviets? Why bother? You've got the ACLU and the White House Office of Legal Counsel. They will simply offer you anything you want which will embarass, humiliate or weaken Americas ability to protect itself and its allies.

Do you think that our European allies were excited when the New York Times published a story about 'secret prisons' in Europe? Do you think that Swiss banks were happy to see the NYT publish a story about how we were using their banking system to track terrorist money?

Real patriots who wanted a secure but ethical and honest American security apparatus already have the power to prevent abuses of the law. Those mechanisms already exist and especially now that we have a President of an opposing party who has no interest in protecting anything his predecessor did there are all the mechanisms in existence to change anything which might be thought unwise, illegal or unpleasant.

But instead, we saw traitorous bureaucrats in our own government agencies trying to throw their follow employees into the fire by committing treason and leaking national security secrets to the media. And once the bureaucrats got the President they hoped for they remain silent about abuses of power while they happily co-operate with the lawyers in taking apart the tools we developed to oppose our enemies and prevent their success.

This is a sad time to be an America and a very dangerous time to be an American clandestine operator. For the next four years, there is no way that anybody who has spent their life protecting their country from its enemies can feel safe. And the cycle of retribution which is being re-started after having been left to die for the last 8 years is going to create domestic recriminations which will be worse than the last round. And, as usual, its the person who publicly proclaims the loudest to be the least political or politically motivated who actually is the most political and politically motivated.

So much for 'post-partisan' and 'change'. For all the stupid, wrong and idiotic things that George Bush did as President, he never punished his enemies politically simply because they were on the other side of the aisle. He didn't go after the Clinton people. He didn't even go after either Clinton despite lots of reasons better than the current crop of excuses for prosecution. Hillary Clinton was a lawyer who wrote a memo suggesting that Richard Nixon be refused legal counsel during his impeachment hearings because he committed crimes as President. Aside from being legally just wacko-speak, what would have happened if George Bush had decided to try to put Hillary in jail for having written a legal memo advocated something which was blatantly illegal (her own boss wouldn't even allow the brief to be turned over to the impeachment committee it was so bonkers) and suggested violating the US Constitution? Want to guess where all this kind of talk can lead? Anarchy. Anarchy isn't too far off from the found documents of the ACLU, btw. Read them. It's quite enlightening to see what an atheist and socialist organization of lawyers has in mind for America even if they don't talk about it publicly.