Accountability for CIA's covert acts

The semi-independent inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency is virtually the only U.S. government official who conducts on-the-ground investigations of covert operations.

After a 17-month delay, President Barack Obama has finally nominated a veteran government investigator, David Buckley, as the next inspector general. The Senate should respond quickly, emphasizing that review of secret programs remains a top inspector general priority. The Senate Intelligence Committee must also press for responsible public disclosure of critical inspector general reports, to help build a political constituency for corrective action.


This issue is urgent. Credible outside observers have been warning that current U.S. policy is failing to achieve a proper balance among its goals of “taking down” terrorists, upholding international humanitarian law and using diplomacy to build friendships and discourage terrorist recruitment.

The U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions recently criticized Washington for violating international law in CIA- and military-targeted killings of suspected terrorists outside war theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan. He characterized these openly acknowledged “stealth” operations as a “vaguely defined license to kill,” and questioned the absence of known safeguards for “legality and accuracy.”

With specific regard to CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, a former CIA legislative counsel under President George W. Bush told a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that there is an “acute” need for an “independent authority” to review actions and issue public reports to “check against abuses.”

The Obama administration’s response to all this has been: “Trust us.” After all, this is an administration that stopped interrogations that involved torture and took steps toward closing the Guantanamo prison.

The State Department legal advisor, Harold Koh, assures us that escalating drone killings are conducted with “great care … to ensure that only legitimate objectives are targeted and that collateral damage is kept to a minimum.” CIA Director Leon Panetta vows to “press to make sure” that alleged terrorists subjected to the continuing program of “extraordinary rendition” to abusive third countries “won’t be mistreated.”

Yet history shows that hard-to-detect CIA operations against suspect individuals tend to develop an organizational momentum that carries them well beyond legal and diplomatic limits — and beyond executive and congressional controls.

There is no better documentation of this problem — and its bipartisan character — than two partially declassified reports from former Inspector General John Helgerson.

The inspector general’s investigation of counterterrorist detentions and interrogations in the two years after Sept. 11 found that, under pressure from the Bush administration, the CIA had proposed “more robust” interrogation techniques inconsistent with stated U.S. human rights policies. Both before and after these “enhanced” methods were approved, the agency used “improvised” and “unauthorized” techniques — including the notorious multiple waterboardings of Al Qaeda associates, which violated Justice Department understandings. These unauthorized practices were often “undocumented.”

Similarly, a report on the “Narcotics Airbridge Denial Program in Peru, conducted largely during the Clinton administration, concluded that the agency’s “routine disregard” of presidentially mandated “intercept procedures … led to the rapid shooting down of target aircraft without adequate safeguards to protect against the loss of innocent life.”

A U.S. missionary plane was shot down over Peru in 2001, killing an American mother and infant. The agency, according to the report, advised its “managers to avoid written products lest they be subject to legal scrutiny.”

CIA and Peruvian participants had ignored procedures designed to ensure proper identification and provide the opportunity to land because they “would have taken time and might have resulted in the escape of the target aircraft.” The agency “incorrectly reported [to the National Security Council and Congress] that the anti-narcotics smuggling program complied with … policies governing it.”

The enduring nature of this accountability vacuum was clear when I recently analyzed new evidence in a controversial “cold case” that combines both rendition and targeted killing.

Almost 50 years ago, Patrice Lumumba, the democratically elected prime minister of the newly independent Congo, was mistakenly cast by the Eisenhower administration as “pro-Soviet.” The CIA installed and subsidized a replacement regime, which subsequently delivered Lumumba to secessionist enemies — who put him before a firing squad.

The CIA Station Chief Larry Devlin was an influential participant in his Congolese protégés’ decision to transfer Lumumba. They had consulted — and heeded — him for months on every major decision involving the deposed leader.

Informed three days in advance by a “government leader” of the secret transfer plan, Devlin made no effort to dissuade his “cooperators.” He withheld information about the coming transfer from Washington, forestalling a strong possibility that the State Department, anxious to maintain African diplomatic support, might have tried to save Lumumba.

Beyond underlining the inspector general’s key role in investigating covert operations, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and full Senate, should press the Obama administration to accept timely declassification of critical inspector general reports, with necessary redactions to protect intelligence sources and methods.

Briefed only to a few legislators and staff sworn to secrecy, the inspector general’s explosive 2004 report on “enhanced interrogation techniques” failed to produce large-scale corrective action. That came only after years of leaks and public scandal.

The inspector general’s essential findings about violations of legality and policy need to be made public so that they can generate political pressure for rapid, meaningful change.

Stephen Weissman is a former staff director of the House Africa Subcommittee. His article, “An Extraordinary Rendition,” appears in the April 2010 issue of Intelligence and National Security.