nakedcapitalism | As those of us who still follow the news know, President Trump
revoked former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance. (For
those who came in late, Brennan
organized torture and “extraordinary rendition”[1], and was a “vocal
advocate” of giving the telcos immunity for Bush’s enormous program of
warrrantless surveillance[2], under President George W Bush. Under President Barack Obama, Brennan organized the “kill list,” later rebranded as a “disposition matrix,” which Obama used in at least one case to kill a U.S. citizen with a drone strike, while avoiding any form of due process.) In response to Trump’s action, twelve “top” intelligence officials wrote and published a statement denouncing it (here). This is the key paragraph:
We know John to be an enormously talented, capable, and patriotic individual who devoted his adult life to the service of this nation. Insinuations and allegations of wrongdoing on the part of Brennan while in office are baseless.
(Scores of “ex-spies” later joined the original twelve.) In this post, I’m not going to discuss motive, whether Trump’s for revoking Brennan’s clearance, or the intelligence community’s outrage that he did so, or the media’s.
Rather, I’m going to focus on the question of whether “the twelve”
should have any standing to issue such a statement in the first place.
After all, if torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless
surveillance, and whacking US citizens without due process are not
“wrongdoing,” then what on earth can be?[3] To this end, I will first
present a table sketching the careers and personal networks of “the
twelve.” Next, I’ll look at those who did not sign the
statement. After that, I’ll make a few brief comments about “the twelve”
as a class. I’ll conclude by raising the issue of standing again. I
hope this post will be especially useful to those who haven’t been
following politics since 9/11, who may take our current institutional
structures for granted (see especially footnotes [1] and [2]).
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