In an article entitled "Torture's Teachers" by A.J. Langguth, dated June 11, 1979, Langguth discussed Leaf's revelations on CIA training of the Shah's notorious police torturers, SAVAK. Then he discussed another former CIA agent he had been trying to reach for years.

Manuel Hevia Conculluela was a Cuban double agent for the CIA who worked for the agency for eight years before resigning. (Alfred McCoy discusses his case in his now-famous and necessary history, A Question of Torture, on page 72, to be precise.) According to Lannguth:

Manuel had revealed his true sympathies by leaving his job with the C.I.A. in Montevideo, where he had worked in Uruguay's police program and returning to his homeland. But from his editor I learned that Manuel, whose full name turned out to be Manuel Hevia Conculluela, would be out of the country the entire time I was in Cuba. I could, however, get a copy of the book he had published six months earlier, "Pasaporte 11333, Eight Years With the C.I.A....

In 1970, his duties brought him in contact with Dan Mitrione, the United States policy adviser who was kidnapped by the Tupamaro revolutionaries later that year and shot to death when the Uruguayan Government refused to save him by yielding up politician prisoners.

Dan Mitrione has long been a controversial figure from the days of the Cold War. After he was executed by the Uruguayan Tupamaros in 1970, his funeral was attended by political luminaries. Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit concert for his family. Director Costa-Gavras made a popular U.S. movie based on his story, State of Seige A.J. Langguth, who wrote the NYT article I'm referencing (and was once NYT bureau chief in Saigon), later wrote a book about Mitrione and U.S. activities in general, Hidden Terrors: the truth about U.S. police operations in Latin America.

Mitrione was said to have been involved in torture in Brazil in the early to mid 1960s. He moved to Uruguay in 1969 to oversee the Office of Public Safety. Manuel Hevia was also working in the Uruguayan police program. From the NYT story:

In 1970, his duties brought him in contact with Dan Mitrione....

Thanks to Mr. Hevia [A.J. Langguth writes], I was finally hearing Mr. Mitrione’s true voice:

"When you receive a subject, the first thing to do is to determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, through a medical examination. A premature death means a failure by the technician.

"Another important thing to know is exactly how far you can go given the political situation and the personality of the prisoner. It is very important to know beforehand whether we have the luxury of letting the subject die...

"Before all else, you must be efficient. You must cause only the damage that is strictly necessary, not a bit more. We must control our tempers in any case. You have to act with the efficiency and cleanliness of a surgeon and with the perfection of an artist..."

Five years late, thanks to the effort of such men as former Senator James Abourezk, the police advisory program was finally abolished.

But, later revelations have shown that the torture did not in fact stop, even if individual programs were "abolished".

I have published this diary for two reasons:

One, to give a brief but real peek into the minds of those who openly push torture in American "interests". Note that this man died for his beliefs at the hands of "revolutionaries", who were themselves later largely hunted down and imprisoned.

Two, I formally ask that if any people of conscience exist within the CIA or intelligence services today, that they step forward and speak out. Yes, you will be vilified. You may even be breaking the law, I don't know. But you will have the satisfaction of having changed history and brought the truth to the American people. That sounds like more than whistleblowing to me. That sounds like patriotism.

Ex-CIA agent Philip Agee told Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now interview back in 2003 why he decided to speak out.

I was always taught to accept the government as honest and as virtuous. I went into the C.I.A. because I wanted to serve my country.

When I went down to Latin America in 1960 I had had no political education in the sense that people were politically educated in the 1960's, a generation later or practically a generation later. I got my political education when I was in Latin America seeing the realities around me day after day....

Little by little I turned against the people that we were supporting because of their greed and because of the political repression that was required to keep this system of injustice glued together.

The use of torture, secret renditions, abrogation of basic rights such as habeas corpus, wars started on phony pretexts, hundreds of thousands of innocent persons killed: are there any people of conscience left in our government?

At the end of T.S. Eliot's poem, Coriolan, he writes:

May we not be some time, almost now, together
If the mactations, immolations, oblations, impetrations,
Are now observed
May we not be
O hidden...

O mother
What shall I cry?
We demand a committee, a representative committee, a committee of investigation

RESIGN  RESIGN  RESIGN

Update, December 13, 2006: After writing this diary I was reminded of an important CIA resignation that occurred last February. As reported at Daily Kos and the Sunday Times Online, Robert Grenier, chief of CIA counterintelligence, was fired for refusing to go along with CIA torture and secret rendition. From the Times article:

Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: "It is not that Grenier wasn’t aggressive enough, it is that he wasn’t ‘with the programme’. He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists."

Grenier also opposed "excessive" interrogation, such as strapping suspects to boards and dunking them in water, according to Cannistraro.

While Grenier has not spoken out publically on torture, to my knowledge, interesting, he did become involved in the Plame/Libby case. From Wikipedia:

In early 2006, Grenier was identified in court documents in connection with the ongoing CIA leak grand jury investigation and charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Grenier told Libby on June 11, 2003, one month before the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA identity, that he believed Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, a CIA agent, was responsible for arranging Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger.[3] Libby claims to have forgotten about the conversation. Grenier is expected to give evidence in the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.