Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colin Powell unloaded on the CIA and congessional leadership this morning. In an appearance on CNN's American Morning he called CIA leadership liars, and the congessional leadership feckless. He also said that the Republican attack on Speaker Pelosi is a "tempest in a teapot" and we need to get to the central issue, which is: torture is against the law.
Colonel Wilkerson is becoming one of the leaders in getting to the bottom of the Bu$hCo crimes. This morning he came down hard on the CIA and the congressional leadership. In an interview with Kiran Chetry on CNN's American Morning, he started by calling out Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson for lacking "bona fides." Gerson is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former chief speechwriter for George W. Bush. Wilkerson said he was stunned by what the Post continues to "allow to appear on their op-ed pages, lambasting the Democratic and others who might as he calls it 'attack the CIA.'"
Wilkerson said he had "35 years of bona fides," going back to Vietnam, and he had studied it as an academic - he knew "the crimes and the ravages that have been perpetrated in the name of the American people, the blood and the treasure that’s been expended by the CIA over that half century." He said he also knew about their the successes. So, it was a "mixed bag." He said that "the leadership of the CIA does not have a stellar record about telling the full and unequivocal truth about its covert operations." He made a point of saying that he was not talking about "the good people in the ranks of the CIA."
He said he hopes that Leon Panetta will be different, but that "the practice of people in the past" was to not be truthful; "I know I was lied to." Wilkerson said he could give "example after example" of George Tenet and John McLaughlin "essentially fabricating truths for Colin Powell getting ready for his preparation for the U.N. presentation." When asked for details, he said it was much more than the infamous "16 words."
I’m referring to aluminum tubes. I’m referring to al Qaeda operatives who were tortured in order to get information about links between Baghdad and al Qaeda. I’m talking about "Curveball." I’m talking about the pillars of Colin Powell’s presentation, which were politicized and in my view, were lied about by the DCI and the DDCI to the secretary of state of this country.
When asked about John Boehner's call for Nancy Pelosi to "come forward with evidence" that she was misled, Wilkerson said that he doubted that she could make the CIA produce self-incriminating evidence. He said even Bobby Kennedy couldn’t do that when he "essentially ran clandestine operations out of the Attorney General’s Office for his brother." Wilkerson's opinion of Boehner's call for evidence is that it was a "tempest in a teapot" and incidental to the central issue: "torture and harsh interrogation, which is against international law and against domestic law."
Chetry asked if can anything could be done to make sure "all sides can be held accountable."
Wilkerson's reply:
... we could have less feckless leadership in the Congress in terms of oversight. And I am not just talking about the Select Committees in the House and the Senate for Intelligence. I’m talking about the leadership in the Congress. This has been the most feckless Congress ever since 2000 that I’ve seen in my 65 years. I just don’t think there’s leadership over there. It’s spineless, it lacks courage, it lacks political will. I shutter (shudder?) for the fact that we’ve got to face these economic and financial challenges we face — Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and other things — and we don’t have a Congress that has any leadership.
Indeed. We need more people saying things like this in places where it will be heard by those who don't regularly follow the news and talk back to their tee vee machines.