CIA Director John Brennan said Wednesday that the next president could remove the restrictions President Obama has put on the use of drones overseas — and that the CIA might comply with an order to commit torture.
In April, Brennan told NBC News that the CIA would refuse an order to resume its torture program. But on Wednesday, speaking at a Brookings Institute event, he said he was just speaking on his own behalf.
“If a president were to order, order the agency to carry out waterboarding or something else, it’ll be up to the director of CIA and others within CIA to decide whether or not that, that direction and order is something that they can carry out in good conscience,” he said.
He added that he was personally opposed: “As long as I’m director of CIA, irrespective of what the president says, I’m not going to be the director of CIA who gives that order. They’ll have to find another director.”
Brennan did not acknowledge that Congress last year turned Obama’s anti-torture executive order into law, explicitly banning waterboarding and other forms of torture — and restricting the CIA in particular to interrogation methods listed in the Army Field Manual.
As for a possible expansion of drone strikes, current policy guidelines issued by President Obama in 2013 require “near certainty” on the part of the government “before lethal action is taken,” that “the terrorist target is present,” and that “noncombatants will not be injured or killed.” President Obama called that standard the “highest standard we can set.”
When The Intercept asked whether the CIA would abandon the “near certainty” standard if ordered to do so, Brennan said, “Any subsequent president can change” restrictions on drone targeting. “If this president or the next president decides to change existing directing policy guidance, it is the [Central Intelligence] Agency’s responsibility to carry out that direction.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has previously advocated for targeting the innocent family members of terrorist suspects, saying, “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself.”
Trump has also said he would bring back “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
Does anyone believe him?? I DO NOT……He is required to obey any lawful order – O.K. some above board and some secretly…. power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I DO NOT BELIEVE HE WOULD SURRENDER ANY OF HIS “SO-CALLED” POWER…..
N.S.A. – C.I.A. – F.B.I. and the pentagon operate in secret – they love the power of that
Ever wonder what it feels like to be part of a middle east dictatorship? Something about his expression reminds me of mubarek. Maybe we are living in an annexation of Palestine and dont know it, yet.
Mr. Brennan… we’re supposed to believe you’re not torturing people ALREADY?
What’s evidence do we have that you ever stopped?
Yeah, right… I’ve been meeting with the President (and persons way not nicer than him) Tuesday nights as part of a very special group that prepares a Kill List of persons we deem Kill-Worthy, assassinating by Drone, other robots or by professional hitmen – or hitwomen. They may well be U.S. citizens; we don’t particularly care if they are civilians or not, and we have only information about the targets delivered by sources in our employ… ‘Scuse me; ain’t this the very old game of good cop, bad cop? Oh yeah; we’re not very nice but those guys over there, the next guys up after I’ve retired to a paradise fortress island in the tropics – whew – they’re REALLY vicious… Sho’ ‘nuf – nation run by a criminal class. Nazis saying their Nazism and violence ain’t so bad ’cause there are more, the next wave of NeoImproved Nazis is on the way, meaner than us and all gunned up… Ick…
Sho’ ‘nuf – nation run by a criminal class.
During the past week i looked back at all the sordid who did what to whom over the past decades and the picture i saw was one where the United States of America is actually run by a rather large network of organized criminals. They lie, they steal, they murder, they forge, they conjure, corrupt, conceal.
The country is run by criminals. So what is it we need prisons for? Why to limit the competition i suppose.
we made law against torture? the author makes it seem like there never were laws against torture.
jeepers creepers has he heard of the constitution? or the convention against torture?
the cia’s lawless , despicable behavior over decades shows it is unaccountable, evil, and should be closed down.
the cavalier manner in which a crime against humanity is bandied about in the usa is deeply saddening.
america only exists as a myth.
more’s the pity.
Well. When one considers the author’s primary subject(s) matter (Brennan, Obama, Congress), it can certainly seem as [if] ‘there never were laws against torture.’ Considering:
~ Obama ‘outlawed’ it … and in general thinks it’s abhorrent.
~ Congress “last year turned Obama’s anti-torture executive order into law, explicitly banning waterboarding and other forms of torture — and restricting the CIA in particular to interrogation methods listed in the Army Field Manual.”
~ and Brennan, of course, doesn’t know whether to poop or go blind.
obama tortures at gitmo. (forced feeding)
obama continues the practice of extraordinary rendition to locations outside the u.s. why do that if not to abuse the victims?
who knows what still goes on at bagram?
and remember, waterboarding didn’t rise to the level of torture because it didn’t cause ‘organ failure or death’ (even though we did torture people to death by other means)
one could argue solitary confinement is torture.
and brennan, as a principled american, is a joke.
I know Mona will jumped on me ;-)
MK-Ultra and COINTELPRO are alive and kicking in these days!
As of late I have noticed a flood of Illuminati Mind control b#llsh!t (even by the NYTimes!) with the clear signature of psy ops. Many people have been picking up on what is going on within their communities, learning about so-called “fusion centers”, about NYPD’s “nexus” in (sold as city-wide social “awareness” organization (with the FBI. NYPD at the top of their hierarchy)) used to gang stalk and mess with people … It isn’t about terrorism or anything, just about “controlling” and messing with people for the fun of it and in order to get paid.
Nowadays they don’t need to keep patients locked up at McGill’s Allan Memorial in order to administer shock “therapy” or bring them to black rooms to monitor what they are saying, doing as they are being drugged for experimentation by the CIA and FBI. They use “no-touch tortures” and “direct energy weapons” (terms introduced by them) and people even pay for the service of carrying a cell phone.
// __ CIA Mind Control Techniques MK-ULTRA Program Brainwashing
So, those “academic” folks were doing “research” for the money … of course, they could easily sense what was going on and factually check it themselves.
This is a good example of gringo mindset. They use supposedly “ethical”, “legal” and even “scientifically” sounding terminology in a pretentious bullsh!ting, paternalistic, mocking way.
Also, does that mean since they don’t know “the specifics”, they could be safely considered to be “innocent” as Greenwald considers NSA employees “just doing their data and so-called “intelligence” work”?
Now, talk about Obamaesque statements even before Obama!
Another good example of gringo mindset
Ma’am, whom would you suggest they do that to, if not to you? To hippies, to unsuspecting minor children, to unsuspecting people serving time prison while the elite go about their business? Who exactly?
I have a proposal, they should do that to politicians and police, but how would they do that do themselves ”if they want the research not to be biased …” as they say
Also, about “the mentality of people who would do this”, as Hannah Arendt explained to us in her “Banality of evil” thesis, all you need is “patriots” and as Milgram and Rosenhan experiments have thoroughly demonstrated there are plenty of those. People would very easily do away with their thin layer of humanity, morality and submit to “authority”, even making up self-serving philosophies about “doing the right thing”, for “the greater good”, … about “God being with ‘us'” … even “good Christian”, church going fellows and seemingly innocent, angelically looking daddy’s daughters you would never believe would do such things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
emming effing Fidel Castro was listed on the Guinness records book as being the person who has repeated the most a phrase, “yankee imperialism”, in a speech. I doubt he was saying anything nice.
Why doesn’t Guinness records book include Obama as the individual (a president of state) keeping the longest kill list ever? “That is different”, right?
The constant, marginal, movie-like digressions in that documentary I found a downright silly
// __ 638 Ways To Kill Castro
youtube.com/watch?v=VFQz8racYNk
~
Part of how you become a targeted individual is:
1) the NSA is collecting all our data anyway,
2) which they correlate and stratify (“you“, “your name“ doesn’t really matter, just your position in their chess table), if you are some sort of out lier you will catch their attention for the rest of your life …
What did Bobby Fisher have to do with terrorism or any such things, when, as his own hippie mother and his opponents put it, all he thinks about is chess?
This is how politicians and police think of us “We the people”. Nationality, “patriotism”, ethnicity, race … are all ideas they use to entertain us.
RCL
torture coming back? don’t worry!
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
sit back, relax, and trust in the moral universe
There they go again lying their @ss off!
Oh, Brennan, so sweet of you! We all knew deep down your heart you are just a tough cookie.
// __ Trump renews call for waterboarding: ‘I like it a lot’ – video
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/jun/29/donald-trump-istanbul-airport-attack-video
At least, that sounds more like what great many Americans want to become reality.
Something somewhat amusing and downright sick I find in gringos is that b#llsh!ting pretentiousness. It is like someone is lying to you, knowing well that he is lying and that you know he is lying and still he puts faces as if he believed he weren’t lying …
I think that could be diagnosed as some sort of schizophrenia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung
You tell me which one of those would consider to be torture
a) inducing high frequency electromagnetic lobes on people
b) systematically sleep depriving people by:
b.1) creating noises in their environment
b.2) infecting their beds with all kinds of insects and chemical sh!t that itches as hell
c) poisoning people’s food to do bodily harm
d) sustained, unrelenting psychological harassment
e) all of the above
f) it depends
* if your answer was §e you selected the right answer option. if you belong to USG you selected §f
Also, gringos say they don’t persecute people … they just “freedom-love” them, I guess
https://ipsoscustodes.wordpress.com/2016/07/14/gringos-might-torture-you/
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/targeted-individuals-us-01-must-avoid-arrests-obvious-crimes-centering-war-money-lies.html
A friend of mine sent this to me the other day:
// __ POLICE GANG STALKING: HIERARCHY, OPERATIVES, DISPOSITION MATRIX, GREENSBORO, NC
youtube.com/watch?v=MLTSR6Q6l9Y
~
Wilfredo, bro, post more about your own experiences with those emming effing morons justifying their salaries
Funny thing is that those are the kinds of people TheIntercept/GlennGreenwald choose to have gentlemen agreements with when they say that they take “recommendations” from the NSA while “redacting” documents …
truth and peace and love,
RCL
Despite considerable evidence implicating the CIA & MI6 in the extraordinary rendition and torture of “supposed” terrorists post 911, and the added assertion that UK Government Ministers knew about this, and turned a blind eye. The UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has decided that no charges will be brought against Straw & Blair because of the apparent unlikelihood of achieving a successful prosecution.
Thing is in relation to the above article is that with a US election coming up, despite Obama & Bremmer’s professed repugnance against torture, things could well change. No doubt Trump would be quite happy to extract finger nails, not sure about Hilary, but don’t trust her.
Aw shucks. Brennan’s just itchin’ to be the first one to drive that first toothpick under that first fingernail
Exhibit number one in “if the President does it then it’s legal”
Disgusting.
In fact, the president is the Midas of legal. Everything he/she touches is legal.
Is there any doubt that America is Terrorist #1 at home and abroad?
So, if the next President orders torture, then it would also be okay to torture Americans, state agents or otherwise? To be egalitarian and all. Someone questioned whether US citizens would be tortured or whether this is for non-Americans. I doubt the government will make that distinction. There is already no distinction when it comes to assassination, according to Jeremy Scahill. Torture and assassination is already greenlit at the upper levels. They do it and always have. The real question is whether the citizenry knows. In which case, the government would just be more open about it.
Such limiting distinctions are best dealt with by the use of language itself. For instance, how does one actually define:
1. a civilian? As far as I am aware, none of the alleged “enemy combatants” were uniforms or identifying insignia
2. an enemy combatant? Are all military-age males in a strike zone still counted as combatants?
3. a terror suspect? Are terror SUSPECTS now legitimate targets of CIA drone strikes?
4. a female enemy combatant? How and why would one want to rule out military-age females? How sexist!
It would be far more pragmatic to just kill everyone one within a designated strike zone without being tasked with the burden of subsequently blurring distinctions. Just stock up on goats and hand them out to whoever believes that their family member was mistakenly victimized by a drone strike. In this way, the US is encouraging the growth of local economies while spreading goodwill among those who remain unscathed in the process.
The American Emperor can kill whoever he chooses, just like in the good old days of Stalin.
Benito?
I have to pretend I didn’t see your comment or reread his, otherwise it’s all too disturbing.
Karl wishes he was as clever as Benito.
This is due to the fact that Barack Obama is a moral retard who didn’t prosecute the torture program architects nor consult his conscience (if he has one) about assassination and collateral damage. Now torture is a mere policy choice, and drone-strike murders of countless unknown people are ‘normal.’
And as for Obama’s policy standards being “high” regarding drone strikes, as this article repeats uncritically for some reason, he is still executing “signature strikes” which are simply guesses that ‘militants’ are below.
This headline says precisely nothing. Brennan says it will not happen when he is the boss. How could he say definitely what will happen afterwards?
It says the establishment’s torture and murder are not really illegal, just policy choice, and Brennan is admitting it.
^^^ This.
His statement says nothing about the legality, and Brennan is admitting nothing. All he said was that he would not do it; he merely clarified that he could not speak for future directors.
I suppose that he did not acknowledge a lot of things. So what?
You never struck me as naïve, but life is full of surprises.
That comment shows that you have not understood what I am saying. Brennan is a very careful administrator. That alone does not make him good or bad. Our reporter and editor are either naive or have not thought this through for some other reason..
Torture was illegal before Obama said it was. But there have been no prosecutions. Murder is illegal even though Obama continues to do it. Brennan is admitting that in reality there are no real obstacles other than personal conviction to reinstating torture or expanding the murderous policy.
John Brennan and every CIA employee swore a supreme loyalty oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution – which includes the Bill of Rights. There are no executions since the Constitution is a wartime charter.
Aside from the fact that the CIA is saying, in essence, that torturing US troops and/or captured American citizens by enemies of the United States is perfectly acceptable and will not/cannot be objected to the US government since they have green-lighted the process, when is the civilized world going to collectively step in to prosecute the US for war crimes?
It was clear 70 years ago that neither Germany or Japan would put itself on trial for war crimes. It requires an outside world tribunal to punish the United States government for it’s actions.
Until US officials receive the same punishment that was meted out to German and Japanese war criminals, those same barbaric crimes now being committed by the United States, that are apparently supported by a large number of ethically bankrupt Americans, will continue.
Yes, but the Allies could only establish and conduct the Nuremberg Tribunals after defeating both nations in a world war. So, no one should be holding her breath.
Well, as we know, there’s always someone available . . .
Saturday Night Massacre