The New York Times (3/27/13) and Washington Post (3/26/13), among other outlets, are withholding the name of a CIA official under consideration for the Agency’s third-highest ranking job: director of the National Clandestine Service. (She is currently the acting head of the Service.)
The story is odd, because such high-ranking CIA officials are normally named in news reports about their activities. So why is the media concealing her identity in this case? Because the CIA asked them to–that’s apparently all it takes.
The real question is: Why did the CIA ask? The Agency reportedly wants her identity concealed because they say she is undercover, suggesting that disclosure could be a matter of national security or safety. But FireDogLake‘s Kevin Gosztola (3/28/13) casts doubt on that claim, pointing out her high rank and the fact that her name is well-known to establishment reporters.
On the contrary, Gosztola makes a good case that agency wants her identity concealed to shield her from accountability over past involvement in the CIA’s interrogation and rendition programs, and in the destruction of videotapes of CIA torture sessions. According to Gosztola:
The Washington Post reported the female officer served in a senior position at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center after the September 11th attacks. She was in the chain of command for the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program (RDI). When Rodriguez was promoted to head the clandestine service in 2004, she became his chief of staff.
At a black site prison in Thailand, brutal interrogations of high-profile detainees, including Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were recorded. Footage included video of Zubaydah vomiting and screaming as he was being waterboarded.
Rodriguez and his chief of staff grew nervous that the 92 tapes recorded might become public and officers involved would face trouble. “The two repeatedly sought permission to have the tapes destroyed but were denied,” according to the Post. “In 2005, instructions to get rid of the recordings went out anyway. Former officials said the order carried just two names: Rodriguez and his chief of staff.”
The compelling interest in the public knowing that a high-ranking public official has taken part in highly controversial and perhaps even illegal actions, in the view of these news outlets, is apparently outweighed by their duty, as they see it, to keep the government’s secrets.
Of course, this is just the latest example of journalists siding with government secret-keepers rather than defending the public’s right to know. In the last go-round, the New York Times and the Washington Post withheld news, again at the CIA’s request, that the U.S. had a drone base in Saudi Arabia, prompting Times ombud Margaret Sullivan to scold her own paper: “The real threat to national security is a government operating in secret and accountable to no one, with watchdogs that are too willing to muzzle themselves.”
But it’s hard to get such a message through to journalists who see muzzling themselves as in integral to their work. As I wrote in the latest Extra!:
Withholding important news over supposed national security concerns is nothing new. And in many cases, no official request is even needed–the decision-makers seem to have internalized the notion that keeping the government’s secrets is part of their job.
Doug Latimer
Corpress complicity
Another sort of “secret service”
john wolfe
Call me Tritesticles, but I’m going to ask for someone to write in her name. Right here. Right now. What other thuggette could get criminal anonmity? She’s a latter-day Bonnie Parker, a rogue in our war on terror, targeting liberties instead of banks, of course. Anyone care to write it? Don’t tell me everyone’s afraid.
Don P
hey it’s been on RT all day
john wolfe
Thanks for the information. I don’t wish this lady any additional grief (assuming she has a concsience), but she should not get away with the kinds of torture that we hanged the Japanese for doing during WW 2. She deserves no anonymity, because she should own her heinous acts before all mankind. Secrecy can only fuel her lust for criminality.
Interesting that when we took the Nazi leader Goering into custody, we fed him a chicken dinner before taking him to an Air Force base, where he played cards with our airman and jovially traded war stories. Second to Hitler, Goering plotted an aggressive war that killed 20 Milion; but, that happy-go-lucky
cross-dresser caught our fancy for a brief bit. And I don’t think we tortured any of his fellow rogues before their ’46 trial.
Goering cheated the hangman by taking poison moments before he was to feel the noose of justice ’round his neck..
Pelu
Have the military and CIA gone rogue?
Night-Gaunt
All part of the Obama administration to protect the Bush admin. And he expects to be protected by the next administration of either party.
Padremellyrn
The worst censorship is always self imposed; because then no one really knows what it is not being said.
Too bad the change we looked for came in the form of more of the same in the same direction, or no change at all.
michael e
The films should all be released.What is done on our behalf,by our representatives who receive their pay from us are accountable….to us.As is our president who yes works for us also.They have no right to hide such things long after the fact.
Eric
“She was in the chain of command for the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program (RDI). … At a black site prison in Thailand, brutal interrogations of high-profile detainees, including Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were recorded. Footage included video of Zubaydah vomiting and screaming as he was being waterboarded.”
Well, at least she looks well qualified to head the black ops — I mean, clandestine — service.
While the IDF claims to be the ‘most moral army in the world’ as it massacres Palestinians, is this ‘clandestine service’ the most moral torturer in the world?