Letter to Congressional Representatives Regarding CIA Torture

Letter to Congressional Representatives Regarding CIA Torture

10 December 2014

Honorable Jared Huffman

1630 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Sen. Dianne Feinstein

331 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

Sen. Barbara Boxer

112 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senators and Congressman,

As a citizen of California District 2 and person of faith in God, I am appalled by the contents of the Senate Report on CIA torture released to the public yesterday. The report redacted and summarized only a portion of the torture program, but its descriptions of barbarity and violation of civilized norms cloud the founding vision of our Constitution for a free, open, cruelty-free and accountable society.

In addition to revealing crimes against humanity and clear violations of international treaties against torture to which U.S. is signatory, the summary report corroborates accounts of systematic lying about the methods, numbers, and effectiveness of the torture program by C.I.A. leaders to their Constitutional overseers in Congress.  I am disturbed by the Department of Justice’s failure to further investigate Senators’ allegations of obstruction by C.I.A. operatives impeding Congressional oversight and its obligation to foster governance free of criminality.

Yet we as a society are expecting and demanding more than a season of piecemeal organizational reform and fact finding.  CIA is structurally disordered.  The comments reported yesterday of Director Brennan’s response to the report demonstrate clearly to me that CIA does not discern its own disorder.  Just political order is manifested by an ethic of social accountability and humanity. Designed as a clandestine spy network that has taken on military roles of incarceration and interrogation, CIA appears systematically corrupt, corrupting and ineffective—and I believe there is a linkage.  CIA’s intended and historic operations of codebreaking foreign enemies in a digital cybernetic world can be transferred to the military branches where clearer lines of accountability and the vetting of personalities fitted for military activities may be expected and demanded.

Congress established CIA by statute in 1947, and it can disestablish CIA.  At long last, when can our society restore a sanity of decency and justice against its barbaric elements that are destroying the hopes of our children and the needy?  Abolishing CIA would do more than eradicate its clear and present structural danger to honesty, openness, transparency, and decency which make society operate efficiently. Abolishing CIA would send a clear and present message that the inhumane element in society may not ratchet up their inhumanity, but may expect oversight of their activities to intensify. In this way, society may be able to roll back the decline in American political civilization and justice that has accelerated since 9/11.

Abolish the CIA.  Hold hearings that demand indictments for perjury and all crimes.  Suggest pardons only at the end of holding the inhumane and criminals to historical account so this dark era in American governance--governor and governed alike--may move towards dawn. May our leaders lead and recover the precedent and expectation for civilization to shine into all of society’s institutions.

Respectfully,

Rev. Douglas Olds [member, Presbyterian Church, (USA)]

[my address and phone number in my letter are "redacted" here]