Dan Jones (portrayed by Adam Driver in the riveting movie, The Report) recently spoke to Jeremy Scahill about the relationship of the CIA to the presidency. It’s not a theme that is really spelled out in the movie, which focuses on the politics of torture, but what Jones says is key to understanding the realities of Washington power during the Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies.
Jones makes a point that may be hard for citizens and journalists to comprehend. The CIA was created in 1947 to serve as the instrument of the commander in chief, to wield the hidden hand of U.S. power. In the 21st century, Jones notes, the presidency became the instrument of the agency’s designs.
The conventional Washington view that is President George W. Bush, led by vizier Dick Cheney, ordered the CIA start torturing suspected terrorists in order to prevent another 9/11 attack. That’s not what happened, Jones said.
So, while we were doing this investigation, one of the stories from the agency was, “Hey, we’re just following orders,” right? “This isn’t our program. This is the Bush-Cheney program. This is Obama’s program. This is America’s program.” And we had 6.3 million pages of records and they really wanted to push this narrative that they were just following orders, good soldiers. And it just isn’t in the records. And we asked the agency, if this is the case, find us the record somewhere. Where’s the email? There’s not even an email discussion among people saying we were with Cheney today and he told us we have to do this. It does not exist. We asked for it. It was in the CIA’s interest to produce it because that was part of their narrative which is we’re just following orders. What the records indicate is that this was a CIA program foisted upon the Bush-Cheney White House, not the other way around.
As an independent observer who had high security clearances and extraordinary access to CIA records, Jones knows what he’s talking about.
It’s really an incredible story and that’s what I always thought the takeaway of this entire report would be. There’s no doubt that torture is terrible. It’s far more brutal than the CIA had suggested. It’s obviously, it was grossly ineffective and resulted in false answers. But I thought the larger takeaway was here’s the CIA systematically misleading its leadership, its political leadership, over multiple administrations — Bush and Cheney, and then later on with Obama with the operation that led to bin Laden’s death.
Source: We Tortured Some Folks: The Report’s Daniel Jones on the Ongoing Fight to Hold the CIA Accountable
