Someone Would Have Talked? Someone Would Be Crazy

Recently by Russ Baker: But Syriasly, Folks…..

Would covert operatives whose work involves subverting democratic governments abroad – including violent coups such as the one that brought down Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 – hesitate when ordered to participate in comparable activities at home?

We're constantly told that no such thing could happen in the good ole USA (certainly not in the deaths of JFK, RFK, MLK, for example), if for no other reason than that it is impossible to keep such plots secret.

Or, in the common parlance: u201CSomeone would have talked.u201D

The logic goes: since no one has come forward to describe their role in such plots, therefore no plot has existed.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. People are coming forward all the time to provide, if not the whole story, crucial bits and pieces that together would lead us to awareness of a variety of covert doings, some clearly nefarious. For example, scores, perhaps hundreds of credible eyewitnesses have cast doubt on the official u201Clone kooku201D scenario that is a staple of every domestic assassination.

But these whistleblowers are quickly discredited, suppressed, or worse. From time to time people even come out of the national security establishment to testify to such wrongdoing, but they almost always pay a heavy price – which of course discourages others from bearing witness.

How many remember the story of Philip Agee? Phil was a loyal American who served in the Central Intelligence Agency abroad. Eventually, he could no longer stomach the ugly work he and colleagues were doing to subvert the affairs of other countries, and he became a critic and a fugitive. You can read about his hair-raising adventures as the might of the US government came down upon him wherever he went, in his book On the Run.

The Waterboard Whisperer

In the years since, there have been numerous other examples of u201Csomeoneu201D who did talk, only to suffer a variety of unpleasant circumstances. The most recent case is that of former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who faces up to 45 years in prison for statements he has made.

Kiriakou first attracted the Agency's ire when, in 2007, the ex-agent told ABC News that while he believed that waterboarding could be effective, it was morally the wrong thing to do. He was quickly ousted from his job as a security risk analyst for the accounting firm Deloitte.

He later, the government charges, spoke to journalists who were seeking confirmation of the identity of agency personnel involved with the controversial interrogation program that used methods tantamount to torture. Kiriakou faces four counts related to leaking classified information, each carrying a penalty of ten years imprisonment.

He is also accused of having told the CIA that material in a book he was writing would u201Cfictionalizeu201D a high-tech CIA scanning device known as a u201Cmagic boxu201D while in fact he went ahead to describe it accurately. The charge of making false statements could earn him an additional five years imprisonment.

The bottom line here is that public servants can go to jail for trying to inform the public about the truth of what their government does – and, bizarrely, for lying to the government by falsely promising to lie about government secrets while actually telling the truth about what they had seen from the inside.

As for u201Csomeone would have talkedu201D……baloney. Almost nobody talks. And for good reason. Just ask John Kiriakou.

Reprinted from WhoWhatWhy.com.

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative reporter. He has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice and Esquire and dozens of other major domestic and foreign publications. He has also served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. Baker received a 2005 Deadline Club award for his exclusive reporting on George W. Bush's military record. He is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America (Bloomsbury Press, 2009); it was released in paperback as Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. For more information on Russ's work, see his sites, www.familyofsecrets.com and www.russbaker.com.