Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Conflict Erupts in Public Rebuke on C.I.A. Inquiry
As you've probably heard, there has been controversy recently about how the CIA allegedly tampered with a Senate investigation into whether the CIA hid information about waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation." According to Dianne Feinstein, who headed the investigation, the CIA infiltrated the computers that her team was using for the investigation in order to find out how the investigation gained access to certain documents, and in two separate instances deleted hundreds of pages of documents pertaining to the investigation. The conflict has been festering for some time, but Feinstein is just now making the details public. Some Senators support this information becoming known, while a few others believe that Feinstein should be dealing with the conflict directly, through less public means. What do you think?
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I am inclined to side with Ms. Feinstein on her decision to make this investigation public, since there is no national security threat in disclosing the information. What it does do, however, is convey the danger of the executive branch encroaching upon the legislative. It is deeply disconcerting that individuals in the agency would even feel comfortable spying on the committee. This only hardens my position that there needs to be a strong, independent group that investigates and oversees these agencies considering how they got away with this for so long.
ReplyDeleteI think that the CIA should be forced to release any papers that the Committee needs in order to conduct the a proper investigation. Of course this brings the ethical question of how far should the CIA go with prisoners? Should torture be allowed? I think it's one of those issues like freedom of speech. In freedom ofnsppech, we hypotetically beleive that everyone has a right to say what they want... Until that person is a neo-Nazi or something. It's the same for torture, we believe it shouldn't be allowed, but in real life if the prisoner is holding crucial information an won't talk, most people would say, "yes, do it if it gets him to talk."
ReplyDeleteThere is no reason that I see that Ms. Feinstein should make this public. They are dealing with highly-sensitive material that the public doesn't need to know about. I support any branch of combat's judgement for them to deem what they need to do to get the job done. Nothing positive can come from making this public; just typical media sensationalism and false accounts.
ReplyDeleteI can't decide whether to side with Ms. Feinstein or not. The details of the investigation shouldn't be kept private since Congress is a public governing body but I don't agree with the CIA's tampering at all. Congress is finally getting a taste of its own medicine. I am against the CIA's actions but I don't think Congress can be outraged at its investigation when it is essentially doing the same thing with the NSA.
ReplyDeleteThe files should be public access, as Olivia said above, but that does not mean that the way they are obtained should be wrong. In this case, the ends do not justify the means. This is why I don't trust this country, they are always doing secretive stuff and looking at our information. I just don't trust it at all.
ReplyDeleteI think it's funny how congress is so angry about CIA tampering with their private information yet congress is doing basically the same thing with the NSA. However, I'm not sure how I feel about this issue. On the one hand, I believe congress is entitled to and should be allowed some degree of privacy in the name of national security, yet, I also believe that some degree of government transparency is important.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ethan, nothing good can come from Ms. Feinstein going public about the issue. It is obvious that the CIA is in the wrong here, that shouldn't even be a question. I would not go as far as DJ though to say that I do not trust this country. I trust our country completely, it is just instances like these that make me realize that no government is perfect and there will always be some sort of corruption.
ReplyDeleteI think that the committee has the right to see these papers so they can do their job of investigating the intelligence agency. It is very obvious that this investigation needs to take place from the allegations mentions in the article, and we should trust that the committee truly needs these documents to conduct their investigation. Hiding information only makes the CIA look worse, and the public will have a must weaker reaction if the committee is able to do their job and report without and more road blocks such as this one.
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