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The unspoken subtext of Karl Rove's treason:
Support your local CIA
by Helen & Harry Highwater, Unknown News
July 19, 2005
If you're following the ongoing scandals swirling around Karl Rove, hoping he'll be indicted, prosecuted, or fired for blowing a CIA agent's cover, you're being snookered.
It's amusing to watch the Bush White House squirm, caught in their own |
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lies and deceit, and it's enjoyable to see Rove simmer in his own sour juices. It's hilarious to see the Republicans' bizarre lies, spin, and fiction in a wheel-spinning attempt to come to Rove's defense. That's entertainment, but that's all it is. The Rove scandal means nothing.
Karl Rove
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There's no chance that Karl Rove is going to be arrested, indicted, tried, or imprisoned -- not while the Bush administration controls the Justice Department. Jim Jeffords is more likely than Rove to be charged with treason. Rove is an extremely well-connected Republican strategist who wins elections by any means necessary, and that's
what matters, and that's all that matters.
And despite all the emailed petitions and AirAmerica hosts demanding that he be |
fired,
it makes no difference whether Rove quits, gets fired, or gets a promotion and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. However this scandal unfolds, Rove will still be pulling strings behind the scenes, and he can pull strings from a downtown office just as effectively as from the White House.
Whatever happens, Rove will still be Bush's brain, and he'll still be very well-paid to orchestrate the next round of smears and fixed elections for the Republicans. And when he grows weary of such battles, Rove will be very well-paid to sit on numerous corporate boards, or to deliver motivational speeches to adoring crowds.
This scandal is no threat to Rove or Rove's power, and Rove knows it. He's probably urging his underlings (Cheney and Bush) to use this scandal as a diversion, to pursue other despicable objectives while the press and progressive activists are all agog about Rove, Rove, and more Rove.
There's only one aspect of the Rove scandal that concerns me, and that's the disturbing technique being used by liberals and progressives in their attacks on Rove.
'We're at war,' seems to be the standard beginning of the anti-Rove argument, a war against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Rove revealed the identity of a CIA agent who was working on WMD counterespionage, and in doing so he betrayed the trust of the nation -- the dictionary definition of 'treason' -- or so say the people who want Rove gone.
This argument makes it sounds as if leaking secrets detrimental to the Central Intelligence Agency, is the equivalent of leaking secrets detrimental to American national security. As if betraying the CIA
= betraying the USA. And that's a lie.
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The CIA is not America. Jennifer Garner is not your typical spook. It's not patriotic to support and admire the CIA -- only ignorant patriots could do so. Let's remember, please, that the Central Intelligence Agency is generally a loathsome, repugnant gang of murderous, unprincipled scum.
The CIA has toppled democratically-elected governments and/or installed or supported cruel tyrants in places like Afghanistan and Iran and Iraq. And you may have noticed, this hasn't helped America's national security in any sane sense of the term -- au contraire, it has led directly to war.
The CIA has backed bloodthirsty bastards in Angola, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Panama, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and more nations we know about or suspect -- and undoubtedly, in still more nations where the CIA's work remains top secret. The number of people who have died as a result number in the millions -- killed by the killers the CIA has installed and protected, in the highest levels of these and other nations' governments.
None of this has enhanced America's "national security." It undermines American national security. The CIA's actions may remain under the media radar in America, but the victims -- the people who live in all these countries -- know damned well who brought them misery, whose bullets killed their brothers, whose bombs blew their parents to pieces, and who destroyed their democracies. And they're furious about it, as you would be if it happened to you.
But these furious people can't just dash off a letter to the editor or send a check to Amnesty International. With the governments America's CIA has given them, doing so would get them arrested, beaten senseless, or killed. So some of these people turn to terrorism.
And of course, terrorism can't be endorsed. But it certainly can't be hard to understand why these people turn to violence and vengeance, and why their targets are Americans.
So if your idea of American national security is a three-hour wait at the airport, having your luggage searched, your background checked, and your underwear x-rayed, having skyscrapers topple to dust and the Pentagon in flames, then the CIA's tactics have been a complete success. They're so successful that your airport wait will undoubtedly grow longer, the searches more intrusive. Eventually, the same scrutiny will be standard practice at train stations and bus stops, and at postal counters, ball parks, and office buildings everywhere.
And some folks, not knowing any better, will call this "freedom." And some politicians who clearly do know better, have made it illegal to expose the CIA's outrageous conduct.
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the law under which Karl Rove could conceivably be prosecuted, is itself unAmerican crap. It was written and passed expressly to overrule the last shred of conscience that might survive in any high-level official's mind. The purpose of this law is to compel silence from people who know about CIA atrocities.
But silence about the CIA, like the CIA itself, usually hurts America's true national security. So long as the CIA is given its ongoing carte blanche, more and more people will want to kill Americans, and Americans will become more and more un-free.
Karl Rove disclosed a covert CIA agent's identity. What he did was possibly illegal, under that awful law. What Rove did undoubtedly shows political recklessness, and of course, Rove is a boob, probably a psychopath, and it's clear that he's hostile to democracy and other traditional American values -- but that was obvious, long before you ever heard of Valerie Plame.
And we don't particularly have a grudge against Valerie Plame. She is or was a CIA agent, but her primary mission (from all the information we've read in the media) was preventing tyrants and terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Of course, the best way to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction would be for America itself to stop developing and exporting weapons of mass destruction. But until that glorious fictional day, we're not naïve enough to believe that every state secret and every covert CIA agent should be unmasked willy-nilly.
So Rove is no hero, for dropping Plame's name to reporters. He's still the same sorry sack of shit he's always been.
But if we want national security, then the CIA must be effectively dismantled. And then, to the extent that its mission can be honestly justified, "The Agency" must be reassembled with some actual, honest oversight from Americans who give a damn about notions like liberty and justice for all -- unlike past and present CIA leadership.
America won't have any true national security until the CIA has been publicly exposed on a grand scale, its files opened for public review, and many of its current and former agents prosecuted for their crimes against humanity. A sincere and complete apology is overdue, and it ought to be delivered live on worldwide TV, straight from an American president's lips. To show sincerity, the apology should be accompanied by reparations, and by a restructuring of the CIA that prevents future U.S.-taxpayer funded atrocities, coups, and mass murders.
Until that happens (and it won't happen soon), the CIA itself is weakening American national security. We're less safe, not more safe, when cloak-and-dagger types are told to break foreign laws, authorized to use propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination, to topple foreign governments and install U.S.-friendly murderous thugs.
Unlike Karl Rove, we wouldn't reveal a clandestine CIA agent's name simply to score political points, or to smear someone perceived as a political opponent. Unlike Karl Rove, we wouldn't uncloak someone like Valerie Plame, who seems to have been doing good work.
But if we came across information about clandestine CIA operatives, if we had the opportunity to impede a nefarious CIA operation somewhere, anywhere, we would blow the whistle as loudly and publicly as possible. We would name names, and do whatever we could to obstruct the CIA.
That's just well-informed patriotism, and America needs more such revelations, not fewer.
© by the authors.
What do you think?
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'We're at war,' seems to be the standard beginning of the anti-Rove argument, a war against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Rove revealed the identity of a CIA agent who was working on WMD counterespionage, and in doing so he betrayed the trust of the nation -- the dictionary definition of 'treason' -- or so say the people who want Rove gone.
This argument makes it sounds as if leaking secrets detrimental to the Central Intelligence Agency, is the equivalent of leaking secrets detrimental to American national security.
As if betraying the CIA = betraying the USA.
And that's a lie.
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If we want national security, then the CIA must be effectively dismantled.
And then, to the extent that its mission can be honestly justified, "The Agency" must be reassembled with some actual, honest oversight from Americans who give a damn about notions like liberty and justice for all -- unlike past and present CIA leadership.
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I can't afford therapy, but boy do I need it. So as an affordable alternative, I've decided to start pounding my anger into a weekly column here.
Fair warning: My parents were repressed -- using any bad words would get my mouth washed out with soap, literally. I still remember the sickly flavor of DoveTM. So as an adult, vulgarity helps with the healing. If naughty language offends you, beat the rush and get offended now.
This page is for my own good, not yours, so you may not like it, but I don't care.
About the authors
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Helen and Harry Highwater have published Unknown News since 1997. We're a married couple sharing a byline à la Lennon and McCartney, and "I" can be either of us, or both of us. If you're consumed by curiosity, it's safe to assume the more boisterous and aggressive bits come from Helen, and anything ladylike or demure is probably Harry's work.
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