“The upshot or take away regarding Congress is this: Congress has oversight and needs to get out of the deep back pockets of vested interest groups and their lobbyists who prowl Capitol Hill poisoning the well with proprietary misinformation that, in turn, makes life expensive, problematic, and a ‘police state’ out of the USA.” – C J Frompovich
After years of conjecture and apparent “conspiracy theories,” taxpayers in the United States finally are getting a handle – possibly only one of many that could be rendered or available – about the CIA, the infamous Central Intelligence Agency, which should have been taken to task many years ago, in this writer’s opinion.
Is a newly-released Senate report [1] vindication for all those whistleblowers, especially John Kiriakou, who currently is serving time in the federal pen at Loretto, Pennsylvania, that the CIA needed to be taken to task and exposed, something the U.S. Congress apparently refused to do for years, until now.
He [Kiriakou] is notable as the first official within the U.S. government to confirm the use of waterboarding of al-Qaeda prisoners as an interrogation technique, which he described as torture. [2]
To the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s credit, though, “This action marked the culmination of a monumental effort that officially began with the Committee’s decision to initiate the Study in March 2009, but which had its roots in an investigation into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of CIA detainee interrogations that began in December 2007.” [3]
The full Committee report totals over 6,700 pages, however, the official report released has only 499 pages. What a synthesized or ‘boiled down’ version! But, maybe it’s better than nothing? There are redactions galore! Evidently, Senator Feinstein chose not to seek declassification of all 6,700 pages but only the Executive Summary.
However and to her credit, Senator Dianne Feinstein, as Chair of the Committee, made a ‘tactical’ decision insofar as releasing a ‘smidgen’ of the report to the world. What repercussions will occur, no one truly knows and many have theorized about its troubling information causing widespread international worries—and rightfully so, one could offer. Nevertheless, transparency should be the “coin of the realm” for ALL government offices, agencies, and programs.
In the Foreword to the Report, Senator Feinstein offers this:
President Obama signed Executive Order 13491 in January 2009 to prohibit the CIA from holding detainees other than on a ‘short-term, transitory basis’ and to limit interrogation techniques to those included in the Army Field Manual. However, these limitations are not part of U.S. law and could be overturned by a future president with the stroke of a pen. They should be enshrined in legislation. [4]
Only time, along with vested-interests and arm-twisting, will reveal what happens further down the line after the new 114th Congress convenes with both chambers held by Republican Party majorities.
However, the real story behind the release of the redacted CIA report is that it even happened! Truly, a ‘sacred cow’ is being trotted out for public and world-wide scrutiny. Applause, applause, applause!
Obviously, there are other ‘sacred cows’ in Congressional committees that must be investigated and vetted, especially those committees and subcommittees having oversight regarding the pharmaceutical and vaccine industries, which the U.S. CDC and FDA regulate. What would we find out about the FDA and its cushy relationships with Big Pharma? Wouldn’t healthcare consumers, physicians, and medical journals like to know?
The reasons probably are legion as to why Big Pharma needs to be taken out behind the wood shed: Especially egregious is how it dictates to the U.S. FDA pseudo-science and its self-generated efficacy studies published in self-owned journals regarding vaccines and most of its pharmaceuticals, many of which have been withdrawn from the marketplace only after years harming consumers who instituted class action lawsuits. See a current list http://topclassactions.com/ of who’s being sued.
What happened that no member of Congress did anything about CDC whistleblower William Thompson, PhD, vaccines, and suppressed data regarding autism?
Consider the current flack about this flu season’s ineffective flu vaccines.
And finally, let’s trot out the pathetic decades-old story about how a cancer-causing monkey virus (SV-40) was given to millions of vaccinees in the original polio vaccines distributed to school children in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2003—50 years after millions received those tainted polio vaccines—the 108th U.S. Congress held a hearing about SV-40. Realistically, we can’t wait another 50 years to find out what’s causing problems in current vaccines!
The upshot or take away regarding Congress is this: Congress has oversight and needs to get out of the deep back pockets of vested interest groups and their lobbyists who prowl Capitol Hill poisoning the well with proprietary misinformation that, in turn, makes life expensive, problematic, and a ‘police state’ out of the USA.
If people are willing to protest with “Hands up; don’t shoot” and “I can’t breathe” demonstrations, then shouldn’t we be willing to put the pedal to the metal regarding transparency in government at all levels, bar none; in medicine and healthcare insurance—especially the Affordable Care Act and how it was passed into law; pharmaceutical research and the FDA’s reliance upon pseudo-science from Big Pharma; and all other aspects of the corporate-government bureaucracy that burden our daily lives?
Notes
[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/249651386/Senate-torture-report
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou
[3] Senate Torture Report Foreword, pg. 1
[4] Ibid, pg. 4
Catherine retired from researching and writing, but felt compelled to write this article.
Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.Catherine’s latest book, published October 4, 2013, is Vaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccins, available on Amazon.com.