NBC News foreign correspondent Richard Engel has been getting an earful from folks at Langley about the Senate Intel Committee's report on torture, and America's spooks are quite the Grumpy Cats this week. Yesterday, he told Ronan Farrow.
“The CIA was asked to do this; was given authorizations to do this. And now many people involved are saying to me privately, ‘Now we’re being held out to dry. You asked us to do this, and now the world is coming down on top of it,” Engel said.
The refrain was similar on Hardball.
"Now they feel like they're being punished for it."
I understand that the Central Intelligence Agency is not a military organization and its personnel are not subject to Section 14c(2)(a)(i) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but surely someone overseeing Agency "contractors" had maybe a momentary curiosity about the ramifications of what they were tasked to do to their fellow humans.
Or perhaps not. Since Allen Dulles set up America's novel system of a single organization combining both intel analysis and operations, Agency operatives have relished their command-free status. Curious now that they would turn to a Nuremberg Defense when their actions are brought to light.
Still, that double standard is less striking than the general attitude of persecution to which it is a response.
"They feel like they're being punished."
Poor babies. The mean octogenarian woman from California stood at a podium and tonelessly cataloged their actions. On television, no less. How terribly cruel of her.
Pundits conferred with correspondents. Legal analysts weighed in. Columnists wrote words. Such cruel and unusual treatment is beyond the pale. I swear, it's tantamount to, well, torture.
Oh, I understand none of them were hung by their shackled wrists from meat hooks for days. None were submerged in ice baths. None were raped. No one held them to a table and poured water into their mouths and noses, deprived them of sleep, jailed them in unending darkness or unblinking light. Nobody reverse-engineered the SERE manual for them.
None faced the horrific prospect of standing before a judge charged with crime, nor even before the boss' desk charged with excessive zeal.
Not one missed so much as a paycheck or even a meal.
No, we heartless, ungrateful citizens did something far, far worse. We questioned their actions. We broke out our harshest euphemisms, deployed our most awkward pauses and actually (sort of) talked about what they had done.
Oh, the humanity.