CIA

Consortium News, July 10, 2009
CIA's History of Lying to Congress
By Lisa Pease

On TV this week, with a measure of disbelief in their voices, the pundits ask, did the CIA lie to or deliberately mislead Congress? How is that not a rhetorical question?

The Agency has a long history of manipulating Congress and others to support its programs. That this was posed as an actual question reveals the media’s historical illiteracy in this matter.

In fact, when a House select committee investigated the CIA in the 1970s, the CIA convinced the House to suppress its own report, begging the question of who was overseeing whom. Nevertheless, a copy of the House report was leaked, via Daniel Schorr, to the Village Voice. The report opened with this disturbing sentence:

“If this Committee’s recent experience is any test, intelligence agencies that are to be controlled by Congressional lawmaking are, today, beyond the lawmakers’ scrutiny.”

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