There is a saying, “Where the CIA goes bodies aren’t far behind.” OK it’s not really a saying since I just made it up but it certainly is descriptive of the actions taken by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). A long history of bloodshed lies in the shadows of the CIA’s history and Bruce Schneier has found a great interview with John A. Rizzo, the former CIA general council . The article is mainly about the selection process used by the CIA to determine who they are going to off in the name of national security. Here’s the base logic the CIA uses:
How CIA staffers determine whether to target someone for lethal operations is a relatively straightforward, and yet largely unknown, story. The president does not review the individual names of people; Rizzo explains that he was the one who signed off. People in Washington talk about a “target list,” as former undersecretary of state Richard Armitage described the process at a recent event in Washington. In truth, there is probably no official CIA roster of those who are slated to die. “I never saw a list,” says a State Department official who has been involved in discussions about lethal operations, speaking without attribution because of the nature of the subject. Officials at the CIA select targets for “neutralization,” he explains. “There were individuals we were searching for, and we thought, it’s better now to neutralize that threat,” he says.
Emphasis mine. Basically the CIA likes to kill people before they could potentially threaten the United States. This logic sounds good on paper but is nothing more than a justification for conniving murder. If you or I were to use such logic to kill somebody we would be brought up on charges of murder and tossed into the klink. Yet when the state decides to commit preemptive murder without any form of public trial it’s considered justified and for the good of the American people.
Put into perspective this would be akin to you killing your neighbor because you are reasonably sure he may cause harm to you in the future. This isn’t considered self-defense as your neighbor hasn’t actually initiated violence against you. Anybody who has to be considered a future or potential threat hasn’t initiated violence and thus their murder shouldn’t be justifiable. If the CIA believes a person to be a threat or or that somebody has initiated violence against the United States why don’t they put that person on trial? Allow the public to determine whether or not the potential target is a threat instead of a few people who are just a wee bit biased.
Wait I forgot, if people were to know who was a threat they would… do something I guess because this information is always classified super top secret. Um mere serfs aren’t allowed to know who is a potential threat to us because… well because the state said so. Shut up slave!