Choice to Lead C.I.A. Faces a Changed Agency

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/us/politics/counterterror-adviser-to-be-named-chief-of-cia.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 9:16 AM
Subject: re: Choice to Lead C.I.A. Faces a Changed Agency
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   John Brennan is an obvious nominee for the next director of our C.I.A. in 2013; he should not be confirmed. Mr. Brennan is deeply involved currently in the running of an agency amok.  So let's swear him in and put him in front of the Senate to answer the questions Americans have not been allowed to ask:

1-Is Pakistan a war zone? If it is, the recruitment of Dr. Shakil Afridi as a spy under the guise of a vaccination campaign is a war crime in violation of the Geneva Conventions. If it is not, what are we to make of our drone strikes there?

2-Are the officers, agents and contractors of the C.I.A. members of our uniformed armed forces? If not, are they what the Geneva Conventions call "unlawful combatants"?

3-Are the officers, agents and contractors of our C.I.A. above the law? I don't mean internal disciplinary matters like that of John Kiriakou. I mean the laws to which all U.S. citizens are supposed to answer, in peace and in war. Will we extradite them to our allies when they break the laws there?

     So let's put John Brennan under oath and let's get some answers and let's reject him. And let's rein in an agency that has forgotten whom it serves.

Barry Haskell Levine