------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Sept. 27, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- THEY'RE ALL UNSAVORY In 1995, because of popular disgust with massacres carried out by U.S. "assets" in Central America, Congress put some legal restraints on the use of thugs and murderers by the intelligence community. Now the U.S. government wants to again openly embrace a foreign policy of dirty tricks. Since Sept. 11, the knives have been unsheathed. Vice President Dick Cheney said: "You have to have on payroll some very unsavory characters. This is a mean, nasty, dangerous, dirty business. We have to operate in that arena." John Negroponte is just the first of the unsavory characters the Bush administration is officially putting on payroll. Pressure to openly use criminal elements in the CIA has been building for some time. In 1998 at the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank connected to Stanford University, former National Intelligence Council Chair John C. Gannon said, "I think when our nation's interests are involved we also need to take risks and deal with unsavory people." Last Oct. 19, the Christian Science Monitor reported that in recent years the CIA had been unhappy that it was not free to hire whomever it wished. "Analysts complain that efforts have been hampered by a 1995 CIA directive that prevents agents from using informants who have been involved in human rights abuses--a condition that could apply to almost any informant within a terrorist ring." The Monitor continued, quoting Mike Wermuth, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. in Washington, "We've tended to hamstring ourselves ... by preventing [the use of] unsavory characters as insiders to infiltrate foreign terrorism organizations." Even with restraining legislation in place, U.S. officials have operated in cahoots with criminals in the Balkans, Colombia, Afghanistan and elsewhere. They've been dealing with gangs conducting assassination, rape, drug trafficking and sex slavery for a long time. If Cheney has his way, Negroponte won't have to hide his work with the thieves, murderers, drug smugglers, rapists and arsonists with whom he worked in the past. --Heather Cottin - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
