( J. Scott Applewhite / AP ) – This March 27, 2014, file photo shows Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. speaking on Capitol Hill in Washington. At the center of a hotly disputed Senate torture report is America’s biggest counterterrorism success of all: the killing of Osama bin Laden. The still-classified, 6,200-page review concludes that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods provided no key evidence in the hunt for bin Laden, according to congressional aides and outside experts familiar with the investigation. The CIA still disputes that conclusion.
This argument, plus the agency’s relations with Congress, seem to amount to civil disobedience. That is, these people believed that the laws were wrong and that, as patriots, they were compelled to obey a higher duty. There is a long and honored tradition of such actions in this country. The difference is that Martin Luther King Jr. and others were willing to go to jail for their civil disobedience.
So, CIA and National Security Agency officials, I think the honorable course would be to stand up and say: “These were the things we did. We thought them necessary at the time. We still do. But we understand we broke the law and are willing to accept the consequences of our actions, for which we remain proud. We throw ourselves upon your mercy.”
Thomas E. Ricks, Washington
Civil disobedience at the CIA – The Washington Post.