November 26, 2008

Obama's Top Pick For CIA Bows Out

Syracruse

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President-elect Barack Obama's top pick to head the CIA blamed his sudden withdrawal from consideration on critics who blamed him for harsh Bush administration policies on interrogations, detentions and secret renditions.

John Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran and career analyst who became the first head of the National Counterterrorism Center in 2004, preemptively declined to take any intelligence post in the new administration in a Nov. 25 letter sent to Obama.

Apparently Obama's advisers were worried about recent blog postings condemning Brennan for his stance on interrogation techniques.
A group of about 200 psychologists published an open letter to Obama on Monday opposing Brennan's leadership of the CIA. They cited several media interviews in which they deemed Brennan insufficiently opposed to rendition and harsh interrogation to make a clean break with the Bush administration's policies.

Stephen Soldz, director of the Center for Research, Evaluation and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, spearheaded the letter.

"I do think they have to find someone who represents a clear break" with Bush administration policies, particularly the use of multiple harsh interrogation practices on detainees, he said.

Brennan has publicly disavowed waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. But Soldz said his group considers the excessive use of isolation, sleep deprivation, cultural and sexual humiliation and other techniques in combination as torture, and Brennan had not repudiated their use.

Hopey changey keeping his constituents happy while screwing with vital interrogation techniques. Damn.


By Stable Hand at November 26, 2008 10:06 AM | | l digg this