Ray
McGovern, a former CIA analyst, marched into Congress yesterday with 15
others wearing orange jumpsuits similar to those worn by
detainees at
Guantánamo Bay.
They wore gags over their mouths decorated with one
word – torture. McGovern also
returned his Intelligence Commendation Award medallion, which was
given
to him for “especially commendable service.” Read McGovern’s letter to Congressman Hoekstra returing the medal:
I Do Not Wish to Be Associated With Torture
By Ray McGovern
Thursday 02 March 2006
Hon. Pete Hoekstra, Chair
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC
Dear Congressman Hoekstra:
As
a matter of conscience, I am returning the Intelligence Commendation
Award medallion given me for “especially commendable service” during my
27-year career in CIA. The issue is torture, which inhabits the same
category as rape and slavery – intrinsically evil. I do not wish to be
associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.
Reports
in recent years that CIA personnel were torturing detainees were highly
disturbing. Confirmation of a sort came last fall, when CIA Director
Porter Goss and Dick Cheney – dubbed by the Washington Post “Vice
President for Torture” – descended on Sen. John McCain to demand that
the CIA be exempted from his amendment’s ban on torture. Subsequent
reports implicated agency personnel in several cases of prisoner abuse
in Iraq, including a few in which detainees died during interrogation.
The
obeisance of CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss in heeding
illegal White House directives has done irreparable harm to the CIA and
the country – not to mention those tortured and killed. That you, as
Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, show
more deference to the White House than dedication to your oversight
responsibilities under the Constitution is another profound
disappointment. How can you and your counterpart, Sen. Pat Roberts,
turn a blind eye to torture – letting some people get away, literally,
with murder – and square that with your conscience?
If
German officials who were ordered to do such things in the 1930s had
spoken out early and loudly enough, the German people might have been
alerted to the atrocities being perpetrated in their name and tried
harder to stop them. When my grandchildren ask, “What did you do,
Grandpa, to stop the torture,” I want to be able to tell them that I
tried to honor my oath, taken both as an Army officer and an
intelligence officer, to defend the Constitution of the United States –
and that I not only spoke out strongly against the torture, but also
sought a symbolic way to dissociate myself from it.
We
Americans have become accustomed to letting our institutions do our
sinning for us. I abhor the corruption of the CIA in the past several
years, believe it to be beyond repair, and do not want my name on any
medallion associated with it. Please destroy this one.
Yours truly,
Ray McGovern