{"id":111634,"date":"2018-05-21T12:01:26","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T11:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=111634"},"modified":"2018-05-19T19:24:41","modified_gmt":"2018-05-19T18:24:41","slug":"gina-haspel-and-pinocchio-from-rome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/05\/gina-haspel-and-pinocchio-from-rome\/","title":{"rendered":"Gina Haspel and Pinocchio from Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"

19 May 2018 – <\/em>Being in Rome, Italy and thinking of Gina Haspel, the CIA nominee and admitted torturer who says her \u201cmoral conscience\u201d has changed after the fact, seems most fitting.\u00a0 Wherever you go in central Rome, you can hear the screams and smell the blood of those tortured and killed by the Roman Empire and those who ably followed in their stead.\u00a0\u00a0 And you can see the crumbled stones and the pathetic architectural remains of those who thought they had triumphed.\u00a0 Their triumph turned to dust, and their belated mea culpas, if and when they ever came, always rang as hollow as Gina Haspel\u2019s, Lt. William Calley\u2019s, and Adolph Eichmann\u2019s excuses that they were only doing their jobs and following orders.<\/p>\n

Throughout Rome there are hawkers dangling Pinocchio trinkets in your face, constant reminders of the cost of lying.\u00a0 Or perhaps more aptly, the fame that ensues from lying followed by a childish semi-apology, even when it\u2019s as obvious as the nose on your face that you are lying still.\u00a0 So in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Haspel was asked by Senator Mark Warner, D-VA., the kind of question that allows a respondent to answer in a deceptive way that means nothing, but seems profoundly sincere. Warned asked:<\/p>\n

If this president asked you to do something that you find morally objectionable, even if there is an [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, what will you do?\u00a0 Will you carry out that order or not?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To which Haspel replied:<\/p>\n

Senator, my moral conscience is strong.\u00a0 I would not allow the CIA to carry out any activity that I thought was immoral \u2013 even if it was technically legal.\u00a0 I would absolutely not permit it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From all reports, neither Warner\u2019s nor Haspel\u2019s nose grew longer, but perhaps such deceptive phrasing slyly falls beyond the parameters of Pinocchio\u2019s sins and the Blue Fairy\u2019s\u00a0 sanctions.<\/p>\n

So the woman who oversaw detainee torture at a CIA \u201cblack site\u201d in Thailand tells us she has a strong moral conscience, but she doesn\u2019t tell us what that conscience considers intrinsically evil, if anything. Nor what that \u201cstrong\u201d moral conscience considers moral or immoral in any way, just that the \u201cCIA must undertake activities that are consistent with American values,\u201d whatever they might be.\u00a0 And if she were ordered to carry out an action \u2013 let\u2019s say kill a foreign agent or assassinate a political leader \u2013 that was technically illegal but accorded with her strong moral conscience, would she do so?\u00a0 Don\u2019t ask; she wasn\u2019t. Even Pinocchio would get confused with this legerdemain, and his \u201cstrong\u201d moral conscience, Jiminy Cricket, would be utterly bamboozled.<\/p>\n

The good Senator, adept at playing deceptive verbal games as befits his stature, is happy to have his non-question answered with a non-answer, and both he and Haspel are happy.\u00a0 Good question, good answer, good conscience.\u00a0 Nothing bad about that.\u00a0 Then Warner goes and votes for Haspel, who he says is \u201camong the most experienced people to be nominated\u201d to head the CIA, and Haspel says she thinks torture \u2013 excuse me, \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d \u2013 doesn\u2019t work anyway.\u00a0 Practicality wins the day.<\/p>\n

But here in Rome so many regular people are not so practical.\u00a0 They seem to relish life, not as a task to accomplish, but as a pleasure to enjoy.\u00a0 Despite the history that surrounds them, and the dismal political economy that weighs heavy on their lives and country, they seem less anxious and terrorized than Americans. Of course this may be a visitor\u2019s myopic vision, and when seen clearly, Romans might be as stressed as Americans.\u00a0 But I doubt it.<\/p>\n

But for this visiting American, it is hard to dismiss thoughts about the disgraceful charade happening back in Washington D.C.\u00a0 Thinking here in Rome of the Haspel vote, I am reminded of the ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles\u2019s and long-time Chief of Counterintelligence James Angleton\u2019s organized \u201cRatlines,\u201d the escape routes for Nazi and fascist killers and torturers, so many of whom were brought to the United States and other countries after World War II through Italy to help the newly formed CIA torture the truth out of detainees and assassinate opponents. Operation Paperclip, they called it.\u00a0 No big deal; just a joining of two like-minded organizations by a tiny device.<\/p>\n

Post September 11 torture is nothing new, and Haspel is nothing if not a traditionalist just doing her job. Is this what Haspel meant by \u201cAmerican values\u201d?\u00a0 Many victims would attest to that.<\/p>\n

In an old city like Rome one tends to think old thoughts: that the history of torture, human treachery, lying, and violence has a long history; that secular and religious fanatics are nothing new; and that empires rise and fall and everyone dies, even those who build monuments to their own \u201cglorious\u201d deeds.<\/p>\n

But if one wanders around Rome and through life with no itinerary, one also encounters beautiful people and small pockets of faith, love, and devotion.\u00a0 One encounters magnificent art that embodies the heights to which humans can aspire.\u00a0 One realizes that despite the gory history of the human race, the killers and torturers, humans have and do rise above their worst inclinations and do the work of angels, despite the devils.<\/p>\n

As we were sitting at a caf\u00e9 in the Piazza della Rotonda, my wife said to me, \u201cYou have your back to the Pantheon.\u201d\u00a0 It was true.\u00a0 Those monumental gods bored me.\u00a0 My glass of vino rosso whirled my mind to better things.\u00a0 Lighter.\u00a0 Not stone idolatry.\u00a0 Not empires, except their death.\u00a0 Not stone gods, nor inquisitors or black sites or hooded torturers with Ph.D’s from Harvard. No palaces to Renaissance princes or Central Intelligence agents, corrupt bastards of different times and places.\u00a0 No Wall Street\/CIA nexus.\u00a0 No dastardly gross stupid rich Trump with his orange hair and phallic towers, nor his doppelganger Berlusconi here in Italy. \u00a0No basilicas, nothing petrified, despite the city of stone that enclosed me. Like the sparrow that alighted on the next table and was pecking at the bread in a basket, my thoughts flew to lighter and more sustaining images of life and love and the spirit of care that sustains this beautiful world despite the torturers and killers.<\/p>\n

Gina Haspel seemed so far away \u2013 yet so very near.\u00a0 My thoughts kept returning to all the U.S. Senators who have voted for this torturer to lead the CIA.\u00a0 Will they say they were only doing their jobs and following orders?\u00a0 Do they think of themselves as civilized?<\/p>\n

I then looked up as the bird took flight and saw a cross silhouetted against the blue sky.\u00a0 Enough said.<\/p>\n

Where will we conduct the next Nuremberg trials?<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a> and teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My thoughts kept returning to all the U.S. Senators who have voted for this torturer to lead the CIA. Will they say they were only doing their jobs and following orders? Do they think of themselves as civilized? Where will we conduct the next Nuremberg trials? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}