On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 13:16:30 GMT, Ken Fortenberry
wrote:

Allen wrote:
The oath is not optional. If you do not like the oath and the
lifelong commitment it entails you are in the wrong business and should
leave. If this woman is found guilty she will be subject to penalties
that she was made fully aware of when she signed the oath. She went into
it with her eyes open and now there's a clear message for the rest of us
that raised our right hands.

Sometimes, such as in this case, the honorable thing to do
is to violate your oath. The trouble with a lot of military
types is they get real confused about things like honor and
responsibility, preferring instead to wrap themselves in oaths
and flags and turn a blind eye to torture, war crimes and murder.

Mary O. McCarthy is a hero, she violated her oath and thank God
she did. She realized that she has a higher responsibility to
truth and humanity than to a CIA oath. We should have more like
her. She'll be charged with a crime, and rightly so, but if I
were on her jury she'd never be found guilty.

Ken, your argument, if accepted, essentially violates the US
Constitution. Here's why: The US is representative democracy, not an
"actual" democracy, and as such, what the representatives do is "legal
until found illegal" under the US Constitution. IOW, the people (the
citizens) have given the right of management to their representatives.
And yes, I realize they have retained the rights not enumerated, but
dealing with foreign entities has been relinquished to the
representatives.

IAC, The US Constitution does not give out-of-formal-custody and/or
extra-territorial rights to non-citizens because it cannot do so, and
individuals, even high-ranking individuals, aren't authorized to grant
such rights under these circumstances. Even if CIA officers themselves
were holding foreign nationals on foreign soil, there would be nothing
"illegal" (in a US Constitutional sense) about it. The morality of that
is not material to its legality.

A CIA officer has no duty or responsibility to either provide you or
foreign nationals truth or humanity. In fact, much like the civilian
police, they would deal in a lot of information withholding, even
untruths, in the pursuit of doing their duties. You are simply mistaken
if you think or feel those charged with national security somehow "owes"
you or any of the public complete transparency or disclosure on demand.
And CIA officers, like military officers, aren't authorized to
substitute their judgment about the appropriateness of orders, only the
legality of them, and even then, they are not authorized to violate
oaths, they are only provided a specific defense for refusing an illegal
order, with that defense vitiating the use of an affirmative defense for
having followed an illegal order. There is simply no defense for
violating oaths.

TC,
R