Child pornography, war crimes AND torture. You’d expect this to describe an organisation like ISIS… but the CIA ?! (it’s probably less shocking to some, particularly after the Senate investigation into torture)
Although the CIA has an Office of Inspector General (OIG), as with all federal government agencies it is designed to investigate employees for criminal activity, it has been able to keep the details of the investigations under wraps and away from the eyes of the public.
Documents released by the spy agency itself has revealed that despite dozens of serious allegations of misconduct related to its employees, the Justice Department has chosen not to prosecute most of the cases. Records of the investigations, a small sampling of the 111 probes that the CIA Office of the Inspector General from early 2013 to mid 2014, was obtained by VICE via a FOIA request.
These redacted records can be seen below:
These serious allegations include a “highly placed US official” who leaked classified information to foreign forces; the retaliation against whistle-blowers; the sale of night-vision goggles on eBay, the purchase of steroids via government computer and the torture of a detainee by the CIA.
An interesting allegation was brought up by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (or the NCIS) which had informed the CIA that one of its operatives working under the purview of the National Clandestine Service had in fact committed a war crime that led to the death of one person.
The OIG investigated the matter, and in June 2010 referred the case to the Department of Justice’s Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section.
By August 2012 however, the DOJ told the OIG that it would not be prosecuting the alleged “war criminal”; by November 2013 an administrative investigation done by the OIG found that the officer was innocent of any wrongdoing:
“The investigation by OIG did not uncover any evidence to substantiate the [redacted] allegations that [redacted] or any other Agency staff or contractor employee, violated the rules of engagement or otherwise unlawfully killed anyone during the assault operations examined during the course of this investigation,” the document said. Of course not.
In another case, yet another National Clandestine Service employee (it seems this segment of the CIA gets to do a lot of shady business) was alleged to have made death threats to domestic workers, abused children and engaged in human trafficking. When one puts those three things together, one can only imagine what the Clandestine employee was up to.
Domestic workers were abused by the employee because he was “not paying adequate wages, forcing long work hours, and making threats to have family members… killed.”
“Additionally, the [redacted] alleged that [the CIA employee and the employee’s spouse] abused illegal drugs and also abused their children,” according to a memo.
By April 2015, a memo showed that the OIG was unable to find evidence of human trafficking or child abuse, though it did find that the employee was paying 470 bucks a month to his household staff; less than half he was supposed to.
Despite this underpayment, and the allegation of death threats by the families of staff who had complained about the underpayment, the DOJ declined to prosecute the case.
There are, however, notable instances where justice was successfully carried out; a former CIA contractor was accused of possessing child pornography, and an October 2012 investigation would “just happen” to reveal that he had been hiding top-secret documents on his hard drive.
“Numerous technical documents related to Agency systems were found on [redacted] laptop,” said the OIG documents. The contractor pleaded guilty to [redacted] and was sentenced to [redacted]. He was also registered as a sex offender.
Sources: RT, VICE
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