IT DIDN'T START WITH ABU GHRAIB

This article appears in the Nov. 11, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

IT DIDN'T START WITH ABU GHRAIB
Dick Cheney: Vice President for Torture and War
by Jeffrey Steinberg

In a rare display of editorial candor, The Washington Post devoted its lead editorial of Oct. 26, 2005 to Vice President Dick Cheney. Under the banner headline "Vice President for Torture," the Post editors wrote: "Vice President Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. 'Cruel, inhuman and degrading' treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, the vice president has become an open advocate of torture."

After reviewing the evidence of ongoing CIA and military torture of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in four known deaths, the editorial turned back to the subject of Vice President Cheney: "It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects."

The editorial reported on Cheney's threats to have President Bush veto the defense spending bill if Congress included language banning torture. But the U.S. Senate, by a bipartisan, veto-proof vote of 91-9, passed an amendment sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), containing precisely such a ban. "So now," the editorial concluded, "Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture."

And how did Vice President Cheney respond? Following the Federal indictment and resignation of Cheney's chief of staff and top national security aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Oct. 28, for his role in the Plamegate leak, Cheney turned around and named the very same David Addington of torture-memo infamy as his new chief of staff. The message from Cheney could not have been any more blunt. He is the vice president for war and torture—and he flaunts it. Cheney's behavior, now more than ever, makes his immediate removal from office a precondition for the United States to shed its current, unfortunately well earned, image as the world's leading rogue state.
It Didn't Start with 9/11

Some people who have known Dick Cheney for a long time say they are perplexed by his open embrace of perpetual war and torture, since he took charge of the Bush Administration from his Vice Presidential perch in January 2001. Some say that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 traumatized the man, and that Cheney went through a marked personality change after that. Other Cheney apologists describe him as living on borrowed time, always facing sudden death from his serious degenerative heart disease, and therefore, a man in a hurry to complete his life's mission, with no patience for anyone standing in his way.

But a more careful review of Cheney's past suggests that he went through no such radical personality change. In fact, the very first time he found himself in a top White House post, he moved heaven and earth to cover up a long-standing CIA program of torture; crimes against humanity, as spelled out at Nuremberg; and what one close observer called "a national security assassination."

Based on EIR's investigation, Dick Cheney comes across as a man obsessed with torture and war for more than 30 years, who has carefully used the power of his office to trample on the U.S. Constitution, international law, and the most basic concepts of humanity.
A White House Coverup

On July 11, 1975, then-Deputy White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney penned a memorandum for his boss and sponsor, Donald Rumsfeld, President Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff. The memo dealt with "The Olson Matter/CIA Suicide," and was written in response to a press conference the previous day by the wife and three children of a deceased U.S. Army chemist, Dr. Frank Olson.

Dr. Olson had died under mysterious circumstances in November 1953. He had plunged from a 13th-floor window of the Statler Hotel in New York City, at 2:30 in the morning of Nov. 28, while in the company of a CIA officer, Dr. Robert V. Lashbrook. At the time, his death was ruled a suicide, and no thorough autopsy was conducted. The Olson family remained clueless about the true circumstances of Dr. Olson's death until June 10, 1975, when the "Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States," chaired by Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, publicly released its report.

Buried on page 227 of the Rockefeller Commission report were the following three paragraphs, inserted in a section describing the CIA's secret experiments on mind control drugs, in which American citizens were used as guinea pigs, sometimes without their consent:

"The Commission did learn, however, that on one occasion during the early phases of this program (in 1953), LSD was administered to an employee of the Department of the Army without his knowledge while he was attending a meeting with CIA personnel working on the drug project.

"Prior to receiving the LSD, the subject had participated in discussions where the testing of such substances on unsuspecting subjects was agreed to in principle. However, this individual was not made aware that he had been given LSD until about 90 minutes after it had been administered. He developed serious side effects and was sent to New York with a CIA escort for psychiatric treatment. Several days later, he jumped from the thirteenth floor window of his room and died as a result.

"The General Counsel ruled that the death resulted from 'circumstances arising out of an experiment undertaken in the course of his official duties for the United States government,' thus ensuring his survivors of receiving certain death benefits. Reprimands were issued by the Director of Central Intelligence to two CIA employees responsible for the incident."

The next day, June 11, 1975, the Washington Post published a front-page story by Thomas O'Toole, detailing the Rockefeller Commission findings, and, for the first time, the Olson family got some indication of the actual circumstances of the death of Dr. Frank Olson. Or did they?

The Rockefeller Commission revelations would trigger a 30-year odyssey for then-31 year old Eric Olson, the oldest son of Dr. Olson, a Harvard-trained psychologist, who has since devoted much of his life to getting to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding the death of his father. Gradually, over the course of three decades, Eric Olson has pealed away more and more of the layers of the cover-story, and now, for the first time, has something approximating a true picture of the events surrounding his father's death more than a half-century ago.
The Cheney Memo

The first obstacle that the Olson family ran up against, after the Rockefeller revelations, was Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. At the time, the Olsons had no idea of this. In fact, it was not until a quarter of a century later that the Olsons learned about the existence of a treasure-trove of White House documents on file at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, that shed light on what happened in July 1975. By then, the access to those documents had been restricted by a George W. Bush Presidential order, signed early in his first term. An historian, Kathryn S. Olmsted, who had written about the mid-1970s investigations into the CIA and FBI, made the documents available to Eric Olson in late Spring 2001.

On July 11, 1975, Cheney wrote a memo to Rumsfeld on the Olson revelations. "At this point," Cheney wrote, "we do not have enough information to be certain we know all of the details of this incident. Furthermore, there are serious legal questions that will have to be resolved concerning the Government's responsibility, the possibility of additional compensation, and the possibility that it might be necessary to disclose highly classified national security information in connection with any court suit, or legislative hearings on a private bill intended to provide additional compensation to the family."

Attached to the Cheney-to-Rumsfeld memo was a four-page Justice Department chronology of events leading to Dr. Olson's "suicide," and a proposed one-paragraph statement for President Ford to deliver at a scheduled press conference later that day, including an invitation to the Olson family to visit the White House to receive an official apology from the President for Dr. Olson's death and the 20 years of Government silence on the case.

The four-page chronology would form the basis of the official coverup of the true circumstances of the death of Dr. Frank Olson for nearly two decades.

In a series of follow-up White House and Justice Department memos, dated July 16, 1975, September 1975, and Sept. 30, 1975, Cheney and other top Ford Administration officials debated how to respond to Olson family threats to sue the Federal Government for millions of dollars, and their demand for a thorough public airing of the circumstances surrounding Frank Olson's death.

In the undated September 1975 memo from White House counsel Roderick Hills through Dick Cheney to President Ford, the author candidly admitted, "The bizarre circumstances of his death could well cause a court of law to determine as a matter of public policy that he did not die in the course of his official duties. Dr. Olson's job is so sensitive that it is highly unlikely that we would submit relevant evidence to the court on the issue of his duties. The latter circumstance may mean as a practical matter we would have no defense against the Olson law suit. In this connection, you should know that the CIA and the Counsel's office both strongly recommend that the evidence concerning his employment not be released in a civil trial.

"In short," the Hill-to-Cheney-to-Ford memo concluded, "there is a significant possibility that a court would either (a) grant full discovery to the Olsons' attorneys to learn of Dr. Olson's job responsibilities; or (b) rule that as a matter of public policy, a man who commits suicide as a result of a drug criminally given him cannot as a matter of law be determined to have died 'in the course of his official duties.'

"If there is a trial, it is apparent that the Olson's lawyer will seek to explore all of the circumstances of Dr. Olson's employment as well as those concerning his death. It is not at all clear that we can keep such evidence from becoming relevant even if the government waives the defense of the Federal Employees Compensation Act. Thus, in the trial it may become apparent that we are concealing evidence for national security reasons and any settlement or judgment reached thereafter could be perceived as money paid to cover-up the activities of the CIA."

Just a little more than a year after the resignation of President Richard Nixon for covering up the crimes of Watergate, top White House officials, including Dick Cheney, were candidly discussing a coverup of the Frank Olson case, "for national security."

Even as memos were flying back and forth between the White House, the CIA, and the Justice Department, shaping a damage control and pay-off strategy, President Ford did hold his Oval Office apology session with the Olson family, on July 21, 1975. Two days later, the Olsons had lunch with then-CIA Director William Colby. At the lunch, Colby personally handed over approximately 150 pages of redacted CIA documents, all pertaining to the death of Dr. Frank Olson. At that time, the Olson family had no idea that Frank Olson had worked for the CIA. They thought he was employed by the U.S. Army, as a civilian chemist at Fort Detrick, the home of the military's biological and chemical weapons laboratories.

In fact, Olson had worked for the CIA, and was brought in on some of the Agency's most secret efforts to develop "truth drugs" and brainwashing techniques for interrogations. Those top secret assignments set into motion, step-by-step, the events that led to the Statler Hotel, and Dr. Frank Olson's murder.
Robbed and Cheated

Unbeknownst to the Olson family at the time of the Ford and Colby meetings, the House Government Operations Committee, under the chairmanship of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), held several days of hearings, beginning July 22, 1975, at which CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston was grilled about a Memorandum of Understanding, dated March 1, 1954, between the Justice Department and the CIA, exempting all CIA personnel from criminal prosecution for actions they undertook in the national security interest of the United States.

At one point, Houston was explicitly asked, by Abzug, if the exemption included the murder of Dr. Frank Olson. Decades later, it would be made clear that Abzug was much closer to the truth than she probably suspected at the time.

From the official House transcript:

Ms. Abzug: Would you please tell me what the decision was which was made with respect to the 1953 LSD-induced suicide of Mr. Frank Olson in New York? Was there an internal investigation conducted by the CIA?

Mr. Houston: There was an internal investigation conducted by the CIA at the direction of the then-Director, Mr. Dulles.

Ms. Abzug: Was this matter ever referred to the Department of Justice?

Mr. Houston: I do not recall that it was referred to the Department of Justice. My only dealings with the case was with the Bureau of Employee Compensation.

Ms. Abzug: It may very well have been a State offense if there was foul play. Was it ever referred to the New York Police Department or State authorities for consideration?

Mr. Houston: Not that I recall.

Ms. Abzug: In other words, this memorandum of understanding, in your judgment, gave authority to the CIA to make decisions, to give immunity to individuals who happened to work for the CIA, for all kinds of crimes, including possible murder?

Mr. Houston: It was not designed to give immunity to individuals. It was designed to protect operations or information of the Agency, which was highly [sic] sensitive.

Ms. Abzug: Was that not the effect of the actual interpretation made by the CIA and their advisors?

Mr. Houston: It could have that effect, yes.

Ms. Abzug: Did it not have that effect?

Mr. Houston: In certain cases it did.

Dick Cheney continued to be a central player in the White House efforts to bury the Frank Olson story. On Aug. 4, 1975, Roderick Hills wrote another memo to Cheney, warning, "The attorneys for the Olson family are pushing very hard for information and are claiming a lack of cooperation with the CIA and DOD. I cannot be certain, of course, but it appears to me that they have been increasingly belligerent.... Accordingly, I believe that sometime in the next week or two we should attempt to contact the attorneys with the help of the Attorney General or perhaps through an intermediary (Mitch Rogovin, Special Counsel to the CIA has a partner at Arnold and Porter who is quite close to the Olson c