‘No one at the top of food chain to be accountable for CIA torture’

Both the UK and US governments are implicated in concealing torture by their intelligence services and it’s highly unlikely any top official will be held responsible, as the UN and ICC are part of Western power, anti-war activist Mike Raddie told RT.

READ MORE:Facing justice: UN, HRW, Amnesty call for prosecuting US officials for torture

RT:The long-anticipated report has finally been released. How damning are the revelations?

San Jose Peace & Justice Center Treasurer Charlotte Casey on CIA torture report: “It is extremely damning, it proves beyond a doubt that there was deliberate intent to torture. And it was not a rogue operation done by a rogue agency; they were authorized to carry out these hideous forms of torture. The top officials all the way down, starting from Bush and Chuck Hagel, everyone who participated should be fully prosecuted.”

Mike Raddie: For those who have been following this story for the last 5-10 years it’s not a surprise. But it’s damning in the sense it comes from a report disseminated from the US. It’s going to be hidden, to be overlooked, be swept aside quite rapidly by the US media and the mainstream media in the UK because there has obviously been British government collusion with CIA rendition flights through the UK territories like Diego Garcia which is a black site where torture was happening, or what they would call “enhanced interrogation techniques” –it’s a fancy word for torture effectively. Where justice implicated in this report is the CIA. Obviously the CIA has been doing this for decades since the days of President Eisenhower who was one of the first to issue assassination orders on serving prime ministers around the world, anyone that the Dulles brothers didn’t like and that was always going to be the case. Obviously today Obama can say this is all in the past and that doesn’t happen these days. Maybe he is right because Obama doesn’t really do interrogation; he just does drone strikes and murders of suspects without any interrogation and without any due cause to law.

RT:In August, Britain’s Freedom of Information Act heightened fears the British government lobbied US officials to obscure the UK’s role in CIA rendition. Do you believe this is possible?

MR: That is what does work both ways. If you remember George W. Bush basically said if the UK’s investigations and enquiries that happen in the UK are revealed and have anything to do with US complicity in torture, then we are going to stop sharing intelligence. This is quid pro quo. I think the British and the American governments for the past ten years have been protecting each other, and we know obviously why - because George Bush and Tony Blair would have been implicated otherwise, and they are all implicated. Obviously I don’t think anything is going to happen with them, I think the United Nations and the International Criminal Court are all part of Western imperial power. I can’t honestly see anything happening to the people who are at the very top of the food chain.

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi on CIA torture report: “No one will be held accountable because there are enough of problems for both political parties in terms of having supported these activities, and that will eventually become an issue when no one wants anyone to be openly punished for it. But this report is a disaster for the CIA. The CIA is seeing this report as a major setback for the agency.”

RT:US Senator John McCain has been particularly damning of the Intelligence Agency. He's basically labeled the torture program “worse than worthless” and said more spying would be preferable. What do you make of that?

MR: McCain was a prisoner of war himself in Vietnam. He might be more in tune with what is going on and he probably knows that there is no useful intelligence that comes out from torture. Anyone who is being tortured will say anything to stop the torture. And they knew this at the time; they knew that this intelligence was dubious. Saying that we should stop torturing and use more intelligence gathering…it’s a kind of overlooking a big picture. Part of the intelligence gathering of the CIA has always been through the use of torture. The same implies to the MI6 and MI5 in the UK. So that’s all is part and parcel of intelligence gathering, you cannot have one without the other.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.