And this time, it’s to ensure that absolutely no one will ever reveal who amongst us are the torturers:

Bmaz just wrote a long post talking about the dilemma John Kiriakou faces as the government and his defense lawyers attempt to get him to accept a plea deal rather than go to trial for leaking the names of people–Thomas Donahue Fletcher and Deuce Martinez–associated with the torture program.

I’d like to look at four more aspects of this case:

• The timing of this plea deal–reflecting a realization on the part of DOJ that their efforts to shield Fletcher would fail
• CIA’s demand for a head
• The improper cession of a special counsel investigation to the US Attorney for Eastern Virginia
• The ongoing efforts to cover-up torture

………

The CIA panicked because the subjects of CIA torture were learning the identities of their torturers. DOJ did an investigation to see whether any crime had been committed, and determined it hadn’t. CIA then started politicizing that decision, which led to Fitzgerald’s appointment.

Fitzgerald confirmed what DOJ originally determined: the defense attorneys committed no crime by researching who their clients’ torturers were.

But along the way Fitzgerald gave the CIA a head–John Kiriakou’s–based partly on old investigations of him. And, surprise surprise, that head happens to belong to the only CIA officer who publicly broke the omerta about the torture program.

This entire case was an attempt to punish someone to restore the omerta on CIA’s illegal activities.

For a bigger picture, I would recommend Dan Froomkin’s analysis of the Obama administration’s war on whistle blower.

Our country desperately needs to enshrine the Swedish concept of Offentlighetsprincipen (openness) into our constitution, and soon, or our representative democracy is going to quickly turn into a sham.