The man who "recently brought the mighty CIA to its knees"

From: CIA's "Great Pretense" Exposed in State-Secrets Fraud Case by Bill Conroy

Judge Can Make History Right by Keeping Pleadings in Ex-DEA agent Richard Horn's Lawsuit on the Books

Former DEA agent Richard Horn, with the help of his attorney, former federal prosecutor Brian Leighton, recently brought the mighty CIA to its knees.

For some 15 years, Horn waged a legal battle in federal court against a former CIA official whom Horn alleged had illegally eavesdropped on him as part of a CIA- and State Department-backed effort to thwart DEA's anti-narcotics mission in Burma in the early 1990s.

The CIA's efforts to undermine Horn's work in Burma in getting that nation's government to stem the flow of heroin to the United States should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with the “Agency's” history. It seems the CIA, over the decades, has often found itself in the corner of narco-traffickers and thugs who support the Agency's covert objectives in areas deemed critical to U.S. special interests – whether that be in Southeast Asia, Central Asia or Latin America.

That's the big pretense of the drug war practiced as dark art by the CIA.

However, earlier this month, government attorneys representing the interests of the CIA agreed to cut a deal with Horn — which calls for the government to shell out some $3 million to Horn to cement a settlement. In exchange, the CIA hopes to put pressure on the judge in the case to erase from the court record several opinions he rendered that accuse CIA officials of committing a fraud on his court and which also opened the door for sanctions to be sought against the culpable current and former CIA employees.

So, it seems that the CIA has made a calculation in the Horn case that its big pretense cannot long endure if the big truth is allowed to remain in the court record — which is the basis of the rule of law the CIA too often seeks to skirt.

For proof of that statement, we need only look at the CIA-pedigreed officials who are in the scope of the federal judge's opinions in the Horn case. Among them are former CIA Director George Tenet and recently retired Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo.

Both Tenet and Rizzo played key roles as part of the Bush Administration in attempting (with the help of Justice Department attorneys like John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury) to set up a legal framework, marked by deceptive legal reasoning, to justify the CIA's use of torture (i.e., waterboarding). Both also were part of the Agency's leadership during the era of “intelligence lapses” that helped pave the way for 9/11 and the ill-fated Iraq War.

And now, as part of the Horn case filed in a Washington D.C. federal court, we find a U.S. District judge, former FISA court member Royce Lamberth, opening the door for sanctions to be brought (as a result of the fraud, or lie, perpetrated on the court) against Tenet and Rizzo — as well as several other current and former CIA officials, among whom is Robert Eatinger, the current Acting Deputy General Counsel for Operations in the CIA's Office of General Counsel (OGC).

If Lamberth's judicial opinions in the Horn case are allowed to remain in the court record — to be recalled and cited going forward by other lawyers, judges and academics — then untold damage could be done to the reputation of the CIA and its leadership. Those judicial opinions memorializing the CIA's fraud on the court also would serve as a permanent reminder of the occasionally dubious credibility of the Agency's pronouncements invoking national security and the state-secrets privilege.

Judge Lamberth has yet to rule on the proposed Horn settlement, and independently on whether he will vacate his prior opinions in the case — and thereby erase from the court record any hint of the CIA's alleged duplicity.

So, in order to preserve for the public memory, in the event the court record is subtracted from this nation's legal memory, Narco News now offers you a glimpse behind the curtain of the big pretense as reflected in the pleadings of a cast of CIA players in the Horn case.

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