While reading another CNN article about Benghazi (I like to keep up with the craziness, it helps me feel sane) I came across something that made me sit up and take notice. They quoted their source as saying if anyone talks, "You don't jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well."
I don't know if that is true or not but even suggesting it should be considered an accusation that we have become a fascist government. Think about that, CNN, a supposed Main Stream Media outlet is claiming that if these CIA operatives talk, they will be putting their families in jeopardy. That is what evil dictators do. That is what mobsters do. That is not what any democratic Republic would do.
I have always felt that Benghazi was a non-story drummed up by the Republicans because they knew there was CIA involvement and also knew that for national security reasons, the president could not tell the truth about it. I have always thought it was a dangerous game of gotcha the Republicans were playing. The president cannot reveal top secret CIA missions so he had to make up a cover story and they know that if they pick at it enough, the cover story will fall apart...Gotcha.
But this is alarming, not because of what information may be leaked but its the tactics (if true) they are using to ensure that it doesn't get released. Here is the article on CNN:
Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings.
The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.
It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.
In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, one insider writes, "You don't jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well."
Another says, "You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation."
It doesn't matter if they are trying to keep the Top Secret Manhattan Project from leaking out, polygraphing people every month, threatening their jobs and especially their families goes way too far to be considered an American principle in a supposed "Free" nation. I am also sure that the Manning and Snowden treatment surely helps in their silence encouragement program.
"Agency employees typically are polygraphed every three to four years. Never more than that," said former CIA operative and CNN analyst Robert Baer.
In other words, the rate of the kind of polygraphs alleged by sources is rare.
"If somebody is being polygraphed every month, or every two months it's called an issue polygraph, and that means that the polygraph division suspects something, or they're looking for something, or they're on a fishing expedition. But it's absolutely not routine at all to be polygraphed monthly, or bi-monthly," said Baer.
I realize the source is questionable which is understandable because of the very nature of the article. It does not mean I believe it 100% even though I do see it as possible and maybe even probable. I am more amazed that we now live in a world where a main stream media outlet can basically accuse the United States of America of becoming a facist police state (because that is the only type of government that threatens their own intelligence agents' families) and the response to it is, "yawn".
The last drop of boiling water has now evaporated and all we have left in the pot is a bunch of boiled frogs starting to burn.