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Student says CIA recruiters lied to SU about fundamental ethical concerns

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Attendees of the CIA recruitment event on Thursday will remember my statement that the CIA is synonymous with torture.

They should also remember the CIA recruiter’s response: “The CIA does not torture.” If you have been paying attention to waterboarding and extraordinary rendition in the so-called “war on terror,” you know the recruiter’s statement is a flat-out lie.

Former CIA director Leon Panetta, the recruiter’s former boss, stated very clearly in a series of interviews with CBS and NBC in May 2011 that the CIA used waterboarding to gather information from terror suspects. Panetta has also said “waterboarding is torture and it’s wrong.” President Barack Obama has been just as clear about acknowledging CIA torture.

So we have to ask: Why does the CIA need to lie in order to recruit Syracuse University students?

Of course, the history of CIA abuse does not start or stop with waterboarding. Protesters at the recruitment event handed out flyers detailing 70 years of torture, assassination, human rights violations and attempts to overthrow democratically elected governments around the world. Information about this history is in the public record.

More recently, in a 2005 report, Amnesty International described the CIA’s “new gulag of prisons around the world beyond the reach of law and decency.” In 2009, an Italian court convicted 22 CIA employees of torture and kidnapping. Finally, a 2012 report from Stanford University and New York University, “Living Under Drones,” describes the CIA-led drone strikes in Pakistan as illegal and dangerous for the United States’ long-term safety.

For those who don’t know, drones are remotely operated, armed aircrafts that have been used increasingly by the CIA under the Obama administration. The Stanford/NYU report shows only one in 50 people killed by drones in Pakistan are known, high-level targets. The report also shows at least three children are killed for every suspected militant, and the percentage is likely much higher since the United States categorizes any male of “military age” a “militant.”

The choice is up to SU students: Do you want to work for the CIA and help extend this history of abuse? Do you want to risk working for an organization whose programs are illegal? Is it worth applying for a job when the recruiter has to lie to you about fundamental ethical concerns? How can SU continue its relationship with the CIA considering the organization’s disregard for democracy and human rights?

Ben Kuebrich
Doctoral student
Composition and cultural rhetoric