Re: Where is the CIA in the chain of command?

In article <e811ea$khj$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Paul Ciszek <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
SOme time back I was listen to NPR talk about two soldiers who were
being tried. The sequence of events, according to the soldiers,
when something like this:

Two soldiers are guarding a VIP (Very Important Prisoner)
Two CIA agents arrive to question the VIP, and send the two soldiers
out of the room.
After a while the CIA agents start yelling for assistance.
The soldiers rush in to find the VIP creatively suspended and not
breathing; they perform CPR to no avail.

Now, the soldiers were on trial because the prisoner was technically
their responsibility; I didn't hear enough of the story to find
out if being ordered out of the room by the CIA absolves them of that
responsibility or not. But my question was this: Do the soldiers
have to obey orders from the CIA? Given what happened this time,
can a soldier refuse to leave the room or even take measures to
defend the prisoner, for whose saftey they are being held accountable,
from the CIA, which has proven itself a threat?

Of course civilians can give orders to military men. Just ask Rumsfield
or Bush, who do it all the time.

The situation in this case is a little more iffy. The CIA men, from your
account, had done nothing to prove themselves a threat in the judgement of
the guards. If they were assigned to the job of prisoner interrogation,
they acted properly in telling the guards to leave the room and the guards
acted properly in obeying. However, they were not "in command" of the
guards, because civilians do not "command" individual military units. The
guards may have been told by their (military unit) commander to do as the
CIA men instructed them. In this case they would have been obeying lawful
instructions pursuant to their commander's lawful order.

Either way, they're up on a bum rap. The CIA men should be in the dock.

-- *** Eney
.

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