For the second time in nearly 40 years the U.S. Senate had disclosed unlawful and unethical practices by the C.I.A.

In 1975, a committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church revealed the agency’s involvement in secret programs to kill international leaders (i.e., Fidel Castro) and to topple foreign democratic governments (i.e., Chile).

In 2014, a committee chaired by Sen. Dianne Feinstein disclosed the agency’s brutal torture techniques.

Four decades ago Latin America was a major laboratory for the agency’s covert operations, interrogation training, and implementation of torture manuals which, in turn, with thousands killed and disappeared.

The “war on communism” rationalized the U.S. government’s security policies abroad and the public’s relative acceptance of abhorrent procedures.

Today European and Asian countries clandestinely hosted C.I.A. detention sites where Muslims were severely abused.

The “war against terrorism” is now the cornerstone of U.S. international strategy while public opinion has become more supportive of torturing foreigners.

Then and now, cries for major reforms have been heard. But as victims have been ignored and torturers kept unaccountable, the preservation of the agency’s supposedly indispensable mission is invoked to block any overhaul. This is a guarantee of continuous and degrading human rights violations.

No proposal for thorough restructuring of the CIA has ever been entertained because Americans are too fearful and polarized to demand real changes in the agency. But that is what is needed. The clandestine operations side, especially, has become a highly politicized and quasi-autonomous unit.

A thorough reorganization, even dismantling, of the agency is needed, but the details of how that should be done will only be clear once the agency's impunity is ended, a vigorous accountability is put in place and an independent scrutiny and new leadership are established. 

If there is something to be learned by the transition to democracy in the Southern Cone of the Americas—so much affected by the CIA activities over the 60s, 70s, and 80s -- it is that human rights should be placed first and foremost in the social and political agenda.

If it is not, we will probably have more reports on the U.S. intelligence system cruelty in the next decades to come.

(*) Director of the department of political science and international studies at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.