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PrintCalls grow for probe of CIA plan for al-Qaida hits
Mon Jul 13, 2009 1:06 PM EDT
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WASHINGTON — Congressional demands for an investigation grew on Monday over new disclosures that a secret CIA program to capture or kill al-Qaida leaders was concealed from Congress for eight years, perhaps at the behest of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The program, which never got off the ground and remains shrouded in mystery, was designed to target leaders of the terrorism network at close range, rather than with air strikes that risked civilian casualties, government officials with knowledge of the operation said Monday.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The program was canceled last month by CIA Director Leon Panetta shortly after he himself first learned of it.
Some Democratic lawmakers suggested the failure to notify the congressional intelligence committees violated the oversight laws, which require the intelligence community to keep Congress informed of its activities.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that House and Senate intelligence committees should "take whatever actions they believe are necessary to get more information on the subject," including whether Cheney played a direct role in proposing the secret program and withholding information from Congress.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., joining the ranks of those calling for a thorough investigations, said, "Individuals who ordered that Congress be kept in the dark should be held accountable." Feingold said he had "deep concerns about the program itself," adding that he had written to President Barack Obama to ask for the probe.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that being kept in the dark by the CIA broke
the law and "should never, ever happen again." But defenders of Cheney suggested that no laws were broken because the counterterrorism program never got beyond the talking stage.
However, the issue might come down to whether any tax dollars were spent on the planning — and thus subject to congressional scrutiny.
"There are points governed by law at which the executive branch is obligated to notify Congress of an anticipated intelligence activity," said Vicki Divoll, a former deputy counsel to the CIA Counterterrorist Center who was general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2001 to 2003.
"Even if arguably those points weren't reached, the executive branch may not spend money developing a program if those funds had not been appropriated and authorized by Congress," said Divoll, who teaches government at the U.S. Naval Academy.
It presented a delicate dilemma for the Obama administration, which so far has steered clear of joining congressional calls for thoroughly investigating controversial intelligence-community actions under President George W. Bush and Cheney and prosecuting those who broke the law.
Robert Gibbs, Obama's spokesman, continued on this careful path on Monday, saying Panetta was reviewing how keeping the information from congressional intelligence leaders "came to pass and I think that's wise."
"The president believes that Congress should always be briefed fully and in a timely manner in accordance with the law. Those are his beliefs as it relates to any of these programs," Gibbs said.
As to a related controversy, reports that Attorney General Eric Holder may be leaning toward having a criminal prosecutor look into whether U.S. interrogators tortured terror suspects, Gibbs repeated Obama's earlier statement that "our efforts are better focused looking forward than looking back."
Gibbs said the president as well as the attorney general and others in the administration "all agree that anyone who followed the law, that was acting in the good faith of the guidance that they were provided within the four corners of the law, will not and should not be prosecuted."
Panetta canceled CIA program on June 23 after learning of its existence, its failure to yield results, and the fact that Congress had been unaware of it since its inception soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to one official with direct knowledge of the plan.
That official said Bush authorized killing al-Qaida leaders and that Congress was made aware of that. However, the official said, Panetta also told members of Congress that, according to notes that he had been given on the early months of the program, Cheney directed the CIA not to inform Congress of the specifics of the secret program.
Panetta told the committees there was no indication that there was anything illegal or inappropriate about the effort itself, the official said.
CIA directors since 2001 agreed with Cheney's decision not to inform Congress because the highly classified operation, described as "sporadic" and "embryonic," never managed to turn up the intelligence needed to carry out a kill and was not considered a covert operation, according to a former intelligence official. That official also was not authorized to discuss the program and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Congress has a right to know everything the CIA does, but the president can by law limit those told about covert operations to just the top four members of the House and Senate from the two parties and the senior members of the intelligence committees. Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are pushing for a legal provision that would require the president to brief both committees in their entirety more often, but the White House has threatened to veto the move.
Most attempts to kill al-Qaida's leaders, believed to be hiding in Pakistan's troubled western border region, use armed drone aircraft because it is difficult terrain controlled by sometimes hostile tribes. But those strikes have sometimes killed and injured innocent civilians and caused outrage in Pakistan.
The government official said the CIA effort was meant to avoid such collateral damage.
Panetta revealed the CIA program to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in emergency briefings he called June 24 and told them he had begun an internal inquiry to determine why Congress — and he — had not been told sooner.
That ignited a storm of protests from Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, who accused the CIA of lying to Congress.
Republicans who had been supporters of the Bush administration's interrogation and other war-on-terror tactics have dismissed the new controversy as much ado about little, suggesting it was an attempt by Democrats to provide political cover to Pelosi, who has accused the CIA of lying to her in 2002 about its use of waterboarding, or simulated drowning, which many people, including Obama, consider torture.
___
Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Jim Abrams contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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- Groups: SpyWorld
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 | Calls grow for probe of CIA program they hid from Congress | msnbc.com | Mon Jul 13 | 1 |
| New reports of massive spying, criminality by US government | WSWS | Mon Jul 13 | 2 |
| "It is time to finally confront the gross human rights abuses of the last administration," | The L.A. Times | Mon Jul 13 | 37 |
 | Democrats push for probe into Bush policies | Associated Press | Sun Jul 12 | 67 |
| TheHill.com-With Pelosi�s blessing, Dems push ahead with probe of CIA | The Hill.com | Tue Jul 14 | 1 |
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{"commentId":8191020,"authorDomain":"luv-to-roam"}
A secret intelligence program canceled by CIA Director Leon Panetta in June was meant to find and then capture or kill al-Qaida leaders at close range rather than target them with air strikes that risked civilian casualties, government officials with knowledge of the operation said Monday.
And this comes as a big news flash to who? Chances are slim our secrets will stay secret if you tell that useless bunch in Congress....
{"commentId":8191020,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"luv-to-roam"}
#1 - Mon Jul 13, 2009 4:08 PM EDT{"commentId":8197940,"authorDomain":"aroleflin"}
Leave it to DEMarxists to shoot themselves in the foot and tie an noose around their own necks. They elect an narcissist idiot as president and polls show his policies and support are dropping like a lead boat anchor. My prediction before the usurper was even elected. I saw it coming from a mile away while Chris 'the leg tingler' Mathews swooned and squealed like a little pink pig over this empty suit job killer from Kenya. Anyone can complaign about Bush, but at least he allowed public and accross the aisle viewing of bills before he signed them or vetoed them. Now, the Narcissist Marxist Failure in Chief in the White House has adopted the mantra of a tyrannt fascist pig nazi by installing lobbyists, financial cronies tied to the Fed and 20 czars who do nothing more than provide a wall between the Kenyan Kommunist and his media sheep.
{"commentId":8197940,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"aroleflin"}
- 1 vote
{"commentId":8213304,"authorDomain":"arsine3463"}
That useless bunch represent me in our nation's capital. I'm footing the bill for this, I am associated with these actions, I damn sure want my representative duly informed!
{"commentId":8213304,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"arsine3463"}
- 1 vote
{"commentId":8213464,"authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
Even as Obama is defending fascist CIA thugs, criminal policies, morphing into Dick Cheney, the right wing continues to call him a Marxist, clueless about terminology, clueless about ideology, and ignoring the BI PARTISAN COVER UP OF CRIMES BY BOTH CLASS PARTIES, EMPIRE PARTIES, AND MURDER, POLICIES......
Is Obama Continuing the Bush/Cheney Assassination Program?
Congress is outraged that Cheney concealed a CIA program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders, but they should also be investigating why Obama is continuing—and expanding—U.S. assassinations.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/14-6
These criminal policies extended by Obama are called "Marxist", when in fact they are fascist, nationalist, imperialist, criminal, but ignored by right wing know nothings.
Excerpt:
"There are several important issues raised by this unfolding story. First, while the Times claims the program was never implemented, the program sounds very similar to what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sy Hersh described in March as an "executive assassination ring" run by Dick Cheney that operated throughout the Bush years:
"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. "Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.
Hersh's description sounds remarkably similar to that offered by the Times and the Wall Street Journal.
The Obama administration has not only continued the Bush policy of using drones to carry out targeted assassinations, but has also continued the use of prisons where people are held indefinitely without charge or access to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Under Obama, Bagram air base in Afghanistan is expanding and, at present, hundreds of prisoners are held there without charges. In essence, the Obama administration is doing exactly what this secret CIA program sought to do, albeit out in the open."
{"commentId":8213464,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
- 1 vote
{"commentId":8191780,"authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
Cheerleading fascist foreign policies and criminal lies, and at the same time demanding that they be legalized fascist lies, still does not do away with the criminality, immorality, and standards of international laws, no matter how many LEGALIZED FASCIST LAWS, Patriot laws Congress passes, all completely against the Constitution, Treaties, and International laws, all set up by none other than the U.S. through universal jurisdiction, after the Nazi trials against class and imperial thugs, in Germany and Japan, hung for their fascist criminal policies, and illegal torture, illegal aggressions:
The Mega-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda
http://www.alternet.org/world/63632/
excerpt:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush has told and repeated a lie that is "big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' testimony. It is a mega-lie, and the American people have come to believe it. It is the "War on Terror."
The Bush administration endlessly recites its mantra of deceit:
The War on Terror was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is intended to enhance our national security at home and to spread democracy in the Middle East.
This is the struggle of our lifetime; we are defending our way of life from an enemy intent on destroying our freedoms. We must fight the enemy in the Middle East, or we will fight him in our cities.
This is classic propaganda. In Goebbels' terms, it is the "state" speaking its lie, but the political, economic, and military consequences of the Bush administration lie are coming into view, and they are all catastrophic. If truth is the enemy of both the lie and George Bush's "state," then the American people need to know the truth."
and:
JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., & Ron Paul Speak Truth to Power(video)
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/44463
and at the heart of all this deception, criminality, is none other than the CORPORATE MEDIA, AP INCLUDED, which fails to note that all four branches, if you include the corporate media, participates in the parsing, deformation, distortion of language, murder of terminology, that never questions whether Criminal and fascist, unconstitutional acts can legalize itself. It assumes the Constitution and international laws, THE RULE OF LAWS, WHICH OBAMA REFUSES TO ENFORCE, ALONG WITH ERIC HOLDER, can be negated through LEGALIZED FASCISM.
Take a look at the Fox moderator, on the video with the phony Republican debate, cheerleading fascism, criminality, and state propaganda, to the masses. The CORPORATE MEDIA ARE AS CORRUPT AS THE OTHER 3 BRANCHES BY THE VERY SAME CLASS IDEOLOGY, CLASS AND IMPERIAL VALUES, FASCIST VALUES.
{"commentId":8191780,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
- 1 vote
#2 - Mon Jul 13, 2009 4:43 PM EDT{"commentId":8192323,"authorDomain":"kelewanpug-politics"}
Aren't we already killing AL Qaeda operatives by using drones and our military? Why the need for a secret program to do that? Sounds like the CIA is still trying to pull the wool over our eyes with this explanation.
The only need for such covert ops is to infiltrate into other governments and take out people there. Methinks, the operation was probably meant to undermine other regimes than to kill Al Qaeda operatives.
{"commentId":8192323,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"kelewanpug-politics"}
- 1 vote
#3 - Mon Jul 13, 2009 5:09 PM EDT{"commentId":8192864,"authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
SpoxLogic:
There is no difference between the overt criminality of Bush and the covert criminality of Obama. Your question is a good one, and several legal experts have pointed out, the hypocrisy of it all, that something is missing, something is odd in this story, that does not hold together, unless something major and explosive is being left out, which would not surprise me at all considering the multiple crimes of both Bush and Obama:
Rep. Eshoo Wants House Probe of CIA Program
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/07/13-4
"A senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee (D-Calif.) is calling for a probe into a canceled CIA program kept secret from Congress.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said the Intelligence panel should find out where funding for the program originated and who directed the CIA not to inform Congress of its existence.
"We, by no means, have the full story," Eshoo said in an interview Sunday.
"We don't know who gave the order. We don't know where the money came from. We don't know all the people who were involved."
and this:
THE ASSASSINATION SQUADS: TWO POINTS
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/07/13/the-assassination-squads-two-points/
excerpt:
"Two comments about this.
First, there must be something more. Aside from the near ubiquitous drone strikes, which seem to be fully acknowledged and non-controversial, there have been enough personal strikes against al Qaeda figures that appear likely to have been assassinations, that for all intents and purposes, it appears we are assassinating al Qaeda figures...
No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination...I assume we'll learn more about this in coming days. But thus far, I'm not convinced this is the whole of the story yet..."
BY THE WAY CALLING EVERY BABY, TODDLER, WOMAN, CIVILIAN MURDERED BY DRONES, "MILITANTS", "AL QUAIDA", "TALIBAN", HIDES THE CRIMINAL WARS AGAINST MASS RESISTANCE TO AMERICAN EMPIRE AND MASS MURDER OF WEDDINGS, FUNERALS. CALLING EVERYONE IN VIETNAM, "GOOKS" "COMMUNISTS" RESULTED IN A MASS ANTI COLONIAL RESISTANCE TO OUR IMPERIAL FASCISM, WHICH WE LOST.
{"commentId":8192864,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
- 1 vote
#4 - Mon Jul 13, 2009 5:35 PM EDT{"commentId":8193461,"authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
Also, "personal", assassination squads, do not need to be only the abstracted "Al Quaida", but any enemy, truthful person that exposes the criminal rogue Empire of American and the criminal British poodle, Blair, who conspired with Bush to lie us into war:
13 doctors demand inquest into Dr David Kelly's death
{"commentId":8193461,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
- 1 vote
#5 - Mon Jul 13, 2009 6:02 PM EDT{"commentId":8200556,"authorDomain":"repoman"}
Oh no the CIA had a secret plan and didn't tell congress....Maybe it has something to do with all the "unnamed source" leaking information to the press about on going operations.
Actually I can't wait until people realize how stupid it is to reveal our secrets to the world. When the next terror attack happens on US soil we can place it right at the feet of the Democrat led House or Reps, Senate and the President of the United States. They are so busy investigating crap that is irrelevant and passing legislation to pay back campaign contributors with tax dollars that they might as well send an invitation to the terrorists to attack us again.
{"commentId":8200556,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"repoman"}
- 1 vote
#6 - Tue Jul 14, 2009 3:23 AM EDT{"commentId":8212900,"authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
Repoman:
Most of the world does not see our secrets as "stupid" , but criminal and fascist. That is why both American Empire and Zionist Israel are being investigated, in spite of "stupid" secrecy, "stupid" policies, where real issues and laws are discussed unlike by most right wing apologists.
{"commentId":8212900,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"eric-albert"}
- 1 vote
#7 - Tue Jul 14, 2009 5:06 PM EDT{"commentId":8220928,"authorDomain":"repoman"}
Ok, maybe since I am at the "tip of the spear" I have a different view on why we need to keep our secrets secret.
Having said that why do we care what the "rest of the world" thinks? I do not see them caring about what we think. Leaders lead. They do not apologize for making hard decissions and leading the way.
{"commentId":8220928,"threadId":"625724","contentId":"3022453","authorDomain":"repoman"}
- 1 vote
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