View Full Version : Democrats Say Panetta Admits CIA Misled Them
incarcerated
07-09-2009, 04:21
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124709503805414883.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Democrats Say Panetta Admits CIA Misled Them
JULY 9, 2009
By SIOBHAN GORMAN
WASHINGTON -- Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon E. Panetta has told lawmakers that the agency "concealed significant actions" from Congress, according to a letter released Wednesday from seven Democratic lawmakers.
The letter also contends that Mr. Panetta said CIA officials have misled Congress since 2001.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes sent a separate letter on Tuesday to the top Republican on his committee saying that Mr. Panetta's appearance led him to conclude that the CIA had "affirmatively lied" to the committee. Mr. Reyes, a Texas Democrat, said the issues Mr. Panetta disclosed to the committee may lead to a full committee investigation.
"I believe that CIA has, in the vast majority of matters, told the truth," Mr. Reyes said in a statement. "But in rare instances, certain officers have not adhered to the high standards held, as a rule, by the CIA with respect to truthfulness in reporting."
Neither letter described the nature of the actions hidden....
A power struggle between Congress' desire for expanded intelligence oversight and the White House's continued support of more limited briefings - combined with typical election year grandstanding = more fuel for the bonfires of conspiracy theories, the BIG BROTHER crowd, and reporters who dream of becoming the next Sheehan, Woodward and Bernstein. :( ;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
dirtyshirt
07-09-2009, 10:19
I hate our elected government officials (particularly Democrats tho).
Cant somebody take DNA from our founding fathers,clone them and then maybe they could straighten out our country again.
I am so tired of the finger pointing and baby games these "grown" people engage in. They all(dems) stick together to shift the blame so Pelosi doesnt look as inept and foolish as she is. I am not saying mis-information doesnt happen at times, but this is just an attempt by the democrats to justify Pelosi's statements and position of "gee, I diddnt know torture was going on,they mis-informed me"
...so
Either Speaker Pelosi or Director Panetta knowingly decieved the US governement and in turn the US citizen base.
If by some strange chance Speaker Pelosi was in fact LIED to, then Mr Panetta should be quickly relieved of his duties in a very public way.
Someone needs to go under the bus !!!
The longer I live the more I love my country, and the more I mistrust our elected officials...regardless of party. I pray for better but fear what it will take to improve the situation. Perhaps I'm just wringing my hands when I should be their wringing necks.
greenberetTFS
07-09-2009, 11:27
Cant somebody take DNA from our founding fathers,clone them and then maybe they could straighten out our country again./quote/dirtyshirt
That's a terrific idea.......:D It's really too bad it's not possible......;)
Big Teddy :munchin
Pretty sad when a political appointee gets spanked by the POTUS/ Dem Congress for supporting his own agency.
Sadder yet when he folds.
rltipton
07-10-2009, 06:55
The longer I live the more I love my country, and the more I mistrust our elected officials...regardless of party. I pray for better but fear what it will take to improve the situation. Perhaps I'm just wringing my hands when I should be their wringing necks.
No forums post I have ever read has ever matched my own feelings on the matter more closely than this one. I could not agree with you more.
So the messenger has learned that lying by ommission is better than being the bearer of bad news to Congress? Wonder where they learned that bit of wisdom and who'll be the next victim. :confused:
Not a good sign when considering the organizational climate in regards to an institution's effectiveness. ;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Someone needs to go under the bus !!!
__________________
Sadly, it will probably be someone that occupies the third or fourth rung from the top of the ladder.
The Pineapple Princess would fit nicely between the transmission and the driveshaft.
greenberetTFS
07-10-2009, 11:40
Sadly, it will probably be someone that occupies the third or fourth rung from the top of the ladder.
The Pineapple Princess would fit nicely between the transmission and the driveshaft.
Amen to that brother..................;)
Big Teddy :munchin
FWIW - I'd admit the facts and take corrective action - but I would never apologize to the current Speaker of the House of Representatives. :mad:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
CIA's Panetta Owes Pelosi an Admission and an Apology
John Nichols, The Nation, 10 Jul 2009
Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta owes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an apology -- or, at the very least, a clarification.
In May, when Republicans claimed she had been briefed in 2002 by the Central Intelligence Agency about the Bush-Cheney administration's torture regimen, Pelosi said: Pelosi accused the CIA of "misleading the Congress of the United States" for years.
CIA Director Leon Panetta denied the charge in blunt language.
"Let me be clear: It is not our practice or policy to mislead Congress," said Panetta. "That is against our laws and values."
That was a blunt statement.
Unfortunately, Panetta was wrong.
Now, he needs to be just as blunt in setting the record straight.
According to Friday's The Washington Post:
Four months after he was sworn in, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta learned of an intelligence program that had been hidden from Congress since 2001, a revelation that prompted him to immediately cancel the initiative and schedule a pair of closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill.
The next day, June 24, Panetta informed the House and Senate intelligence committees of the program and the action he had taken, according to Democratic and Republican members of the panels.
The program had not merely been hidden from Congress.
It was kept secret -- perhaps because it involved illegal spying on the American people -- as part of a deliberate plot to keep the House and Senate in the dark about a gross violation of the CIA's mission.
"Instructions were given not to brief Congress," explained Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-California.
In fairness to Panetta, he does not seem to be the bad guy here.
Piecing together what we now know, it appears that the director may have been lied to by CIA staffers.
After learning about the secret program, Panetta did shut it down.
Then he briefed key members of Congress.
He gets points for those moves.
But he now needs to make it clear that what he said in May was wrong.
Panetta does not have to beat himself up. He can explain that he was. himself, a victim.
But Panetta owes Pelosi, the Congress and the American people an admission that his statement of two months ago created a false and unfair impression.
He could say: "It was the policy of the CIA to mislead Congress."
He could say: "The CIA violated our laws and values."
Or Panetta could just keep things straight and simple and say: "The Speaker was right."
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/450720/cia_s_panetta_owes_pelosi_an_admission_and_an_apol ogy
"Panetta does not have to beat himself up. He can explain that he was. himself, a victim."
Yeap, the buck stops..............somewhere else.
Surf n Turf
07-11-2009, 14:57
A power struggle between Congress' desire for expanded intelligence oversight and the White House's continued support of more limited briefings - combined with typical election year grandstanding = more fuel for the bonfires of conspiracy theories, the BIG BROTHER crowd, and reporters who dream of becoming the next Sheehan, Woodward and Bernstein.
Richard's $.02 :munchin
As Richard said, this seems to be a turf battle between Congress and the WH over who is briefed. The congressional answer for oversite is “lets brief everyone”(and with their record of keeping secrets, why not :mad: ). The Obama White House is of a different view, and is threatening a veto if the legislation is over broad on who is briefed.
Keeping in context the sheer panic of Sept 11, 2001, it appears that the Bush administration pulled out all the stops, and started monitoring everything. From open source information, it appears that President Bush singed a single “finding” for all the activities.
It also appears this was an NSA program, not CIA. General Hayden maintains that he briefed members personally, and they were all supportive.
Link
Who will guard the guards -- :munchin
SnT
It sounds like the Dimocrats and the MSM are adding 2+2 and conveniently getting =5.
1. We briefed the legislature about waterboarding.
2. I discovered a very secret Agency program recently and shut it down.
I don't see that the second statement negates the first.
Or is my comprehension on the whack?
Okay - hang on to your tin hats - there's a sirocco on the way out there! The conspiracy kooks and the anti-GWBers are gonna be going crazy. :eek:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
Scott shane, NYT, 11 Jun 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.
Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.
The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.
The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”
In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.
The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.
An intelligence agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined on Saturday to comment on the report of Mr. Cheney’s role.
“It’s not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “When a C.I.A. unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.”
Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program, whose details remained secret and which even some Democrats have said was properly classified. Most of those interviewed, however, have said that it was an important activity that should have been disclosed to the intelligence committees.
Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.
In the tense months after 9/11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment, intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures. It was in that atmosphere that the unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress, officials said.
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.
One intelligence official, who would speak about the classified program only on condition of anonymity, said there was no resistance inside the C.I.A. to Mr. Panetta’s decision to end the program last month.
“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” the official said. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.”
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, who was the C.I.A. director when the unidentified program began, declined to comment on Saturday, noting that the program remained classified.
In the eight years of his vice presidency, Mr. Cheney was the Bush administration’s most vehement defender of the secrecy of government activities, particularly in the intelligence arena. He went to the Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers to his task force on energy, and won.
A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program makes clear that Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to approve personally every government official who was told about the program. The report said “the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program” frustrated F.B.I. agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it had turned up.
High-level N.S.A. officials who were responsible for ensuring that the surveillance program was legal, including the agency’s inspector general and general counsel, were not permitted by Mr. Cheney’s office to read the Justice Department opinion that found the eavesdropping legal, several officials said.
Mr. Addington could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
Questions over the adequacy and the truthfulness of the C.I.A.’s briefings for Congress date to the creation of the intelligence oversight committees in the 1970s after disclosures of agency assassination and mind-control programs and other abuses. But complaints increased in the Bush years, when the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies took the major role in pursuing Al Qaeda.
The use of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, for instance, was first described to a handful of lawmakers for the first time in September 2002. Ms. Pelosi and the C.I.A. have disagreed about what she was told, but in any case, the briefing occurred only after a terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded 83 times.
Democrats in Congress, who contend that the Bush administration improperly limited Congressional briefings on intelligence, are seeking to change the National Security Act to permit the full intelligence committees to be briefed on more matters. President Obama, however, has threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if the changes go too far, and the proposal is now being negotiated by the White House and the intelligence committees.
Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat of Illinois on the House committee, wrote on Friday to the chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat of Texas, to demand an investigation of the unidentified program and why Congress was not told of it. Aides said Mr. Reyes was reviewing the matter.
“There’s been a history of difficulty in getting the C.I.A. to tell us what they should,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat of Washington. “We will absolutely be held accountable for anything the agency does.”
Mr. Hoekstra, the intelligence committee’s ranking Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency had not been as forthcoming as the law required.
“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/politics/12intel.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
And the beat goes on...;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
AP Interview: Hayden denies Congress not informed
Pamela Hess, AP, 11 Jul 2009
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden angrily struck back Saturday at assertions the Bush administration's post-9/11 surveillance program was more far-reaching than imagined and was largely concealed from congressional overseers.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Hayden maintained that top members of Congress were kept well-informed all along the way, notwithstanding protests from some that they were kept in the dark.
"One of the points I had in every one of the briefings was to make sure they understood the scope of our activity 'They've got to know this is bigger than a bread box,' I said," said Hayden, who also previously headed the National Security Agency.
"At the political level this had support," said the one-time CIA chief, jumping foursquare into an escalating controversy that has caused deep political divisions and lingering debate on the counterterrorism policies of an administration now out of power.
Hayden was reacting to a report issued Friday by a team of U.S. inspectors general which called the surveillance program in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks "unprecedented." The report also questioned the program's legal rationale and the excessive secrecy that enshrouded it.
Hayden, who in 2001 designed and carried out the secret program, told The AP he is distressed by suggestions that Congress was not fully informed. He said that he personally briefed top lawmakers on the entire surveillance operation and said he felt that they supported it.
The details of the wider surveillance program described by the federal investigative report remain classified. The program included the wiretapping of American phone and computer lines and was intended to detect communications from the al-Qaida terrorist network. That was revealed by the New York Times in 2005 and later confirmed by then-President George W. Bush.
Several Democratic members of the House and Senate expressed surprise and concern Friday about the still-secret surveillance program.
Hayden asserted that just weeks after Bush approved the activity, senior Republicans and Democrats on the intelligence committees in the House and Senate started getting briefed regularly on its details. He said these sessions happened about four times a year. Hayden also said the number of lawmakers informed was intentionally kept small because the program was highly classified.
On occasion, he said, the briefing audience was expanded to include top members of the House and Senate leadership as well.
Hayden also said that the members of Congress who were briefed were told the average daily level of surveillance activity and the cumulative activity since the program started. And he said the meetings nearly always occurred at the White House, with Vice President Dick Cheney in attendance.
The Bush surveillance program has been contentious since it was first revealed, raising concerns about the extent of secret activities undertaken since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the potential violation of civil liberties. Indeed, the report released Friday said that most of the information gathered under the wider program ultimately did not have any connection to terrorism.
It was so secret that few members of Bush's inner circle were "read in" on program. Even John Ashcroft, who was attorney general at the time, got an accurate description of one surveillance activity only two years after he first certified it as legal. And his initial request to brief his chief of staff and deputy on the program were refused by the White House.
Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the report released Friday pointedly said that any continued use of the information gathered in the secret programs must be "carefully monitored."
Bush authorized the warrantless wiretapping program under the authority of a secret court in 2006, and Congress approved most of the intercepts in a 2008 electronic surveillance law. The fate of the remaining and still-classified aspects of the wider surveillance program is not clear from the report.
In the interview Saturday, Hayden called the program extremely valuable and said that it served as an early warning system to help prevent further al-Qaida attacks.
Some members of Congress are calling for a full independent inquiry and others are urging further congressional investigations.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., told The AP Friday that she was shocked by the report. She said she asked former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales — after the wiretapping was revealed in 2005 — whether the government was conducting any other undisclosed intelligence activities. She said he told her there were no additional operations.
Robert Bork Jr., Gonzales' spokesman, said Friday: "It has clearly been determined that he did not intend to mislead anyone."
In a separate but related move, House Democrats are pressing for legislation that would expand congressional access to secret intelligence briefings. The Obama administration has threatened to veto it over concerns about protecting secrecy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090712/ap_on_go_co/us_domestic_surveillance_hayden_3
incarcerated
07-13-2009, 00:38
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124736381913627661.html
CIA Had Secret Al Qaeda Plan
Initiative at Heart of Spat With Congress Examined Ways to Seize, Kill Terror Chiefs
JULY 13, 2009
By SIOBHAN GORMAN
WASHINGTON -- A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.
The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn't clear, and the CIA won't comment on its substance.
According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn't become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.
In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. It isn't clear whether they were an early part of the CIA initiative that Mr. Panetta stopped.
The revelations about the CIA and its post-9/11 activities have emerged amid a renewed fight between the agency and congressional Democrats. Last week, seven Democratic lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee released a letter that talked about the CIA effort, which they said Mr. Panetta acknowledged hadn't been properly vetted with Congress. CIA officials had brought the matter to Mr. Panetta's attention and had recommended he inform Congress.
Neither Mr. Panetta nor the lawmakers provided details. Mr. Panetta quashed the CIA effort after learning about it June 23.
The battle is part of a long-running tug of war between the executive branch and the legislature about how to oversee the activities of the country's intelligence services and how extensively the CIA should brief Congress. In recent years, in the light of revelations over CIA secret prisons and harsh interrogation techniques, Congress has pushed for greater oversight. The Obama administration, much like its predecessor, is resisting any moves in that direction.
Most recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a dispute over what she knew about the use of waterboarding in interrogating terror suspects, has accused the agency of lying to lawmakers about its operations.
Republicans on the panel say that the CIA effort didn't advance to a point where Congress clearly should have been notified.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency "has not commented on the substance of the effort." He added that "a candid dialogue with Congress is very important to this director and this agency."
One former senior intelligence official said the program was an attempt "to achieve a capacity to carry out something that was directed in the finding," meaning it was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.
The official noted that Congress had long been briefed on the finding, and that the CIA effort wasn't so much a program as "many ideas suggested over the course of years." It hadn't come close to fruition, he added.
Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said little had been spent on the efforts -- closer to $1 million than $50 million. "The idea for this kind of program was tossed around in fits and starts," he said.
Senior CIA leaders were briefed two or three times on the most recent iteration of the initiative, the last time in the spring of 2008. At that time, CIA brass said that the effort should be narrowed and that Congress should be briefed if the preparations reached a critical stage, a former senior intelligence official said.
Amid the high alert following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a small CIA unit examined the potential for targeted assassinations of al Qaeda operatives, according to the three former officials. The Ford administration had banned assassinations in the response to investigations into intelligence abuses in the 1970s. Some officials who advocated the approach were seeking to build teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks, said another former intelligence official.
"It was straight out of the movies," one of the former intelligence officials said. "It was like: Let's kill them all."
The former official said he had been told that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney didn't support such an operation. The effort appeared to die out after about six months, he said.
Former CIA Director George Tenet, who led the agency in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, declined through a spokesman to comment.
Also in September 2001, as CIA operatives were preparing for an offensive in Afghanistan, officials drafted cables that would have authorized assassinations of specified targets on the spot.
One draft cable, later scrapped, authorized officers on the ground to "kill on sight" certain al Qaeda targets, according to one person who saw it. The context of the memo suggested it was designed for the most senior leaders in al Qaeda, this person said.
Eventually Mr. Bush issued the finding that authorized the capturing of several top al Qaeda leaders, and allowed officers to kill the targets if capturing proved too dangerous or risky.
Lawmakers first learned specifics of the CIA initiative the day after Mr. Panetta did, when he briefed them on it for 45 minutes.
House lawmakers are now making preparations for an investigation into "an important program" and why Congress wasn't told about it, said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, in an interview.
On Sunday, lawmakers criticized the Bush administration's decision not to tell Congress. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, hinted that the Bush administration may have broken the law by not telling Congress.
"We were kept in the dark. That's something that should never, ever happen again," she said. Withholding such information from Congress, she said, "is a big problem, because the law is very clear."
Ms. Feinstein said Mr. Panetta told the lawmakers that Mr. Cheney had ordered that the information be withheld from Congress. Mr. Cheney on Sunday couldn't be reached for comment through former White House aides.
The Senate's second-ranking official, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, echoed those concerns and called for an investigation, an indication of how the politics of intelligence continue to bedevil the CIA.
Separately, Attorney General Eric Holder is considering whether to order a criminal probe into whether treatment of terrorism detainees exceeded guidelines set by the Justice Department, administration officials said.
President Barack Obama and Mr. Holder have said they don't favor prosecuting lawyers who wrote legal justifications for interrogation methods that the president and his attorney general have declared to be torture. They have sought to protect CIA officers who followed the legal guidelines.
"The Department of Justice will follow the facts and the law with respect to any matter," said Matthew Miller, a department spokesman. "We have made no decisions on investigations or prosecutions, including whether to appoint a prosecutor to conduct further inquiry."
—Evan Perez and Elizabeth Williamson contributed to this article.
Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com
Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/14intel.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print).
Does congressional oversight include access to all plans?
July 14, 2009
C.I.A. Had Plan to Assassinate Qaeda Leaders
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior al Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials.
The plans were never carried out, the officials said, and Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, canceled the program last month.
Officials at the spy agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic obstacles. How could the role of the United States be masked? Should allies be informed and might they block the access of the C.I.A. teams to their targets? What if American officers or their foreign surrogates were caught in the midst of an operation? Would such activities violate international law or American restrictions on assassinations overseas?
Yet year after year, according to officials briefed on the program, the plans were never completely shelved because the Bush administration sought an alternative to killing terror suspects with missiles fired from drone aircraft or seizing them overseas and imprisoning them in secret C.I.A. jails.
Mr. Panetta scuttled the program, which would have relied on paramilitary teams, shortly after the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center recently informed him of its existence. The next day, June 24, he told Congressional intelligence committees that the plan had been hidden from lawmakers, initially at the instruction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The program was designed in the frantic weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks when President Bush signed a secret order authorizing the C.I.A. to capture or kill Qaeda operatives around the world. To be able to kill Osama bin Laden or his top deputies wherever they might be — even in cities or countries far from a war zone — struck top officials as an urgent goal, according to people involved in the discussions.
But in practice, creating and training the teams proved to be difficult.
“It sounds great in the movies, but when you try to do it it’s not that easy,” said one former intelligence official. “Where do you base them? What do they look like? Are they going to be sitting around at headquarters on 24-hour alert waiting to be called?”
A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.
There has been intense speculation about the nature of the program since members of the House Intelligence Committee disclosed last week that Mr. Panetta had put an end to it. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the secret program was intended to capture or kill senior Qaeda leaders.
Current and former officials said that the program was designed as a more “surgical” solution to eliminating terrorists than missile strikes with armed Predator drones, which cannot be used in cities and have occasionally resulted in dozens of civilian casualties.
“The Predator strikes have been successful, and I was pleased to see the Obama administration continue them,” said Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “This was another effort that was trying to accomplish the same objective.”
Senator Bond would not discuss specific details about the terminated C.I.A. program.
It is not clear why Mr. Panetta decided to cancel the program, although several current and former government officials said that the program never developed beyond vague concepts. The C.I.A. never proposed a specific operation to the White House for approval, said the officials, who would only speak anonymously because the program had been classified.
Because the program was only nascent, and because Congress had already signed off on the C.I.A.’s broad authoritiesafter the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials and some Republican lawmakers said that the spy agency was not required to brief lawmakers on specifics about the program.
But Congressional Democrats were furious that the program had not been shared with the committees. The Senate and House oversight committees had been created by law in the 1970s as a direct response to disclosures of C.I.A. abuses, notably including assassination plots against Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Fidel Castro in Cuba, and other foreign politicians. In addition, President Gerald Ford in 1976 issued an executive order banning assassinations.
But the ban does not apply to the killing of enemies in a war. The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that has attacked the United States and stated that its goal is to attack again, is no different than shooting enemy soldiers on the battlefield. The Obama administration, which has continued to fire missiles from Predator drones on suspected Qaeda members in Pakistan, has taken the same view.
Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University who has studied targeted killings, said the United States first made the argument in 1989 that killing terrorists would not violate the assassination ban and would be a legal act of self-defense under international law. The killings would be premised on the condition that authorities in the country where the terrorist was located were unable or unwilling to stop the terrorist, he said.
In legal terms, Mr. Anderson said, there is no real difference between killing a terrorist with a missile or with a handgun. “In political terms there’s a real difference,” he said. “The missile feels more like regular warfare, even if it’s carried out by the C.I.A.”
But any targeted killings make human rights advocates uneasy. Hina Shamsi, an adviser to the Project on Extrajudicial Execution at New York University, said such a calculation about inserting a kill team would include the violation of the sovereignty of the country where the killing occurred; the different legal status of the C.I.A. by comparison with the uniformed military; and whether the killing would be covered by the law of war.
“The issue is a complex one under international law, and it encompasses all of the contentious issues of the years since 2001,” Ms. Shamsi said.
In his 2006 book “State of War,” James Risen wrote that the C.I.A. set up paramilitary teams shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks to hunt down top Qaeda operatives. Mr. Risen, a reporter for The New York Times, wrote that the operation was soon disbanded before the C.I.A. carried out any operations. But the spy agency continued to develop plans to target Qaeda operatives, and top C.I.A. officials were briefed periodically about the progress of these efforts, the officials familiar with the program said.
In the spring of 2008, C.I.A director Michael V. Hayden and top aides were told about one aspect of these plans that involved gathering sensitive information in a foreign country, according to a former senior intelligence official.
Mr. Hayden ordered that the operation be scaled back and that Congress be notified if the plans became more fully developed, the official said.
Two of Mr. Hayden’s aides who were briefed on the program were Steven R. Kappes and Michael J. Sulick, who remained at the agency to work for Mr. Panetta.
Praetorian
07-13-2009, 19:49
A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.
The CIA was trying to Capture or kill Al Qaeda Operatives in the wake of 911? Was this really a SECRET to anybody?
:confused:
What did Congress think we were doing in Afghanistan?
Im serious... This is like watching a Twilight Zone episode.... The whole world knows the CIA has been tasked with capturing or killing Bin Laden and his cohorts, and the Congress is going to pretend as if we're all insane for thinking that?
The CIA was trying to Capture or kill Al Qaeda Operatives in the wake of 911?
Wasn't a secret to me.
Just when I thought I couldnt' be more disappointed in my government I am proven wrong, again.
incarcerated
07-13-2009, 23:24
Congress is pretending that it can be trusted.
civilian
07-14-2009, 01:22
Where is the backlash against Pelosi and the 11 other scumbag Democrats. I mean really! Their track record for keeping classified covert programs secret from the The York Times was so wonderful that Cheney wasn't concerned at all that they would blab their big months when the plan wasn't even being used yet. Amazing our own elected representatives would knife our own country in the back. Not to mention the people who put their lives on the line. Our guys have to constantly worry about their careers if the Dems get their wish and launch another witch hunt at the CIA. Just like they did during the Clinton and Carter administrations. Starting to see a pattern.
I see from reading from other postsin this thread, that it may have been more of a NSA program than a CIA program, but that certainly won't stop Pelosi and her stooges from going after the CIA as payback for catching her in a lie. Panetta carrying her water at the CIA, really makes me feel safe that they willing to Carry on the good fight other than sending drones across the fence. I'm sure we will find out 8 years from now what kinds of opportunities presented themselves and we didn't have the backbone to pull the trigger.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this country is not bulletproof and our enemies smell blood. They are watching us bankrupt ourselves with pork disguised as stimulus, universal health care and the global warming nonsense. Sounds more and more like Holder is itching to investigate how Bush kept us safe instead of saying thank you. We simply don't have enough votes to block anything in the Senate. 1970s all over again. I hope we can get our act together in time for the next election or at least learn to keep a secret in the meantime.
Let me see if I've got this correct:
a. Our NCA and national security agencies fear the Congressional oversight committee for intelligence cannot be trusted to keep a sensitive program vital to our safety a secret so something sensitive and vital to our post-911 national security is kept from Congress and we don't hear of it in the MSM for 8 years -
b. Congress is briefed -
c. It's leaked to the news in a matter of hours - :mad:
An application of the Congressional Theorem: a + b = c :(
What's a voter to think? :confused:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Let me see if I've got this correct:
a. Our NCA and national security agencies fear the Congressional oversight committee for intelligence cannot be trusted to keep a sensitive program vital to our safety a secret so something sensitive and vital to our post-911 national security is kept from Congress and we don't hear of it in the MSM for 8 years -
b. Congress is briefed -
c. It's leaked to the news in a matter of hours - :mad:
An application of the Congressional Theorem: a + b = c :(
What's a voter to think? :confused:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Very well said Richard. Even a Reporter should understand that explanation.......
...reporters have always understood that equation.
Reporters are taught that equation in reporter-school.
civilian
07-15-2009, 00:01
Let me see if I've got this correct:
a. Our NCA and national security agencies fear the Congressional oversight committee for intelligence cannot be trusted to keep a sensitive program vital to our safety a secret so something sensitive and vital to our post-911 national security is kept from Congress and we don't hear of it in the MSM for 8 years -
b. Congress is briefed -
c. It's leaked to the news in a matter of hours - :mad:
An application of the Congressional Theorem: a + b = c :(
What's a voter to think? :confused:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Kind of reminds me from that scene in Aliens 2, when Ripley (played by Weaver) ponders the questions which species is worst. The humans or the aliens, because she didn't see them F@*! each other over for a profit. Despite the fact I don't agree with anything the Dems stand for, what would possess them to leak our plans to get the enemy. A enemy who has killed our people, soldiersand and our allies on almost every continent. Dems have both houses of Congress and the White House for Christ's sake. All Congress should be told is the fact they are trying to capture and kill those who promise to kill us, regardless of which party is in the White House. In hindsight, wish Bush and the Republicans had changed the law. Like Obi Wan said in Episode II of Star Wars, "politicians are not to be trusted."
...what would possess them to leak our plans to get the enemy. A enemy who has killed our people, soldiersand and our allies on almost every continent.
Revenge - power - money...same old story. :(
Richard's $.02 :munchin
And so it goes... ;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
The CIA's Truth Problem
Tim Weiner, The Nation, 3 Jun 2009
The United States has been trying to run a secret intelligence service in an open democracy for sixty years. It depends on trust between politicians and spies, two professions known to wrestle with truth. Trust has been broken time and again.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent charge that the CIA lied to her about the torture of suspected terrorists under President George W. Bush has started a whirlwind of spin. The big lie--President Bush said the United States didn't torture, though we did--has been lost in the maelstrom. So has a harsh truth: yes, the CIA has stonewalled and deceived Congress in the past, but Congress is stone deaf and derelict in overseeing the CIA.
Pelosi's old Congressional colleague Leon Panetta, who runs the CIA, wants to set things right. "There's been a lot of poison in the well," Panetta said on May 18, and "it hurts this country" when "Congress and the CIA don't feel like they're partners." He said he would commune with his Congressional overseers, hash things out in private, talk with them "in a way in which we can be honest with one another."
Good luck, Leon. Others have gone before you.
Like it or not, the United States needs trustworthy intelligence. But spying is a dirty and dangerous business. The CIA depends on officers who know how to lie, cheat and steal--"to use deception, to use manipulation, to use, frankly, dishonesty," in the words of former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith. But when things go wrong overseas--as they often do--the CIA is called to account in Washington from time to time. That's where things really go wrong.
The CIA is "an organization that thrives on deception," says John Hamre, former deputy secretary of defense. "How do you manage an organization like that?" Congress hasn't had the will or the wherewithal to do it.
Congress created the CIA in 1947, and for a generation most of its members did as Senator John Stennis advised: "Make up your mind that you are going to have an intelligence agency and protect it as such, and shut your eyes some, and take what is coming." Then a newly anointed president, Gerald Ford, let slip that the CIA had run lethal plots against foreign leaders, which would tarnish every president since Harry Truman.
Ford looked back in some anguish on this; he had been a Congressman when called to serve on the Warren Commission, which looked into the assassination of President Kennedy. Late in life he reflected on the CIA's keeping secrets from the commission--notably its plots against Fidel Castro. It was "unconscionable" that the CIA was "not giving us the full story," Ford said.
But when he was in the White House, Ford feared that the truth about the past would destroy the CIA and damage the United States. That same kind of fear is drowning out calls for a truth commission on the conduct of the "war on terror."
"The question is how to plan to meet the investigation of the CIA," Ford mused at a White House meeting in February 1975. His chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, called for "a damage-limiting operation" to save the secrets from spilling in Congress. The man Ford chose to run the CIA--George H.W. Bush--tried his best. But no one protected former CIA director Richard Helms. He drew a two-year suspended sentence in 1977 on a federal charge of deceiving Congress about his orders from President Nixon to overthrow the government of Chile.
Helms had an obligation to testify truthfully, but he thought he had a higher oath to keep secrets. America's political history turned on which oath mattered more. For the past thirty years, Congress has fought for the right to oversee the CIA. It has failed to fulfill its responsibilities.
Before President Reagan took office, in 1981, Congress created intelligence oversight committees in the Senate and the House. Reagan's CIA chief, William Casey, foiled them for six years. "Casey was guilty of contempt of Congress from the day he was sworn in," said Robert Gates, Casey's number-two man, now defense secretary. Casey obfuscated gleefully before the intelligence committees; his senior officers testified evasively. Among the consequences was the Iran/Contra affair, which blew up in late 1986. The spectacle of the United States caught shipping weapons to Iran, skimming the profits and slipping the money to anticommunists in Central America came close to wrecking Reagan's presidency.
From 1986 to '94, the CIA sent ninety-five highly classified reports on Moscow's military strength to the White House. Senior CIA officials knew some of the data were manipulated by Moscow and designed to deceive the United States. They decided it didn't matter. The discovery of this deception in 1995 was "incredible" and "shocking," said Fred Hitz, then the CIA's inspector general. "What came out of this whole episode was a feeling that the agency couldn't be trusted." The CIA had broken "the sacred trust," said Hitz, "and without that, no espionage agency can do its job."
Starting in 1995, the CIA used the Peruvian air force to shoot down airplanes suspected of carrying cocaine. In April 2001, the operation attacked a plane carrying a family of Michigan missionaries over the Amazon. Veronica Bowers, 35, and her daughter, Charity, seven months old, were killed. CIA inspector general John Helgerson reported that CIA officers had violated presidential orders controlling the operation and hid their misdeeds from Congress, the Justice Department and the National Security Council.
Seven years after the shoot-down, Peter Hoekstra--the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, now running for governor of Michigan--published a few damning paragraphs from the report. He called it evidence that the CIA "operates outside the law and covers up what it does and lies to Congress." That's what Pelosi said about torture.
Now, on orders from President Obama to dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda, the CIA is killing suspected terrorists with remote-controlled missiles fired from drone aircraft above Pakistan and Afghanistan. The CIA decides if it has hit the right targets and whether civilian deaths are acceptable. Do we want to live in a world where the CIA's clandestine service has the authority to decide who lives and who dies? The idea that the CIA may be killing civilians, sparking an ever wider war, is too hot for Congress to handle.
Oversight is a word with two meanings--to oversee and to oversleep. So is mislead. It means to lie, and it means a lack of leadership. Congress has a responsibility to oversee the CIA that remains largely unfulfilled. It has to ask the right questions, demand full answers and report the facts annually to the American people.
Will the CIA tell Congress the truth? Would Congress listen if it did? If trust remains broken, intelligence will fail again. And when intelligence fails, soldiers and civilians die.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/weiner
Source is here (http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=D99F5ANO0&show_article=1).
AP sources: Tenet canceled secret CIA hit teams
Jul 15 06:17 PM US/Eastern
By PAMELA HESS and ADAM GOLDMAN
Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) - As CIA director in 2004, George Tenet terminated a secret program to develop hit teams to kill al-Qaida leaders, but his successors resurrected the plan, according to former intelligence officials.
Tenet ended the program because the agency could not work out its practical details, the officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program.
Porter Goss, who replaced Tenet in 2005, restarted the program, the former officials said. By the time Michael Hayden succeeded Goss as CIA chief in 2006 the effort was again flagging because of practical challenges.
CIA Director Leon Panetta drove the final stake into the effort in June after learning about the program. He called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees the next day, informing lawmakers about the program and saying that as vice president Dick Cheney had directed the CIA not to inform Congress about the operation.
The CIA declined to comment on the officials' comments.
One former senior intelligence official said Wednesday that the idea never quite died because it was a capability—the details of which remain classified—that the CIA wanted in its arsenal. But as time wore on, the official said, its need became less urgent.
Another former official said that the CIA's reliance on foreign intelligence services and on drone-launched missile strikes proved over time to be less risky yet effective in targeting al-Qaida chiefs for death or capture. President George W. Bush authorized the killing of al-Qaida leaders in 2001.
According to one congressional official, the agency spent more than $1 million over the eight years that the CIA considered launching the hit teams. The official would not detail the exact amount or how it was spent.
The House Intelligence Committee is laying the groundwork for a possible investigation of the program and its concealment from Congress. In late June it asked the CIA to provide documents about the now-canceled program to kill al-Qaida leaders.
Agency officials say it is complying with the request. Panetta has at the same time ordered a thorough internal review of the program.
The committee will try to establish how much was spent on the effort, whether any training was conducted and whether any officials traveled in association with the program, a committee official said. Those factors would determine whether the program had progressed enough to require congressional notification.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, is expected to decide as early as this week whether to press ahead with a full investigation.
MOO, the issue is: does Congress have the right to know what the CIA is planning to do or is that right limited to knowing what the CIA is actually going to do?
MOO, the issue is: does Congress have the right to know what the CIA is planning to do or is that right limited to knowing what the CIA is actually going to do?
All depends on the perceived threat, who's in charge, and who's up for re-election. :rolleyes:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
incarcerated
07-15-2009, 22:49
http://www.stratfor.com
U.S.: Reaction to the CIA Assassination Program
July 15, 2009 | 1634 GMT
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
On June 23, 2009, Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta learned of a highly compartmentalized program to assassinate al Qaeda operatives that was launched by the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When Panetta found out that the covert program had not been disclosed to Congress, he canceled it and then called an emergency meeting June 24 to brief congressional oversight committees on the program. Over the past week, many details of the program have been leaked to the press and the issue has received extensive media coverage.
That a program existed to assassinate al Qaeda leaders should certainly come as no surprise to anyone. It has been well-publicized that the Clinton administration had launched military operations and attempted to use covert programs to strike the al Qaeda leadership in the wake of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. In fact, the Clinton administration has come under strong criticism for not doing more to decapitate al Qaeda prior to 2001. Furthermore, since 2002, the CIA has conducted scores of strikes against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the MQ-1 Predator and the larger MQ-9 Reaper.
These strikes have dramatically increased over the past two years and the pace did not slacken when the Obama administration came to power in January. So far in 2009 there have been more than two dozen UAV strikes in Pakistan alone. In November 2002, the CIA also employed a UAV to kill Abu Ali al-Harithi, a senior al Qaeda leader suspected of planning the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole. The U.S. government has also attacked al Qaeda leaders at other times and in other places, such as the May 1, 2008, attack against al Qaeda-linked figures in Somalia using an AC-130 gunship.
As early as Oct. 28, 2001, The Washington Post ran a story discussing the Clinton-era presidential finding authorizing operations to capture or kill al Qaeda targets. The Oct. 28 Washington Post story also provided details of a finding signed by President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks that reportedly provided authorization to strike a larger cross section of al Qaeda targets, including those who are not in the Afghan theater of operations. Such presidential findings are used to authorize covert actions, but in this case the finding would also provide permission to contravene Executive Order 12333, which prohibits assassinations.
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush and the members of his administration were very clear that they sought to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the members of the al Qaeda organization. During the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections in the United States, every major candidate, including Barack Obama, stated that they would seek to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Obama was quite vocal in his criticism of the Bush administration for not doing more to go after al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan. This means that, regardless of who is in the White House, it is U.S. policy to go after individual al Qaeda members as well as the al Qaeda organization.
In light of these facts, it would appear that there was nothing particularly controversial about the covert assassination program itself, and the controversy that has arisen over it has more to do with the failure to report covert activities to Congress. The political uproar and the manner in which the program was canceled, however, will likely have a negative impact on CIA morale and U.S. counterterrorism efforts....
....Unlike UAV strikes, where pilots fly the vehicles by satellite link and can actually be located a half a world away, or the very tough and resilient airframe of an AC-130, which can fly thousands of feet above a target, a surgical assassination capability means that the CIA would have to put boots on the ground in hostile territory where operatives, by their very presence, would be violating the laws of the sovereign country in which they were operating. Such operatives, under nonofficial cover by necessity, would be at risk of arrest if they were detected.
Also, because of the nature of such a program, a higher level of operational security is required than in the program to strike al Qaeda targets using UAVs. It is far more complex to move officers and weapons into hostile territory in a stealthy manner to strike a target without warning and with plausible deniability. Once a target is struck with a barrage of Hellfire missiles, it is fairly hard to deny what happened. There is ample physical evidence tying the attack to American UAVs. When a person is struck by a sniper’s bullet or a small IED, the perpetrator and sponsor have far more deniability. By its very nature, and by operational necessity, such a program must be extremely covert.
Even with the cooperation of the host government, conducting an extraordinary rendition in a friendly country like Italy has proved to be politically controversial and personally risky for CIA officers, who can be threatened with arrest and trial. Conducting assassination operations in a country that is not so friendly is a far riskier undertaking. As seen by the Russian officers arrested in Doha after the February 2004 assassination of former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, such operations can generate blowback. The Russian officers responsible for the Yandarbiyev hit were arrested, tortured, tried and sentenced to life in prison (though after several months they were released into Russian custody to serve the remainder of their sentences).
Because of the physical risk to the officers involved in such operations, and the political blowback such operations can cause, it is not surprising that the details of such a program would be strictly compartmentalized inside the CIA and not widely disseminated beyond the gates of Langley. In fact, it is highly doubtful that the details of such a program were even widely known inside the CIA’s counterterrorism center (CTC) — though almost certainly some of the CTC staff suspected that such a covert program existed somewhere. The details regarding such a program were undoubtedly guarded carefully within the clandestine service, with the officer in charge most likely reporting directly to the deputy director of operations, who reports personally to the director of the CIA.
incarcerated
07-15-2009, 22:50
Part 2
Loose Lips Sink Ships
As trite as this old saying may sound, it is painfully true. In the counterterrorism realm, leaks destroy counterterrorism cases and often allow terrorist suspects to escape and kill again. There have been several leaks of “sources and methods” by congressional sources over the past decade that have disclosed details of sensitive U.S. government programs designed to do things such as intercept al Qaeda satellite phone signals and track al Qaeda financing. A classified appendix to the report of the 2005 Robb-Silberman Commission on Intelligence Capabilities (which incidentally was leaked to the press) discussed several such leaks, noted the costs they impose on the American taxpayers and highlighted the damage they do to intelligence programs.
The fear that details of a sensitive program designed to assassinate al Qaeda operatives in foreign countries could be leaked was probably the reason for the Bush administration’s decision to withhold knowledge of the program from the U.S. Congress, even though amendments to the National Security Act of 1947 mandate the reporting of most covert intelligence programs to Congress. Given the imaginative legal guidance provided by Bush administration lawyers regarding subjects such as enhanced interrogation, it would not be surprising to find that White House lawyers focused on loopholes in the National Security Act reporting requirements.
The validity of such legal opinions may soon be tested. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, recently said he was considering an investigation into the failure to report the program to Congress, and House Democrats have announced that they want to change the reporting requirements to make them even more inclusive.
Under the current version of the National Security Act, with very few exceptions, the administration is required to report the most sensitive covert activities to, at the very least, the so-called “gang of eight” that includes the chairmen and ranking minority members of the congressional intelligence committees, the speaker and minority leader of the House of Representatives and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. In the wake of the program’s disclosure, some Democrats would like to expand this minimum reporting requirement to include the entire membership of the congressional intelligence committees, which would increase the absolute minimum number of people to be briefed from eight to 40. Some congressmen argue that presidents, prompted by the CIA, are too loose in their invocation of the “extraordinary circumstances” that allow them to report only to the gang of eight and not the full committees. Yet ironically, the existence of the covert CIA program stayed secret for over seven and a half years, and yet here we are writing about it less than a month after the congressional committees were briefed.
The addition of that many additional lips to briefings pertaining to covert actions is not the only thing that will cause great consternation at the CIA. While legally mandated, disclosing covert programs to Congress has been very problematic. The angst felt at Langley over potential increases in the number of people to be briefed will be compounded by the recent reports that Attorney General Eric Holder may appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations and ethics reporting.
In April we discussed how some of the early actions of the Obama administration were having a chilling effect on U.S. counterterrorism programs and personnel. Expanding the minimum reporting requirements under the National Security Act will serve to turn the thermostat down several additional notches, as did Panetta’s overt killing of the covert program. It is one thing to quietly kill a controversial program; it is quite another to repudiate the CIA in public. In addition to damaging the already low morale at the agency, Panetta has announced in a very public manner that the United States has taken one important tool entirely out of the counterterrorism toolbox: Al Qaeda no longer has to fear the possibility of clandestine American assassination teams.
civilian
07-16-2009, 03:10
Revenge - power - money...same old story. :(
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Well if that is it then Richard, I'm starting to get pissed off. This crap is not acceptable. Hard to beleive our own people knifing our country. I guess wee are the jedi and they are the Sith.. Take too many bad 4 letter words to convey it any other way. Kind of hard to sit at a table with someone in favor of these gangsters robbing us of God given right to defend ourselves. Obama's handling of Iran and Hondurace speaks volumes. These Godless idiots are not even hiding it anylonger. I remember hearing Pelosi gave out important details about the Zodiac murderer or was it the the Night Stalker ?when she was Mayor of San Fransilly. The LA police were pissed off because she gave out info that only the murder would know or possess. No regard for anyone but herself. Majority of AMerican are idiots are watching too much football. Something! THis is getting down right crazy. Talking about individuals who wouldn't stand a chance doing anything in the private sector. Like a bad Home Owners Association.
incarcerated
08-02-2009, 01:05
Is it just me, or do you get the impression that being Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff and running the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy have done nothing to prepare this guy for the job?
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/panetta_CIA_politics/2009/08/01/242839.html
Political Payback Distracting CIA, Panetta Warns
Saturday, August 1, 2009 7:13 PM
WASHINGTON – CIA Director Leon Panetta warned in an article published Saturday that the country's premier intelligence agency has been hurt by a climate of recriminations in Congress over its past practices.
"I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action," Panetta wrote in an op-ed piece published in the online edition of The Washington Post.
....Panetta said the agency has ended controversial interrogation and detention practices authorized by the administration of president George W. Bush.
"Yet my agency continues to pay a price for enduring disputes over policies that no longer exist," he wrote.
"Those conflicts fuel a climate of suspicion and partisanship on Capitol Hill that our intelligence officers -- and our country -- would be better off without," he wrote.
Panetta cited an uproar that followed a briefing he gave last month to congressional overseers on his decision to cancel a classified anti-terrorist program.
...."Debates over who knew what when -- or what happened seven years ago -- miss a larger, more important point: We are a nation at war in a dangerous world, and good intelligence is vital to us all. That is where our focus should be."
:boohoo
This was a pretty good article and it will be interesting to see events continue to enfold.
CIA Director Leon Panetta’s emergency testimony to Congress about an illegal assassination program has set off a crisis at the spy agency. The Daily Beast’s Joseph Finder exclusively reports that:
• The secret assassination ‘program’ wasn’t much more than a PowerPoint presentation, a task force and a collection of schemes—it never got off the ground
• Panetta’s three immediate predecessors—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—have spoken to him, and that he now sees that no laws were broken.
• Panetta has frantically tried to rectify his gaffe, but now faces increased Congressional oversight.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-18/spy-agency-fiasco/
One of those unintended consequences as a result of the purging of the PM side of the CIA under President Clinton and then belatedly realizing it was a BIG mistake. I had some good friends forced into early retirement because of the idea they were unnecessary in a vision based on a love of technology and the cumbayahish warm and fuzzy intelligence models of the time. And so it goes...
Richard's $.02 :munchin
C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists
Mark Mazzetti, NYT, 19 Aug 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.
Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.
The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.
It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.
Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.
Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq.
It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license.
:mad:Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta’s decision on the assassination program was “clear and straightforward.”
“Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it.”
A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.
:confused:Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress. “It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for,” she said.
The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta’s predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed.
The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.
One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny.
“It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin,” the official said. “It went well beyond that.”
Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.’s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.
In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said.
Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.
C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.
An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians.
The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.
But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.
Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs.
But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot.
“I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.
Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1250766155-b8K1/sdxFZmaTUtgxy8ohw
And the beat - and finger-pointing - goes on...;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on Drones
James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, NYT, 20 Aug 2009
From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, the company formerly known as Blackwater has assumed a role in Washington’s most important counterterrorism program: the use of remotely piloted drones to kill Al Qaeda’s leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees.
The division’s operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater. It has grown through government work, even as it attracted criticism and allegations of brutality in Iraq.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the agency hired Blackwater in 2004 as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top Qaeda operatives.
In interviews on Thursday, current and former government officials provided new details about Blackwater’s association with the assassination program, which began in 2004 not long after Porter J. Goss took over at the C.I.A. The officials said that the spy agency did not dispatch the Blackwater executives with a “license to kill.” Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.
“The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise,” said one government official familiar with the canceled C.I.A. program. “It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue.”
Any operation to capture or kill militants would have had to have been approved by the C.I.A. director and presented to the White House before it was carried out, the officials said. The agency’s current director, Leon E. Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June.
The extent of Blackwater’s business dealings with the C.I.A. has largely been hidden, but its public contract with the State Department to provide private security to American diplomats in Iraq has generated intense scrutiny and controversy.
The company lost the job in Iraq this year, after Blackwater guards were involved in shootings in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead. It still has other, less prominent State Department work.
Five former Blackwater guards have been indicted in federal court on charges related to the 2007 episode.
A spokeswoman for Xe did not respond to a request for comment.
For its intelligence work, the company’s sprawling headquarters in North Carolina has a special division, known as Blackwater Select. The company’s first major arrangement with the C.I.A. was signed in 2002, with a contract to provide security for the agency’s new station in Kabul, Afghanistan. Blackwater employees assigned to the Predator bases receive training at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to learn how to load Hellfire missiles and laser-guided smart bombs on the drones, according to current and former employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of upsetting the company.
The C.I.A. has for several years operated Predator drones out of a remote base in Shamsi, Pakistan, but has secretly added a second site at an air base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, several current and former government and company officials said. The existence of the Predator base in Jalalabad has not previously been reported.
Officials said the C.I.A. now conducted most of its Predator missile and bomb strikes on targets in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region from the Jalalabad base, with drones landing or taking off almost hourly. The base in Pakistan is still in use. But officials said that the United States decided to open the Afghanistan operation in part because of the possibility that the Pakistani government, facing growing anti-American sentiment at home, might force the C.I.A. to close the one in Pakistan.
Blackwater is not involved in selecting targets or actual strikes. The targets are selected by the C.I.A., and employees at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., pull the trigger remotely. Only a handful of the agency’s employees actually work at the Predator bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the current and former employees said.
They said that Blackwater’s direct role in these operations had sometimes led to disputes with the C.I.A. Sometimes when a Predator misses a target, agency employees accuse Blackwater of poor bomb assembly, they said. In one instance last year recounted by the employees, a 500-pound bomb dropped off a Predator before it hit the target, leading to a frantic search for the unexploded bomb in the remote Afghan-Pakistani border region. It was eventually found about 100 yards from the original target.
The role of contractors in intelligence work expanded after the Sept. 11 attacks, as spy agencies were forced to fill gaps created when their work forces were reduced during the 1990s, after the end of the cold war.
More than a quarter of the intelligence community’s current work force is made up of contractors, carrying out missions like intelligence collection and analysis and, until recently, interrogation of terrorist suspects.
“There are skills we don’t have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for,” Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who ran the C.I.A. from 2006 until early this year, said during a panel discussion on Thursday on the privatization of intelligence.
General Hayden, who succeeded Mr. Goss at the agency, acknowledged that the C.I.A. program continued under his watch, though it was not a priority. He said the program was never prominent during his time at the C.I.A., which was one reason he did not believe that he had to notify Congress. He said it did not involve outside contractors by the time he came in.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who presides over the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the agency should have notified Congress in any event. “Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the Congress,” she said. “If they are not, that is a violation of the law.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
HowardCohodas
08-21-2009, 09:20
Blackwater is not involved in selecting targets or actual strikes. The targets are selected by the C.I.A., and employees at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., pull the trigger remotely. Only a handful of the agency’s employees actually work at the Predator bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the current and former employees said.
What???
Aren't the Predators managed by the Air Force and remote controlled from Creech AFP?
Aren't the Predators managed by the Air Force?
Not all - as with a number of other such assets. ;)
Richard
Obama White House v. CIA; Panetta Threatened to Quit
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=8398902
'...................In addition to concerns about the CIA's reputation and its legal exposure, other White House insiders say Panetta has been frustrated by what he perceives to be less of a role than he was promised in the administration's intelligence structure. Panetta has reportedly chafed at reporting through the director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, according to the senior adviser who said Blair is equally unhappy with Panetta.
"Leon will be leaving," predicted a former top U.S. intelligence official, citing the conflict with Blair. The former official said Panetta is also "uncomfortable" with some of the operations being carried out by the CIA that he did not know about until he took the job."
Where there is smoke there is..................
frostfire
08-24-2009, 13:42
More than a quarter of the intelligence community’s current work force is made up of contractors, carrying out missions like intelligence collection and analysis and, until recently, interrogation of terrorist suspects.
“There are skills we don’t have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for,” Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who ran the C.I.A. from 2006 until early this year, said during a panel discussion on Thursday on the privatization of intelligence.
With the the military as big and versatile as it is...I found this statement dubious