Democrats Say Panetta Admits CIA Misled Them

[incarcerated]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1247...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....

[Richard]

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

[dirtyshirt]

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"

[Box]

...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 !!!

[Surf n Turf]

Originally Posted by Richard

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

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 ). 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 --

SnT

[plato]

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?

[Richard]

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.

Richard's $.02

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...er=rss&emc=rss

[Richard]

And the beat goes on...

Richard's $.02

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/...lance_hayden_3

[LarryW]

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]

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....... It's really too bad it's not possible......

Big Teddy

[PRB]

Pretty sad when a political appointee gets spanked by the POTUS/ Dem Congress for supporting his own agency.
Sadder yet when he folds.

Originally Posted by LarryW

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.

[Richard]

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.

Not a good sign when considering the organizational climate in regards to an institution's effectiveness.

Richard's $.02

[swpa19]

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]

Originally Posted by swpa19

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