Cheney Dicked around with Congress

[BeBMan]

I thought I post this before loinburger starts to copy/paste all the important news stuff in an attempt to make friends and influence people:

Cheney 'ordered CIA to hide plan'


Dick Cheney played a key role in US anti-terror policy after 9/11

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney gave direct orders to the CIA to conceal an intelligence programme from Congress, US media reports say.

The existence of the programme, set up after 9/11, was hidden for eight years and even now its nature is not known.

CIA director Leon Panetta is said to have abandoned the project when he learnt of it last month.

He has now told a House committee that Mr Cheney was behind the secrecy, the unnamed US sources say.

There has been no comment from Mr Cheney.

War of words

The claims come amid an increasingly bitter row between the CIA and Congress over whether key information was withheld about other aspects of the agency's operations.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed that the CIA misled her about interrogation methods including waterboarding, while other senior Democrats have quoted Mr Panetta as admitting that his agency regularly misled Congress before he took office.

Leon Panetta
Panetta is said to have closed the programme when he discovered it

Details of the newly-revealed secret programme have still not been divulged, but sources say it did not relate to the CIA's rendition programme, interrogation methods or a controversial domestic surveillance project.

Officials quoted by the New York Times say the programme was launched by anti-terror operatives at the CIA soon after the 2001 attacks, and involved planning and training but never became fully operational.

Another unnamed official told AP it was an embryonic intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at yielding intelligence that would be used to conduct covert operations abroad.

Sources have told a number of US media outlets Mr Cheney personally instructed the CIA to withhold information about the programme from Congress.

Mr Panetta - who took over directorship of the CIA under President Obama's administration - is said to have learnt about the programme only on 23 June.

The next day he called an emergency meeting with congressional intelligence committees to tell them about its existence and to say that it was being cancelled, the reports say.

Veto threat

The allegations come as Democrats in Congress are trying to push through new rules that would increase the number of members of Congress who are told about covert operations.

The White House is threatening to veto the bill, fearing that operational secrecy could be compromised.

The CIA has not commented on the reports of Mr Cheney's role.

"It's not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing," said spokesman Paul Gimigliano.

"When a CIA 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."

A CIA spokesman insisted earlier this week that "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8146466.stm

[loinburger]

You beat me to it, and your thread title is cleverer than mine would have been

[BeBMan]

I thought a moment of writing "dickgirled" but then figured it would be overdone

[Zkribbler]

I don't know what is more frightening: Chaney giving the order to withhold information from Congress or the CIA following it.

[Dinner]

The program in question seems to be Cheney's secret, and highly illegal, assassination program which was revealed by the journalist Seymour Hersh (He's the guy who broke the story about the My Lai Massacre).

[Zkribbler]

The program in question seems to be Cheney's secret, and highly illegal, assassination program which was revealed by the journalist Seymour Hersh (He's the guy who broke the story about the My Lai Massacre).

That was my first guess, then I read this passage in the Opening Article:

Officials quoted by the New York Times say the programme was launched by anti-terror operatives at the CIA soon after the 2001 attacks, and involved planning and training but never became fully operational.

Another unnamed official told AP it was an embryonic intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at yielding intelligence that would be used to conduct covert operations abroad.

My understanding of Hersh's revelations were that Cheney's operation did NOT involve intelligence gather but rather that Cheney dispatched "hit teams" to assassinate high-level terrorists and others and that this operation was fully functional and that a number of targets were located and killed.

[Kuciwalker]

1) This sounds like a whole lot of noise to try and defend Pelosi et. al. There was a secret program that was concealed from Congress! Except it never actually got beyond the planning stages and we won't tell you what it was... for all we know, it could have been a plan to replace all the coffee machines at Langley.

2) There are few things I could be less offended by than CIA operations to assassinate terrorists.

[Zkribbler]

1) This sounds like a whole lot of noise to try and defend Pelosi et. al. There was a secret program that was concealed from Congress! Except it never actually got beyond the planning stages and we won't tell you what it was... for all we know, it could have been a plan to replace all the coffee machines at Langley.

2) There are few things I could be less offended by than CIA operations to assassinate terrorists.

--Except assassinations are against U.S. law.

[Kuciwalker]

I remain unmoved.

[dannubis]

Yes principles exist but a bit less for you, we know.

[DinoDoc]

AP Interview: Hayden denies Congress not informed
By PAMELA HESS – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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."

On a seperate note:

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.

Good for Obama. I'd also like to thank Congress for proving his point.

[DinoDoc]

--Except assassinations are against U.S. law.

Are they? What would you call these predator drone attacks against the hideouts of AQ leaders?

[molly bloom]

I remain unmoved.

Gosh- so hardcore and worldly-wise, and yet so young, tender and inexperienced...

... ah, Alles klar !

In 1976, President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 to clarify U.S. foreign intelligence activities. The order was enacted in response to the post-Watergate revelations that the CIA had staged multiple attempts on the life of Cuban President Fidel Castro.

In a section of the order labeled "Restrictions on Intelligence Activities," Ford outlawed political assassination: Section 5(g), entitled "Prohibition on Assassination," states: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."

Since 1976, every U.S. president has upheld Ford's prohibition on assassinations. In 1978 President Carter issued an executive order with the chief purpose of reshaping the intelligence structure. In Section 2-305 of that order, Carter reaffirmed the U.S. prohibition on assassination.

In 1981, President Reagan, through Executive Order 12333, reiterated the assassination prohibition. Reagan was the last president to address the topic of political assassination. Because no subsequent executive order or piece of legislation has repealed the prohibition, it remains in effect.

The ban, however, did not prevent the Reagan administration from dropping bombs on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's home in 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. troops.

Additionally, the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles at suspected guerrilla camps in Afghanistan in 1998 after the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Following the September 11. 2001, attacks, the White House said the presidential directive banning assassinations would not prevent the United States from acting in self-defense.

According to an October 21, 2001, Washington Post article, President Bush in September of last year signed an intelligence "finding" instructing the CIA to engage in "lethal covert operations" to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization.

White House and CIA lawyers believe that the intelligence "finding" is constitutional because the ban on political assassination does not apply to wartime. They also contend that the prohibition does not preclude the United States taking action against terrorists.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/11/04/us.assassination.policy/

[Darius871]

Gosh- so hardcore and worldly-wise, and yet so young, tender and inexperienced...

... ah, Alles klar !

In 1976, President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 to clarify U.S. foreign intelligence activities. The order was enacted in response to the post-Watergate revelations that the CIA had staged multiple attempts on the life of Cuban President Fidel Castro.

In a section of the order labeled "Restrictions on Intelligence Activities," Ford outlawed political assassination: Section 5(g), entitled "Prohibition on Assassination," states: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."

...

Additionally, the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles at suspected guerrilla camps in Afghanistan in 1998 after the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/11/...nation.policy/

Eh, the key phrase in that article would be "political assassination," e.g. heads of state, ministers, etc. Who here can explain to me why that Order necessarily encompasses leaders of terrorist organizations hostile to the United States? Would blowing OBL's brains out be a "political assassination"?

[molly bloom]

Eh, the key phrase in that article would be "political assassination," e.g. heads of state, ministers, etc. Who here can explain to me why that Order necessarily encompasses leaders of terrorist organizations hostile to the United States? Would blowing OBL's brains out be a "political assassination"?

It don't- at least according to the article on CNN. Since Bin Laden is not an elected or hereditary head of state but a leader of a terrorist group, then he's in the same league as any of the I.R.A., the R.A.F., Baader-Meinhof, JRA, Red Brigades, and so on.


He isn't (supposedly) a non-combatant either, so I don't really see what the problem is- other than public relations and politics:

Death on the Rock was the title of a programme in the current affairs series This Week, made by Thames Television and broadcast on the ITV network on 28 April 1988. The programme investigated the incident, on Sunday 6 March 1988, when three members of the IRA, sent to Gibraltar on an active service mission, were shot and killed by members of British special forces. The incident, and subsequently the programme about it, became controversial as a result of uncertainty and conflicting evidence about the manner in which the killing was carried out and the degree to which it was an "execution" with no attempted arrest. The programme interviewed witnesses who claimed to have heard no prior warning given by the SAS troops and to have seen the shooting as one carried out "in cold blood." Furthermore, the defence that the IRA team might, if allowed time, have had the capacity to trigger by remote control a car bomb in the main street, was also subject to criticism, including that from an Army bomb disposal expert.

[...]

For much of the British public, the various bombing attacks of the IRA (many of them involving civilian casualties), seemed to give the incident in Gibraltar the character of a wartime event, whose legitimacy was unquestionable.

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/deathonthe/deathonthe.htm