Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month
Jack Linthicum
The seven Congress people are allies of Speaker Pelosi, but the letter
was written.
July 9, 2009
Democrats Say C.I.A. Deceived Congress for Years
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E.
Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door
testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from
Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee
members said.
In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats
said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years
about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This
is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent
periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by
Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the
signers.
In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the
C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this
over a trivial matter.”
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative
Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s
disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican,
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly
reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been
misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in
at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”
In a related development, President Obama threatened to veto the
pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision
that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the
entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-
called Gang of Eight — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both
houses of Congress and the two Intelligence Committees.
A White House statement released on Wednesday said the proposed
expansion of briefings would undermine “a long tradition spanning
decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence
matters.” Democrats have complained that under President George W.
Bush, entire programs were hidden from most committee members for
years.
The question of the C.I.A.’s candor with the Congressional oversight
committees has been hotly disputed since Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused
the agency of failing to disclose in a 2002 briefing that it had used
waterboarding against a terrorism suspect. Ms. Pelosi said the agency
routinely misled Congress, though she later said she intended to fault
the Bush administration rather than career intelligence officials.
Since then, Republicans have called Ms. Pelosi’s complaint an
unwarranted attack on the integrity of counterterrorism officers and
have demanded an investigation. Democrats have rebuffed the demand.
In a statement Wednesday night, a C.I.A. spokesman, George Little,
noted that the agency “took the initiative to notify the oversight
committees” about the past failures. He said the agency and Mr.
Panetta “believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently
informed.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/us/politics/09intel.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
Jack Linthicum
and
House Intelligence Chairman Reyes Says CIA Lied to Committee
By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The chairman of the House intelligence committee has accused the CIA
of lying to the panel in a classified matter, the second time in less
than two months that a top House Democrat has charged the spy agency
of intentionally misleading Congress.
Rep. Silvestre Reyes (Tex.), in a letter sent Tuesday to House
leadership, said that CIA officials "affirmatively lied" to the
intelligence committee when recently notifying the panel about a
classified matter. Reyes wrote that it was one of several recent
instances in which the CIA has not fully informed the committee on
other classified notifications.
His complaint echoed charges by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.),
who on May 14 said the agency intentionally misled her in a 2002
briefing on interrogation techniques used against alleged terrorist
detainees.
"This committee has been misled, has not been provided full and
complete notifications, and [in at least one case] was affirmatively
lied to," Reyes wrote. The letter, which was first reported yesterday
by Congressional Quarterly, was sent to Pelosi, House Minority Leader
John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the ranking
Republican on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
In an interview yesterday, Reyes declined to expand upon the
allegations in his letter, saying "it's all classified information."
Late last night, he issued a statement crediting CIA Director Leon E.
Panetta with bringing the issues to the committee's attention at a
June 24 briefing.
The CIA rejected the allegation that it lied to Congress. "This agency
and this director are committed to a candid dialogue with Congress.
When Director Panetta believes something should be raised with the
Hill, it gets done quickly and clearly. Our oversight committees
recognize that," George Little, an agency spokesman, said in a
statement.
Further increasing the tension on intelligence issues, the White House
issued a veto threat yesterday to a provision that House Democrats
included in an intelligence authorization bill set for debate today.
The provision makes it the prerogative of the two committee chairmen
to determine whether classified briefing information could be opened
up to the entire membership of the House and Senate intelligence
panels.
The White House said it "strongly objects" to that language,
suggesting it would create an unconstitutional usurpation of executive
power.
The provision was included at the behest of Pelosi after her showdown
with the agency in mid-May.
Pelosi initiated the CIA feud when she accused the agency of
intentionally misleading her, and not telling her about the use of
waterboarding, in a September 2002 briefing on interrogations.
CIA documents released two months ago included notations indicating
that Pelosi was informed at the 2002 briefing about waterboarding.
Republicans have suggested Pelosi has not told the truth about her
knowledge and support of the enhanced interrogation technique, an
allegation they plan to repeat in today's debate
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/08/AR2009070804142.html?hpid=moreheadlines
dott.Piergiorgio
[cut]
This news raisetwo questions, and I guess that even conservative US
people can agree that for US's sake, must be answered:
Firstly, all this is started in 2001 agreed, but _when_ in 2001 ? from
spring or from fall ? I guess that a more exact starting point is really
needed, for obvious reasons.
Second, without details, what type of thing was hidden ? we have at
least two different, but not interchangeable, words: "actions",
"programs"; in my parsing, "actions" means "covert ops/intelligence
gathering" and "programs" means "procurement & deploying of sekrit
gizmos"; there can be other meanings, of course, but paradoxically, it's
more serious lie about gizmos, esp. gizmos whose don't work as
advertised, whose can have serious consequences, at least in the more or
less black part of the budget (I prefer not to think about an operative
captured (if not worse) because of a gizmo failure....).
I have pointed in past that seriousness & trustworthiness in gizmo
procurement is more than fundamental, not only because is too easy to
poach taxpayer money & escaping GAO's aegis but also because gizmos can
be the decisive "ace in the sleeve" during wartime (let's think about
the role of ULTRA & MAGIC during WWII, at least after the dissemination
from the latter was seriously reviewed & corrected)
returning to "action", parsed as "covert ops", I must point that the
balance between people whose by nature are public (politicians) and
classified matter is rather difficult to obtain, and on top of it, in
the US case, there can be serious discrepancies in rules & timetables
about declassifying documents between the too many agencies and the
Capitol (aside the obvious fact that not few documents should be
declassified case-by-case to avoid unpleasantiness with allies and/or
key countries; a good, if not canonical example is handling
declassification of docs involving Greece and/or Turkey)
On paper, at least on foreign matters, should be feasible a post-facto
report on covert ops behind closed doors, providing the developing of a
working mechanism for a quick and discreet "taking his responsibility
and resigning" if what was done don't please the congress
people/critters, but in many cases can be source of issues between the
legislative and executive branches (generic example, helping endangered
key people to escape to the US of A and Congress enacting legislation
restricting or damaging said expatrieated people, like frozing of
confiscating the wrong type of foreign assets)
At least for now isn't another "The Divine really bless America" issue...
Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.
Jack Linthicum
The program or whatever has never been revealed to any member of
congress, breaking the National Security Act of 1947. It was
terminated as soon as DCI Panetta learned of it. The guessing and
surmising will have to wait but I would assume some sort of
retaliation for 911 at the level of petty vengeance.
Dennis
> WASHINGTON � The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E.
> Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door
> testimony that the C.I.A. concealed �significant actions� from
> Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee
> members said.
So what else is new?
Dennis
Jack Linthicum
A large bowl of Darvons outside the Republican House caucus room.
Note: Do not use this medication if you have a history of suicidal
thoughts or actions. Propoxyphene should never be taken together with
a sedative (such as Valium or Xanax) or an antidepressant if you are
also drinking large amounts of alcohol.
Jack Linthicum
>
Hints as to what the initiative is or was
"The program remains classified, and those knowledgeable about it
would describe it only vaguely yesterday. Several current and former
administration officials called it an "on-again, off-again" attempt to
create a new intelligence capability and said it was related to the
collection of information on suspected terrorists that was instituted
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."
Secret Program Fuels CIA-Congress Dispute
Democrats Accuse Agency of Pattern of Withholding Information From
Lawmakers
By Paul Kane and Ben Pershing
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 10, 2009
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 incident has reignited a long-running dispute between
congressional Democrats and the CIA, with some calling it part of a
broader pattern of the agency withholding information from Congress.
Some Republicans, meanwhile, privately questioned whether Panetta --
who has stood with CIA officers in a dispute with House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) -- was looking to score points with House Democrats.
The program remains classified, and those knowledgeable about it would
describe it only vaguely yesterday. Several current and former
administration officials called it an "on-again, off-again" attempt to
create a new intelligence capability and said it was related to the
collection of information on suspected terrorists that was instituted
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Congressional Republicans said no briefing about the program was
required because it was not a major tool used against al-Qaeda and
other terrorist groups. They accused Democrats of using the matter to
divert attention away from Pelosi's accusation that CIA officials
intentionally misled her in 2002 about the agency's interrogations of
suspected terrorists.
But Democrats waved away such claims and said they may open a
congressional investigation of the concealment of the program.
"Instructions were given not to brief Congress," Dianne Feinstein (D-
Calif.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in an
interview.
Small details of the Panetta briefing emerged earlier this week when
Democrats from the House intelligence committee leaked letters that
had been privately sent to the CIA director and the bipartisan House
leadership. The CIA declined to comment yesterday, pointing to the
statement it made Wednesday after six Democrats sent their letter to
Panetta accusing the CIA of having "concealed significant actions."
"This agency and this director believe it is vital to keep the
Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta's actions back
that up. As the letter from these six representatives notes, it was
the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight
committees," agency spokesman George Little said.
Current and former administration officials familiar with the program
said it was not directly related to previously disclosed high-priority
programs such as detainee interrogations or the warrantless
surveillance of suspected terrorists on U.S. soil. It was a
intelligence-collection activity run by the CIA's Counterterrorism
Center, officials said. It was not a covert action, which by law would
have required a presidential finding and a report to Congress.
"This characterization of something that began in 2001 and continued
uninterrupted for eight years is just wrong. Honest men would question
that characterization. It was more off and on," said a former top Bush
administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of the classified nature of the issue.
The official said he was certain that, if the nature of the program
could be revealed, it would be seen as "no big deal."
However, another intelligence official said that the program was
"sensitive" and should have been briefed to the committees, and that
lawmakers had been told they had been fully informed on collection
activities.
CIA officials brought the program to Panetta's attention, and when he
realized it potentially conflicted with what the committees had been
told, he immediately went to Capitol Hill, according to officials who
discussed classified material on the condition of anonymity.
Panetta has initiated an internal review of the matter.
Democrats this week cited the incident as a reason for approving a
provision they have added to a bill, now under consideration, that
would authorize intelligence activities for 2010 but forbid the
administration from limiting briefings only to top congressional
leaders and the four top lawmakers on the House and Senate committees.
The Obama White House, as the Bush administration previously had, has
threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if that
provision is attached, citing existing laws allowing the executive
branch to conduct intelligence matters while limiting some highly
sensitive information. House Democrats said yesterday they are
negotiating a compromise to the standoff.
Reactions to the Panetta briefing split along partisan lines.
Republicans said Democrats were trying to find other instances of the
CIA's misleading Congress to back up Pelosi's claim.
"They were looking for some political theater," said Rep. Mike Rogers
(R-Mich.), a member of the intelligence panel. He said Panetta came
into the meeting "with his hair on fire" but, after a question-and-
answer session, the issue seemed less serious.
"That particular program never quite got there. It was turned off,"
Rogers said.
But House Democrats, who have unanimously backed the speaker's
assertions, exited the briefing ready to investigate.
"The full committee was stunned," said Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (Calif.).
Rep. Silvestre Reyes (Tex.), chairman of the House intelligence
committee, called Panetta "a stand-up guy."
Eshoo said the intelligence panels should investigate how and why the
program was concealed from Congress. Rep. Rush D. Holt (N.J.)
suggested "a major commission" or other entity to conduct a much
broader investigation of intelligence practices. "A lot of people are
trying to turn this into an inside-the-Beltway political matter," Holt
said, emphasizing that the dispute goes to the heart of the
intelligence committees' oversight function.
The former top Bush administration official rejected that view, saying
that CIA officials kept nothing from Congress that should have been
communicated.
President Obama has rejected calls from Democrats, led by Pelosi, to
create a "truth commission" to investigate allegations of misconduct
by Bush administration officials. The White House says such a body
would foment a partisan battle.
Republicans have also opposed a commission but have supported an
investigation by a special House panel to examine Pelosi's claims in
May that CIA officials misled her about interrogations. They have
accused the speaker of demeaning the nation's spies.
"I've worked closely with our intelligence professionals, and they are
that -- professionals. And I do not believe that the CIA lied to
Congress. I'm still waiting for Speaker Pelosi to either put up the
facts or retract her statement and apologize," House Minority Leader
John A. Boehner (Ohio) told reporters yesterday.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903017_pf.html
Jack Linthicum
Hoekstra finally gets the message: “We have to pull the information
out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.
July 12, 2009
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
By SCOTT SHANE
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 hurt the effectiveness of the
counterterrorism surveillance effort.
Democrats in Congress, who contend that the covert action provision
was abused to cover up programs under President Bush, are seeking to
change the law to permit the full 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.
A spokesman for the intelligence agency, 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.”
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 remains classified.
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.
“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,” one intelligence
official, who would speak about the classified program only on
condition of anonymity. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.”
Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program,
whose details remain secret. Most of those interviewed, however, have
said that it was an important activity that they felt should have been
disclosed.
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 personally approve 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 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 back 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.
Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat of Illinois on the House
committee, wrote on Friday to the chairman, Representative Silvestre
Reyes, 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, Democrat of
Washington. “We will absolutely be held accountable for anything the
agency does.”
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the committee’s top
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 has not been as forthcoming as the
law requires.
“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr.
Hoekstra said.
Jack Linthicum
wrote:
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* JULY 13, 2009
CIA Had Secret Al Qaeda Plan
Initiative at Heart of Spat With Congress Examined Ways to Seize, Kill
Terror Chiefs
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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.
View Full Image
CIA Had Secret Al Qaeda Plan
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said CIA Director Panetta, above, told lawmakers
Vice President Cheney ordered information be withheld from Congress.
CIA Had Secret Al Qaeda Plan
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.
View Full Image
CIA Had Secret Al Qaeda Plan
European Pressphoto Agency
Dick Cheney
CIA Had Secret Al Qaeda Plan
CIA Had Secret Al Qaeda Plan
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."
Jack Linthicum
wrote:
More and more this "program" sounds like some hare-brained idea cooked
up to get the backing of the vice President and maybe get somebody a
promotion. Every now and then the CIA would trot out some people have
them shoot at targets and throw grenades while Cheney watched form a
safe distance. Mostly reminds me of the school play, where some lines
are thrown out to convince the man in charge that he is liked and
obeyed.
New Info Brings More Questions On Secret CIA Program
By Zachary Roth - July 13, 2009, 12:13PM
We've gotten some more information in recent days about that secret
CIA program that the agency withheld key information from Congress
about, and that CIA director Leon Panetta promptly shut down when he
learned about it last month. But the new reports only raise more
questions.
On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the CIA withheld
information about the secret program "on direct orders" from then-Vice
President Dick Cheney. The Times did not identify the program, but
noted that, according to intelligence and congressional officials, it
involved neither the CIA's interrogation program nor its domestic
intelligence (e.g. warrantless wiretapping and surveillance)
activities.
Now today, the Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.) that the
program was an effort to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, prompted
by a 2001 presidential finding authorizing the CIA to conduct such a
program. The Journal adds that the program never became fully
operational before Panetta shut it down. The report, sourced to
"former intelligence officials familiar with the matter," appears to
jibe in some respects with comments made by New Yorker reporter
Seymour Hersh at a public event earlier this year, in which he
referred to an "executive assassination ring" reporting to Cheney.
But there's reason to believe we still don't have anything like the
full story. First of all, according to one of the Journal's sources,
both Cheney and President Bush opposed what seems to be a particularly
aggressive iteration of the program, involving using "teams of CIA and
military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did
after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks," by carrying out targeted
assassinations.
That doesn't appear to line up with the Times' report that Cheney was
behind the decision to keep Congress in the dark about the secret
program, though strictly speaking it doesn't contradict it.
But there are other reasons to keep asking questions:
Perhaps most importantly, a program, launched immediately after
September 11 to capture or kill top al Qaeda operatives just doesn't
seem sufficiently radioactive to have provoked the kerfuffle it has.
To be sure, Congress outlawed targeted CIA assassinations in the 1970s
in response to the excesses of 50s and 60s, and the issue played a key
role in the move during the same period to give Congress greater
powers to oversee the agency. And if the program allowed CIA to act
without the consent or knowledge of liaison services in the countries
where the targets were located, that's obviously a big deal.
Still, the US military has openly been trying to get Osama bin Laden
and other top Qaeda leaders "dead or alive" since shortly after the
9/11 attacks. Would CIA involvement in that effort be so explosive
that it would not only need to be kept from Congress in the first
place, but would also have been shut down by Panetta as soon as he
learned about it?
By the same token, it was Democratic lawmakers who brought the issue
into the news last week by complaining that they had for years been
kept in the dark on the unidentified program. Would they have chosen
to initiate that spat when it seems to allow them to be portrayed as
opposing an effort to hunt down al Qaeda terrorists?
We don't have answers to these questions yet, but it seems clear that
there's more to be uncovered here. And given the Democratic push to
look closer at the circumstances under which Congress was kept out of
the loop -- as well as Panetta's own move for an informal, internal
probe into CIA's handling of the program -- we may well get them.
Jack Linthicum
wrote:
This whole op reminds me of a true CIA operation. Several members of
my training class were assigned to develop a "safe haven" base in a
Vietnamese province overrun by VC. They were given a room on the first
floor and every resource.
At about week three someone told them that not only was the province
overrun by VC but the location of their "safe haven" was probably the
headquarters for whatever people were running the opposition to the
U.S. and ARVN in that area.
So they decided to use their unlimited resources for their own good.
They telephoned around the country for the lowest housing loans, best
savings programs, new car prices...all the things you go on the
internet for today.
And, one day the highest of management that ever strolled the halls
came down to give them a pep talk. And he realized that all of the
reports on progress and implementation were false or at best
optimistic. But he liked the concept and told them to continue. Within
a month they were disbanded.
This latest was most probably a sort of morale booster for Cheney and
not ever taken seriously. No one at CIA will ever be allowed to forget
the attempts to kill Castro in the early 1960s and the subsequent
belief that those attempts were made known to people like Lee Harvey
Oswald.
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 Qaeda
terrorists, according to current and former government officials.
The plans remained vague and 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
the two 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 George W. Bush signed a secret order
authorizing the C.I.A. to capture or kill operatives of Al Qaeda
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 agency officials as an urgent goal, according
to people involved in the discussions.
But in practice, creating and training the teams proved difficult.
“It sounds great in the movies, but when you try to do it, it’s not
that easy,” a former intelligence official said. “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.”
Mr. 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. 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 never carried out any missions and because
Congress had already signed off on the agency’s broad authorities
after Sept. 11, the officials and some Republican legislators said the
C.I.A. was not required to brief lawmakers on specifics of the
program.
But Congressional Democrats were furious that the program had not been
shared with the committees. The Senate and House oversight committees
were created by law in the 1970s as a direct response to disclosures
of C.I.A. abuses, notably including assassination plots against
Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Fidel Castro in Cuba and other foreign
politicians. President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 issued an executive
order banning assassinations.
That ban does not apply to the killing of enemies in a war, government
officials say. 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.
Such killings would be premised on the condition that the authorities
in the country where the terrorist was located were unable or
unwilling to stop the terrorist, Mr. Anderson said.
In legal terms, he said, there is no real difference between killing a
terrorist with a missile or with a handgun. “In political terms,” he
continued, “there’s a real difference. The missile feels more like
regular warfare, even if it’s carried out by the C.I.A.”
But any targeted killings make many specialists in international law
uneasy. Hina Shamsi, an adviser to the Project on Extrajudicial
Executions at New York University, said that any calculation about
inserting an assassination team would have to consider the following:
the violation of the sovereignty of the country where the killing
occurred; the different legal status of the C.I.A. compared 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,” Ms. Shamsi said,
“and it encompasses all of the contentious issues of the years since
2001.”
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
focus on 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 spring 2008, Michael V. Hayden, then the agency’s director, and his
top aides were told about one aspect of these plans that involved
gathering sensitive information in a foreign country, a former senior
intelligence official said.
Mr. Hayden ordered that the operation be scaled back and that Congress
be notified if the plans became more fully developed, the official
said.
Jack Linthicum
"The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency's
actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not
obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the
directive."
In other words, if you looked like a suspect or used a name close
enough for the Box Top people, you were dropped.
CIA Assassin Program Was Nearing New Phase
Panetta Pulled Plug After Training Was Proposed
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 16, 2009
CIA officials were proposing to activate a plan to train anti-
terrorist assassination teams overseas when agency managers brought
the secret program to the attention of CIA Director Leon Panetta last
month, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The plan to kill top al-Qaeda leaders, which had been on the agency's
back burner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into
the spotlight because of proposals to initiate what one intelligence
official called a "somewhat more operational phase." Shortly after
learning of the plan, Panetta terminated the program and then went to
Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers, who had been kept in the dark since
2001.
The Obama administration's top intelligence official, Director of
National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, yesterday defended Panetta's
decision to cancel the program, which he said had raised serious
questions among intelligence officials about its "effectiveness,
maturity and the level of control."
But Blair broke with some Democrats in Congress by asserting that the
CIA did not violate the law when it failed to inform lawmakers about
the secret program until last month. Blair said agency officials may
not have been required to notify Congress about the program, though he
believes they should have done so.
"It was a judgment call," Blair said in an interview. "We believe in
erring on the side of working with the Hill as a partner."
Democratic lawmakers have accused the CIA of deliberately misleading
Congress by failing to disclose the program's existence until the
briefing by Panetta on June 24. House Democrats, citing an account
given by Panetta, say then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney personally
ordered the CIA not to tell Congress about the initiative, which
involved a series of intermittent plans to kill or capture Osama bin
Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders using small teams of assassins.
Congressional Democrats this week formally requested documents about
the program, and some have called for an investigation into whether
the CIA improperly withheld information from oversight committees.
Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), a member of the Senate intelligence
committee, was among several prominent Democrats who have accused the
CIA of violating the law.
He said he had "deep concerns about the program" and had conveyed them
to President Obama in a classified letter.
Republicans say the allegations of CIA wrongdoing are false and
harmful, and some accused Democrats of raising the issue to deflect
attention from recent controversies surrounding House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (Calif.), who was heavily criticized after accusing the agency
of lying to Congress about its use of waterboarding and other harsh
interrogation techniques.
"We have lost valuable opportunities to improve oversight of the
intelligence community because they got caught playing silly games,"
said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.).
The plan to deploy small teams of assassins grew out of the CIA's
early efforts to battle al-Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. A secret document known as a "presidential finding" was
signed by President George W. Bush that same month, granting the
agency broad authority to use deadly force against bin Laden as well
as other senior members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency's
actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not
obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the
directive.
The CIA declined to reveal specifics of the terminated program. But
agency spokesman George Little said it was "never fully operational
and never took a single terrorist off the battlefield." Since his
appointment, Panetta has been "aggressively using the vast tools and
tactics at our disposal -- those that actually work -- to take
terrorists off the streets," Little said.
Some U.S. officials familiar with the program say it never progressed
beyond concepts and feasibility studies, but others described more
advanced preparations, including selection of teams and limited
training. All of the attempts ultimately had to be scrapped, often
because of logistical difficulties or because the risks were deemed
too great, said several officials who served in counterterrorism units
or had access to top-secret files.
The program was active in fits and starts, and it was essentially
killed in 2004 because it was deemed ineffective, former and current
intelligence officials said. It reemerged briefly in 2005 but remained
largely dormant until this year. Two U.S. officials with detailed
knowledge of current CIA operations said the agency presented Panetta
last month with new plans for moving forward with training for
potential members of the assassination teams -- activities that would
have involved "crossing international boundaries," in the words of a
former counterterrorism official briefed on the matter.
"When a CIA unit brought the program to Panetta's attention, it came
with a recommendation to brief Congress since there was some thought
being given to moving toward a somewhat more operational phase -- that
is, a little training," said an intelligence official with direct
knowledge of the events.
Despite the new activity surrounding the program, there were "concerns
about its feasibility," the official said. "If the country ever needs
a capability like this going forward, smart minds will figure out a
better way to do it."
Blair said that Panetta told him in advance of the decision to
terminate the program and that he supported the action as well as the
decision to inform Congress.
Panetta "felt it was urgent and appropriate to brief the Hill," Blair
said. "You can make a judgment call on whether a briefing was
necessary. We were on the side of 'Let's do it.' We're trying to reset
our relations with Congress."
Blair also asserted that killing the program did not diminish U.S.
options for battling al-Qaeda, including the possible use of insertion
teams that could kill or capture terrorist leaders.
"This particular program didn't make the cut," he said. "But it is
absolutely not true that we are doing less against al-Qaeda. Our
primary criterion is effectiveness, and we will continue to do things
that we think are effective to make terrorist lives miserable, and
hopefully, short."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/15/AR2009071503856.html