Cheney Directed CIA to Withhold Information From Congress

[Rick Mann]

Cheney Directed CIA to Withhold Information From Congress
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight
years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism
program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials
with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
[Dick Cheney]

Dick Mr. Cheney

Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the
intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they
believed merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence
official and another government official familiar with Mr. Panetta 's
June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Mr. Panetta didn't agree.

Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Mr. Panetta
terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the
House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program
and that it was canceled.

Mr. Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush
administration's surveillance program that was the subject of an
inspectors general report this past week. That report noted that Mr.
Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in
Bush's inner circle could even know about the secret program.

But revelations about Mr. Cheney's role in making decisions for the
CIA on whether to notify Congress came as a surprise to some on the
committees, said another government official. All spoke on condition
of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program
publicly.

An effort to reach Mr. Cheney was unsuccessful.

A former intelligence official, who was familiar with former CIA
Director Gen. Michael Hayden's tenure at the CIA, said Gen. Hayden
never communicated with the president or vice president about the now-
canceled program and was under no restrictions from Mr. Cheney about
congressional briefings. The official said Hayden was briefed only two
or three times on the program.
[Michael Hayden]

Exactly what the counterterrorism program was meant to do remains a
mystery. The former intelligence official said it was not related to
the CIA's rendition, interrogation and detention program. Nor was it
part of a wider classified electronic surveillance program that was
the subject of a government report to Congress this past week.

The official characterized it as an embryonic intelligence gathering
effort, and only sporadically active. He said it was hoped to yield
intelligence that would be used to conduct a secret mission or
missions in another country _ that is, a covert operation. But it
never matured to that point.

The government official with direct knowledge of the Mr. Panetta
briefing and the former intelligence official said the CIA has
numerous efforts ongoing under its existing authorities that have not
yet been briefed to Congress. He said they are not yet known to be
viable for intelligence gathering.

The Mr. Cheney revelation comes as the House of Representatives is
preparing to debate a bill that would require the White House to
expand the number of members who are told about covert operations. The
White House has threatened a veto over concerns that wider
congressional notifications could compromise the secrecy of the
operations.

That provision, however, would have no effect on programs like this
one.

The former intelligence official familiar with Gen. Hayden said
Congress has a right to contemporaneous information about all CIA
activities. But he said there are so many in such early stages that
briefing Congress on every one would be too time consuming for both
the CIA and the congressional committees.

The New York Times initially reported about Mr. Cheney's direction not
to tell Congress of the program on its Web site Saturday.

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