CIA Vet: Agency Doesn’t Need Secret Program To Target al Qaeda
TPMmuckracker
By Zachary Roth
July 13, 2009Earlier today, we raised a few questions about the notion that the secret CIA program that Dick Cheney reportedly withheld from Congress concerned an effort to kill or capture al Qaeda leaders. And now a top counter-terror expert is doing the same. Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we’ve been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization.
Since the war on terror began, said Cannistraro, the CIA has routinely conducted operations targeting top Qaeda leaders. "The CIA runs drones and targets al Qaeda safe houses all the time," said Cannistraro, explaining that there’s no important difference between those kinds of attacks and "assassinations" with a gun or a knife. Cannistraro said the Defense Department has also conducted such targeted efforts, under an initiative that New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh has written about… The Rumsfeld initiative seems to be the subject of this report from a few hours ago in The Guardian…
But Cannistraro cautioned that that DOD program has nothing to do with the secret, unidentified CIA program which Cheney is said to have hid from Congress, and which CIA director Leon Panetta ended last month. As for what the program did involve, Cannistraro suggested that it involved Americans as targets, and that it went beyond surveillance, but declined to elaborate. He added that, though Cheney may have directly ordered the CIA to keep Congress in the dark, the veep wasn’t acting alone. "The approval was from the president," said Cannistraro…
Of course we had people going after Qaeda. This is what devious men do when they need an alibi, they lie to cover their tracks. I’ve never been a vengeful person but Cheney and Addington make me want to see every book thrown at them. I want to see them go to jail and I don’t mean the college dorm type of jail either.
[…] and al Qaeda threat [C.I.A. business as usual]. This article says it’s the latter. The last one I reported suggested the […]
I just looked up a bio of Vincent Cannistraro and my jaw dropped. He is former C!A counter-terrorism chief and 27 year CIA vetern. He had extensive first hand experience in International security issues. He also served as Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council under President Reagan and there is much more. He arranged a 1998 ABC interview with Bin Laden through his contacts in the Middle East. I don’t think I need to write anymore for anybody to know this is not a small fish with an ax to grind.