C.I.A. Had Plan to Assassinate Qaeda Leaders
New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
July 13, 2009WASHINGTON — 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…
I’m so paranoid about Cheney at this point, I’m wondering if the story isn’t a trap – something to make him look good. Maybe we ought to ask why they weren’t able to get this program going instead of wasting time, money, and people invading Iraq. This was one of the few ideas that at least targets our actual enemy.
Now, back to lying to get us into a war, ignoring our laws, data-mining our email, and torturing people…
| So here is Lizzie’s reaction to the latest news [Liz Cheney]: |
| CHENEY: There’s this big piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning that says that it was a number of different concepts for ways that we could capture or kill al Qaeda leaders in the days after 9/11. I am really surprised that the Democrats decide that that’s what they want to fight over. I mean, if they want to go to the American people and say that they disagree with the notion that we ought to be capturing and killing al Qaeda leaders, I think it’s just going to prove to the American people one more time why they can’t trust the Democrats with our national security |
UPDATE: "Old friend" after all?:
Dick Cheney Responds To Panetta: I Hope He Was "Misquoted"
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner
06-15-09CIA Director Leon Panetta caused a stir this weekend, when New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer quoted him saying former VP Dick Cheney almost seems to want another terrorist attack. Cheney has responded, saying he hopes Panetta was misquoted.
"I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted," said Cheney in a terse statement. "The important thing is whether or not the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the last eight years."
Panetta had said of Cheney: "I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics."
Do you think this was Cheney and Addington’s contingency plan if they got caught or when they left office? Theone thing that has always bothered me about this duo was why they wouldn’t plan ahead when they left office after 8 years. They knew that eventually there would be things that had to go public. I guess they did have a plan after all. You smell dead fish(I do too) but to other people they’re a couple of heros trying to kill those bad people who attacked us.
I don’t know that, but I’m plenty suspicious.
TPMmuckraker is reporting that a former CIA counterterrorism chief, Vince Cannistraro, says there would have been no need for secrecy about a hit squad, because they actually did that and it was known.
He suggests instead:
“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.”
So you may be right that the ‘assassination squad’ may be a smoke screen to avoid the real story.