A ferocious dispute between the CIA and congressional Democrats centers on an ultrasecret effort launched by agency officials after 9/11 to draw up plans to hunt down and kill terrorists using commando teams similar to those deployed by Israel after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, according to a former senior U.S. official.
Officials of the CIA’s undercover spying branch, then known as the Directorate of Operations, on and off over the last several years repeatedly floated and revised plans for such operations, which would involve sending squads of operatives overseas, sometimes into friendly countries, to track and assassinate Al Qaeda leaders, much the same way Israeli Mossad agents sent assassins to Europe to kill men they believed responsible for murdering Israeli Olympic athletes, the former official said. But several former and current officials said the highly classified plans, which last week provoked bitter argument between Congress and the CIA, never became "fully operational," and CIA Director Leon Panetta put an end to the program in June.
According to two former officials—who, like others quoted in this story, asked for anonymity to speak about sensitive matters—shortly after 9/11, the Bush White House consulted with the Directorate of Operations about expanding the agency’s powers to track or lure terrorists. Top CIA officials ultimately concluded the program posed an unacceptable risk of failure or exposure, according to another former official. As a result, the initial plans proposed by officers of the Directorate of Operations—now known as the National Clandestine Service—were put on hold by CIA Director George Tenet before he left office in 2004, former officials said. Tenet’s two successors, Porter Goss and Gen. Michael Hayden, kept the plans in the deep freeze. But a former official said that until Panetta killed the program outright last month, the CIA never totally abandoned the plans for kill teams; agency personnel believed it was important to have them ready as an option for the president to use, and they continued to try to refine the idea…
So the pendulum swings from day to day – will it be another horrible secret program like torture or domestic communications data-mining or will it turn out to be an understandable response to the 9/11 massacre and al Qaeda threat [C.I.A. business as usual]. This article says it’s the latter. The last one I reported suggested the former.It brings up a point. I doubt that any of us see Cheney as an evil character who only does bad things. That’s not the issue. If this program is as it’s described in this article, they should’ve told Congress. But it’s only icing on the cake compared to the other abuses of secrecy. The bigees are falsifying the prewar intelligence, torturing people to get confirmation of a lie, invading a country under false pretenses, suspending the Geneva Conventions, ignoring the Legislative Branch, marginalizing the Military Command, crippling the State Department, invading the Department of Justice, sending John [f—–g] Bolton to the U.N. – stuff like that. Emulating the Israeli hit squads to get al Qaeda isn’t what we’re mad about.
I know that you are probably right that Cheney did something right but the only thing I can think of is his uncondtional love for his lesbian daughter and his acceptance that gays have rights too. Anything else and I draw a blank. I’m sure someone as bad as the dead guy with the little mustache who ruled Germany had to have something soft in his heart for someone or something. I rate Cheney right up there with twisted and devious types. I’m not comparing Cheney to H but there are those around who say we all have some good in us even the really bad guys.
I just read an article in rawstory.com that Seymour Hersh sticks by his story about the hit squads and I believe him. I have worried about Hersh’s safety from the people he writes about for years.