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Who's in charge?

Posted at 7:04 PM on July 11, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, War

If there's one story that's yet to strike a significant nerve with folks outside of Washington, it's the revelation that the Central Intelligence Agency had a secret counterterrorism program that it didn't tell Congress about.

Oh, and it didn't tell Leon Panetta, who is director of the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Panetta, who says he ended the program when he heard about it on June 23 after he heard about.

As befits Washington, it's Republicans on one side; Democrats on the other, according to National Public Radio's All Things Considered on Saturday..

Details of the program have not been released. Some Republicans say the revelation is no big deal, and that Democrats are playing politics. A man at the center of the controversy -- Democrat Silvestre Reyes of Texas, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee -- tells NPR's Guy Raz that his committee has pinpointed numerous instances where it was not given "full and complete information" and in at least one case, "we were deliberately lied to."

But wait, there's more, according to the New York Times, which cites its sources claiming it was under orders from former VP Dick Cheney that withheld information about the program from Congress:

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 had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

Amid all the controversy over who knew what, we still don't know what the counterterrorism program was. The Times says it didn't involve domestic spying, or waterboarding and that it never became fully operational.

Comments (3)

Do we need more evidence that Cheney committed illegal acts? Repub defenders of this nonsense lose credibility when stating that "...it's no big deal". No big deal for a tin horn dictatorship in central america or a despotic african strongman but here in the US we are supposed to have accountability.

When we we put a stop to this?

Posted by MNguy | July 12, 2009 9:36 AM

The L.A. Times reported the plan "was put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks, but never became fully operational."

Think of it like a $867 Billion stimulus plan that never actually spent a dime. Would a plan to do something stupid still need to be reported to Congress, even if it was never carried out?

Let's call this what it is, an effort to resurrect Nancy Pelosi's reputation from the ashes and direct attention away from the monumental failure of the stimulus package.

Posted by GregS | July 13, 2009 6:52 AM

Oops.

Not only did the CIA brief Congress on this program, but the Democrats turned right around and brief (leaked) the story to the New York Times.

NYT: Bush Has Widened Authority of C.I.A. to Kill Terrorists By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: Sunday, December 15, 2002

"WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 ? The Bush administration has prepared a list of terrorist leaders the Central Intelligence Agency is authorized to kill, if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be minimized, senior military and intelligence officials said."

Now will Nancy Pelosi do the right thing and resign?

Posted by GregS | July 15, 2009 5:43 AM