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The United States has started engaging the Taliban in negotiations through Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies, highly-placed sources told Dawn on Monday. He said that four “major neutral players” were engaged with the Afghan Taliban on behalf of the Saudi leadership and the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) of Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani leadership and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).The GID and ISI have been doing the job on behalf of the US government and CIA. The source said that one of the main objectives of the recent visit to Pakistan by CIA chief Leon Panetta was to assess progress in...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- CIA Director Leon Panetta arrived in Pakistan Friday to discuss the issue of the location of the leadership of the Taliban with security officials. Panetta was to meet with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and top military and intelligence officials, Pakistan's The National newspaper reported. He is expected to discuss issues related to the leadership of the Taliban believed to be hiding in the tribal border regions along the Afghan border. Pakistani officials denied claims the leadership is in the area, the report said.

CIA Director Leon Panetta and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair squared off in May over Blair's effort to designate his own representative at U.S. embassies to be his personal eyes and ears abroad, instead of relying on CIA station chiefs. Two intelligence officials said Thursday that the CIA won a monthslong turf battle with the Office of National Intelligence, assuring the primacy of CIA station chiefs over other U.S. intelligence operations and personnel around the world. The territorial dispute was resolved only after it got all the way to the office of national security adviser Gen. James Jones. The CIA...

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News. It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said. One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan's efforts. CIA director Leon Panetta and the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis...

The CIA may have misled Congress at least five times since 2001, two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said Tuesday. Intelligence subcommittee Chairwomen Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) are leading an investigation into what they described as a practice of incomplete and often misleading intelligence briefings, which arose in the wake of CIA Director Leon Panetta’s June 24 admission that intelligence officials failed to notify Congress about a top-secret program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders.

Seven former heads of the CIA wrote President Obama on Friday to ask him to end an investigation launched by former Attorney General Eric Holder into the actions of CIA interrogators who used "enhanced" techniques to question terror detainees.

Former CIA counterterrorism expert Kent Clizbe tells Newsmax it's "indisputable" that the Obama administration's actions regarding intelligence agents have undermined the global war on terror. Clizbe was a member of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, and returned to the CIA after 9/11 to serve in multiple counterterrorism deployments. He recently wrote an opinion piece for Newsmax headlined "Obama and Holder 'At War' With Agency." Newsmax.TV's Ashley Martella noted that President Barack Obama has allowed Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA personnel involved in the interrogation of terrorist detainees, and has taken future interrogations away...

Note: The following text is a quote: Message from the Director: September 11th Statement to Employees by Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon E. Panetta on September 11th September 10, 2009 Tomorrow, our nation as a whole will remember those lost to us eight years ago. For the men and women of the CIA, September 11th is a constant, powerful incentive in the war against al-Qa’ida and its violent sympathizers. Our Agency is at the center of that fight. We have no higher priority or greater focus. Alone, and with partners in this country and overseas, the CIA has...

Poor Leon Panetta. It's hard not to feel bad for the guy. If the Obama administration is like one big, elaborate stage production of "Chicago," Panetta is playing invisible Amos Hart - "Mr. Cellophane" - to sheer, translucent, forgettable perfection. In less than a year, Panetta's CIA has been reduced to irrelevance and Panetta himself has either been ignored or emasculated by the very folks who were supposed to be his biggest supporters. For taking on a thankless job that typically only gets attention when there's a massive failure, this is the thanks he gets? When he was asked by...

Last April Nancy Pelosi sparked a furor when she claimed that the CIA was always lying to Congress. She also claimed that she was briefed by Bush administration officials on the legal justification for using water boarding, but they never told her the technique was actually being used. It was Nancy Pelosi version of "I tried it but I never inhaled." "In that or any other briefing we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel...

AUGUST 28, 2009 The Fall Guy CIA Director Leon Panetta getting sacked by his own team. By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL In the game of political football that is today national security, spare a thought for CIA Director Leon Panetta. Quarterbacking is hard enough without getting sacked by your own team. President Barack Obama fought hard for the former California congressman during his uncertain February confirmation fight. That's about the last thing the president has done for his spy chief. Quite the opposite: If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it's that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president's...

WASHINGTON — The US Central Intelligence Agency will pay the legal fees of any officers involved in a government probe of alleged abusive interrogation techniques, the Washington Post said Friday. CIA Director Leon "Panetta will do everything he can to ensure that anyone who needs legal representation has it, whether they have liability insurance or not," a senior intelligence official was quoted as saying. "It's a question of fairness. People who did tough jobs for the country won't be left by the side of the road." Some, but not all, CIA agents working on controversial assignments take out personal liability...

In the game of political football that is today national security, spare a thought for CIA Director Leon Panetta. Quarterbacking is hard enough without getting sacked by your own team. President Barack Obama fought hard for the former California congressman during his uncertain February confirmation fight. That's about the last thing the president has done for his spy chief. Quite the opposite: If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it's that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president's designated fall guy. The title has been months in the making. Mr. Obama is contending with an angry left that's...

With the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate detainee abuses, long-simmering conflicts between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department burst into plain view this week, threatening relations between two critical players on President Obama’s national security team. The tension between the agencies complicates how the administration handles delicate national security issues, particularly the tracking and capturing of suspected terrorists overseas. It also may distract Mr. Obama, who is trying to move beyond the battles of the Bush years to focus on an ambitious domestic agenda, most notably health care legislation. The strains became evident inside the administration in...

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Impact" segment tonight: controversy still raging over Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to appoint a special prosecutor to look into alleged CIA abuses in the interrogations of about a dozen terror suspects. ABC News is reporting that CIA chief Leon Panetta confronted some high-level White House people and even used obscenities in the heated discussion. Joining us now from ABC News headquarters in New York, the chief investigative reporter for that outfit, Brian Ross. So we're hearing it was Rahm Emanuel that Leon Panetta went toe to toe with. Is that what you're hearing? BRIAN...

I’m hearing a very credible rumor that Leon Panetta has dispatched a resignation letter to Barack Obama on vacation. Panetta is said to be extremely angry about the possible prosecution of CIA officers doing their job and has decided to resign in protest. The rumor is unconfirmed, but given the sourcing I think it is safe to treat it credibly.

Our friends at Restate are hearing credible rumors that Leon Panetta is quitting over the proposed procecution of CIA operatives. If this is true, kudos to Leon...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A prominent Democratic strategist said Monday that the Justice Department probe of CIA interrogations during President George W. Bush's administration may turn into a political liability for President Obama. "This is terrible politics for the Obama administration and the Democrats," James Carville, a Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, said Monday in an interview on 'The Situation Room.' "The country – like – really doesn't want this." But, Carville added that the decision to open the probe into Bush-era interrogations of terrorism suspects is being driven by a belief that "we are a nation of laws." Ed...

Today, the news cycle was dominated by news related to intelligence. Let's start with this story about potential CIA investigations. After months of consideration, Attorney General Eric Holder plans to appoint a special prosecutor to examine allegations that terror suspects were abused at the hands of their CIA interrogators. The highly controversial decision comes as the Department of Justice releases a 2004 report from the CIA's inspector general detailing allegations of harsh interrogation practices -- which Holder cited in his decision.

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.” The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.’s inspector general but have never been released. When the...

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com. Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials. "You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama...

RAW DATA: Panetta Letter to CIA Staff on Release of Interrogation Report CIA Director Leon Panetta sent the following note to the agency's workforce Monday on the release of a report on interrogation practices. FOXNews.com Monday, August 24, 2009 Message from the Director: Release of Material on Past Detention Practices Today, as part of a number of Freedom of Information Act cases, the government is responding to court orders to release more documents related to the Agency's past detention and interrogation of foreign terrorists. The CIA materials include the 2004 report from our Office of Inspector General and two papers-one...

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.[snip] [snip]A White House spokesperson, Denis McDonough, said reports that Panetta had threatened to quit and that the White House was seeking a replacement were "inaccurate." According to intelligence officials, Panetta erupted in a tirade last month during a meeting with a senior White House staff member. Panetta was reportedly upset over plans by Attorney General Eric...

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com. Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials. "You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama...

The Daily Beast is a center-left/RINO news outlet, so for them to kneecap The One this way is nothing short of shocking. So awful that I don’t even know how to excerpt it. Arguably the most damning story to emerge about Obama’s administrative competence since the inauguration. Remember a few months ago when Panetta wet his pants about some supposed CIA plan to assassinate Al Qaeda leaders that Congress hadn’t been briefed on (but which had been public knowledge since 2002)? Funny thing: According to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level...

A few weeks ago, our friends in congress had a major fit about a secret Bush-era program that was revealed to them my CIA Director Leon Panetta: Congress originally authorized the CIA to develop the secret counter-terrorism program that is now drawing fierce criticism from House Democrats who say they were kept in the dark all along, a former senior intelligence official told FOX News on Monday. The program, which sources told FOX News was a plan to capture or kill Al Qaeda operatives, also never came close to being operational, the intelligence official said. "This was not a program....

Three former CIA directors have privately told their successor he had his facts wrong when he revealed an illegal assassination program, reports Joseph Finder, and his spies will suffer for it. according to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level officials from the Bush administration, the real story is at once more innocent—Panetta was mistaken; no law was broken—and far more troubling: an inexperienced CIA director, unfamiliar with how his vast, complicated agency works, unable to trust senior officials within his own agency, and desperate to keep his hands clean, screwed up....

Last month, at a meeting overseas of intelligence service chiefs, one of my counterparts from a major Western ally pulled me aside. Why, he asked, is Washington so consumed with what the CIA did in the past, when the most pressing national security concerns are in the present? It was a very good question. In fact, I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action. In our democracy, effective congressional oversight of intelligence is important, but it depends as much...

Political Payback Distracting CIA, Panetta Warns WASHINGTON – CIA Director Leon Panetta warned in an article published Saturday that the country's premier intelligence agency has been hurt by a climate of recriminations in Congress over its past practices. "I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action," Panetta wrote in an op-ed piece published in the online edition of The Washington Post. Some members of Congress have pressed for a fuller investigation of the past practices of the intelligence agencies...

Note: The following text is a quote: Former President Clinton Visits CIA July 27, 2009 Former President Bill Clinton visited the Central Intelligence Agency today to thank the men and women of CIA for their essential work in protecting the United States from foreign threats. Welcoming the former President back to CIA, Director Leon E. Panetta said: “President Clinton understood very well the role of intelligence and its vital importance in the post-Cold War era. He relied on this Agency for information and insight, as he and his team confronted an array of foreign challenges.” In remarks to hundreds of...

Here is video of former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton criticizing President Obama's Administration for leaking information on a highly classified CIA program to identify and kill top Al-Qaeda operatives. Bolton says the revealing of the program by CIA Director Leon Panetta will depress morale at the Agency because it undercuts creativity in the future. He also said it tells Al-Qaeda leaders the CIA is not going to seek to use lethal force against them. Bolton also slammed Obama's handling of Iran's drive to obtain nuclear weapons. Bolton thinks Obama believes he can find a way to...

WASHINGTON -- Secrecy is endemic in all governments. It goes with the turf, especially if their leaders hope to hide illegal or immoral behavior, such as torture of foreign prisoners. Many Americans heaved a sigh of relief last January when President Barack Obama banned the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Image-wise, it made the administration look more humane than the Bush-Cheney team. But that is not the whole story. Obama left unaddressed the possibility of torture in secret foreign prisons under our control as in Abu Ghraib in Iraq or Bagram in Afghanistan, not to mention the "black...

Late Friday afternoon, Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, announced that his panel would be undertaking a formal investigation of the CIA. The ostensible subject of the probe is a highly classified program that targeted al Qaeda leaders for assassination and which CIA director Leon Panetta briefed the committee about on June 24. "After careful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will conduct an investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1947," Reyes said in a statement....

Lawmakers to investigate CIA hit teams House Intelligence Committee to ask if secrecy violated the law WASHINGTON - The House Intelligence Committee will investigate whether the CIA broke the law by not telling Congress earlier about a secret program to deploy hit teams to kill individual al-Qaida members, the committee chairman said Friday. CIA Director Leon Panetta told the committee about the program on June 24, and said he had only learned of the program a day earlier. He also said he canceled it himself. By law, the House and Senate intelligence committees must be kept informed of significant intelligence...

Congressional liberals must think Americans have very short memories. For years the Left trashed the Bush administration for not capturing and killing Osama bin Laden. Democrats claimed they could get the job done. Campaigning for president, Barack Obama made “We will kill bin Laden” a regular part of his foreign policy stump speech. But as the political winds have shifted, so has the nature of the Left’s indictments. Congressional Democrats continue to attack the Bush administration. Only now they are blaming it for trying to kill Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders. Theirs is a dangerous game. The Democrats’...

Where's the outrage? If this country had its head on straight, there would be nothing but white-hot popular fury over the latest Bush-era CIA scandal broken by the New York Times. CIA director Leon Panetta reportedly told congressional committees that under Dick Cheney, the CIA hatched a plan, in the wake of 9/11, to kill senior leaders of al-Qaida. The CIA would send operatives to assassinate these terrorists in their homes and caves, if that's not redundant. President Bush reportedly put Vice President Cheney in charge of the scheme. Now, here's where it gets confusing. The Democrats and much of...

So this was the reason for all the hub-bub? On June 23, 2009, Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta learned of a highly compartmentalized program to assassinate al Qaeda operatives that was launched by the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When Panetta found out that the covert program had not been disclosed to Congress, he canceled it and then called an emergency meeting June 24 to brief congressional oversight committees on the program. Over the past week, many details of the program have been leaked to the press and the issue has received extensive media coverage. That...

The roots of this war probably started in 2002. That's when Nancy Pelosi was first briefed about waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques. Or at least, that's one side of the story. Ms. Pelosi herself says that she never actually knew about any specific person being waterboarded. She was only told it might happen.

By falsely accusing Cheney of withholding information from Congress and instructing CIA to withhold this information, the Democrats hope to reach 2 significant goals at a highly crucial time. This article examines the ulterior motives of Obama and the Democrats and blows the lid on their 'red herring.'

Do tell.

The man who ran the CIA from 2006 through January says he wasn't told by then-vice president Dick Cheney not to brief Congress about a covert program aimed at members of al-Qaida, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports. Gen. Mike Hayden's statement is at odds with a New York Times report Sunday that said the CIA: Withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said...

President Bush last month signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake its most sweeping and lethal covert action since the founding of the agency in 1947, explicitly calling for the destruction of Osama bin Laden and his worldwide al Qaeda network, according to senior government officials. Bush's order, called an intelligence "finding," instructs the agency to attack bin Laden's communications, security apparatus and infrastructure, senior government officials said. U.S. intelligence has identified new and important specific weaknesses in the bin Laden organization that are not publicly known, and these vulnerabilities will be the focus of the lethal covert...

The Democrats’ war against our spies has taken two new turns. In their zeal to punish Bush administration officials -- and protect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) from publication of the facts showing her complicity in then-legal waterboarding of terrorist prisoners -- the Democrats have again accused the CIA of lying. This came during the same week when it was reported that Attorney General Eric Holder is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those who authorized and committed alleged torture of prisoners at CIA “black sites”, the secret prisons where high-value terrorists were interrogated since...

Armed with new authority from President Bush for a global campaign against al Qaeda, the Central Intelligence Agency is contemplating clandestine missions expressly aimed at killing specified individuals for the first time since the assassination scandals and consequent legal restraints of the 1970s. Drawing on two classified legal memoranda, one written for President Bill Clinton in 1998 and one since the attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has concluded that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action. The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad grant...

House Democrats are in (cynical, calculated) high dudgeon after a shocking "revelation" was made public this week.  Brace yourself, because this bombshell isn't for the faint of heart:  After 9/11, the Bush administration considered a CIA program designed to target and kill top al-Qaeda operatives. Gasp. It gets worse: Some members of Congress now say they weren't sufficiently briefed on the then-nascent secret program (which was never actually implemented), and it's even possible that Vice President Cheney intentionally kept lawmakers in the dark about the preliminary plans (which, again, never became operational). Once you've picked yourself up off the floor, take...

Via The Hill: With their Speaker behind them, House Democrats are pushing ahead with plans to hold a series of hearings investigating instances in which intelligence officials may have misled members of Congress.Senior Democratic aides said that a major announcement could come by the end of week, but it was already clear on Monday that House Democrats are seizing on weekend news reports that former Vice President Dick Cheney hid information from Congress.The New York Times reported on Sunday that the CIA, under the direction of Cheney, developed a secret counterterrorism program and then was directed by the vice president...

WASHINGTON — 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. Skip to next paragraph Paul Buck/European Pressphoto Agency 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...

The secret CIA program revealed to members of Congress late last month involved a series of planned attempts to assassinate top al-Qaeda leaders -- efforts that never progressed to an operational stage, according to current and former intelligence officials. Although the agency's attacks on terrorist camps using pilotless aircraft is well documented, the CIA's program involved operatives "striking at two feet instead of 10,000 feet," a current intelligence official said. But one current U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the program was small, intermittent and "exactly the kind of work people would expect the agency to be...

A secret intelligence program canceled by CIA Director Leon Panetta in June was meant to find and then capture or kill al-Qaida leaders at close range rather than target them with air strikes that risked civilian casualties, government officials with knowledge of the operation said Monday. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program, said the spy agency's program never got off the ground. Panetta canceled the effort on June 23 after learning of its existence, its failure to yield results, and the fact that Congress had been unaware of the...

In light of recent reports that Vice President Cheney had ordered the CIA to withhold information about a counterrorism program that was being planned during the Bush administration, on Sunday ABCÂ’s George Stephanopoulos on both Good Morning America and on This Week suggested that the revelations may be "vindication" for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or that they at least "bolster" her claims about the CIA lying to her. Stephanopoulos even seemed to be pushing Pelosi to claim "vindication" even while the SpeakerÂ’s office was reluctant to do so. Stephanopoulos, from Good Morning America: "I spoke with Speaker Pelosi's office about...