Posted on 07/14/2009 9:59:53 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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 to conceal it from Congress.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the program was a classified initiative to kill or capture al Qaeda operatives.
Unfortunately for Democratic witch-hunters, their pals at the national security-defying New York Times apparently blew this secret back in December 2002:
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.
The previously undisclosed C.I.A. list includes key Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as other principal figures from Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, the officials said. The names of about two dozen terrorist leaders have recently been on the lethal-force list, officials said. “It’s the worst of the worst,” an official said.
President Bush has provided written legal authority to the C.I.A. to hunt down and kill the terrorists without seeking further approval each time the agency is about to stage an operation. Some officials said the terrorist list was known as the “high-value target list.”
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
The marxist/communist version of McCarthyism - reverse McCarthyism.
fyi
We have foreign idiots running the Govt today....
Maybe they are aliens???
Maybe every time Obama gives the CIA its marching orders, they should go on TV and announce it to the world.
I believe we could coin a new expression....”revo-McCarthyism”.
My question...who will be our Edward R. Murrow?
Bush Has Widened Authority of C.I.A. to Kill Terrorists
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.
The previously undisclosed C.I.A. list includes key Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as other principal figures from Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, the officials said. The names of about two dozen terrorist leaders have recently been on the lethal-force list, officials said. "It's the worst of the worst," an official said.
President Bush has provided written legal authority to the C.I.A. to hunt down and kill the terrorists without seeking further approval each time the agency is about to stage an operation. Some officials said the terrorist list was known as the "high-value target list." A spokesman for the White House declined to discuss the list or issues involving the use of lethal force against terrorists. A spokesman for the C.I.A. also declined to comment on the list.
Despite the authority given to the agency, Mr. Bush has not waived the executive order banning assassinations, officials said. The presidential authority to kill terrorists defines operatives of Al Qaeda as enemy combatants and thus legitimate targets for lethal force.
Mr. Bush issued a presidential finding last year, after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, providing the basic executive and legal authority for the C.I.A. to either kill or capture terrorist leaders. Initially, the agency used that authority to hunt for Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan. That authority was the basis for the C.I.A.'s attempts to find and kill or capture Mr. Bin laden and other Qaeda leaders during the war in Afghanistan.
The creation of the secret list is part of the expanded C.I.A. effort to hunt and kill or capture Qaeda operatives far from traditional battlefields, in countries like Yemen.
An Indonesian alien....
There are some pretty skilled operators in the CIA (or there used to be). I would be very careful as to what I said or did if I had to go up against them. IMHO
Let me guess...the first witness won’t be Hayden.
*************************************EXCERPT***********************************
Washington Post ^ | October 28, 2001 | Barton Gellman
Posted on Tue 14 Jul 2009 09:04:34 AM PDT by Virginia Ridgerunner
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.
Not to mention the WaPost reported on it in 2001.
If Congress was any more full of crap it’d be flowing out the windows like a broken toilet.
Thanks Ernest. I won’t breathe a word about this “secret program”.
Panetta dragged this out (likely as requested ) to give Nancy cover for her accusations against the CIA.
Yes, what a horrible, rotten plan the CIA was thinking of implementing. They actually wanted to kill our sworn enemies, have you ever heard of such a dastardly thing? (smirk)
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