Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2300582/posts
Behind The CIA’s Assassination Program
IBD Editorials ^ | July 24, 2009 | DAVID IGNATIUS
Posted on July 24, 2009 6:42:29 PM PDT by Kaslin
When the CIA’s alleged assassination program surfaced this month, the first reports focused on what hadn’t been done: Congress hadn’t been briefed, supposedly on orders from Vice President Dick Cheney, and the program hadn’t actually resulted in any “hit team” attacks on al-Qaeda operatives.
The first failing upset House Democrats, and they demanded an investigation. But the second issue is in some ways more interesting for what it reveals about the bureaucratic and legal culture in which the CIA operates.
The program began soon after Sept. 11, 2001, as part of a broader anti-terrorism effort that had the vivid code name “Cannonball.” The initial idea at the agency’s Counter-Terrorism Center, according to one former top-level official, was to go after al-Qaeda operatives around the world and “compromise them, disrupt them, snatch them” and, if necessary, kill them.
The goal was that “every al-Qaeda man on the planet should worry that someone is screwing with them, full time,” recalls a second former agency official. The CIA wanted to send the message: “If you work for Osama bin Laden, we will find you and come after you.”
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http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336351621193968
“Speaker Of Lies”
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 28, 2009 4:20 PM PT
SNIPPET: “Public Trust: What did the speaker know, and when did she know it? With CIA documents contradicting Nancy Pelosi’s claims on classified briefings, will a death watch begin on her leadership?
Read More: Global War On Terror
The newly declassified CIA report on the interrogation of Islamist terrorists notes “in the fall of 2002, the agency briefed the leadership of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees on the use of both standard techniques and EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques).”
The CIA, according to the report, “continued to brief the leadership of the Intelligence Oversight Committees on the use of EITs and detentions in February and March 2003.”
And here’s the zinger: “The general counsel says that none of the participants expressed any concern about the techniques or the program . . . .”
For months, Speaker Pelosi has claimed she and other high-ranking Democrats in Congress who were briefed by the CIA during President Bush’s first term “were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used.”
Others present with her at CIA intelligence briefings, like former House Intelligence Committee Chairman and CIA director Porter Goss, say otherwise.”