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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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July 8th,
2009 - Democrats Say C.I.A. Deceived Congress |
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Democrats Say C.I.A.
Deceived Congress By Scott Shane New York Times July 8, 2009 Washington - The director of
the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House
Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed
“significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven
Democratic committee members said. In a June 26 letter to Mr.
Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled
members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the
letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are
aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday
by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers. In an interview, Mr. Holt
declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions. But he
said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.” The chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas,
referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking
Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional
Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been
misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at
least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.” In a related development,
President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization
Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert
actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees,
rather than the so-called Gang of Eight - the Democratic and Republican
leaders of both houses of Congress and the two Intelligence Committees. A White House statement
released on Wednesday said the proposed expansion of briefings would
undermine “a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches
regarding intelligence matters.” Democrats have complained that under
President George W. Bush, entire programs were hidden from most committee
members for years. The question of the C.I.A.’s
candor with the Congressional oversight committees has been hotly disputed
since Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to disclose in a
2002 briefing that it had used waterboarding against a terrorism suspect. Ms.
Pelosi said the agency routinely misled Congress, though she later said she
intended to fault the Bush administration rather than career intelligence
officials. Since then, Republicans have
called Ms. Pelosi’s complaint an unwarranted attack on the integrity of
counterterrorism officers and have demanded an investigation. Democrats have
rebuffed the demand. In a statement Wednesday
night, a C.I.A. spokesman, George Little, noted that the agency “took the
initiative to notify the oversight committees” about the past failures. He
said the agency and Mr. Panetta “believe it is vital to keep the Congress
fully and currently informed.” External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/us/politics/09intel.html |