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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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July 16th,
2009 - CIA Assassin Program Was Nearing New Phase |
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CIA Assassin
Program Was Nearing New Phase Panetta Pulled Plug After Training Was Proposed By Joby Warrick Washington Post July 16, 2009 CIA officials were proposing
to activate a plan to train anti-terrorist assassination teams overseas when
agency managers brought the secret program to the attention of CIA Director
Leon Panetta last month, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the
matter. The plan to kill top
al-Qaeda leaders, which had been on the agency's back burner for much of the
past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals
to initiate what one intelligence official called a "somewhat more
operational phase." Shortly after learning of the plan, Panetta
terminated the program and then went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers, who
had been kept in the dark since 2001. The Obama administration's
top intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair,
yesterday defended Panetta's decision to cancel the program, which he said
had raised serious questions among intelligence officials about its
"effectiveness, maturity and the level of control." But Blair broke with some
Democrats in Congress by asserting that the CIA did not violate the law when
it failed to inform lawmakers about the secret program until last month.
Blair said agency officials may not have been required to notify Congress
about the program, though he believes they should have done so. "It was a judgment
call," Blair said in an interview. "We believe in erring on the
side of working with the Hill as a partner." Democratic lawmakers have
accused the CIA of deliberately misleading Congress by failing to disclose
the program's existence until the briefing by Panetta on June 24. House
Democrats, citing an account given by Panetta, say then-Vice President
Richard B. Cheney personally ordered the CIA not to tell Congress about the
initiative, which involved a series of intermittent plans to kill or capture
Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders using small teams of
assassins. Congressional Democrats this
week formally requested documents about the program, and some have called for
an investigation into whether the CIA improperly withheld information from
oversight committees. Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), a member of the Senate
intelligence committee, was among several prominent Democrats who have
accused the CIA of violating the law. He said he had "deep
concerns about the program" and had conveyed them to President Obama in
a classified letter. Republicans say the
allegations of CIA wrongdoing are false and harmful, and some accused
Democrats of raising the issue to deflect attention from recent controversies
surrounding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who was heavily criticized
after accusing the agency of lying to Congress about its use of waterboarding
and other harsh interrogation techniques. "We have lost valuable
opportunities to improve oversight of the intelligence community because they
got caught playing silly games," said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). The plan to deploy small
teams of assassins grew out of the CIA's early efforts to battle al-Qaeda
after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A secret document known as a
"presidential finding" was signed by President George W. Bush that
same month, granting the agency broad authority to use deadly force against
bin Laden as well as other senior members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist
groups. The finding imposed no
geographical limitations on the agency's actions, and intelligence officials
have said that they were not obliged to notify Congress of each operation
envisaged under the directive. The CIA declined to reveal
specifics of the terminated program. But agency spokesman George Little said
it was "never fully operational and never took a single terrorist off
the battlefield." Since his appointment, Panetta has been
"aggressively using the vast tools and tactics at our disposal - those that
actually work - to take terrorists off the streets," Little said. Some U.S. officials familiar
with the program say it never progressed beyond concepts and feasibility
studies, but others described more advanced preparations, including selection
of teams and limited training. All of the attempts ultimately had to be
scrapped, often because of logistical difficulties or because the risks were
deemed too great, said several officials who served in counterterrorism units
or had access to top-secret files. The program was active in
fits and starts, and it was essentially killed in 2004 because it was deemed
ineffective, former and current intelligence officials said. It reemerged
briefly in 2005 but remained largely dormant until this year. Two U.S.
officials with detailed knowledge of current CIA operations said the agency
presented Panetta last month with new plans for moving forward with training
for potential members of the assassination teams - activities that would have
involved "crossing international boundaries," in the words of a
former counterterrorism official briefed on the matter. "When a CIA unit
brought the program to Panetta's attention, it came with a recommendation to
brief Congress since there was some thought being given to moving toward a somewhat
more operational phase - that is, a little training," said an
intelligence official with direct knowledge of the events. Despite the new activity
surrounding the program, there were "concerns about its
feasibility," the official said. "If the country ever needs a
capability like this going forward, smart minds will figure out a better way
to do it." Blair said that Panetta told
him in advance of the decision to terminate the program and that he supported
the action as well as the decision to inform Congress. Panetta "felt it was
urgent and appropriate to brief the Hill," Blair said. "You can
make a judgment call on whether a briefing was necessary. We were on the side
of 'Let's do it.' We're trying to reset our relations with Congress." Blair also asserted that
killing the program did not diminish U.S. options for battling al-Qaeda,
including the possible use of insertion teams that could kill or capture
terrorist leaders. "This particular
program didn't make the cut," he said. "But it is absolutely not
true that we are doing less against al-Qaeda. Our primary criterion is
effectiveness, and we will continue to do things that we think are effective
to make terrorist lives miserable, and hopefully, short." Staff writers R. Jeffrey
Smith, Karen DeYoung and Ben Pershing and staff researcher Julie Tate
contributed to this report. © 2009 The Washington Post
Company External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/15/AR2009071503856.html |