Replies to post #434533 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[sylvester80]

Cheney kept CIA program from Congress, source says

* Story Highlights
* Cheney ordered CIA to withhold info on counterterrorism program, source tells CNN
* Program reportedly initiated after 9/11 attacks, stopped by CIA Director Panetta
* House Democrats recently wrote letter claiming CIA misled Congress for years

updated 1 hour, 34 minutes ago
From Pam Benson
CNN National Security Producer
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/11/cheney.surveillance/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress during the Bush administration on direct orders from then-Vice President Dick Cheney, current CIA director Leon Panetta told members of Congress, a knowledgeable source confirmed to CNN.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly ordered the CIA to withhold information about counterterrorism.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly ordered the CIA to withhold information about counterterrorism.

The disclosure to the House and Senate intelligence committees about Cheney's involvement by Panetta was first reported in the New York Times. Efforts to contact Cheney for reaction were unsuccessful late Saturday.

The source who spoke to CNN did not want to be identified by name because the matter is classified, and CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined comment on the report.

"It's not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing," Gimigliano said. "When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta's attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect."

The fact that Panetta recently briefed lawmakers on an unspecified counterterrorism program was first revealed Wednesday, when a letter from seven House Democrats to Panetta was made public. The June 26 letter characterizes Panetta as testifying that the CIA "concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week."

The letter contained no details about what information the CIA officials allegedly concealed or how they purportedly misled members of Congress.

A knowledgeable source familiar with the matter said the counterterrorism program in question was initiated shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

The program was on-again, off-again and was never fully operational, but was rather, a tool put on the shelf that could have been used, the source said. Panetta has put an end to the program, according to the source.

The disclosures follow a May spat between the spy agency and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who accused the CIA of misleading Congress during a secret 2002 briefing on harsh interrogation techniques being used on terrorism suspects. The CIA responded that Pelosi was told about the harsh techniques, including waterboarding, at the briefing.

However, the June 26 letter from the seven House Democrats noted that Panetta told CIA employees in a May 15 letter -- a response to the Pelosi allegation -- that it was not CIA policy to mislead Congress. The letter from the House Democrats asked Panetta to correct his May 15 statement "in light of your testimony."

Asked about the Democrats' letter, CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta "stands by his May 15 statement."

"This agency and this director believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta's actions back that up," Little said in a statement. "As the letter from these ... representatives notes, it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees."

The latest revelations come as lawmakers consider expanding the number of House and Senate members privy to the kind of secret briefing that Pelosi received.

The White House opposes a measure that would increase the number of briefing participants from the current eight to 40 members of Congress. A White House memo warned President Obama's senior advisers would recommend a veto of the bill if it contained the expanded briefing provision.

[sylvester80]

Report: Cheney told CIA not to inform Congress
By Ian Swanson
Posted: 07/11/09 11:23 PM [ET]
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/reports-cheney-told-cia-not-to-inform-congress-2009-07-11.html

Former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the CIA not to inform Congress about a secret counterterrorism program for eight years, according to separate media reports on Saturday.

Subsequent CIA officials determined the program had not gone forward enough to merit telling members of Congress, the Associated Press reported. Cheney’s involvement was first reported by The New York Times.

Democrats on the House Intelligence panel this week said President Obama’s CIA Director, Leon Panetta, told them in a briefing that Congress had not been told of the program. The AP reported that Panetta determined the other CIA officials had made a mistake in not alerting Congress.

The latest revelations make it likely lawmakers will continue to deal with the battle over what intelligence officials have told the congressional panels with oversight over their activities when Congress returns to Washington next week. The issue has become a distraction for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who repeatedly has been hit with questions over the briefings.

Pelosi in May said the CIA had lied to her about its use of waterboarding. Republicans have disputed Pelosi’s statements, arguing she knew of the CIA’s use of waterboarding but did not speak out at the time.

News of the briefing broke after several Democrats on the Intelligence panel made public a letter to Panetta asking him to make it clear that the CIA had misled members of Congress by not telling them of intelligence programs.

It’s not clear what was involved in the program Panetta told lawmakers about.

[sylvester80]

Cheney Told CIA To Hide Program From Congress

PAMELA HESS | July 11, 2009 09:15 PM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta's June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Panetta did not agree.

Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it was canceled.

Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration's surveillance program that was the subject of an inspectors general report this past week. That report noted that Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in Bush's inner circle could even know about the secret program.

But revelations about Cheney's role in making decisions for the CIA on whether to notify Congress came as a surprise to some on the committees, said another government official. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program publicly.

An effort to reach Cheney was unsuccessful.

A former intelligence official, who was familiar with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden's tenure at the CIA, said Hayden never communicated with the president or vice president about the now-canceled program and was under no restrictions from Cheney about congressional briefings. The official said Hayden was briefed only two or three times on the program.
Story continues below

Exactly what the counterterrorism program was meant to do remains a mystery. The former intelligence official said it was not related to the CIA's rendition, interrogation and detention program. Nor was it part of a wider classified electronic surveillance program that was the subject of a government report to Congress this past week.

The official characterized it as an embryonic intelligence gathering effort, and only sporadically active. He said it was hoped to yield intelligence that would be used to conduct a secret mission or missions in another country _ that is, a covert operation. But it never matured to that point.

The government official with direct knowledge of the Panetta briefing and the former intelligence official said the CIA has numerous efforts ongoing under its existing authorities that have not yet been briefed to Congress. He said they are not yet known to be viable for intelligence gathering.

The Cheney revelation comes as the House of Representatives is preparing to debate a bill that would require the White House to expand the number of members who are told about covert operations. The White House has threatened a veto over concerns that wider congressional notifications could compromise the secrecy of the operations.

That provision, however, would have no effect on programs like this one.

The former intelligence official familiar with Hayden said Congress has a right to contemporaneous information about all CIA activities. But he said there are so many in such early stages that briefing Congress on every one would be too time consuming for both the CIA and the congressional committees.

The New York Times initially reported about Cheney's direction not to tell Congress of the program on its Web site Saturday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/11/cheney-told-cia-to-hide-p_n_230093.html

[sylvester80]

Cheney should be looking at prison for forcing CIA to lie to congress...

[sylvester80]

Cheney to CIA: Don't Tell Congress About Program
By Justin Peters
Posted Sunday, July 12, 2009, at 3:48 AM ET

The New York Times leads news that, under instructions from former vice-president Dick Cheney, the CIA deliberately failed to tell Congress about a secret counterterrorism program. The Washington Post leads news that Attorney General Eric Holder is considering whether to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that CIA operatives tortured terrorism suspects. The Los Angeles Times leads a recap of President Obama's visit to Ghana, where he gave a speech exhorting the African continent to take responsibility for its own future.

None of the papers provide any actual material details about the secret counterterrorism program, which apparently lasted from 2001 until early last month, when CIA director Leon Panetta learned of its existence and ordered it disbanded. Two unnamed sources told the NYT about Cheney's apparent involvement in covering up the program, which the CIA claims was never actually operational.

The Post's article plays down the alleged Cheney connection (possibly because the paper was scooped by the NYT), focusing instead on the fact that House Democrats may choose to investigate the program. The CIA is supposed to report on all but its most sensitive operations to the full House and Senate intelligence committees; any investigation will hinge on whether the program was sensitive enough to legitimately skirt that requirement. But without any indication of what the program actually was, it's hard to say whether all this smoke will be traced back to an actual fire.

Following up on a story that Newsweek broke yesterday on its Web site, the Post reports that recent disclosures about torture protocols during the Bush administration have led the attorney general to more seriously consider initiating a probe into alleged CIA malfeasance. But the story relies heavily on anonymous sources, making it hard to gauge the validity of the information. The NYT story, much shorter than the Post's, quotes a Justice official who "spoke anonymously because the decision had not yet been made."

The LAT piece about Obama's visit to Africa is a strong one, putting Obama's visit and speech in the context of both his personal heritage and of recent Western involvement in Africa. The paper interviews a few Ghanans who noted that the substance of Obama's speech was fairly unmemorable: "It was the same things about good-governance and responsibility that we've been hearing since the 1980s," said one man.

The NYT account, consisting largely of excerpts from Obama's speech, is less satisfying—the reporter interviews no actual Ghanans and overdoes the heavy-handed symbolism. ("When he first came as a college student, he had little more than a backpack and a train ticket. On Friday, he arrived on Air Force One.") Tellingly, the LAT story was co-written by the paper's Nairobi bureau chief, while the NYT piece came solely from domestic political reporter Peter Baker of that paper's D.C. bureau. The Post's competent story is co-written by White House reporter Michael Fletcher and Africa correspondent Karin Brulliard.

All three papers run scene-setters in advance of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, which begins next week. The NYT runs down what it imagines to be the easiest "path to the court"—namely, don't say anything controversial during the hearing process. The Post notes that Sotomayor is "a striking mixture of uneasy outsider and consummate insider."

The LAT fronts a deep investigative piece, reported in conjunction with ProPublica, about how incompetent, abusive nurses in California tend to retain their licenses for years, due to a nursing oversight board that "often takes years to act on complaints of egregious misconduct." One chronically angry nurse repeatedly assaulted patients. Another allegedly fell asleep while performing CPR. "The nursing board is there to protect the public from me," said the chronically angry (and oddly self-aware) nurse.

The NYT off-leads a feature on a group of Somali-American students from Minnesota whose unexpected shift toward Islamic radicalization (and their consequent involvement with militant groups in Somalia) has precipitated "what may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11." The article says that Somali militant group al-Shabaab is affiliated with al-Qaeda; but, as a Post story from April reported, it's unclear how strong the group's al-Qaeda ties really are—or whether those ties actually exist.

The LAT fronts a story on the recent bloodless coup that overthrew Honduran president Manuel Zelaya—a Chavez-style leftist authoritarian who was "an increasingly arbitrary and provocative leader"—one day before a controversial and dubiously legal vote that would have made it easier for Zelaya to rewrite the country's constitution. '"For [Zelaya], it was all about becoming a big figure. If he had to dance the cha-cha-cha, he'd do it. If he had to spout Marxist rhetoric, he'd do it,'" noted one Honduran political analyst.

"A scar that will be visible for years": The Post runs a comprehensive ombudsman piece slamming the paper's decision to hold off-the-record, pay-to-play "salons" involving politicians, academics, and members of the Post newsroom. Calling the idea "an ethical lapse of monumental proportions," Andrew Alexander fairly eviscerates publisher Katharine Weymouth, who claims not to have realized that these events would have generated such controversy. Alexander's unstinting conclusion: "The Post's reputation now carries a lasting stain."
Justin Peters is a writer in New York, and the editor of Polite.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2222727/

[sylvester80]

Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
July 12, 2009
By SCOTT SHANE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/politics/12intel.html

The Central Intelligence Agency 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 Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.

The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”

In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

An intelligence agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined on Saturday to comment on the report of Mr. Cheney’s role.

“It’s not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “When a C.I.A. unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.”

Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program, whose details remained secret and which even some Democrats have said was properly classified. Most of those interviewed, however, have said that it was an important activity that should have been disclosed to the intelligence committees.

Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.

In the tense months after Sept. 11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment, intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures. It was in that atmosphere that the unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress, officials said.

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.

One intelligence official, who would speak about the classified program only on condition of anonymity, said there was no resistance inside the C.I.A. to Mr. Panetta’s decision to end the program last month.

“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” the official said. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.”

Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, who was the C.I.A. director when the unidentified program began, declined to comment on Saturday, noting that the program remained classified.

In the eight years of his vice presidency, Mr. Cheney was the Bush administration’s most vehement defender of the secrecy of government activities, particularly in the intelligence arena. He went to the Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers to his task force on energy, and won.

A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program makes clear that Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to approve personally every government official who was told about the program. The report said “the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program” frustrated F.B.I. agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it had turned up.

Mr. Addington could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

Questions over the adequacy and the truthfulness of the C.I.A.’s briefings for Congress date to the creation of the intelligence oversight committees in the 1970s after disclosures of agency assassination and mind-control programs and other abuses. But complaints increased in the Bush years, when the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies took the major role in pursuing Al Qaeda.

The use of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, for instance, was first described to a handful of lawmakers for the first time in September 2002. Ms. Pelosi and the C.I.A. have disagreed about what she was told, but in any case, the briefing occurred only after a terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded 83 times.

Democrats in Congress, who contend that the Bush administration improperly limited Congressional briefings on intelligence, are seeking to change the National Security Act to permit the full intelligence committees to be briefed on more matters. President Obama, however, has threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if the changes go too far, and the proposal is now being negotiated by the White House and the intelligence committees.

Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat of Illinois on the House committee, wrote on Friday to the chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat of Texas, to demand an investigation of the unidentified program and why Congress was not told of it. Aides said Mr. Reyes was reviewing the matter.

“There’s been a history of difficulty in getting the C.I.A. to tell us what they should,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat of Washington. “We will absolutely be held accountable for anything the agency does.”

Mr. Hoekstra, the intelligence committee’s ranking Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency had not been as forthcoming as the law required.

“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.

[sylvester80]

Cheney 'ordered CIA to hide plan'

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney gave direct orders to the CIA to conceal an intelligence programme from Congress, US media reports say.

The existence of the programme, set up after 9/11, was hidden for eight years and even now its nature is not known.

CIA director Leon Panetta is said to have abandoned the project when he learnt of it last month.

He has now told a House committee that Mr Cheney was behind the secrecy, the unnamed US sources say.

There has been no comment from Mr Cheney.

War of words

The claims come amid an increasingly bitter row between the CIA and Congress over whether key information was withheld about other aspects of the agency's operations.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed that the CIA misled her about interrogation methods including waterboarding, while other senior Democrats have quoted Mr Panetta as admitting that his agency regularly misled Congress before he took office.

Details of the newly-revealed secret programme have still not been divulged, but sources say it did not relate to the CIA's rendition programme, interrogation methods or a controversial domestic surveillance project.

Officials quoted by the New York Times say the programme was launched by anti-terror operatives at the CIA soon after the 2001 attacks, and involved planning and training but never became fully operational.

Another unnamed official told AP it was an embryonic intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at yielding intelligence that would be used to conduct a covert operations abroad.

Sources have told a number of US media outlets Mr Cheney personally instructed the CIA to withhold information about the programme from Congress.

Mr Panetta - who took over directorship of the CIA under President Obama's administration - is said to have learnt about the programme only on 23 June.

The next day he called an emergency meeting with congressional intelligence committees to tell them about its existence and to say that it was being cancelled, the reports say.

Veto threat

The allegations come as the Democrats in Congress are trying push through new rules that would increase the number of members of Congress who are told about covert operations.

The White House is threatening to veto the bill, fearing that operational secrecy could be compromised.

The CIA has not commented on the reports of Mr Cheney's role.

"It's not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing," said spokesman Paul Gimigliano.

"When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta's attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect."

A CIA spokesman insisted earlier this week that "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8146466.stm

[fuagf]

benz, syl's wasn't, yours was .. totally ..

for a start (fas), Obama is a United Church man

do all a favor (daaf) .. scratch your extreme prejudice 'b'itch in bed ..