Cheney told CIA to withhold information
- Thread starter shawn555
- Start date
Very good point Bobby--probably one of reasons many things are not reported to congress--and both parties quilty of "gotcha" politics over security interests.
C.I.A. Had Plan to Assassinate Qaeda Leaders
New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 13, 2009
WASHINGTON ? Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials.
Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, canceled an assassination plan after learning of it. The plans remained vague and were never carried out, the officials said, and Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, canceled the program last month.
Officials at the spy agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic obstacles. How could the role of the United States be masked? Should allies be informed and might they block the access of the C.I.A. teams to their targets? What if American officers or their foreign surrogates were caught in the midst of an operation? Would such activities violate international law or American restrictions on assassinations overseas?
Yet year after year, according to officials briefed on the program, the plans were never completely shelved because the Bush administration sought an alternative to killing terror suspects with missiles fired from drone aircraft or seizing them overseas and imprisoning them in secret C.I.A. jails.
Mr. Panetta scuttled the program, which would have relied on paramilitary teams, shortly after the C.I.A.?s counterterrorism center recently informed him of its existence. The next day, June 24, he told the two Congressional Intelligence Committees that the plan had been hidden from lawmakers, initially at the instruction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The program was designed in the frantic weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks when President George W. Bush signed a secret order authorizing the C.I.A. to capture or kill operatives of Al Qaeda around the world. To be able to kill Osama bin Laden or his top deputies wherever they might be ? even in cities or countries far from a war zone ? struck top agency officials as an urgent goal, according to people involved in the discussions.
But in practice, creating and training the teams proved difficult.
?It sounds great in the movies, but when you try to do it, it?s not that easy,? a former intelligence official said. ?Where do you base them? What do they look like? Are they going to be sitting around at headquarters on 24-hour alert waiting to be called??
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/14intel.html?_r=1&hp
If our former vice president is prosecuted, perhaps they can put togeather something to help with the legal bills like a 'evil lying treacherous bastard aid concert'. I'm sure the Dixie Chicks would chip in for a good cause. Just a thought.
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Maybe I am thick, maybe? :mj07: But I always thought that was part of the program. I would rather capture them but if get a chance to kill them why not? What am I missing here?
The granola crunchers would rather a "No Kill Solution" :shrug:
In Fact I would rather see all disputes solved like this myself.
