[Blolover11]

Report: CIA plan to seize, kill Al Qaeda chiefs at heart of Congress controversy



UPDATE: Officials confirm to AP secret CIA program involved targeted assassinations

Monday afternoon, the Associated Press published a story based on unnamed official sources, backing up other reports that the CIA program in dispute involved targeting Qaeda leaders for assassination.

"A secret intelligence program canceled by CIA Director Leon Panetta in June was meant to find and then capture or kill al-Qaida leaders at close range rather than target them with air strikes that risked civilian casualties, government officials with knowledge of the operation said Monday," the AP reports.

The AP adds, "The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program, said the spy agency's program never got off the ground. Panetta canceled the effort on June 23 after learning of its existence, its failure to yield results, and the fact that Congress had been unaware of the program since its inception in 2001, according to one official with direct knowledge of the plan."

A report in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the CIA program that director Leon Panetta ended last month was a never-fully-functional plan to kill Al Qaeda leaders is drawing questions and criticism in the blogosphere.

"There must be something more" than a partially implemented plan to kill Al Qaeda leaders, writes a blogger at Emptywheel. "Aside from the near ubiquitous drone strikes, which seem to be fully acknowledged and non-controversial, there have been enough personal strikes against al Qaeda figures that appear likely to have been assassinations, that for all intents and purposes, it appears we are assassinating al Qaeda figures."

The blogger cites a New Yorker article written by Seymour Hersh in which the investigative journalist describes a blurring of lines of responsibility between military special operations and CIA activities. Because the Bush administration considered all these sorts of activities to be part of the "war on terror," it may have decided not to tell Congress about the CIA program because, to the Bush administration, it fell under the rubric of war, which is the President's arena, and -- unlike CIA activities -- not subject to Congressional oversight.

Emptywheel concludes that the program, as it was described in the WSJ article, could not have been the source of all the controversy. Congress already knows, for example, of a Bush-era plan to destabilize Iran's religious government, and that has drawn very little criticism and attention. So how could a far more innocuous program aimed at Al Qaeda generate so much more controversy?

The Washington Times reported Monday morning that an unnamed "intelligence official" claimed the controversial program that Panetta ended last month had to do with "special access programs," which are "intelligence activities that are so secret that even officers with the highest intelligence clearances do not know about them, and their access is reserved for only the most senior officials and officers directly working on the activities."

It's not clear what sort of "access" special access programs are about, though the term suggests wiretapping or other surveillance activities.

The article also states that both former CIA Director George Tenet and former Vice-President Dick Cheney knew about the program, and both agreed to keep it a secret from Congress.

On the Hullabaloo blog, Digby writes:

[T]he assassination squad story is actually looking like a real possibility. Even [Republican Michigan House Rep.] Pete Hoekstra now admits that it was something that would only have been approved in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (which reinforces the fact that we were being led at the time by a bunch of pants wetting panic artists) which only raises the question of why it was kept going, even in the planning stages, until this year.

Since [the secret program] wasn't operational after eight years ... I have to wonder if it wasn't some kind of kooky plan to kill from space or some shit. Why else would Pete Hoekstra say it was something that could only be hatched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and wouldn't pass muster today?

ORIGINAL STORY CONTINUES BELOW

The controversy over claims the CIA lied to Congress by withholding information about a counter-terrorism program centers around an "attempt" by the agency to seize and kill Al Qaeda leaders in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

According to the story, the CIA program that agency director Leon Panetta learned of last month, and then disclosed to the House Intelligence Committee, was "an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives."

The Journal cites unnamed "current and former government officials" who reportedly said the program had never become fully operational before Panetta ordered it shut down last month.

Cryptically, the paper states: "Republicans on the panel say that the CIA effort didn't advance to a point where Congress clearly should have been notified." No explanation is given as to why only Republicans on the committee would have been privy to this information.

The paper also states:

In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. It isn't clear whether they were an early part of the CIA initiative that Mr. Panetta stopped.

Last week, Democrat members of the House Intelligence Committee released a letter stating that Panetta informed them the CIA had kept a program concealed from Congress for some six or seven years. That spawned a flurry of speculation as to what the program may have been, including questions about whether it was, in effect, a "secret CIA army" that assassinated individuals abroad and was run directly by then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

The controversy grew this past Saturday when the New York Times reported that Cheney may have directly given the order to keep the program concealed from Congress -- a violation of the National Security Act, if proven true.

The Journal's report implies the program may have never become fully functional, but questions still remain about the specific details of the program, whether Cheney ran it directly, and whether he ordered the CIA to keep it from Congress.

The Journal writes:

Republicans on the [House Intelligence] panel say that the CIA effort didn't advance to a point where Congress clearly should have been notified.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency "has not commented on the substance of the effort." He added that "a candid dialogue with Congress is very important to this director and this agency."

The official noted that Congress had long been briefed on the [presidential finding ordering the CIA to hunt and kill Al Qaeda agents], and that the CIA effort wasn't so much a program as "many ideas suggested over the course of years." It hadn't come close to fruition, he added.

-- Daniel Tencer