rssCIA Was Trying to Create an Assassinations Capability
Monday, July 13, 2009 at 6:00 am
- 15 Comments
All credit is due to The Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman, who provides the most thorough account so far of what the “significant actions” were that CIA Director Leon Panetta told the Congress about — and stopped — late last month. To make a long story short: the effort was apparently an on-again-off-again attempt to create an assassinations capability to go after al-Qaeda, following a post-9/11 presidential finding from George W. Bush. The scope and contours of the effort are unknown, but it reportedly never went beyond the stages of spending “money on planning and possibly some training.” Whether that actually was the case will probably be the subject of upcoming congressional hearings.
Here’s a description of the program, as Gorman reports it:
Some officials who advocated the approach were seeking to build teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks, said another former intelligence official.
“It was straight out of the movies,” one of the former intelligence officials said. “It was like: Let’s kill them all.”
Two things. First, we’ve known for years that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld endeavored to move Special Forces in the direction of traditional CIA covert operations. In 2005, the Pentagon acknowledged creating so-called “Strategic Support Teams” of military and civilian personnel for unspecified and hairy operations. I’d check out this briefing for a suggestion of what these things might have been, or might have tried to be:
Q: Have they been deployed anywhere besides Iraq and Afghanistan thus far?
SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well see, we really haven’t deployed teams as — you know, as described here as these Strategic Support Teams. Up until now, we have been deploying from the larger base of those capabilities and Defense HUMINT services, as I said earlier, sort of individual augmentations drawn broadly from our capabilities.
Whether this sort of thing is a cousin to the “significant actions” emerging here remains to be seen, but I wonder.
Second, this really ought to quiet all talk that Panetta was just trying to mend fences with congressional Democrats after the fracas with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) over whether CIA lied to Congress about torture briefings. For about 30 years, the CIA has been barred from conducting assassinations. It makes all the sense in the world for Panetta to disclose to Congress a newly-discovered program to build up an assassinations capability. If he discovered the effort and didn’t tell Congress, it would be cause for the oversight committees to rake him over the coals, even if he scuttled the program.
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15 Comments
Comment posted July 13, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
Let's face it. The Bush Presidency was a period that every American can be ashamed of. First, under Bush and Cheney's watch the US experienced its most devastating attack since the creation of our country. Second, Bush and Cheney lied us into an unnecessary war that has, until now, cost the lives of over 4,000 Americans with approximately 20,000 seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands Iraqis have been killed and millions displaced. What did this war achieve? It made some of Bush and Cheney's cronies rich and economically ruined the rest of the country. On top of all of this Bush and Cheney used fear tactics to undermine the very fabric of our democracy. They turned America into a country that tortures prisoners as a matter of policy. They ignored the science concerning climate change because it might be bad for their pocketbooks and those of their friends. And maybe worst of all they showed us that in some sense we are a nation of cowards. The Democrats stood by and let all of this evil happen. The rest of us did not want to take a chance and stand up for principles out of fear and lack of integrity. So, even though Bush and Cheney were the evil men that directly perpetrated all of these crimes we all passively participated in them. And now we are doing the same thing by not bringing them to justice. We are allowing those that committed crimes against humanity and our democracy to go on without being held accountable for their actions. Where will this lead?
Comment posted July 13, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
“For about 30 years, the CIA has been barred from conducting assassinations. It makes all the sense in the world for Panetta to disclose to Congress a newly-discovered program to build up an assassinations capability.
If he discovered the effort and didn’t tell Congress, it would be cause for the oversight committees to rake him over the coals, even if he scuttled the program.”
I think Spenser is on to something real here. Stay on the hunt.
We can best support him by keeping the pressure on Democrats to investigate.
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Comment posted July 13, 2009 @ 4:50 pm
I wanted to comment to the Washington Independent news for one reason.
Although I don't think everything is about me, not even most of the things I post, many things I have seen have references to 'hairy'. I wanted to say that adding the comment about hairy may be an attempt to add a perception that is not true, if it is from another source, then this comment would be directed at that source also.
The article says “hairy operations” Since hairy is something I have referenced, specifically the rabbit, I wanted to say my view is that, I do not think the rabbit is connected in any way to anything like organizations that operate in secret. All of my comments over the years have been about secrecy being bad and shinning a light on corruption.
If anyone makes a connection between that article and the many comments about hair or hare, from the musical, to the Easter bunny, the rabbit sketches, Sultans of swing, long hair friends of Jesus, the many long haired people in videos, Big hair rock bands, Indian tradition of long hair, the comcast fast bunny, the two gold stars for drawing a bunny, the jumping, or many other correlations to rabbits that people have posted videos about. Then that is dishonest and insidious.
In my view life should be lived with compassion and justice, and reaching those things in my view requires honesty, kindness, and shinning a light on hidden elements of corruption. Again I do not believe in violence nor killing and enjoy the thoughts of turning the other cheek and loving thy enemy. God Bless
Comment posted July 13, 2009 @ 4:56 pm
The only use of secrecy that makes sense is when it is used to stop a worse bad in a flawed world, a combination on a safe is kept secret to stop a worse theft, if secrecy does not limit bad it is inherently bad, and oversight is required in secrecy.
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[...] Ackerman argues that this proves Panetta wasn’t merely trying to curry favor with Congress but may have been [...]
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Comment posted July 18, 2009 @ 11:03 am
An illegal war in Iraq. The knee-jerk reaction and emotionalism post 9-11. The financial crisis that was not even mentioned during the Bush Administrations 8-years in office. The Israeli-American attack on Lebannon. The intervention in the Hamas election. The failure to go after Al Quada at Tora Bora. The North Korean Nuclear Program Debacle. The Offshore Tax Shelters and criminal tax evations that never to this day have been prosecuted. The School of The Americas. The Deficit of The Bush Administration. The fake Axis of Evil propaganda against Iran. The Katrina Hell. The Torture Prisons and Renditions. The Dick Chaney Energy White Papers. The Israel Lobby and Spying Networks. The Russian Poisionings in Europe. The Health Care Crisis and Education Deficits. The Defense Budget to not-a-single win!
The Food Challenged in America. The Criminals and their Mark-to-Market Banking Boondoggle. The Lack of Protective Armour in the Iraqi Invasion for our troops.
So, now we are to entertain the details of a “possible” violation of the Constitution and Congress by the same class of the educated and military elites who took the chains off Wall Street and allowed devils like Midoff to roam the hallways of our financial system for 20-years without all this forward seeking electronic survallance detecting his movements?
This all seems like an endless pre-planned pimp game to finish robbing the American People and then pretend that the American system of government is “cleaning house” and restore confidence. We'll see how many of “there own” goes to jail. What ever happen to the crime of treason?
Comment posted June 2, 2010 @ 3:39 pm
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Comment posted September 17, 2010 @ 8:21 am
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Comment posted September 25, 2010 @ 9:36 am
and the heads of the intelligence community, as well as antipathy to the government of Hamid Karzai.
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