Wow, who could that be? Remember this:

Well, you think, for example, in the intelligence arena. We ask those people to do some very difficult things. Sometimes, that put their own lives at risk. They do so at the direction of the president, and they do so with the — in this case, we had specific legal authority from the Justice Department. And if they are now going to be subject to being investigated and prosecuted by the next administration, nobody’s going to sign up for those kinds of missions.It’s a very, very devastating, I think, effect that it has on morale inside the intelligence community. If they assume that they’re going to have to be dealing with the political consequences — and it’s clearly a political move. I mean, there’s no other rationale for why they’re doing this — then they’ll be very reluctant in the future to do that.

Back in the real world, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s decisions to embrace illegality and instruct CIA operatives to carry it out have resulted in the actual convictions in absentia of 23 people. What do you think the odds are that Cheney will pay deSouza’s legal bills with all his oil money?

One thing The Times doesn’t report is the newest speculation/rumor: that this effort would have included hunting al-Qaeda domestically, where the CIA is not not not supposed to act. Some sources of Time’s Bobby Ghosh — who seem not to have first-hand information — are musing along those lines. I have no information for this proposition, but we’re too early in this to rule anything decisively out. The Guardian reported yesterday that the teams were intended to operate in allied countries where a U.S. spray-and-leave capability would be, at a minimum, diplomatically problematic.

But would that really have freaked Congress out? The Bush administration had the CIA abduct people like Abu Omar off the streets of Milan with minimal congressional opposition. An effort to assassinate him, to be macabre about it, is the next logical step. And Congress has no problem assassinating suspected members of al-Qaeda from the air.

So clearly there’s more here, though I have no idea as yet what the additional ‘there’ is. One striking thing about this is how comic-book-y it all seems: trying to create teams of assassins to gallavant around the world killing terrorists in stealthy ways. I think this is the plot of the new “G.I. Joe” movie.

There could be situations — and I emphasize could be, because we haven’t made a determination yet — where, let’s say that we have a well-known al-Qaeda operative, doesn’t surface very often, [and who] appears in a third country with whom we don’t have an extradition relationship or isn’t willing to prosecute. And we think [this operative] is a very dangerous person. I think we still have to think about how we deal with that scenario, in a way that comports with international law, that abides by my very clear edict that we don’t torture and that we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining, through habeas corpus, an opportunity to answer to charges. How all that sorts itself out is extremely complicated, because it’s not just domestic law, it’s also international law. Our relationship with various other entities. So, again, it will take this year to be able to get all these procedures in place and on the right footing.

The hypothetical scenario he’s describing isn’t extraordinary rendition, the process by which the United States would transfer a detainee extra-judicially into the custody of another country, typically as a method of claiming not to know that the detainee is tortured. It’s more like a tweaked version of the infamous case of Abu Omar, whom CIA and Italian intelligence agents abducted off the streets of Milan on suspicion of involvement with terrorism and handed to the Egyptian security service. Abu Omar told Peter Bergen last year what happened to him:

Spreading his arms in a crucifixion position, he demonstrates how he was tied to a metal door as shocks were administered to his nipples and genitals. His legs tremble as he describes how he was twice raped. He mentions, almost casually, the hearing loss in his left ear from the beatings, and how he still wakes up at night screaming, takes tranquilizers, finds it hard to concentrate, and has unspecified “problems with my wife at home.”

An Italian judge has indicted 25 CIA operatives and an Air Force colonel for their involvement in Abu Omar’s abduction. Since the U.S. refuses to extradite them, they’re being tried in absentia.

Assume for a moment that the hypothetical scenario Obama outlines is enshrined as U.S. policy tomorrow. That would mean the next Abu Omar would be snatched by the CIA from some country and eventually handed over to the custody of either another U.S. agency — as the CIA is out of the “long-term” detention business — and a process ensues whereby s/he can challenge the basis for his/her detention. The individual would have to be interrogated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. And this would all have to comport with international law. I am unsure of what basis there is for rendition in international law and would love to be enlightened on that score.

Mr. Obama said Tuesday that Mr. Panetta and other members of the new administration would be “committed to breaking with some of the past practices” that had “tarnished the image” of the United States’ intelligence agencies.

But transition officials said Mr. Obama also intended to keep the C.I.A’s No. 2 official, Stephen R. Kappes, a highly regarded former Marine officer and agency veteran. The transition officials spoke on condition of anonymity about the personnel move, a plan that could help defuse criticism inside the C.I.A. about Mr. Panetta’s own thin background in intelligence.

Yes, that Steve Kappes. As deputy director, Kappes won’t go through any confirmation hearings, so the Abu Omar affair and his role in it — in whatever capacity — will remain incomplete, as will his successes in Libya and elsewhere. Of course, the CIA didn’t tell Mazzetti what Kappes’ own plans for the future are, so this may all be a moot point, but still.