More proof Vice President Voldemort was the leader of the "let's keep this illegal program a secret" club.
From the NY Times:
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.
A report that former Vice President Dick Cheney was behind the decision to conceal a C.I.A. program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it.
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.
Read the rest here.
It is going to take 20 years to undo the mess the collection of Bush Administration craven incompetents left behind. A pox on their houses. A blight on American history.
Still, it must really suck to be a supporter of these buffoons these days and watch all their hard work go down the drain as Obama corrects their thousands of mistakes, one by one.
So Cheney wanted Al Queda dead, but was afraid Congress would screw it up. Yeah, Americans are really going to hate the Republicans for that.
The Democrats ought to make this a big issue.
Posted by: R Turney | July 14, 2009 at 06:35 AM