Personal About Politics: Cheney Linked to CIA Assassination Squad & His Silence is Deafening

For months, former Vice President Dick Cheney couldn’t stop talking. Rarely a day went by that he, and/or his daughter, Liz, wasn’t on the radio, T.V. or newspaper touting the virtues of torture and how he practically saved the world single-handedly, not only from terrorists, but from anyone who was not patriotic enough to support torture. 

Since the news came out ten days ago that Cheney was in control of a CIA assassination squad he as gone to ground. No comment. Not a sound. Not a peep. He has disappeared, apparently hiding in one of his super-secret underground bunkers. The silence has been deafening.

For the past eight years, the CIA has been running a top-secret unit to assassinate members of al-Qaeda, and on orders from Cheney, kept it secret from Congress. According to an inspectors general report out this past week, Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in Bush’s inner circle could even know about the secret program. (AP)

CIA Director Leon Panetta learned of the program on June 23 from within the CIA and immediately terminated it, calling an emergency meeting of the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it had been cancelled. (AP)

Keeping secrets or running covert operations is not anything new for the CIA – it’s what they do. What’s disturbing is that Cheney was giving the orders, nobody in Congress was informed, and it was four months into his tenure before Panetta was told about it.

In 1981 Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333, which states among other things these important directives:

1.5: Director of Central Intelligence.
In order to discharge the duties and responsibilities prescribed by law, the Director of Central Intelligence shall be responsible directly to the President and the NSC (National Security Council)

2.11: Prohibition of Assassination.
No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.

3.1 Congressional Oversight.
The duties and responsibilities of the Director of Central Intelligence and the heads of other departments, agencies, and entities engaged in intelligence activities to cooperate with the Congress in the conduct of its responsibilities for oversight of intelligence activities shall be as provided in title 50, United States Code, section 413.

Simply put, the president is in charge - not the vice president and his attorney - assassination is against the law and intelligence must notify Congress to provide oversight.

Intelligence officials have said that the agency was not obligated to disclose the program, in part because it never became fully operational. (Washington Post)

However, according to Seymour Hersch writing for the The New Yorker, “Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.”

That bears repeating: “….a Presidential Finding…must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way.”

Not 8 years later!

Jack Rice, a former CIA agent, speaking about that argument on his radio program “The Jack Rice Show,” had this to say, “According to Congressman Hoekstra they spent at least a million dollars in preparations here. They say that this never came to fruition, but they already started down the path. Guess what. That’s an operation.”

Which begs the question, where did the money come from and who determined what names where on the hit list? If Congress was left out of the loop, who allotted that money and from what fund? Did Cheney and Addington just pull names off a list of “suspected terrorists” and decide they should be assassinated? How do we know it wasn’t just someone they personally disliked? If Panetta wasn’t told about the operation until June, who was running it? Was Cheney still calling the shots? And why was it still in the planning stages after 8 years? Wouldn’t you think after a couple of years it would have been determined to not be workable?

These are all very frightening prospects and precisely why we need oversight. Congressional oversight, if only the Gang of Eight, who are sworn to secrecy, is needed to determine if the covert operation is viable, legal and warrants funding.

We aren’t likely to know the answers to these questions anytime soon, if ever, since Cheney isn’t talking. However, he has sent “Dick Junior”, daughter Liz, to make the talk show circuits to defend his stellar reputation. She gave this explanation about her father’s “executive assassination ring”.

“There was clearly a disagreement here it looks like between the current director of the CIA and his predecessor, about whether or not these plans rose to the level to need to brief Congress. But the fact that all of that is being used now by the Democrats to launch political attacks at the expense of the defense and security of the nation will once again, as I said before, make the American people ask, how can the Democrats be trusted with our national security?”

The Democrats? Apparently her dad didn’t think the Republicans could be trusted either, since they weren’t told about the operation.

Obviously Liz isn’t going to give us anything but red herrings, but on Friday the House intelligence committee announced it would investigate the CIA’s secret assassination program, including whether Dick Cheney improperly intervened to stop the agency from telling Congress about the initiative. (Washington Post)

It’s time for Cheney to start talking again, but this time in front of a Congressional hearing having to answer hard questions under oath, for hours and hours under hot lights with cameras flashing, and millions and millions of people watching. I wouldn’t mind having our tax money spent on that operation!

Cheri Cabot, Politics Correspondent
Cheri’s column, “Personal About Politics,” published every week, will reflect on how the life of a 59 year-old, middle class woman is affected by politics, policy and the current state of the nation - a look at the personal aspects of politics. Her column is part of Gather Essentials.



Cheri is a freelance writer, living in Southern California.  She has two grown children and is the proud grandmother of three. Cheri is also a purveyor of fine coffee, warm chatter and dry wit.



You can find all of Cheri’s columns on Personal About Politics at www.personalpolitcs.gather.com, The Obama Watch at theobamawatch.gather.com  or her home page here, www.ccabot.gather.com