the other night when a TV report on the subject (and this is near-verbatim)said, "ABC news has learned that this program was in the planning staged so it may not have been necessary to inform congress."

No attribution.

"Has learned" Remember that one?

Hint: Yellowcake.

I guess they are just too busy booking Liz Cheney to investigate.

but not to worry. I fixed it.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is getting a "bum rap" over reports that he ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress, two of his closest buddies told CNN Monday.

According to both pals, who both received lucrative intelligence posts with little background qualifications, any intelligence program “that comes off the top of Dick’s head” is approved by the White House after a charade of meetings. In any such situation, once the administration decides to pursue a covert program, there is discussion on how to keep Congress from ever getting wind of it, the officials said.

President George W. Bush was "delegated" by then-Vice President Cheney to chair many of the meetings that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the fishing buddy said. . . .

Neither of the former officials who spoke to CNN would discuss the details of the program in question, but both said the CIA was developing a certain post-9/11 counterciviliberties capacity.

As one FOD (Friend of Dick) put it, "It should come as no surprise that we would justify it by saying 'the terrorists.'"

Both sources said the program that Panetta discussed fell under a presidential finding that broadly authorized just about, well, anything. They said Congress had been briefed on that finding in the fall of 2001, and there was no requirement to brief lawmakers on a program that they were hoping they’d never find out about in the first place.

"When it goes public, then you brief them," one of the former officials said.

Check out what Larissa Alexandrovna has to say at At-Largely. Why would you need to cancel a program that was not operational? If you believe this, you will believe anything.

Cheney will prove too slimy to grab.

About Addington:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/13/alito/permalink/ef5323ec92ad8459e8d88424b3d6d2b2.html

Even if the Alicia Shepards of the world were correct, and the purpose of journalism were merely to lay out both sides of a two-sided debate... how on earth would people decide which was correct? It'd be like rendering a verdict in a court case on the basis of opening arguments and nothing else.

Like so many things in our society, though, absurd premises like that are merely accepted as givens, with no real reflection or analysis.

O homines ad servitutem paratos!

:-)

Intentionally hiding a program like this from anyone in Congress is clearly illegal in and of itself, of course.

But there is no conceivable reason why the CIA and Cheney would intentionally hide this program as described from Congress, and then cancel it before it did anything, and so there must be a lot more to the story than just the bit about the paramilitary CIA team with the objective to kill al Qaeda leaders.

I believe this small tidbit was leaked with the intent to make the public think "No big deal here" and get any further public pressure off of the CIA

*NOW* have we proven The System (tm) is broken ? ? ?

hee hee hee

how many repetitions of the same type of insane outcomes do we go through before the inescapable conclusions are, well, inescapable ? ? ?

ho ho ho

will a 'broken' system (broken for us li'l peeps, functioning just fine for power elites) fix itself ? ? ?

ha ha ha

who will overturn the moneychangers' tables ? ? ?

ak ak ak

(hint: those loudest about their own humble pie ty (and most insistent on your adhering to twue bewiefs) are least likely to annoy moneychangers)

art guerrilla

aka ann archy

eof

In my previous comment, the following should have [116] as a citation. Sorry.

Jack Goldsmith: “To my astonishment, one of the first times that I confronted the extraordinary secrecy around legal opinions in the government, in OLC, was when, in connection with the NSA program, in a meeting in which the inspector general of the NSA, who was doing an audit of the NSA program, asked to see the legal opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel supporting the program, and David Addington snapped his head off and said that he was not to see the opinions.”

[116] Bill Moyers Interviews Jack Goldsmith, Frontline, PBS, 10/16/07 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/interviews/goldsmith.html#4

...to media outlets that actually report, well, anything? This is stenography at its worst. Journalism in the US is so wedded to the idea of impartiality (or fearful of being labeled "liberal"), that they have slid down the scale of impartiality toward indifference. They don't care about whether or not something criminal actually happened, they just want to remain neutral (and ineffective) to help their bottom line.

But the real question is when are we going to start to see investigations and prosecutions of this kind of criminal behavior by the Bush administration? Would the media then snap to attention?

"the program that Panetta discussed fell under a presidential finding that broadly authorized covert counterterrorism activities."

Just as warrantless wiretapping fell under a broad authorization by the president for the NSA to spy on terrorists.

So basically we are going to end up at another juncture where the pivotal question centers on executive power. Surprised, much?

I was going to title this, "They will never learn", but they don't care.

The capper for me is the contention that you would not have to inform Congress until the program was operational. So millions/billions of dollars would be wasted in planning, staffing, etc. on a program which might be killed at the last second by Congress?

That last part about Congress killing the program was a joke.

I see the briefing sort of like this:

CIA: So thats what we have set up Senators,......and you other guys.

Congress: Really? Did this cost much to plan?

CIA: No, the planning was real quick. A few thousand bucks for lunches and a celebratory dinner at the end. Most of the money was spent in setting it up and (cough) runningit.

Congress: Whats that? Running it?

CIA: Yes, sort of a shakedown test run so to speak.

Congress: What are the total costs for this program?

CIA: Ohh, XXXX billions so far. Not all the bills are in yet.

Congress: Holy crap! Where did you get that money?

CIA: Oh, we got money, Senator. Don't worry about that.

Congress: Well, as long as it is funded and working okay....it is working okay, right?

CIA: Do you really want to know?

Congress: I think you have told us enough sir. I believe I can speak for my fellow Senators that it would be a shame to cancel this key part of our national security program this far along. Thanks for fulfilling your legal responsibility Mr. Director.

CIA: Anytime Senator, anytime.