THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SECRET
Well, it is all coming out just as we knew it would. Remember a few days ago when CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that the CIA did not make a practice of withholding information from the Congress except maybe for that one teensy-weensy little time 8 years ago? This set House Democrats into a frenzy of memo writing looking for the truth (and maybe a little vindication for Nancy Pelosi).
Well, the story has finally come out as it always does. Turns out it was former Vice-President Dick Cheney who was behind the withholding of information from Congress. Now there's a real shocker. But wait, it gets even better.
The program that he was so anxious to keep from Congress was targeted killings of known al-Qaeda operatives around the world by CIA agents, a project that had been hinted at in earlier reporting by Seymour Hersh. The irony is that it was a similar program of targeted killings that prompted Senator Frank Church to hold hearings that lead to the imposition by Congress of the requirement that they be informed by the CIA in advance of any programs that might be important.
The further irony is that Congress probably would have green-lighted the plan given the temper of the post-9/11 times. It was Cheney's obsession with secrecy and his arrogant assumption that Congress couldn't be trusted that led to the current brouhaha. (Of course, since Cheney considered himself to be part of the legislative branch maybe he felt that Congress was already informed if he knew about it.)
You would think that a smart guy like Dick Cheney would understand a couple of basic facts of life. First, if senior al-Qaeda officials mysteriously started dying all over the world, the CIA's involvement would have been taken as a given no matter what the circumstances and how tight the secrecy. Second, when administrations change the dirty laundry always comes out sooner or later so you really better have a strong short-term gain to offset the long-term historical pain.
The CIA was apparently sufficiently leary of the pitfalls to never bring the program fully into operational status (or at least so we are told). And in fairness it should be pointed out that it may well be that the decision not to tell Congress was technically correct when it was made, but it surely violated the spirit of the law.
I know there are folks who will strongly disagree with me on this, but to me this whole episode demonstrates how important it is to follow the law, even the ones we don't especially care for. If nothing else, Congressional oversight will sometimes save us from ourselves.
As a footnote, let me add that I met someone who did that sort of thing while he was in Vietnam. The work takes its toll no matter how committed one is to the cause. We need to remember that long after the war is over those men and women who do our dirty work for us will eventually have to face many long nights crowded with memories that won't go away.
July 14, 2009
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Tags:
CIA
War on Terror
Dick Cheney
