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Rep. Eshoo Wants House Probe of CIA Program
WASHINGTON - A senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee (D-Calif.) is calling for a probe into a canceled CIA program kept secret from Congress.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said the Intelligence panel should find out where funding for the program originated and who directed the CIA not to inform Congress of its existence.
"We, by no means, have the full story," Eshoo said in an interview Sunday.
"We don't know who gave the order. We don't know where the money came from. We don't know all the people who were involved.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday that Democrats have been told by CIA Director Leon Panetta that former Vice President Dick Cheney called on the CIA not to tell Congress of the program.
"We need a full investigation," Eshoo continued. "My preference is that we hire an attorney to come in and run this, someone that is known for their prosecutorial knowledge as well as their knowledge of this particular area of the law."
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also called on congressional panels to investigate the matter Sunday during an appearance on ABC's "This Week."
Details about the eight-year CIA program are unclear, as members are refusing to disclose specifics about it. Still, several have referred to it as a serious program, and members of both parties have said Congress should have been informed.
Eshoo would not confirm or deny Cheney's involvement, but called for a full prosecution of whoever was found to be responsible, saying that she hoped fellow members would not shirk the task for partisan reasons.
"Once facts are established, if in fact laws have been broken, then one individual or more should be prosecuted," she said. "I think Congress has to have the stomach for this."
Durbin also said it could have been illegal to keep the program from Congress. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday that CIA Director Leon Panetta told members of the Intelligence panels that Cheney had told the agency not to inform Congress.
"This was purposefully concealed from Congress from 2001 to 2009, so it's not just the story that breaks, but the Congress has to have the stomach to do the right thing, regardless of who it is," Eshoo said.
Eshoo is one of seven panel members who sent a letter to Panetta last month asking him to publicly recant his previous statement that it is not the CIA's "policy or practice to mislead Congress" in light of his more recent testimony that revealed the CIA's concealment of information from members.
Eshoo said that her calls for an investigation were not simply to punish those in violation of the National Security Act, which requires the CIA to completely inform Congress. She said the CIA's actions had jeopardized her congressional responsibilities.
"This goes to the heart of the work of our responsibility on this committee," she said of not being informed by the CIA. "We can not do our work unless the Agency is forthcoming, the National Security Act calls for that to completely and fully inform Congress. Now, if you don't have the information, how can you shape policy?"
25 Comments so far
Show AllThis is ridiculous. For countless years, the CIA has worked outside the government and every damn CONgressperson knows. Smoke and mirrors again. Want to do some good...just disban the damn thing....yeah, right....never happen. These people have no morals and scruples. They'll just laugh at this little dance, lie their way through and continue their ops.
Once upon a time murder and mayhem agencies like the OSS were activated only in times of war. Now that we have a perminately out of control CIA we seem to have perminate wars. I suspect that the 'reasons' for America's endless atrocities will cease when the CIA is disbanded.
Honest corporations can make a living too.
I agree with "cynical." Most of the Dems have been hammered by their constituents lately because we voted FOR CHANGE in the last election, and we've had TOO MUCH CONTINUITY of the BUSH policies...and even another war.
ALSO--Obama's put the foxes in charge of the hen house on the economic front and now that the foxes have done what they normally do, he should be replacing them (since their plan didn't work) with NEW PEOPLE who were NOT RESPONSIBLE for the very decisions that got us here in the first place.
READERS--get OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA, five centuries of the pillage of a continent by Eduardo Galeano (Uruguan journalist)for a serious look at what our country's done. This was the book given to Obama earlier when he met Chavez (wonder if he read it). Obvious other is Naomi Klein's SHOCK DOCTRINE for anyone who hasn't read that one yet.
People like to call obama supporters blind and naive. It wasn't just those that voted for him, though. The whole world swallowed his tripe-filled hope soliloquy and thought it was sirloin. I haven't read that book yet, but now that you've reminded me im going to. I wonder when exactly we allowed our tax dollars to be treated like a giant slot machine and our government to become a mafia-esque stomping ground for a few good ol' boys. Can we call a mulligan and start over?
obama,s going to read shock doctrine like hees going to get a wisdom tooth pulled without anistethics !
He read it, but thought it was an instruction manual.
BWAHAHA!
The genuinely newsworthy back story appears to be that George W. Bush made a classified presidential "finding" which authorized the CIA, in ostensible compliance with the National Security Act and executive orders dating back to the Ford and Reagan administrations, to engage in targeted assassinations of named or perhaps all generic Al Qaeda "operatives" some time in 2001. The existence of such official White House approval was then withheld from Congressional oversight (perhaps upon orders of Vice President Dick Cheney) until new CIA director Leon Panetta finally briefed the lawmakers about the program in 2009.
Certainly this is well worth full investigation.
Regardless of whether the CIA acted upon Bush's secret finding or not, once we cross the conceptual threshold that premeditated murder can be carried out by persons on the federal payroll outside the context of soldiers engaged in combat, strict compliance with the minimal existing statutory and executive order standards governing use of assassination as an official tool of state is a matter of exceptional public policy significance.
Secret death squads roaming about, trying to execute people based upon secret hit lists, should at least remain obligated to document their paper trail and timely disclose their activities to our elected political representatives, in order that those responsible for appropriating tax funds to pay the nation's contract killers can maintain fiscal accountability.
Start playing fast and loose with this modest internal bookkeeping requirement, and the gig is truly up, the Rubicon crossed forever.
Bill from Saginaw
Yes, I think the program in question or one of them still secret was the hit squad that Sy Hersh wrote about,
Even before that I heard about a man who claimed to be a hit man for little George a few years ago and tried to get his story out but of course the media would not touch it.
Also I don't recall his targets as being al Quida.
When the people we put in charge of making the rules (laws) break those laws, there are no laws....
Mr. Cheney has some sussplainin' to do...
Fifty-six years after the fact, the majority of Americans still do not know (or, if they know, they don't care) about the CIA's Operation Ajax- the coup against Mossadegh to install the Shah in Iran. In the introduction to "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror," Stephen Kinzer writes: "Its radicalism inspired anti-Western fanatics in many countries, most notably Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda and other terror groups found homes and bases." Yet the majority of American people lack any knowledge or understanding of the birth of unrest and terrorism in the Middle East.
How is it that, in any of our history classes, we never learned about these events? How can anyone feign surprise or disbelief at any of these recent "revelations" of CIA secrecy and lies?
This will be stalled and eventually swept under the rug, just like all of the other war crimes and malfeasances of BushCo - in the interest of "looking forward, not backward", of course.
The Democrats are good at bringing up these issues which generate good headlines for sap consumption. Once the Democratic "leaders" catch wind of it it will die. It makes nice PR though. The saps will think Obama righted Bush's wrongs because they'll never bother to go back and check.
I want further investigation of the 'oops, a B-52 loaded with nukes just flew over the USA' incident of August '07.
--- "the mishandling in August would have required not one mistake — but a series of lapses by a number of people in order for armed weapons — as opposed to unarmed ones — to be inadvertently taken out of a storage bunker, mounted on the B-52, misidentified on a flight manifest and flown across the country for three hours without anyone noticing.
The plane also sat on a runway for hours with the missiles after arriving in Louisiana before the breach was known — meaning a total of 36 hours passed before the missiles were properly secured, officials have said." ---
Of course, the question has not been asked as to why nuclear cruise missiles to be decommissioned were not loaded aboard a transport for delivery to the decommissioning site in Texas, but instead mounted upon a B-52 and sent to Barksdale AFB, where planes take off from if they want to go to the Middle East.
Anyone looking for Cheney's fingerprints on this one? Are witnesses still alive?
for all we know - this was probably a botched attempt (maybe someone had a "change of heart" at the last moments? anything could be possible) - at ACTUALLY dropping the bomb somewhere "least populated" IN the USA -- no big cities involved, no big towns, just rural , maybe desert, least developed area - far "enough" from concentrations of populations to make it "tolerable" -
BUT VERY VERY SCARY -- "oh my god!!!!! THIS IS WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO US FROM TERRORISTS who HATE OUR FREEDOMS".....
an actualy demonstration of nuclear terror IN the USA -
and why wait for another terrorist attack? SCARE THE BEJEESUS out of americans with a REAL NUKE in the mainland.....
and ALL BETS ARE OFF -- FASCIST POLICE STATE BECOMES AMERICA.
is such a thing SO FAR from the imaginations and even attempts of the likes of Cheney ?
if the Germans under hitler used the Fire consuming the "symbol" of German Greatness - The Reichstag - to COMPLETE their fascist take-over - what is there to stop power-mad americans like cheney to stage the most fearsome man-made terror in the US mainland for the same purpose?
they would still call it an accident - heads will roll if they have not been "disappeared" -
BUT THE MESSAGE would be driven straight and COMPLETE into every american's brain :
"LET US PROTECT YOU....give up ANY of your liberties whenever we say so".
and that would be the final end of the american "republic". later to die a second death - that of a barbarian nation..gone completely bonkers.
I hope that Sen. Feinstien understands that in a proper investigation of the various and multitudinous crimes against humanity and acts of treason against the US by the Bush junta, she herself will be held accountable for her support of the Bush Doctrine and it's descendants.
Walk in peace.
The wheels of justice are creaking.
Keep a good thought-- but they usually tiptoe behind and jack up the chassis so the wheels aren't quite touching the ground.
· Yr Obd't Servant
"Congress has to have the stomach to do the right thing"
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!
Investigate the CIA by all means, as long as Nancy Pelosi is investigated right along with them. No more smoke and mirrors for her either.
This bs started back in 1980 when after Watergate, the repukes discovered the advantage of electing “lovable clowns” over serious politicians. If anything goes wrong they can grin and smile and all is forgiven, besides no one would ever believe they were smart enough to commit all their evil deeds. When Reagan was questioned about the illegal war waged on the Nicaraguan people funded partly by the CIA partially by RUNNING DRUGS INTO THE US and partly by CIA’s illegal arms sales to Iran while the Reagan administration was supplying Hussein with chemical weapons, he simply smiled and said “he could not remember”. And all evil and millions of ruined lives his illegal policies crated were forgiven. Such a touching moment.
This is simply a continuation of that policy and since we only have two-facets of an industrial-military-for-war-profits party, nothing ever happens to the war criminals, the murders, the rapists, the thieves that steal trillions from hard working people worldwide and all the other political and politically connected criminals that control America.
Since the beginning of the neocon control of the United States of America in 1980 they turned the greatest nation in the world into a country that stands for and means nothing to anyone but greed, hate, fear, and terror. Our great nation and the world have suffered immensely. Today the US is home to 100 billionaires, 10 million millionaires, and 290 million people that have little hope or future. And this is what the lying soulless scum that control everything want. The US will never have healthcare for all since the rich view the workers as machines and once used up they would rather we simply die.
We only have 2 facets of the same party to vote for but there are a few democrats in congress that do care about the average person and once we get more elected and the war criminals executed and the wall-street thugs imprisoned for live maybe just maybe we can live in a country where freedom, liberty, and justice for all mean something more than simply a corning saying from a time long ago and in a place far away.
No, no, no..........it all started after World War II when the OSS initiated "Operation Paperclip"........Yes, 1600 or more NAZI scientists and psychologists were brought into the United States by the OSS and Department of Defense......their records were "bleached" by the OSS and many were brought in through Mexico........(Oh, Spain often sent Nazis through Argentina by "bleaching" their records and redocumenting them as Spaniards.)
Where do you think this game of "Propaganda,Fear,Torture,and Terror" originated?
Now, back to Congressional hearings where smiles and, "I can not recall that meeting" are more important than getting criminals investigated.......With all due respect, after World War II, a secret trust fund was established known as "The Black Eagle Trust" or "Black Eagle Fund". All gold, jewels,money, and treasures recovered from Germany and Japan were put into a "Secret" trust that was to be controlled and used for clandestine operations.....Additional Gold was found in the Phillipine Islands many years later and that too was put into the "Fund"......
Information on that "Black Eagle Fund" is slowly disappearing. I guess that you would have to ask Timothy Geithner, how and when the money was distributed. Allegedly, the New York Reserve was the "Safe House"..........
The CIA has been "Off Book" for decades and every congressman and congresswoman has neither the courage nor desire to go up against "The Power Elite". They would rather take their share of the "Loot" and be safe and comfortable.
There was a money trail for the attacks of 9/11. Yet, no "Independent Investigation" was ever made. ("I do not want to look at the past, I would rather look at the future.")........Wow, we have a "Government by the rich and powerful for the rich and powerful." If you pay for the murder of almost 3,000 people, you just have your people: destroy evidence,threaten and or kill eyewitnesses, and have a commission write a fictional "Official Version". The rest of us are just "Conspiracy Theorists" and we get marginalized by the "Power Elite's Mainstream Media".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8136000/8136768.stm
(Try to watch this - iPlayer facility may not work outside of the UK.)
The former president of Peru who was recently sentenced to 25 years in jail for authorising a secret army hit squad, has appeared in court on corruption charges.
Justice exists in Peru but the US is still in doubt.
I can't think of Rep. Anna Eshoo without automaticially thinking "Gesundheit!"
· Yr Obd't Servant