House probe of covert CIA program could target Cheney
Published: July 20, 2009
Updated 8 months ago
Vice President Dick Cheney isn’t out of the reeds just yet.
In a little noticed statement Friday, the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence and Investigations announced they will begin a full investigation into charges that the CIA misled congress about a covert spy operation that had been going on for nearly 8 years before it was canceled by CIA Director Leon Panetta last month.
“The House Intelligence Committee will move forward with a full investigation that will explore certain CIA programs and the core issue of how the committee is kept informed,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), the committee’s chairwoman, said in a statement late Friday.
“My subcommittee will take the lead on significant portions of the investigation;” the congresswoman continues. “We will explore instances where the Congress was not informed in a timely way and situations in which laws may have been broken.”
The New York Times has reported that Cheney ordered the CIA to conceal from lawmakers a spy program aimed at eliminating Al Qaeda members.
Cheney tried to keep program secret
US former vice president Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years, The New York Times reported on its website Saturday.
Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence on June 23, revealed Cheney’s role in a closed briefing a day later to the Senate and House intelligence committees, the Times said, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” an intelligence official told the newspaper, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The allegations about the program, which was not identified, came as lawmakers from both President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party and opposition Republicans fight a bitter dispute over whether the CIA informed Congress adequately and comprehensively about sensitive programs.
In May, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged that the US spy agency misled lawmakers in 2002 about interrogation techniques widely seen as torture, including “waterboarding,” a simulated drowning method used on terror suspects.
The briefing, on whose content Pelosi and the CIA have disagreed, came after accused Al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.
The disclosure about Cheney’s involvement came a day after a US government probe highlighted his key role in restricting the number of officials with knowledge of a secret wiretap program launched after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States.
The report, compiled by the inspectors general of five government agencies, including the CIA and the departments of Defense and Justice, found that the high level of secrecy of the National Security Agency’s covert wiretapping had hurt the program’s effectiveness to monitor terror plots and activities.
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“We need to look forward instead of backwards, and we need to be pragmatic about the GREATEST CRIMES OF THE 21 CENTURY and do our very best to cover them up”—-Barack Hussein Obama
House probe of covert CIA program SHOULD target Cheney
THERE. I FIXED IT FOR YOU.
Criminals don’t really investigate criminals.
Nothing will come of this. War criminal Cheney is under direct protection of his Bankster Puppet Masters.
I WISH I could waterboard that scumbag!
He will never testify…his pacemaker is bound to have a remote.
So we are suppose to believe that a Vice President somehow controls the CIA? Under what authority? This is ridiculous.
Follow the purse strings. Who pays the CIA? Congress (even for secret programs) and illegal arm/drug sales. Show me the money!
Maybe, could be focus????? If he isn’t the prime target then they are just wasting our time. Get the job done and convict his scumbag ass and then get the rope.
Does the elitist have sweaty palms?
Probing Cheney will NEVER happen. This is all just to help placate the masses. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et.al… they are free to roam the earth now that Barack Obama has protected them.
House probe of covert CIA program could target Cheney.
The operative word there being ‘could’.
So they say they’re going to investigate cheney’s covert CIA program ?
Well of course, there’s no reason to investigate known and admitted war crimes.
This country’s government has completely spiraled down the toilet.
I fully believe that the United States will never recover as long as the crimes of the bush admin. go uninvestigated and unpunished.
The whole country will be living under that dark cloud.
The current DOJ’s lack of investigation transfers the blood directly onto their hands.
Probe or not, here’s hoping this sad sack of shit gets riled enough to have a heart attack. Die, you fucking monster, die! And do it quickly and publicly so we can all enjoy your deserved demise.
I’d look for Darth to suddenly drop dead just the same way Kenny Lay did as the noose begins to tighten around his neck — He and Kenny will both probably be put up at the same luxury resort somewhere in the Med with taxpayer funded personal servants tending to their every whim.
if he does drop dead, look for it to happen in public with a lot of drama. its easier to sell it that way. then he will just be shipped back to Haiti to his personal doctor, Saramanga. a few roosters at midnight, a little hoodoo and a gallon or so of kitten blood, and he will be back on his cloven hoofs for a few more years at least.
that is, until Satan finally calls him home for his just rewards.
Schakowsky is a woman, but she’s one of the few people on Capitol Hill with real balls. She walks the talk, unlike most of her collegaues. This could get interesting.
Nothing will happen to Dick Cheney. Obama is 100 percent focused on getting enough GOP support to get his universal health care legislation passed. He’s not going to risk the distraction and political infighting of prosecuting war criminals.
Obama is 100 percent focused on getting enough GOP support to get his universal health care legislation passed. He’s not going to risk the distraction and political infighting of prosecuting war criminals
——————————
The health care legislation aside (which I don’t think has a damn thing to do with this), The bottom line is: Savior Obama is a war criminal too. That’s what this is really about. When was the last time you saw one group of criminals investigate another group of criminals?
If Obama doesn’t clue Holder to up the ante on investigating torture, Cheney’s role in torture and hit squads, and the massive war crimes of the Bush years, he will be replaced during the next election…or maybe he will promise us “faithfully” he will take the lead on all these inportant issues during his second term.
So you really expect War Criminal Obama to clue up Holder do you? Man, some people have some strong stuff. Must be that intoxicating Dem kool-aid once again.
Savior Obama will be replaced during the next election? LOL. Riiiiiiiiiiight.
Instead what you will hear is:
“I haven’t always agreed with Obama and Obama may not be perrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrfect, but he is better than the Repug candidate (or at least I choose to believe that), so I’m voting for Obama once again. Go, Obama, go.”
Most people will vote for this War Criminal once again. So what does that make them? An accomplice to a war criminal.
Yes, that’s what you will hear from the gullible sheep who voted for this fraud the first time. They won’t have the intelligence to vote for a true, real progressive candidate (such as Kucinich, Nader or McKinney). And Kucinich even has a D behind his name which is a requirement for the D partisan-indoctrinated sheep.
“Hope” and “change we can believe in.” Simple slogans for simple minds.
Cheney’s crimes and health care are unrelated. It’s apples and oranges. If Obama goes easy on Cheney in order to get his way on health care, he will be a one-term president. The left wing will be angry at him for letting Cheney off the hook, and the right wing will decry socialized medicine, taking advantage of the splintered Democratic party on the issue and preventing anything meaningful from happening.
It will become a lose-lose for Obama. Hope he realizes this, for his sake.
You know, whenever they mention this program, it is ALWAYS stated that the program was never fully operational…… which means in governmentspeak that it was fully operational. SO …. let it be no surprise when it turns out that… it was.
I will be there at the imprisonment of Dick Cheney selling T-shirts.
They never flushed the toilet of “dickhead’s” shadow-government trolls that still work thru out the government. There’s so much Astro-Glide on this “dick” , he’ll slide out of it.
Look for an orchestrated national emergency,like another (inside job) attack on a U.S. city or protectorate if any investigation gets anywhere near the truth on this….”Look over here,Ladies and Gentlemen,simply ignore that punk ass b**** behind the curtain.Have faith in your leaders,their ways are mysterious, yet wise beyond your comprehension”…..
“Get” CHENEY?
Oh what A TEASE! tease…tease…
They WON’T GET CHENEY
unless Cheney wants to be gotten.
He doesn’t.
Sloppy reporting here. First of all, there is not one word in this article calling into question what has become the official story, that Cheney’s Assassination ring was about killing Al-Qaeda leaders.
Methinks Raw Story has lost the links to Seymour Hersh’s breaking of this story months ago.
The other thing that Raw Story in general, and in this case Seymour Hersh keep doing, is shoving down the memory hole, the fact that two of the original whistleblowers regarding the NSA wiretapping, have given sworn testimony that the surveillance began months BEFORE 9/11.
Seriously, why does RS perpetrate propaganda?
Big ooooooops……..I hate when I start to write, and then rewrite without re-reading…..
I meant to write……”The other thing that Raw Story in general, and in this case David Byrne keep doing, is shoving down the memory hole…”
sorry folks!
John Byrne of course…..I need sleep now.
Congerss did not give a damn untill they were lied to. Now its a big deal? Were was our gov. when we needed them. Is anything going to happen or is this the same Wag the dog crap we keep being fed?
So the Bushes are gonna toss Cheney under the bus eh? This is all a ruse. I look for a Ken Lay deal here. First they’ll crucify Libby and by the time they get around to Cheney,…..he will convienantly have a funeral. Count on it. Libby will get the prison time he got out of last time and it will all fade away.
The thing I find curious is why bush didn’t pardon cheney and others in his regime when he had the chance? I’m glad he didn’t, but I do wonder about it. Was it just a parting “fuck you” gesture by bush to cheney and others for some unknown reason, or was there some kind of secret deal made by Obama to not pursue prosecution for the crimes committed by the bush regime?
There is no acceptable explanation as to why Obama, his attorney general and our congressional reps keep dragging their feet on prosecuting the bush/cheney monsters–particularly when it’s not a matter of if they broke the law–cheney has publicly admitted as much.
It’s not a matter of “if” bush/cheney lied us into Iraq–it has been well established that they did, in fact, lie to the American people to trick us into supporting a war against a nation they knew had done nothing to us. And in the current age, wars of aggression are classified as war crimes.
And it’s not a matter of “if” they tortured–it has been well established that they tortured people and that they did so at least in part to gain false confessions in order to establish a link between 9/11 and Iraq (and I suspect false confessions for 9/11 itself)–torture that ended up killing AT LEAST 100 detainees and I suspect many, many more. In the current age, torture is classified as a war crime. And torturing people to death is considered a heinous and dispicable crime against humanity.
And on and on and on….
Yet all we seem to get is one “dog and pony” show after the next–one excuse after the next–one delay after the next. Well, fuck that! I’m tired of excuses, coverups, dog and pony shows. They either produce the results that the majority demands or they can kiss their political careers goodbye–and that goes for each and every one of them, president on down–and then we’ll go after them for aiding and abetting known war criminals!