9:26 |  | Spencer - So there's some "significant actions" that seven Congresspersons said on Wednesday that CIA Director Leon Panetta acknowledged in June. Those actions -- we don't know what exactly they are, but if you read my pal Siobhan Gorman's excellent excellent excellent WSJ piece this morning, it appears in broad contour to be the creation or (more likely) bolstering of some kind of assassination capability to be used on al-Qaeda. CIA isn't supposed to do this kind of thing but there are caveats to that general rule. Anyway, whatever it is, Panetta says in a closed House session in late June that he shut it down. It freaked him out. And apparently it never got passed the money-and-training stage, although I'm way skeptical about that.
Beyond that: Panetta said that no one told Congress about this shit. Over the weekend, Scott Shane at the NYT and my main dude Eli Lake at the Washington Times -- happy birthday Eli; ladies he's available -- report that Dick Cheney and then-CIA Director George Tenet made sure Congress didn't know about any of this. Cheney would have needed CIA's complicity in keeping the effort away from Congress but chances are Tenet would have eagerly offered it up. Diane Feinstein says concealing the effort from Congress may have been illegal.
I have my skepticism all around,as there's still a ton to this story we don't know, but that's a serviceable summary. Speculations-wise, I have some tinfoil on here. |
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