Thursday, July 16, 2009

Cheney's Hit Squads , Murder INC. CIA Guilty , Drone Attacks Part of US Assassinations Program

Update & edit 11:30AM & 2:33PM,5:52 PM ,July 16, 2009

CIA Program Revealed: Ed Shultz w/ Leahy, Rice, Holt-July 15
Dick Cheney told the CIA to illegally hide a program from Congress. Ed Shultz talks to Rep. Rush Holt, ex-CIA officer Jack Rice, and Sen. Patrick Leahy about CIA director Leon Panetta revealing the program and what should be done about those that tried to hide it from Congress.




"I said what I said, they can always say what they say," Hersh told The Daily Beast. "The last time they said the government doesn't torture, this time it's the government doesn't assassinate." Seymour Hersh


"All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."
George W. Bush ( is " a different fate" assassination? GORD.)

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.

...Beyond the Cheney assassination program, what is really worthy of Congressional investigation right now is the legality of Obama's current policy of assassination. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination," states Executive Order 11905."

From: "Is Obama Continuing the Bush/Cheney Assassination Program?" by Jeremy Sahill

"The implications are clear. The CIA maintained the secrecy ordered by Cheney even after the latter had left office, and continued to conceal the existence and nature of the covert operation not only from Congress, but from the Obama administration itself."
From: "Death Squads and US Democracy" By Bill Van Auken


Countdown-Jonathan Alter briefly discusses Sy Hersh's mention of Cheney "Hit Squads"




ACLU action alert!: the mammoth Defense Department Authorization bill
Cheney 's Death Squads and/or Assassination Squads
Obama's Drone Wars another form of Assassination targeting weddings, funerals & whole villages & towns to get a couple of Al Qaida suspects???


Anyway the American Civil Liberties Union has sent out a bulletin to inform Americans about the Defense Department Authorization bill which may stop any hearings or prosecutions of those who broke the law during the Bush Regime while at the same time continuing & even expanding various programs & policies such as (enhanced Techniques( torture), renditions, indefinite detentions, using the notorious military tribunals (kangaroo courts).

Dear ACLU Supporter,

This week and next, the mammoth Defense Department Authorization bill is on the Senate floor.

This must-pass legislation could easily become a vehicle for amendments to stop the closing of Guantánamo Bay, undermine efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the Bush torture program, and -- most troubling of all -- promote a new system of indefinite detention without charge or trial. In fact, the bill already has language that would allow the Guantánamo military commissions to continue to convict people based on coerced confessions.

Email your senators and tell them not to let the Defense Department Authorization bill become a vehicle for undermining civil liberties.

Your voice and that of hundreds of thousands of other ACLU activists are being heard in Washington. After months and months of pressure and newer, more disturbing revelations, Attorney General Holder is close to appointing a special prosecutor to investigate torture. And we have allies in the White House and in Congress who are committed to cleaning up the mess left by the Bush administration.

There are also some dangerous proposals being considered -- including indefinite detention without charge or trial. That is why it is so critical for you to contact to your senators today and ask them to:
Support the President's commitment to shutdown Guantánamo by January 2010.
End Guantánamo military commissions, and charge and try any alleged terrorists in federal criminal courts.
Totally reject indefinite detention without charge and without trial. Nothing could be more un-American than giving the federal government the power to imprison people indefinitely without charge or trial.
Please help the ACLU create a drumbeat letting Congress and the White House know that Americans want them to move forward. Congress should not codify and expand Bush Administration policies.

Email your senators and tell them not to let the Defense Department Authorization bill become a vehicle for undermining civil liberties.

With critical civil liberties issues about to hit the Senate floor, we have to be as vocal as possible. Please take a moment right now to contact your senators. And please stay alert to fast-moving events in the days ahead.

Sincerely,

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
American Civil Liberties Union

P.S. The news last weekend that Attorney General Eric Holder is actively considering launching a torture investigation is encouraging. It is because of the hard work of ACLU attorneys and advocates and the voices of activists like you that we are at this point. We’ll be counting on you to make sure he follows through -- and to insist that an investigation is as thorough and far-reaching as it needs to be.



Death Squads and /or Assassination Squads / Drone Wars

It appears some intelligence & military programs instituted by Cheney & the CIA & Special Ops were kept secret from Congress during the Bush Regime & were kept secret by the CIA after Obama took office until June 23, 2009. So if true the CIA has been lying to the congress & to President Obama about their covert operations. So it is possible that the certain actions were taken such as assassinations without Obama being informed. For instance Drone attacks in Pakistan may have been dressed up for Obama as legitimate military targets when in fact they were essentially carried out as assassinations of one or a couple of Al Qaida suspects without any concern for the blowing to pieces of innocent civilians.

Journalist Seymour Hersh made passing reference to one of these special squads in a speech in March calling it an “executive assassination ring.” As Van Auken suggest there are probably more disturbing revelations yet to come.

Another issue as I have discussed in previous posts over the last couple of years is that the US & its CIA have trained, equipped & advised if not taken an active part in "Death Squads" to eliminate dissidents or those opposed to brutal authoritarian governments which were considered allies of the United States as they did for instance in Chile, El Salvador , Guatemala, Bolivia, Haiti, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Philippines, Argentina, Venezuela etc. And Americans wonder why there are a large group of people in various nations who do not trust the United States to act in the best interests of the average citizens in these nations. America's main concern historically has bee doing only that which is in its own best interests & its rather broad definition of its security & the interests of its biggest corporations.

"Death Squads and US Democracy" By Bill Van Auken July 15, 2009 "WSWS"

...Burying the crimes of the Bush administration in the past, however, has proven impossible, not only because of their grave character, but also because much of what was done has yet to be fully exposed and many of the same methods are continuing under Obama.

The way in which this latest revelation has emerged is highly revealing. It has come to the surface as a result of Obama’s CIA director, Leon Panetta, briefing congressional intelligence committees on the matter. The CIA director went to Congress to give the briefings on June 23—the day after he himself became aware of the secret program and ordered it terminated.

The Obama appointee supposedly in charge of America’s spy agency became aware of this operation only four months after assuming his post.

The implications are clear. The CIA maintained the secrecy ordered by Cheney even after the latter had left office, and continued to conceal the existence and nature of the covert operation not only from Congress, but from the Obama administration itself.

The exact nature of the secret program has yet to be made public either by the CIA or those members of Congress briefed by Panetta.

A report published in the Wall Street Journal Monday, citing three unnamed “former intelligence officials,” suggests that it was aimed at organizing the “targeted assassinations” of individuals deemed enemies of the United States in the so-called “global war on terrorism.” In other words, the CIA appears to have been organizing death squads.

“Amid the high alert following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a small CIA unit examined the potential for targeted assassinations of Al Qaeda operatives, according to the three former officials,” the Journal reports.

...The description of this operation corresponds to charges made by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh earlier this year that the Bush administration had created an “executive assassination ring.”

Hersh, who said that he was writing a book based on his findings, linked the operation to the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which frequently works in tandem with the CIA. “They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office,” he said.

...One indication that at least some investigation is being considered came from Attorney General Eric Holder, who spoke extensively to Newsweek magazine. In an article posted on the magazine’s web site Sunday, Holder is quoted as saying that he was “shocked and saddened” after reading the still secret 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on the torture of detainees at CIA “black sites.”

Given the continuous revelations over the past several years, from Abu Ghraib to recent reports leaked from the Red Cross, to the testimony of men who passed through the hellish abuse at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, if Holder was genuinely “shocked,” that can only mean that crimes more heinous still have yet to be revealed.


Chris McGreal at The Guardian argues that the CIA is under going a great deal of scrutiny by the US Congress & the Media about recent revelations of secret programs & illegal activities & misleading the Congress & the President while the CIA tries to claim it is a victim of partisan politics this is in fact rather disingenuous on the CIA's part since it embraced the Bush/Cheney policies of "torture & abuse of prisoners etc. with great gusto. Another telling point on this is that if you recall the FBI once they knew what was going on refused to have anything to do with these illegal & unjustifiable programs.

CIA Faces Hostile Scrutiny as Details of 'Dark' Programmes Are Revealed by Chris McGreal Guardian UK, July 14, 2009 via commonDreams


...in recent days the ground has shifted dramatically, as a slew of revelations about the CIA's activities has left the agency facing its most hostile scrutiny since the 1970s, when congressional hearings revealed that it was pursuing its own, often illegal, agenda including numerous failed attempts to kill Fidel Castro.

...The CIA's critics say that it is coming under belated scrutiny over its submission to a highly political and possibly illegal agenda that its officials embraced with enthusiasm in the febrile atmosphere after the 9/11 attacks, when the Bush administration thought it could throw out the rule book by declaring the Geneva conventions out of date and redefining long established parameters for torture

...Some former CIA officers, including the former counter-terrorism chief of operations, Vincent Cannistraro, say the agency involved itself in suspect practices as it rode roughshod over long established restraints.

"There were things the agency was involved with after 9/11 which were basically over the edge because of 9/11. There were some very unsavoury things going on. Now they are a problem for the CIA," he said. "There is a lot of pressure on the CIA now and it's going to handicap future activities."

The CIA made two mistakes. The first was to think that it could keep it all hidden.

....The CIA's second, and perhaps greater mistake, was that all of the dark programmes appear to have been largely for nothing.

There is now ample evidence that interrogators learned most of what al-Qaida detainees had to tell before they were repeatedly water boarded.
Rendition, torture and Guantánamo are likely to have done more to have enhanced terrorism than curb it.

The inspector general of the justice department said of the secret surveillance programme that most of its leads "were determined not to have any connection to terrorism".

"There are plenty of people who view that the ends justifies the means," said Bergen. "The problem with Cheney is there were not ends. The waterboarding derived intelligence of no great value. I think it'll become clear these extreme measures were counterproductive and above all didn't find anything. That is going to be a very damning judgement for the CIA."



Jeremy Scahill argues that the unmanned Drone attacks are really a type of assassination with a hell of a lot of civilian casualties. This is surely a War Crime. The questions this raises include whether the Drone attacks in Pakistan some forty this year so far were legitimate military targets or were primarily meant to be assassinations of Al Qaeda suspects and not an Al Qaeda training camp or stronghold etc. Secondly did the Obama administration get full disclosure on these attacks or given sort of military jargon & bureaucratese style explanation claiming the attacks were within the law. Otherwise the Obama administration may also be culpable in taking part in War Crimes.

But it is like Obama's stance on torture which is rather nuanced certain techniques such as Waterboarding Obama says is "torture" & so is not permitted but when Obama is questioned about other so called "enhanced techniques " his answers are not necessarily reassuring because he like Bush & Cheney appears to have as they did a definition of "torture" & "abuse" which may not jive with the Geneva Conventions & the International Agreements on the Treatment of POWs or Enemy Combatants. It appears for instance that harsh & abusive treatment of detainees (POWs) has continued at Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and dozens of other prisons run by US personnel or their allies . Scahill has written for instance the use of armed military squads who go into detainee cells & abuse & beat up detainees for least infraction of some outrageous unreasonable prison rule.

"Is Obama Continuing the Bush/Cheney Assassination Program?" by Jeremy Scahill RebelReports, Via Common Dreams July 14, 2009

Congress is outraged that Cheney concealed a CIA program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders, but they should also be investigating why Obama is continuing—and expanding—U.S. assassinations.


In June, CIA Director Leon Panetta allegedly informed members of the House Intelligence Committee of the existence of a secret Bush era program implemented in the days after 9-11 that, until last month, had been hidden from lawmakers. The concealment of the plan, Panetta alleged, happened at the orders of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

The House Intelligence Committee is now reportedly preparing an investigation into this program and the Senate may follow suit. "We were kept in the dark. That's something that should never, ever happen again," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein. Withholding this information from Congress "is a big problem, because the law is very clear."

There are several important issues raised by this unfolding story. First, while the Times claims the program was never implemented, the program sounds very similar to what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sy Hersh described in March as an "executive assassination ring" run by Dick Cheney that operated throughout the Bush years:

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.

...Beyond the Cheney assassination program, what is really worthy of Congressional investigation right now is the legality of Obama's current policy of assassination. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination," states Executive Order 11905.

White House lawyers--with their seemingly infinite legal creativity--would likely say that the drone strikes are not assassinations, but rather part of war. That putting poison in a cigar of a foreign leader is different than launching missiles at a funeral where an "enemy" is believed to be among the mourners. While the implications of the U.S. assassinating heads of state or foreign officials are grave, it could be argued that, on some levels, the drone attacks are worse in the sense that they kill many more civilians. Moreover, these drone attacks largely take place is Pakistan, which is a sovereign nation. There is no legal or Congressional declaration of war against Pakistan.




Chris McGreal points out that Dick Cheney kept secret his Special Operations or Brigades which were used to take out ie murder Al Qaeda operatives or those suspected of being friendly with or aiding Al Qaeda or in the case of Iraq the Insurgents. In Iraq the Brigades acted under General Chrystal as "Death Squads" to take out Insurgents , enemy combatants but may have also been used in the traditional manner of "Death Squads" ( their M.O.) to eliminate " trouble makers", " anyone opposed to the US occupation including journalists & human Rights workers & dissidents in general.

"Dick Cheney 'hid plans to kill al-Qaida operatives abroad'" by Chris McGreal,guardian.co.uk, July 13, 2009

• Ex-CIA officials say foreign leaders were also in dark
• Investigation demanded into post-9/11 strategy


Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials.

Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.

The CIA apparently did not put the plan in to operation but the US military did, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the programme.

...One former official said that the Bush administration discussed assassinations in the context of a ban introduced in the 1970s that responded to several failed CIA attempts to murder Fidel Castro, and concluded that as the US had declared itself at war with al-Qaida and the Taliban, this ban did not apply.

Peter Bergen, a senior security analyst at the New America Foundation, said that the secret operation must have gone further than that to have created such a backlash in Congress: "If it's an assassination programme of al-Qaida leaders that is hardly surprising. Clinton had an assassination programme against bin Laden. There have been 27 drone missile strikes against al-Qaida alone this year."

...Some former intelligence officials and Republicans have attempted to portray the programme as barely getting out of the planning stages but others in the intelligence community have said it is highly unlikely that the CIA would have kept such an operation going for eight years without advancing it.

Seymour Hersh stands by his statements referring to a special hit squad


The Man Who Knew Cheney's Secret by Benjamin Sarlin, The Daily Beast July 14, 2009

"I said what I said, they can always say what they say," Hersh told The Daily Beast. "The last time they said the government doesn't torture, this time it's the government doesn't assassinate."

Some observers accused him of rumor-mongering and a top former military official threw cold water on the story, but with the recent news that the CIA allegedly kept Congress in the dark on a covert program, Hersh's words suddenly look more and more prescient. Yesterday, the New York Times reported the hidden program in question was a death squad authorized by Dick Cheney without Congressional approval.

Now, there are key differences between Hersh's reporting and the Times' latest piece. Hersh suggested that the assassination ring was conducted out of the Joint Special Operations Command rather than the CIA. Moreover, according to Hersh's sources the program was operational, leaving a trail of bodies, while The Times cited officials saying that the CIA hit squad never actually carried out a mission. The Times and Hersh could conceivably be reporting two distinct squads.

...As recently as July 2008, Hersh published a report that the White House was exploiting technical differences between Defense and intelligence operations in order to get around briefing Congress on pursuing "high-value targets" in Iran through covert action.

"There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing," he wrote then.

Beyond his own reporting, Hersh said President Bush's own speeches provided evidence of secret assassinations.

"Go read George Bush's January 2003 State of the Union speech," he said. "He's talking and he says we've captured and detained 3,000 al Qaeda members and other terrorists—crazy numbers—and said some of them will never bother us anymore. And Congress cheers."

...Bush's full quote then was:

"All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."


also see:
"Of Dick Cheney, Assassinations And A Flash Of Deja Vu" By Jim Galloway July 15, 2009 via Information Clearing House

and so it goes,
GORD.

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