It is highly classified, and no one can talk about what it was, because of top secret classification. Speculation at first was about waterboarding, but that was stopped during Bush's term. Piecing bits together suggests it's something much much bigger and heretofore unknown.
A committee member, Rep. Anna Eschoo (D-CA) told Stein that when Panetta told the committee what the program was that had been withheld from their oversight committee for years, since 2001, that "the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans."
And it is something that Panetta himself did not know about until June 23. He immediately put a stop to it and the next day informed the Intel Committees, which rules out waterboarding.
Now speculation is that the big bombshell is Dick Cheney's "executive assassination ring" that Seymore Hersche hinted at back in March. Supposedly a secret wing of special forces, it was an assassination hit squad that operated completely outside even the usual special forces and secret channels. Here's what Hersch said:
So -- this could so big that even Republicans will agree an investigation must be done."It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," Hersh said. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it," he added. "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."
Ralph
OK -- so "current and former administation officials" are saying that the program Panetta revealed to the IntelCom was not about covert activities but intelligence gathering by the Counterterrorism Division -- and that it was just different from what had been revealed before.
ReplyDeleteA former bush administration official said, if it could be revealed, it would be seen as "no big deal."
Uh huh. So why was it so "shocking" to the committee???
And if they lied once, how do we know they're no lying now? And if it's no big deal, why can't it be revealed? Or at least why was it not revealed to the IntelCom during the past 8 years?
I think nothing short of an independent investigation will lay this one to rest.