Investigations galore

From the way things are going with bad news for the bush administration leaking out every day, it looks like investigation may become a growth industry. Maybe it will even help the economy.

Eric Holder is rumored to be about to decide on appointing a special prosecutor to look into the torture mess. The sources say he hasn't decided, but it has all the aura of the kind of leak you do as the last step before announcing something big. Sort of like clearing your through and getting everyone's attention. I'd be astounded if he now announces that he's not going to investigate this.

Now, in the wake of CIA Director Leon Panetta's bombshell last week that the CIA had withheld information about some unnamed counterterrorism program from the required oversight Congressional leaders -- and yesterday's revelation that the withholding was on direct orders from VP Cheney, Democrats are calling for an investigation into this whole miscarriage of reporting to the oversight authority of Congress. This would be an entirely separate investigation, by Congress, whereas Holder's would be by the Dept. of Justice or an independent prosecutor.

Republicans are doing damage control, insisting that the program (whatever it was) was never implemented, that it was something they thought about and did some planning on, but it never actually reached the point that met criteria for requiring reporting to Congress, and that, really, "it was no big deal."

To my thinking, that is patently false. A member of the House Intelligence Committee who was briefed by Panetta, and knows what the program consisted of, says they were all shocked -- both Democrats and Republicans.

But to my thinking the two most telling clues that it was bad and had reached a much more serious stage than just ideas and planning are the extraordinary secrecy they kept on it and Panetta's reaction when he was finally told.

Why would they keep toying with it, or whatever, for 8 years -- in strictest, even illegal, secrecy -- if there was never a serious consideration of using it? Why did they not even tell the new boss, Panetta, about it until after he had been in charge of the CIA for months?

And, if it really was "no big deal," as some have tried to spin it, why did it require VP cheney to "order" that the CIA not tell the Gang of 8, to whom they have a legal duty to report? And if it was no big deal, why did Panetta immediately, on the spot, order the program ended -- after 8 years in the making? And why did Panetta then, within 24 hours, call meetings with the two Intelligence Committees and report it -- apparently with his full emotional reaction to it -- to the full committees, not just to the Gang of 8 leaders?

No, this can't be whitewashed and miminized. Their own actions prove that it was big and bad. Congress cannot ignore this.

Ralph