This story in the NY Times may prove to be a real problem for the Bush-Cheney crowd. It sounds like they have hard evidence that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered CIA officials to lie to Congress about the existence and implementation of CIA programs.
Apparently, there was a program, the details of which are still secret except the relevant committees in Congress, that Cheney ordered CIA briefers to conceal and lie about. As a result the committees in Congress that were responsible for overseeing CIA activities were unaware of what the CIA was doing in this program. I've heard rumors/stories on the radio, that this may be a reference to an illegal assassination program whereby CIA teams would travel to foreign countries and assassinate people on their target list. Assassination has been illegal for the CIA since the early 1970s when Congress reacted to CIA abuses in the 50s and 60s.
According to the story, Obama's CIA Director, Leon Panetta, ordered the program shut down as soon as he heard about. Elections have consequences!
Remember a few months ago when Pelosi claimed that the CIA had been lying to Congress - especially the Democrats for years? At the time, Republicans threw a hissy fit about how she was undermining the morale of the CIA and how dare this San Francisco "librul" impugn the honor of these heroes. Well, it turns out she was right all along and - no surprise - it was Cheney who was undermining morale and impugning the honor of the CIA.
I have no idea where this will lead formally. Clearly, has this come out during the Bush administration's time in office, it would be grounds for impeaching the whole lot of them. I suspect that Cheney, at the very least, could be charged with "Contempt of Congress" and possibly a number of federal laws against falsifying or tampering with government reports etc. LTG will probably have a better idea of his legal liabilities here.
Politically, this vindicates Pelosi to some extent. That probably won't help Pelosi's numbers but it probably will hurt the reputation of those Republicans who have been using her as a punching bag - at least among independents.
8 comments:
No, Cheney cannot be charged with contempt of Congress. If he testified under oath to them and lied, then yes. But he didn't. I am less familiar with other federal laws, but a former vice president isn't going to be charged for official acts taken while he was a sitting vice president of this kind.
This is politically brilliant of Panetta, btw. At a time when liberals in Congress are feeling frustrated with compromises, they are given a green light to humiliate the "loyal Bushies" again.
FYI, I am absolutely outraged that Cheney gets to KEEP LYING about this over and over again and have the entire Republican party give him a pass. Seriously, the biggest problem America faces right now is not climate change or terrorism, it's the Republican party. Plow them under and we can start making progress on everything.
So a former VP is off scott free even if it is discovered that he had ordered government employees to violate the law and lie to Congress? I find that hard to fathom.
The remedy is impeachment...
But surely there are laws requiring notifying Congress and that those reports be truthful and accurate. And conspiring to mislead Congress through falsifying those reports is illegal too. And surely violating those laws carry some sort of penalty.
I am not sure this is much of a smoking gun. The NY Times article contains several important diminishing caveats.
NY Times: "Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities... [it] never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year."
NY Times: "But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done 'to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.'"
NY Times: "Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program, whose details remained secret and which even some Democrats have said was properly classified. Most of those interviewed, however, have said that it was an important activity that should have been disclosed to the intelligence committees."
So let's review...
1. The program did not go beyond the planning/raining phase.
2. The law did not clearly require that Congress be briefed, and even some Democrats feel it was handled properly.
To me, the astonishing part is that Cheney was involved! Though I have not read the law, I am quite certain that the Vice President has no statutory authority whatsoever to decide what the CIA may tell Congress. Perhaps we should just start calling it the Cheney administration...!
Dr. S. I agree the most astonishing thing is that the Vice President was not only part of the chain of command (unheard of as far as I know) and that he was circumventing the normal chain of command (e.g. the Attorney General and key figures at CIA). That alone demonstrates to me that Bush had effective lost control of the executive branch almost from the start of his administration.
But I'm not convinced that the caveats Dr. S points to let Cheney off the hook here. First of all, we're not talking about refusing to tell Congress in open committee sessions or something. We're talking about intentionally misleading the committees specifically tasked with overseeing the CIA and its activities. Furthermore, the story also says that Cheney also ordered people to lie to the "Gang of 8" a bipartisan group of Congressional leadership that is used in exactly the kind of the "due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure" situation.
Finally, the ruling out of interrogation and domestic spying does not mean it was just a run of the mill program. We've gotten used to being most upset about those two types of things true. But I've heard stories on NPR that this program may have been about setting up CIA death squads that would go around the world and murder people on the CIA's hit list with no oversight and no due process. Not to mention that assassination has been illegal since the Congressional reaction against CIA abuses under Nixon.
What Cheney has done here is to simply ignore 30-40 years of law about oversight of covert operations. This is a theme in Cheney's entire approach to executive authority vis a vis Congress. He sees the Presidency as paramount. His vision of American institutions is hierarchical with the President and Vice President at the top and Congress subservient. He didn't see himself as a substitute President waiting for the phone to ring. Rather he saw himself as a kind of Consul of the Roman Empire. He looked in the mirror and saw Mark Anthony.
NO MATTER WHAT I WOULD TRUST DICK CHENEY WITH MY LIFE & THE LIFE OF MY LOVED ONES. AFTER ALL A LOT OF US PROBABLY WOULDN'T BE HERE TODAY WITHOUT HIS LOVE FOR THIS COUNTRY. GOD BLESS DICK CHENEY & ALL THAT HAVE THE SAME LOVE FOR THIS COUNTRY. THOSE OF YOU WHO WANT THIS COUNTRY TO BE LIKE THE UK (AND OTHER SOCIALIST COUNTRIES) - YOU CAN APPLY FOR CITIZENSHIP THERE. LET US KEEP THE ONLY ONE WORTH SAVING. IF YOU HATE THE US -- PLEASE FEEL FREE TO LEAVE. BY THE WAY OTHER COUNTRIES WON'T ALLOW YOU TO KEEP YOU HARD EARNED MONEY. SO GO FORTH AND BE MISERABLE.
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