The CIA had a secret plan to capture or kill al-Qaeda operatives, but it was terminated by new CIA Director Leon Panetta, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said late on Sunday. Citing unnamed former intelligence officials familiar with the matter, the newspaper said the precise nature of the highly classified effort remained unclear, and the CIA would not comment on its substance.
Current and former government officials said the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training of its operatives for the mission, the report said.
It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. But the initiative had not become fully operational at the time Panetta ended it.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Citing three unnamed former intelligence officials, the WSJ said that in 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al-Qaeda leaders. But those discussions tapered off within six months. Neither Panetta nor members of Congress provided details, said the Journal, adding that he quashed the CIA effort after learning about it on June 23.
Meanwhile, Representative Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said little money had been spent on the project — closer to US$1 million than US$50 million.
“The idea for this kind of program was tossed around in fits and starts,” the WSJ quoted Hoekstra as saying.
The New York Times reported on its Web site on Saturday that former US vice president Dick Cheney had ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years.
Panetta, who ended the program when he learned of its existence, revealed Cheney’s role in a closed briefing to the Senate and House intelligence committees, the paper said, without specifying the nature of the program.
Panetta told members of Congress that Cheney ordered the agency not to share details of the program with legislators, Senate Intelligence Committee head Dianne Feinstein said.
“I think if the intelligence committees had been briefed, they could have watched the program, they could have asked for reports on the program, they could have made judgments about the program as it went along,” Feinstein said on Fox News Sunday.
“That was not the case, because we were kept in the dark. That is something that should never happen again,” she said, describing the move as “outside the law.”
Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, appearing on CNN, described the alleged failure to notify Congress about the program was “a serious breach” of the law.
Representative Anna Eshoo, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she would call for the panel to hire an outside counsel to investigate the issue.
“We have to know who gave the order for this, who gave the order to conceal this, where did they draw the money for this,” Eshoo told the Washington Post.
Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate’s powerful judiciary committee, also said he would favor an investigation.
“I think it’s impossible to just leave it lay when you have something like this,” Leahy told CBS television.
An unnamed intelligence official told the Washington Post that the highly secretive program was in the planning stages and never crossed the agency’s threshold for reporting to congressional overseers.
Two former agency officials told the newspaper that it involved proposals to provide US intelligence agencies with a “needed capability” — without explaining what that meant.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
Nauru said it would hold a referendum to change its official name, described as a colonial relic from a time when “foreign tongues” mangled the native language. Nauru would change its name to Naoero to “more faithfully honor our nation’s heritage, our language and our identity,” Nauruan President David Adeang said in a statement on Tuesday. The Pacific island nation’s native language is Dorerin Naoero, which is spoken by the vast majority of its approximately 10,000 inhabitants. “Nauru emerged because Naoero could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues, and was changed not by our choice, but for convenience,” the government said in
RSS