I can only think of two possibilities: 1) It was illegal and 2) He knew Congress would not sit idly by. By not telling them, he would avert an Iran contra operation, because he certainly wasn't going to take no for an answer.

As ample evidence should now make it obvious: It is always easier to obtain forgiveness than permission...

Why Cheney would direct the CIA not to brief Congress on the efforts is still unclear.

right...

because to tell them to go f*ck themselves..

would have been so much more efficient..

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"al Qaeda" is a myth, a Mossad/CIA operation that literally translates to "the toilet". Bringing this out merely keeps the myth front and center.

When it comes out that Cheney and the Bilderbergers staged 9/11 they'll be telling us something we really need to know.

Be afraid people, be very afraid.

A bit kerfuddled here.

Haven't we been, and still are assassinating targeted individuals, via drone aircraft (remotely controlled from middle America)?

Why Cheney would direct the CIA not to brief Congress on the efforts is still unclear.

To avoid the leaks and the last five or so days of irresponsible liberal media feinting and liberal blogging outrage.

It wouldn't help the program too much if the targets knew how and where we were coming after them.

The liberal media will take every opportunity to destroy a republican/conservative program that doesn't fit the liberal mindset. Take Iraq: the media has worked overtime to destroy the mission, as well as obfuscate the facts behind it.

One question that comes to mind is: why is the CIA or any other government office following the orders of the Vice-President?
What sort of orders are Joe Biden giving, and is anyone following them?

Do you mean "curtain"?

Obviously there is must be much more to this since killing and capturing Al Qaeda operatives has been the policy and practice all along. Only guessing here, but was/is there an assassination program that targets leaders in Iran and North Korea?

Pity that St Sarah was ever so close to having her own person Special Forces hit team - During lulls in "running" the Senate, she could have ordered hits on Rogue Polar Bears, Moose, or is that Meese, wabbitts, ex-brother-in-laws, former to be son-in-law, Alaskan bloggers - Why the list is endless - Schade, St Sarah, Schade

Given that Cheney is vicious, and a coward (the dark side, if you will), I'd guess they were targeting family members for murder, kidnapping and torture.

Dick Cheney is a mass-murderer, a war criminal, and a traitor.

God damn Dick Cheney's shit-filled soul to hell.

Moderator, please advise what snagged my comment just now -- the link to emptywheel or the blockquote-inside-a-blockquote?

Connected, but slightly OT: The saddest figure among all of the Sunday Morning show apologists has to have been Bob Woodward on ABC's This Week.

Watch him argue in defense of the Bush cabal and then contemplate his reputation as this dogged Watergate reporter who single-handedly, well maybe with a little help by his friend Carl Bernstein, but almost single-handedly saved the American constitution from this Nixon monster.

Can there be a more vivid example of how regard and maybe even fervor for the truth is snuffed out by the social advancement into the elite Village circles than Bob Woodward?

Ah, the patriotic fervor builds for the 2012 ticket of McCain-Dostum.

Why does my gut tell me that this explanation is yet another attempt to obfuscate the issue....that the concept that this was something they "kicked around" for a few months but never did anything about....is total crap. From lots of other evidence, Cheney and Addington particularly were guys who launched a whole series of initiatives in an atmosphere of seething anger and a thirst for revenge and as we have seen, in most cases, if an issue of law were in the way, it was shoved to the side and ignored or papered over with opinions from folks like John Yoo who knew their job was to produce a rationale.

This doesn't strike me as something Cheney and Addington would kind of casually explore and then drop. They authorized rendition, torture by foreign governments, wiretaps of US citizens, they fabricated the rationale for the war even as they got more and more evidence that it was bogus, they lied to Congress about what they were doing, and they destroyed careers of anyone who tried to get in their way with legal niceties.

This sounds too much like the end of a Bourne movie with the head of intelligence telling a Congressional committee that Project Treadstone was just something they fiddled around with and discarded.

Obviously there is must be much more to this since killing and capturing Al Qaeda operatives has been the policy and practice all along.

Pretty much. So that leaves torturing and assassinating people who are not officially al Qaeda or Taliban and not necessarily in Afghanistan.

(I understand that the CIA is not going anywhere. But is it too much to ask that an intelligence agency stick to intelligence?)

So that leaves torturing and assassinating people who are not officially al Qaeda or Taliban and not necessarily in Afghanistan.

agreed. I think the trick to this one will be who they were trying to define as "al qaeda". A Pakistani Intelligence officer known to aide Taleban, for example?

Danp I would guess that he knew that "some" would consider the program illegal but because of his stand on executive privileged he believed the president (at least a Republican president) has leeway to do anything when we are at war therefore it wasn't an illegal program.

Also, I am guessing that he knew congressional resistance would be all froth and do-nothingness but he just couldn't be bothered with any any questions (no matter how weak) because he is Dick Cheney and He knows best and because Republican presidents/vice presidents don't answer questions about how they do their job.

So that leaves torturing and assassinating people who are not officially al Qaeda or Taliban... -Halfdan

I was thinking the same thing. Capture, torture, and assassination of friends and family of suspected AQ members. Maybe arming certain unsavory groups just because they happen to share our contempt for other unsavory groups. Rigging elections, foreign and domestic? It could be so many things.

Secret? What secret? Bush openly boasted of assassinations in his 2002 State of the Union speech: "Others have met a different fate. Put it this way: they are no longer a danger to the United States or its allies." As one commentator observed, you could almost see him blowing a puff of smoke away from the muzzle of his gun as he boasted of the successful hits. But at the time, the majority of Americans just wanted Big Brother to protect them from the bad guys, and anyone who found his claim shocking could expect hate mail and death threats.

OK, everybody, all together:

"It's not the assassinations that matter, it's the lying!"

(though I think the assassinations matter too.)

I was thinking the same thing. Capture, torture, and assassination of friends and family of suspected AQ members.

Getting closer. I think there's one more step, though: Capture, torture and assassination of people (and their friends and families) whom we know are not AQ members, but who are inconvenient for us and for whom we will insist we had "credible evidence," which naturally cannot be made public, of affiliation with AQ and other unsavory groups.

The other stuff you said, hell, yeah.

It's clearly about this.

Wonder if it had more to do with the "Cheney assassination squad" who targeted not only al qaeda but corporate business execs who wouldn't play ball with us.

No matter. The VP did not have the right to remove checks and balances put in place to keep the CIA accountable and responsible.

Note that it is the Wall Street Journal, spilling the leaks from aparently self-serving members of the CIA, which has violated U.S. security and told us the substance of this program, not the Democratic members of Congress whom Dick was too worried about to inform about his assassination bureau scheme.

This is a case of the boy who cried wolf - in reverse. EVERYTHING Cheney does must be regarded top secret, including what he has for breakfast. If only the nefarious stuff qualifies, we know where to look. And would it make a difference if we discovered that what Cheney has for breakfast is the boiled hearts of children? Or that his supplier is Al Jr.?

What I think is interesting is that, at least according to the Wall Street Journal (7/13/09, p. 1), when Panetta shut the effort down on June 23, the "initiative hadn't become fully operational..."

Now, I'm rather glad that it hadn't become "fully operational," but 7+ years of effort only to have no program worth even talking about? However good the CIA may have been, or may be now, as an intelligence-gathering agency, is apparently sucks as a covert operations agency.

"...capture, torture and assasination of people...who are inconvenient..." shortstop @ 1:16 PM.
Since the CIA and DoD already have several progrmas that targetted Al Qaeda, this is, unfortunately, the most likely explanation.

"Now, I'm rather glad it hadn't become 'fully operational'..." Donald A. Coffin @ 4:14 PM.
I read in the comments at TPM that that phrase refers, not to a program's commencement, but, rather, whether it's existence was even acknowledged by the CIA. If that is true, then the program has been in actual operation for quite some time.
This is why present-day Republicans shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the CIA.

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