[Peace-discuss] Cheney->Obama

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Published on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 by RebelReports
	Is Obama Continuing the Bush/Cheney Assassination Program?

	Congress is outraged that Cheney concealed a CIA program to assassinate
	al Qaeda leaders, but they should also be investigating why Obama is
  	continuing -— and expanding -— U.S. assassinations.
	by Jeremy Scahill

In June, CIA Director Leon Panetta allegedly informed members of the House 
Intelligence Committee of the existence of a secret Bush era program implemented 
in the days after 9-11 that, until last month, had been hidden from lawmakers. 
The concealment of the plan, Panetta alleged, happened at the orders of 
then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

Now, The New York Times is reporting that this secret program that had "been 
hidden from lawmakers" by Cheney was a plan "to dispatch small teams overseas to 
kill senior Qaeda terrorists." The Wall Street Journal, which originally 
reported on the plan, reported that the paramilitary teams were to implement a 
"2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the 
CIA to pursue such efforts."

The plan, the Times says, never was carried out because "Officials at the spy 
agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic 
obstacles." Instead, the Bush administration "sought an alternative to killing 
terror suspects with missiles fired from drone aircraft or seizing them overseas 
and imprisoning them in secret C.I.A. jails."

The House Intelligence Committee is now reportedly preparing an investigation 
into this program and the Senate may follow suit. "We were kept in the dark. 
That's something that should never, ever happen again," said Senate Intelligence 
Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein. Withholding this information from Congress 
"is a big problem, because the law is very clear."

There are several important issues raised by this unfolding story. First, while 
the Times claims the program was never implemented, the program sounds very 
similar to what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sy Hersh described in March as 
an "executive assassination ring" run by Dick Cheney that operated throughout 
the Bush years:

"Congress has no oversight of it. 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.

Hersh's description sounds remarkably similar to that offered by the Times and 
the Wall Street Journal. While the House and Senate should certainly investigate 
this program-and lying to Congress, misleading it or concealing from it such 
programs is likely illegal-it is also important to guarantee that it has 
actually stopped. But another pressing issue for the Congress is investigating 
the Obama administration's adoption of this secret program's central components. 
As the Times noted, the major reason-beyond logistical hurdles-that the program 
was not implemented (if that is even true) was that the Bush administration 
began increasing its use of weaponized drones to conduct Israeli-style targeted 
assassinations (often, these drones kill many more civilians than so-called 
"targets"). These drone attacks, coupled with the use of extraordinary rendition 
and secret prisons, became the official program for "eliminating" specific 
individuals labeled "high value" targets by the administration.

The Obama administration has not only continued the Bush policy of using drones 
to carry out targeted assassinations, but has also continued the use of prisons 
where people are held indefinitely without charge or access to the International 
Committee of the Red Cross. Under Obama, Bagram air base in Afghanistan is 
expanding and, at present, hundreds of prisoners are held there without charges. 
In essence, the Obama administration is doing exactly what this secret CIA 
program sought to do, albeit out in the open.

Beyond the Cheney assassination program, what is really worthy of Congressional 
investigation right now is the legality of Obama's current policy of 
assassination. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning 
assassinations. "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or 
conspire to engage in, political assassination," states Executive Order 11905.

White House lawyers -- with their seemingly infinite legal creativity -- would 
likely say that the drone strikes are not assassinations, but rather part of 
war. That putting poison in a cigar of a foreign leader is different than 
launching missiles at a funeral where an "enemy" is believed to be among the 
mourners. While the implications of the U.S. assassinating heads of state or 
foreign officials are grave, it could be argued that, on some levels, the drone 
attacks are worse in the sense that they kill many more civilians. Moreover, 
these drone attacks largely take place is Pakistan, which is a sovereign nation. 
There is no legal or Congressional declaration of war against Pakistan.

It is long past due that the Congress investigate this U.S. government 
assassination program. The politically inconvenient truth, however, is this: An 
actual investigation would require the Democrats pounding Cheney over his 
concealment of an assassination program (that allegedly was not implemented) to 
focus their investigation on how President Obama actually implemented and 
expanded that very program.

© 2009 Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The 
Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin 
Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.