Durbin: Probe possible Cheney concealment

[BlueJessamine]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin says Congress should investigate whether former Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration ordered the CIA to conceal the existence of a counterterrorism program.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Durbin says it may have been an illegal act if such a program was hidden from Congress.

The comments by the Illinois Democrat came in response to a New York Times story that the CIA withheld information for eight years on direct orders from Cheney.


Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jFLvRTDtMk5iZR9RP-K0iQ9NdeYgD99CUPEO4

---

CNN's "State of the Union:

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said Sunday that congressional Democrats are turning the CIA into a 'whipping boy' over revelations this week that the CIA has misled lawmakers over the last decade about a covert program:

"That isn't a reason to disassemble the CIA and make them a whipping child in the middle of public opinion, which basically undermines the whole agency," Gregg said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Gregg said a Saturday New York Times report that then-Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information about the program to Congress was concerning, but he added: "I sense … that we're heading back to this frank church atmosphere in this senate and this congress where people use the CIA as a whipping boy."

"This national attempt by some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to basically undermine efforts to collect intelligence," Gregg said

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) shot back: "I just want to emphasize one more time this is not about not supporting the CIA, or undermining the CIA… We are strongly supportive of a professional, credible CIA."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politicolive/0709/Gregg_Dems_turning_CIA_into_whipping_boy.html?showall

[BlueJessamine]

1. BBC front page this morning:

Cheney 'ordered CIA to hide plan'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8146466.stm

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney gave direct orders to the CIA to conceal an intelligence programme from Congress, US media reports say.

The existence of the programme, set up after 9/11, was hidden for eight years and even now its nature is not known.


Jesselyn @ Daily Kos:

Can we please prosecute now??

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/12/752597/-Cheney-Ordered-CIA-to-Hide-Intelligence-Collecting-Program-from-Congress-for-8-Years

snip

Granted, we still don't know what the classified CIA program is, other than an on-again, off-again attempt, formulated in the hours after 9/11, to create a new intelligence capability related to the collection of information on suspected terrorists. Congress has been told it does not have to do with torture or warrantless wiretapping.

But if the program was a covert action (a particularly secret category in which the United States' role is hidden), the amended National Security Act of 1947 requires a presidential finding and a report to Congress. The law requires the President to make sure the intelligence committees

are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.

Instead, the super-secret program--too secret to even tell congressional leaders--was designated under a lesser secrecy category, "classified," in order to avoid oversight.

Prosecute Dick "Secrecy" Cheney for ordering the CIA to withhold this information from Congress.

[fascisthunter]

2. oh my... the flood gates have opened

what other facts will we see swimming by.

[Kablooie]

15. Flood gates have opened before but, like Katrina, NOTHING is ever done about it.

I don't have my hopes up that anything will ever come of this.
It will be one more faded example of our inadequacy as a Democracy.

[sasquuatch55]

20. Stretch his neck!

nt

[opihimoimoi]

3. The Gates are OPEN...WORMS are everywhere....

[TankLV]

4. Yeah - dicky "I can't apologize fast enough" durbin will "help" us - riiiiiiight...

Wasn't he also a member of the "C-Street" idiots?

dickky durbin is PART OF THE PROBLEM - do NOT look to him for any sort of "help" for what WE deem crucial...!!!

[unblock]

5. something i've never understood about these things:

if cheney had no authority to "order" the cia to conceal something from congress, isn't it up to the cia to say, hey, sorry bud, you've got no authority to do that, we have a statutory duty to keep congress informed.

that's not to say cheney even trying wasn't illegal, but shouldn't the cia bear primary responsibility here? i mean, if i were to "order" people to do things where i had no authority *and they did it anyway*, i might get in trouble, but *they* would bear primary legal responsibility.

for example, if i asked a bank to move around money that wasn't mine, well, if they did, shame on them. the victims there would have every right to hold the bank responsible; to say, well, why the hell did you listen to unblock?

now, if cheney *coerced* the cia, that would be an abuse of whatever power he was claiming, but still, the cia should still be held responsible to do things by the book.

well, in general that's the way organizations should work. i know, i know, the cia in particular is all about doing things NOT by the book, but still....

[destes]

8. That's a pretty good diagram of the situation, but.....

....I've got a question. Can you tell me by what authority Dick Cheney told anybody to do anything? Aside from an authorization he would have to get from the president, does any vice president have inherent authority in these matters?

If the answer is,"no, the VP has no such authority", then why isn't the hunt on for Bush?

I know. It's the competence thing, isn't it? If the president is determined to be, for any reason, unfit to perform his duties or some such, the VP will assume his duties. That pretty well puts Cheney in the drivers seat 24-7, eh?

These guys are only a flight from Paraguay and I hear the late winter to spring there is lovely. He might just "decide" to go there. Would he get to keep his secret service detail in self-imposed exile?

[unblock]

9. the thing is, i don't think the white house always runs by the book

at least, certainly not the shrub white house.

i think the potus often tasks the vpotus with various duties, but it's never officially authorized. most likely the vpotus tells the bureaucrat that potus authorized it and the bureaucrat takes the vpotus's word for it. sloppy on the part of the bureaucrat, and enables exactly this sort of abuse of power.

unless the potus drafts an executive order transferring certain specific duties to the vpotus, or there's already a law on the books giving the vpotus that authority, then the vpotus can't officially act. he can only make requests or engage in other unofficial activities.

[jazzjunkysue]

16. Try to imagine Joe Biden calling up the FBI or CIA with such orders.

They'd tell him he had a wrong number, and go back to the poker game.

[TheEuclideanOne]

17. That was funny

Thanks for the laugh, I needed that. You crack me up.

[unblock]

19. why so funny?

in any other adminstration, the veep has virtually no power at all beyond breaking ties in the senate, except when the presidency is vacated.

as another poster pointed out, if biden tried to boss the cia around, they'd tell him to buzz off.

[sasquuatch55]

21. Presidential signing statements probably gave him authoization.

nt

[BlueJessamine]

6. America's Darth Vader / Dick Cheney

"Dick Cheney's fingerprints are on virtually every lie and abuse of power committed by the corrupt Cheney/Bush administration. Seymour Hersh's recent revelations about an 'executive assassination ring' that directly reported to Cheney is another strong indication of Cheney's shadow presidency" - A. Rolland OpEd News

http://www.opednews.com/articles/America-s-Darth-Vader--Di-by-Allen-L-Roland-090313-115.html


more:

T.D. Allman / Rolling Stone / in an article entitled The Curse of Dick Cheney summed up Cheney's slide to the dark side ~ " As vice president, Cheney was the decisive force pushing America into war. In the inner councils of the administration, it was he who emasculated Colin Powell, cut the State Department out of effective policymaking, foisted fake reports on the intelligence agencies and supplanted the National Security Council. It was also Cheney who placed appointees personally loyal to him, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, in charge of the Pentagon and speckled the warmaking bureaucracy with desk officers culled from neoconservative Washington think tanks ~ ideologues with no military experience ~ Those who have known him over the years remain astounded by what they describe as his almost autistic indifference to the thoughts and feelings of others " http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=6450422

[Optical.Catalyst]

7. Open the flood gates. Put Cheney under indictment, and watch the whole Bush clan go to jail

Once the criminals in the Bush Administration see the cracks forming in the dike, their secrecy will collapse. The courts will step in and clean house.

It will be a beautiful thing.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

12. I hope you're right. ..I can't help but think that Cheney will say his secrecy was for our safety

...Then our guys will rollover.

[Optical.Catalyst]

27. All it will take is for just one of the top Bush guys to to be in a position of being found guilty

The back stabbing, deal cutting, and accusations to deflect blame will send them all to prison. The best thing about the deal is, once it starts, the Republicans will finish it for us in their efforts to save their own butts.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. The gates have opened, but I fear

that a number of Democrats, including members of the Obama administration, are now working furiously with the Republicans to close them again.

[dana_b]

14. me too

I really have no hope for indictment. I've written, called, begged every political leader that I can think of and I'll I've ever gotten from them was a form letter saying it was time to move on, look forward, etc. I don't see this situation as being any different.

[MindMatter]

11. So what was the program? Obviously worse that systematic waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, and rendidions

Because those other programs were disclosed, at least to some degree. So this program is clearly even more insidious. That seems to narrow the possibilities. Any ideas:

One obvious possibility is the idea of an assassination squad. There haven't been a lot of world leaders assassinated, but there have been a lot of journalists knocked off. Not sure that is how Cheney would be spending his time.

I think the key to unraveling this is that it happened "in the aftermath of 911." That leads most people to assume that it was a reactionary program related to chasing down the bad guys. But in fact we haven't actually done much of that. Instead, I'd suggest that this was yet another cases where 911 provided the chaos that created an opening to put in place a program that has little to do with the "war on terrorism".

Instead, considering that Cheney did it, it is probably very much in the mode of enabling profits for all of Cheney's buddies. I would be looking for something more like the Iran-Contra deal.

One thing we know for sure, it was a very specific program, not a vague concept. We know that Panetta shut it down (or at least ordered that0 as soon as he learned of it. You can't shot down a concept. It must have been an active, ongoing program with real agents in the field, money flowing to them, and a command-and-control structure.

So put yourself in Cheney's shoes. What kind of rogue program would you be running?

[cascadiance]

18. Any other ideas? I have one, but still needs a few more dots to connect...

But I have my suspicions... Consider the following:

1) Iran/Contra got a lot of people in trouble, including a number in this crowd for trying to conceal funding of Contras through getting money from Iran in underhanded ways... Lesson learned from this? Don't try to get creative in this way to fund your black ops...

2) Some very high profile corruption cases involving the CIA and money launderers that intersected each other...

- Dusty Foggo was the highest ranking official in the CIA who was put in prison over bribery connections with Randy Duke Cunningham, and his longtime friend and money launderer Brent Wilkes... Foggo also worked with John Negroponte in Honduras, and Negroponte in addition to being head of Homeland Security, was a part of the Iran/Contra mess as well earlier:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E7DF133EF930A25757C0A9639C8B63

- Brent Wilkes got off with kid gloves for "money laundering", but still is in prison now for it, and was working internationally doing so in places like Panama.
- interesting speculation of him being tied to Iran/Contra on DU earlier back in 2005, and mysterious suicide of Gary Webb, San Jose Mercury News reporter who was investigating CIA involvement in cocaine smuggling.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5582027
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2005/12/cia-wilkes-cunningham-abramoff-cocaine.html
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0512/S00080.htm

- Thomas Kontogiannis, was another money launderer who was put in prison for his ties to these scandals.
- another money launderer tied to these guys had some unprecedented secrecy surrounding his trials and appeals...
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/06/kontogiannis-se.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080308-9999-1m8sealed.html
- Kontogiannis was also treated with 'kid gloves' treatment during his trial, including a trip to Greece that the appellate judge didn't know about after he was convicted and awaiting sentencing on some undisclosed 'government biz'. Dusty Foggo asked his judge for a similar trip before sentencing and didn't get approval to do so in his trial.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004205.php
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/indicted_cia_spook_kyle_dusty.php

- Other entities to look at tied to this mess;
- Randy Duke Cunningham - now in prison.
- Mitchell Wade - now in prison for bribery, etc.
- Porter Goss - tied to the Watergate "Hookergate" gambling/sex scandals that also had the above people involved in them that had him resigning from the CIA.
- John T. Michael - Thomas Kontogiannis's nephew also linked in to above scandals and pleaded guilty to money laundering.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080205-9999-1m5michael.html

3) Carol Lam, who prosecuted and convicted Duke Cunningham earlier, indicted Brent Wilkes, John T. Michael, and Dusty Foggo before leaving office when she was one of the U.S. Attorneys that were fired in the attorney scandal, and arguably her firing was the one that started to bring that controversy out in the open.
- She was also hired quickly by Qualcomm for one of their highest legal staff positions, before Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel could work on getting her hired back on a contract basis to finish up her investigations/prosecutions in these areas. Coincidentally also (or perhaps not), Brent Scowcroft (who's an instrumental part of both AIPAC and ATC lobbyist groups) is on the board at Qualcomm.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070208-9999-7m8lam.html
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/02/true-cost-of-hookergate.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Stock/QCOM/insiders

4) The secrecy and coverup of the Cunningham and related cases was really bipartisan in nature as evidenced by the quashing of Duke Cunningham matter by the House Intelligence Committee. Why were the Democrats also covering up what arguably was a heavily a set of Republican criminal activities?
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003686.php

5) North Korea has been attributed with the being the source of the many "super dollar" counterfeit U.S. currency bills that were too good to be caught easily, and forced us to update our currency. However, mainstream news sources like Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, and the U.S.'s McClatchy DC News bureau have claimed that the quality of these counterfeits were too good to have been minted by the North Koreans, and that a more likely source of the counterfeited money was a CIA operation that used that money to fund black operations.
http://www.nowpublic.com/german_paper_reports_cia_counterfeiting_us_currency
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/24521.html
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/46471/is_the_cia_counterfeiting_dollars_and_blaming_it_on_north_korea/

When you put all of these different news items together, you have to ask yourself "HMMM!!!"... And if this operation that the CIA is lying to congress about is this operation, and if you have even Democrats covering it up earlier, along with Cheney being directly involved in it, ask yourself what would happen to our country's economy and the value of the dollar if it were found out that Cheney and the CIA had put together a U.S. counterfeit money and laundering operation to fund black ops that they didn't want to get tracked like Iran/Contra was in its day, with many of the same people involved with the earlier Iran/Contra operations involved! I think overnight our dollar would lose HEAVILY. Which might explain why the Dems perhaps might be complicit in a coverup of something like this.

[MindMatter]

23. VERY interesting. SO you are suggesting that the "operation"

was not a specific spy or behind-the-scenes operation per se, ad we understand typical CIA operations to be. You are suggesting that this -- let's call it a "program" rather an an "operation" -- this program was an organized counterfeiting effort to give the CIA (effectively Cheney) an extra source of money to find operators that could be completely off budget.

Considering that the CIA already gets a big stash of money and all of that is practically off-budget, this would imply that the scale of the operation would have to be in the billions of dollars in order to make much sense.

Would Cheney like to have a couple billion here or there to send to Halliburton or Blackwater? Sure he would. But could the CIA really carry out that big of a program for 8 years without attracting more attention?

Let's say that they were careful and limited themselves to $2 billion a year or something like that. That would be 20 million $100 bills to put into circulation. They would need a sizable laundering operation to get that many bills into circulation.

[cascadiance]

24. Well, it was the McClatchy Bureau, etc. that suggested CIA black ops might be funded...

... through counterfeiting operation, and of course we have a history with Iran/Contra of doing so.

Now would an assassination program by itself need funding by such a source? I'm guess like you that by itself it perhaps did not. But it is one of those types of black ops that they want off the books, and this potential assassination bureau part of the lies might be just a tip of the ice berg of all of the activities that might have been going on.

If the CIA were lying to congress or at least concealing both the "hit squad" operation as well as any "counterfeiting operation", then yes, a whole *more* underground CIA that would be *completely* off the books could have been at work for a lot of things that even the congress weren't made aware of until at least after the fact (that they were already in motion). As I noted, the Democrats looked to be as complicit in covering up Duke Cunningham's related scandal information as the Republicans were. Now if the secrets involved counterfeiting, you could see how perhaps even the Democrats might have been feeling the need to keep a coverup going (even if they were lied to about it initially), as the consequences of such information becoming public might be devastating.

Now, this is still a theory in my mind, but there are a lot of unanswered and hidden stories that I point to here, that if you add them together, might indicate that such a thing might be happening. It would involve a lot of in-depth investigative reporting, that I don't have the resources/capacity to do to try and uncover or dismiss. Still a lot of the secrecy in a number of these cases beg more explanation, and someo f them still might be tied together, albeit perhaps not with the "counterfeiting" angle...

Now the scale of such a laundering program might have to be immense, but remember that folks like Brent Wilkes, Thomas Kontogiannis, John T. Michael, Dusty Foggo, Mitchell Wade were the ones that got caught. There's no telling how many out there might have been able to successfully avoid scrutiny. Hell all of these guys might have been still hiding had it not been for some San Diego Union Tribune reporter that stumbled on some very curious real estate transactions for Duke Cunningham that lead to the local investigation there. Duncan Hunter also had some weird real estate transactions himself (overvaluing his burned house to an insurance agent, while undervaluing it to tax auditors), and had his brother who was a VP of a local real estate development firm "win" some property that was part of a "deal" that this firm (that contributes heavily to Republicans) did with the city for some city property earlier. I also got some information from Hunter's Democratic challenger in the last election Hunter had before he retired that Hunter might have been slated for indictment himself right before Carol Lam was fired.

Please note in the McClatchy article that there was rumors of the CIA also counterfeiting Russian money too to try and destabilize Russia too, which would point to the CIA having the capacity to do this sort of thing, and perhaps that the scope might be more than just printing American money too.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=34044

...
It has been reported in the Russian media that under the guise of humanitarian aid, the U.S. Navy has shipped equipment to Georgia to print millions of counterfeit rubles to undermine the Russian economy. The Georgian government will print and distribute the funny money, while the entire operation has been masterminded by the CIA (www.newsru.com, October 21).
...

Some more articles on this speculation to look at:

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2008/01/counterfeit-100.html

Just found this article that alleges that counterfeit money may have been involved with Iran/Contra as well, though I've not had a chance to read it fully yet. Sounds like Iran's government when the Shah was there might have been involved...

Original link link with the "Pegasus File".
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5156948/The-Pegasus-File

Google cached version that's easier to search the article content with..

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:X2tU8Jop9nkJ:www.scribd.com/doc/5156948/The-Pegasus-File&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

[MindMatter]

26. That raises a very basic question

How do we know that they have stopped? If they were reporting only to Cheney and operated for 7 months after Cheney left office without telling the Director, and they generate their own operating funds, well ...

How do we know that Cheney isn't STILL running that group?

They aren't accountable to the Director. They aren't accountable to Congress. They sure as hell aren't accountable to Obama. SO who are they working for really?

[Igel]

31. It was a specific program.

From what I've read. However, mostly it's described as "not fully operational", and that they constantly reworked it, retrained, and experimented, so that when Panetta "shut it down" it wasn't something that was up and running but sputtering along in hopes of getting up and running. However, those anonymously informing the reporters were fairly clear that while they thought it might have a chance of being approved by Congress in 2001, by 2002 and certainly by 2003 it wouldn't have passed muster ... and so they started reworking it some more.

I'm curious about what it was, but suppose that they won't declassify it. Declassifying it would serve nobody's political interests--the intent of the program, once operational, might serve dems' interests, but if it was as non-functional as claimed then there was no operation, and if there's no operation there's nothing required to be reported to Congress and no wrong-doing.

[truthisfreedom]

13. What was the fucking program? The horrors we've already heard about couldn't possibly get worse,

could they?

[Duer 157099]

28. I thought it was the email thing

The one where they collect and archive every email that passes through any American ISP.

[Odin2005]

22. Judd Gregg can go fuck himself.

[Zhade]

25. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

NT!

[Kingofalldems]

29. And to think DUers were chided and mocked by Bush/Cheney's DU pal(s)

when they called for an impeachment inquiry. Vindicated.

[rschop]

30. Proof the CIA had deliberately allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11

The information on this story pales in comparison to the fact that is now well documented from the US government’s own sources that prove that the CIA, working with agents at FBI HQ they had subjugated, knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately had allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11. This information is even documented and summarized on web sites that have the original PDF source documentation taken of the US government’s own web sites.

This information shows that the CIA and FBI HQ had the names of three of the al Qaeda terrorists who were on AA 77 that hit the Pentagon, for over 21 months and deliberately hid this information from the FBI Cole bombing investigators. This information was in fact kept hidden from these FBI criminal investigators by the CIA even after Walid Bin Attash, known to be one of the masterminds of the Cole bombing, was identified on January 4, 2001 in a photograph taken at a al Qaeda planning meeting, the same meeting attended by Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and knew that all three had actually taken part in the planning the Cole bombing at this meeting.

But then the CIA and FBI HQ even kept this information secret from these same FBI Cole bombing investigators after August 22, 2001, when the CIA and FBI HQ Agents found out that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were located inside of the US by FBI Agent Margaret Gillespie, and knew they were in the US in order to take part in horrific al Qaeda terrorist attack that would kill thousands of Americans. See “Substitution for the testimony of John”, aka Tom Wilshire, in particular the July 23, 2001 email he sent back to his managers at the CIA where he said that Khalid al-Mihdhar will be found at the location of the next big al Qaeda terrorist attack, an attack that by this date the CIA and FBI HQ knew was going to take place inside of the US, and the information that FBI Agent Gillespie gave both CIA officer Tom Wilshire and FBI Agent Dina Corsi on August 22, 2001, that the INS had found both Mihdhar and Hazmi to be inside of the US. This information went to almost all of the CIA and FBI management on August 23, 2001 when Gillespie had the CIA Bin Laden unit issue a worldwide alert for both Mihdhar and Hazmi.

The “Substitution for the testimony of John”, is located on the official US government web site for the Moussaoui trail at:

http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exh ... /

Yet both Wilshire and Corsi not only did not sound any alarm, nor did anyone else at the rest of the CIA, but they shut down the only FBI criminal investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi that could have found these known al Qaeda terrorists in time to have prevented the al Qaeda attacks that the CIA and FBI HQ had been warned about since April 2001, knowing that as a result, thousands of Americans would perish in these attacks.

Since Wilshire had been denied twice by CIA management in July 2001 from providing this information to the FBI criminal investigators on the Cole bombing and Corsi had been working with her management at the FBI, in shutting down the FBI criminal investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi, many people at both the CIA and FBI had been involved in this criminal conspiracy that had allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out these attacks.

It is now clear that many people inside of our own government at both the CIA and FBI HQ had intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11.