Amazing Article in WaPo About CIA Operations Known as GST

[kpete]

Absolutely amazing article in the WaPo by Dana Priest about the vast program of UnConstitutional, Illegal, Immoral but NOT Fattening program of special CIA operations known as GST.

The amount of detail and research in this piece are tremendous. This is investigative journalism at its best:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/firedoglake/113591852054124930/

snippets from 5 page article Wapo on GST:


By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005; Page A01

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.

Working behind the scenes, the CIA has gained approval from foreign governments to whisk terrorism suspects off the streets or out of police custody into a clandestine prison system that includes the CIA's black sites and facilities run by intelligence agencies in other countries.

Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legal interpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officials and seven lawyers who once worked on these matters.

One way the White House limited debate over its program was to virtually shut out Congress during the early years. Congress, for its part, raised only weak and sporadic protests. The administration sometimes refused to give the committees charged with overseeing intelligence agencies the details they requested. It also cut the number of members of Congress routinely briefed on these matters, usually to four members -- the chairmen and ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence panels.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901585.html

[hootinholler]

1. Hmmm,

3 votes before the :kick:.

-Hoot

[fasttense]

2. Great article.

Wow the CIA seems to have grown into a huge illegal covert spy ring reporting only to the bushites. I wonder who in the US has been whisked away?

[bigtree]

3. didja see Hayden's quote?

from the WP article:

"We're going to live on the edge," Hayden told the groups, according to notes taken by Human Rights Watch and confirmed by Hayden's office. "My spikes will have chalk on them. . . . We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, I'm troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law.

Not stopping another attack not only will be a professional failure, he argued, but also "will move the line" again on acceptable legal limits to counterterrorism.

sounds like he's pining for another attack so that he can expand his snooping powers.

[EVDebs]

8. Does anyone know if Hayden is a Knight of Malta ?

Most of the early OSS/CIA leadership were KOM's, Donovan, Dulles, Colby, Casey, Angleton, Gehlen (oops !).

[hootinholler]

13. My spikes will have chalk on them

Um, if your spikes have chalk on them then you are OUT OF BOUNDS, asshole! At least in the games I played.

-Hoot

[BamaBecky]

4. Global Stop Terror - Global Snooping Terrorists???

[kpete]

5. The New CIA: Kidnapping, Rendition, Assassination

The New CIA: Kidnapping, Rendition, Assassination
Dana Priest's lengthy article in today's Washington Post shows in great detail how the current regime has returned the CIA to the days when the CIA freely disrupted the political affairs of Latin America. This new CIA, however, has none of the traditional oversight that it had in the past. Congress has not been allowed to pierce the secrecy to find out just what it's funding.

http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/

[Fridays Child]

6. He blew up frogs, as a child. How can this surprise us?

George Bush is a classic psychopath.

[hedda_foil]

7. Very interesting comment on *'s personal involvement.

If it comes to war crimes trials, this statement leaves * swinging in the wind.

"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations."

[Peace Patriot]

9. Well, that's certainly what I suspected about Bush--a childish personality

that takes sadistic pleasure in the sufferings of others, and relishes the "dirty details" of black ops that he has ordered and permitted. i suspect that it thrills him to think that he has the power to order up death, torture, people shitting in their pants out of fear, people being water-boarded and beaten to death, and sexually humiliated. But I think it's a mistake to focus too much on Bush as a personality--and de-focus on his enablers and puppet-masters (the ones who feed him this stuff, and manipulate him with delusions of grandeur), and all the toadies and yes-men in the military and the CIA who are going along with clearly evil policies.

It's possible we have a Caligula on our hands--a psychotic child man--but such a thing is not possible without the failure, corruption and collusion of the people who should known better, the Senators, the government leaders and professionals, and the rich ruling elite who sold away the Roman Republic for protection of their little fiefdoms of power and privilege.

I was watching the DVD of Jon Stewart and the Daily Show last night on the 2004 election, the segment on the Democratic Convention. And what struck me about it was how utterly revolted these comedians were at what they found in Boston: a completely meaningless and scripted proceeding, in which democracy had gone brain-dead. They could hardly contain their revulsion, and had a hard time being funny about it (--although they are funny, for the most part--they can't help it; a brilliant comedic crew).

Two of the guests they had on were Sen. Joseph Biden and Gov. Bill Richardson (NM). And that's when *I* felt like vomiting. (You see, I don't have TV, and couldn't watch this stuff while it was happening--just learned about it from reading, and from a few clips here and there.) These corrupt war toadies And Bush enablers made me sick.

Stewart asked Biden about invading Iraq over WMDs that were never found--the false justification for the war. And Biden says, yea, their recent report on it said that 70% of the prewar intel on Iraq was wrong, and only 30% right, and that we shouldn't go to war on bad intel. Then Stewart concludes the interview with a plea to Biden that they require a 60/40 ration of bad to good intel before they go to war, not 70/30. (You see what I mean? Stewart can't help but be funny--and, oh God, is he sharp!).

Prior to this, he had Bill Richardson on--a pudgy, self-satisfied looking little man, who said absolutely nothing (a few bits of pablum from some DNC brochure). Stewart shuffles him off quickly. There is no there there.

Biden voted to give Congress' Constitutional power to declare war away to George Bush (in the Iraq war resolution of Oct. '02). He broke his oath of office on that day. And he has been supporting this illegal, unjust, murderous war, that was based on a pack of lies, ever since--with BILLIONS and BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars in appropriations for Bush to continue murdering and torturing Iraqis and others.

IF Biden and others had NOT broken their oath of office, and had NOT permitted a president to make the decision to declare war, then the evaluation of evidence against Iraq would have remained with the Congress, which would undoubtedly have let the UN weapons inspectors finish their work, for one thing, and which would then have been in a position to evaluate Colin Powell's 100% pack of lies to the UN. The UN weapons inspectors were concluding that Iraq had no WMD program left. But Bush kicked them out, precipitously, with the unnecessary invasion, and their reports and conclusions came too late.

This is WHY the Founders of our republic gave the power to declare war to CONGRESS--a deliberative body that is supposedly representative of the people, whose lives and money will be sacrificed in war--and expressly FORBADE the president to make that decision.

And there Biden sat--smiling boyishly, flashing his well-cared for teeth--saying, lightly in an off-hand way, oh yeah, we shouldn't go to war on bad intel.

I just wanted to puke. True, he was at a disadvantage sitting next to Jon Stewart (as shrewd a political comedian as I've ever seen). But I know that Biden was lying through those pretty teeth. He's an agent of the military-industrial complex--he's their shill, their biggest advocate. He knew damn well the case for war was just as phony as it could be--you can't tell me otherwise--and he, and all those who voted for BUSH to make the decision, are examples of the cowardice, corruption and parasitism that leads to a Caligula gaining imperial power within a once great, ancient Republic, the model for all republics that came after it (i.e., governments with a balance of powers among the executive, the lawmakers, and the common citizens).

As for Richardson--all you need to know about him is that the stopped the Greens from getting a recount of New Mexico in 2004 (by imposing a million dollar bond on them, or something). He helped the Bush junta steal the election.

I just happened to catch these two Bush enablers on this DVD. They are not unique. There are plenty of others like them in our political establishment, and as professionals within the government. They are the passive criminals--the well-rewarded, the smug, the ones who wink and smile. Then there are the active criminals around Bush, and the yes-men and toadies who knew how to avoid being purged, in the military and the CIA and FEMA and the other agencies.

Caligula can't help but be who he is--a pampered psychotic given wholly undeserved power by virtue of birth and privilege--like any mad king in history. We had done with all that, in the founding of THIS republic. And now the enablers, and the toadies, and the mincing rich elitists are back, to push another idea of the "balance of powers" in government into decline and fall. People like Biden and Richardson are destroying this country, just as much as Bush is. They are the ones who should know better.

[troubleinwinter]

10. What a great post, Peace Patriot.

"Caligula" seems to fit.

[mom cat]

11. Permission to kill:

This from the article:

"Bush delegated much of the day-to-day decision-making and the creation of individual components to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to congressional and intelligence officials who were briefed on the finding at the time.

"George could decide, even on killings," one of these officials said, referring to Tenet. "That was pushed down to him. George had the authority on who was going to get it."

Does this scare anyone else?

[mom cat]

12. Further twisting on rules for assassination:

"Tenet, according to half a dozen former intelligence officials, delegated most of the decision making on lethal action to the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. Killing an al Qaeda leader with a Hellfire missile fired from a remote-controlled drone might have been considered assassination in a prior era and therefore banned by law.

But after Sept. 11, four former government lawyers said, it was classified as an act of self-defense and therefore was not an assassination. "If it was an al Qaeda person, it wouldn't be an assassination," said one lawyer involved.

This month, Pakistani intelligence sources said, Hamza Rabia, a top operational planner for al Qaeda, was killed along with four others by a missile fired by U.S. operatives using an unmanned Predator drone, although there were conflicting reports on whether a missile was used. In May, another al Qaeda member, Haitham Yemeni, was reported killed by a Predator drone missile in northwest Pakistan.

Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legal interpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officials and seven lawyers who once worked on these matters."