the veep wasn't acting alone. "The approval was from the president," said Cannistraro.

This is silly. Cheney ordered it and the Village Idiot rubber stamped it.

From Hersh's description, that sounds like a DOD program to set up fake "terrorist" groups in various countries, and then actually commit terrorist crimes! What were they planning to do, blow up buildings in the hopes that their fake terrorist groups could then get the attention of Bin Laden?

If so, that would be a truly horrible idea. Could you imagine the sh-tstorm if the CIA was blowing up civilians as some sort of covert op? I'm sure Cheney's CIA program wasn't any better.

"Cannistraro suggested that it involved Americans as targets, and that it went beyond surveillance"

I think this is why it was so secret -a hit squad against American and Allied individuals who posed a real threat to Cheney's plans -invading Iraq -why not? We know about other things he did to this end -why would he not go all the way?

Where did the story that the CIA was covering up for Cheney Death Squads come from? Who pushed that? Clearly it's a red herring, and it was probably pushed by someone who knows the truth to be far worse. It's pretty obvious that "CIA had secret plan to kill Al Quaeda members" is not going to get too many people upset. In fact, it's going to bring up the obvious "Democrats want to stop going after Terrorists/Dems are weak on National Security" bullshit, which was probably what it was intended to do.

On the other hand, if the CIA was running a domestic surveillance program...

And Cheney kept it from Congress...

Is the program codename "Blackbriar" or "Treadstone"?

All these attempts to limit this (these) secret programs to one modality will IMO, just allow those involved to let this stuff out slowly enough to reduce the impact, and thus, the proper reaction. If Americans were targeted, even with acts that were not physical, but attacks on reputation and loyalty, together with the other surmised activities, this amounts to a modified coup in that the CIA and Cheney were operating with the power of the US government without the authority drawn from legal sources. This is a most dangerous situation, and in times less tumultuous than these to the fall of governments. Congress must insist that the president, and not the CIA shall set and carry out American foreign policy.

Whatever is going on, I have a hunch that at least SOME of it is causing more harm to our nation than good. Why? Because those we select to investigate, fund, and oversee these guys have apparently been kept in the dark.

Not so bad a deal if and when anyone ever figures out how to make ALL those in power respect the commoners whom they are supposed to be working for. This scenario will not occur until hell freezes over, so until then, this secrecy is a wide open door for our democracy to fail...

Give a bad guy a gun (or nuclear bomb) and take away all restrictions and... this is the EXACT scenario we are now talking about...

Of course now that our other leaders have decided to protect these clowns (remember, those folks who we were counting on to bring the bad guys to justice... who instead immediately took impeachment and prosecution off the table) this will undoubtedly happen in the future... with some horrific repercussions... IMHO

Cheney. Assassinations. Leahy. Daschle. Wellstone.

The primary targets were always domestic.

9/11 was an inside job. (seriously)

one more thing.

i recall from a movie that i saw, "The Walker" (2007), starring Woody Harrelson, the Cheney-like character was represented as big into assassinating Americans--any that got in his way.

the ambiance of the movie felt very Cheneyesque

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783608/

"And there's this guy from the CIA who's creeping around Laurel Canyon…"

Frank Zappa, 1967

Operatives posing as corrupt foreign business people? One wonders if some of them pretended to want to buy supplies from a nation in Africa.

One also wonders how broad was the definition of terrorism.

Sorry about the paranoia.

Has anyone noticed that everytime one of daddy's illegal activities come out, Liz Cheney shows up on TV? If NOT informing Congress is illegal, then what is about "illegal" that the Cheney's don't understand? We are a nation of laws, and the Cheney's act as if our laws don't apply to them. I think they doth protest too much.

"Cannistraro suggested that it involved Americans as targets"

Like General Wherley?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/whatever-force-is-necessary/

My tin foil hat isn't handy, so I'm going to stay away from the more conspiratorial concerns here.

But in terms of addressing the fundamental question of why this program might be different than "merely" killing Al Qaeda via drones attacks and the like, there has been a clear indication that this issue could be one of geography/diplomacy.

The suggestion from many of the press reports on this subject is that instead of simply attacking Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Cheney program is alleged to have been designed to go after targets in other countries -- including western allies of the US -- without participation, consent or knowledge of those countries.

If Cheney's assassins were going to be killing people the CIA considered connected to Al Qaeda in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Turkey, and similar locations, the dangers of the program become extremely obvious. If the US were gunning down British citizens and residents on the streets of London without the consent of the British government, the potential shit-storm in response if discovered would be hugely damaging to American relations with allied countries.

(The discussions on MSNBC last night framed this by looking at the continuing fall-out of the "extraordinary rendition" of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan by CIA operatives- although that event did involve the knowledge of at least some in the Italian government, and did not involve assassination.)

Perhaps such a program would not need additional legal authorization, but that doesn't address the legal obligation of the CIA to keep Congress (or at least the gang of eight) appraised of significant programs being undertaken. That would still be required, even if authorization were not needed.

But if this was the nature of the program, it wouldn't surprise me in the least that Cheney chose to keep Congress in the dark about it -- and the combination of lack of information and potential diplomatic fall-out would explain why Congressional Dems and Director Panetta view this as such a serious matter.

"since Ford pardoned Nixon...the crimes have become more and more egrarious... from a botched B&E, (election fraud)..to lying, Treason, false imprisonment, false and wrongful convictions, unlawfully with holding information from Congress, to illegal wire-tapping, to torture, etc.,...what's the next crime?.. and when will it stop..? Never..? How far do we go before we finally realize we have become what we despise..?"

Indeed. One could say that The Great Experiment has run its course. Or rather, much of the course had already been altered half a century ago, when the desire for Empire became the dominant paradigm, but the depths of that fundamental shift are only now becoming publicly apparent. It's easy to demonize Cheney, but he is merely the one brazen figurehead of a broad movement.

Mr. Cannistraro is correct about Americans being targets. Nor is this what you all think. The program wasn't set-up to outright shoot the targets. Rather, targets were tracked when in their cars, their schedule and which roads they would take known for the day because of electronic surveillance of their communications. Car accidents were staged with the hope that the target would perish in the accident, and their death appear as an accident. I was driving a 2000 ML430 Mercedes. It was a terrible car mechanically, but it also was a tank and kept me safe for 2 of the accidents. The other accident was while I still hadn't gotten my car back from repair with the first accident, and was driving my grandmother's 2000 Mercedes wagon. That is a very long car. The tow truck operator with tons of hardware on the front of the grill assigned to creme my grandmother's wagon took-out the entire backend of the car! Literally, he made a turn, had to go only feet to where I was stopped at a red light, and yet caused the entire backend of the car to have to be replaced!

I am head of federal operations for the inventing company of the tech std called "smart wallet" by NIST. Lockheed Martin's biometric smart card is so inferior to our platform that they aren't competition. Yet, Lockheed walked-off with all our contracts DARPA labeled as ours in 2002. The VP had our US RnD, then German RnD and then finally French RnD operations sabotaged. There simply was no place in the world we could retreat w/o being stalked by the CIA! Carol Lam interfered with the first conspiracy on our French RnD office so it took her removal and a 2nd conspiracy for the VP to succeed in the sabotage of our French office where he had CIA operatives embedded that French employment law prohited us from firing. The public learned something had happened when the Real ID standard was announced by Chertoff 3/4 of a year late (from when the Act specified), and it was because our French office filed for bankruptcy that morning. Meanwhile, it was me back in the US keeping the company funded. Kill me, and Lockheed's superior competition fails! The attempts on my life were made 2/04, 3/04, 5/04 and 9/05. 9/05 wasn't a car accident but literally that the Veep got so desperate he tried to have people beat me up. The location was very public, and only that scared-off my wannabe attackers. They weren't prepared to go to jail for the VP!

Lynne Cheney was on Lockheed's board of directors into 9/03. The Cheney family is full of Lockheed Martin shares the VP wanted to defend from office by abusing his post. Furthermore, Phil Perry, the VP's son-in-law was embedded by Cheney into various posts to keep my company from DOD and DHS contracting, and when not in government service was a Lockheed Martin lobbyist at Latham & Watkins.

By the way, Cheney was caught by a grand jury the public didn't know is convening by August of 2006, and was caught in newer conspiracies by the grand jury in 1/07 at the same time Perry was caught.

The other piece of information you all are seeking is about the other NSA programs controlled by the White House. Cameras were put into my house concentrated on areas where I dressed. I believe the original reason was to blackmail me. In 2/06 images of my bare body were posted to the internet in retribution to some comments I made to WaPO's website under the username Dawn The Doormat that were being widely read, and a phone call made to my county PD Police Commissioner's office to have me taken into custody on felony obscenity charges. The PC and his staff are family friends. They called my father before the FBI could intervene and silence them. This is how I found-out about what happened.

In 2/06 former US AG Gonzales said, "there are other White House spy programs the president doesn't know about." This is another way of saying that the VP did!

There also is the problem that more than 500 members of Congress are in Lockheed Martin's pocket!

I am having troubles with being silenced in some circles and really, this is the only outlet where I've been permitted to speak-out. This probably is b/c no one reads comments here. I suggest you all pay attention now b/c in weeks someone like DeLay, Buckham or Doolittle will be indicted. My company is to be apart of the indictments and this last avenue in which I've been able to speak-up will be closed to me. This is one of the last chances TPM readers have to get their questions answered.