Leon Panetta

Congress To Probe Secret CIA Program

Zachary Roth | July 17, 2009, 3:31PM

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who chairs the House Intelligence committee, has announced an investigation into the secret CIA program that Leon Panetta recently ended, and which Dick Cheney reportedly ordered kept secret from Congress.

From Reyes's statement:

After careful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, I am announcing an official Committee investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1974.

This investigation will focus on the core issues of how the congressional intelligence committees and Congress are kept fully and currently informed. To this end, the investigation will examine several issues, including the program discussed during Director Panetta's June 24th notification and whether there was any official decision or direction to withold (sic) information from the Committee.

CIA

Report: CIA Assassin Program Could Operate Anywhere -- Even Inside U.S.

Zachary Roth | July 16, 2009, 11:31AM

Since the news broke (sub. req.) at the start of the week that CIA director Leon Panetta had pulled the plug on a secret program to assassinate or capture al Qaeda leaders, we've been raising questions about one key aspect of the story. In particular, what was it about the program that was so shocking that Dick Cheney reportedly ordered it kept secret from Congress, Panetta quashed it as soon as he heard about it, and Congressional Democrats risked being painted as soft on terror by shrieking about being kept in the dark?

We may have gotten a good piece of the answer here: The Washington Post reports today on how the program had been revived and then put on hold several times since 2001. But it also says, referring to the "presidential finding" with which President Bush authorized the program in 2001:

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CIA

CIA Gets Extension Until Aug 24 On Torture Report

Zachary Roth | July 15, 2009, 12:31PM

The Obama administration's request to delay releasing a key report on torture has reportedly been granted.

According to Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent, a judge has said the CIA can have until August 24 to release the declassified version of a 2004 inspector general's report on the Bush administration's interrogations program. The report's release has already been delayed several times.

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CIA

CIA Vet: Agency Doesn't Need Secret Program To Target al Qaeda

Zachary Roth | July 13, 2009, 3:57PM

Earlier today, we raised a few questions about the notion that the secret CIA program that Dick Cheney reportedly withheld from Congress concerned an effort to kill or capture al Qaeda leaders. And now a top counter-terror expert is doing the same.

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we've been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization.

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Barack Obama

Holder May Investigate Torture -- But Several Probes Are Already Underway

Zachary Roth | July 13, 2009, 2:34PM

The pendulum appears to have swung back in the other direction on the issue of criminal investigations into Bush-era torture. It had looked for a while like President Obama's stated desire to look forward not back had carried the day. But now it appears that Attorney General Eric Holder -- independent of his boss's political concerns, which is how things should work -- is leaning back towards initiating a probe. The news was first reported over the weekend by Newsweek, then picked up today by the New York Times and Washington Post.

But whatever Holder ultimately decides, there are already several ongoing government efforts to investigate torture, which figure to substantially fill out our still patchwork understanding of the issue. So as we wait for official word from the Justice Department on a criminal inquiry, it's worth being clear about what those efforts are, and how they relate to each other.

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Dick Cheney

New Info Brings More Questions On Secret CIA Program

Zachary Roth | July 13, 2009, 12:13PM

We've gotten some more information in recent days about that secret CIA program that the agency withheld key information from Congress about, and that CIA director Leon Panetta promptly shut down when he learned about it last month. But the new reports only raise more questions.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the CIA withheld information about the secret program "on direct orders" from then-Vice President Dick Cheney. The Times did not identify the program, but noted that, according to intelligence and congressional officials, it involved neither the CIA's interrogation program nor its domestic intelligence (e.g. warrantless wiretapping and surveillance) activities.

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CIA

White House Slipped In Key Passage To CIA Threat Assessment, Justifiying Surveillance

Zachary Roth | July 10, 2009, 4:06PM

Perhaps the key passage -- or at least the most interesting one -- from the just released inspectors general report on warrantless wiretapping is this one:

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Barack Obama

CIA Again Delays Release Of Key Torture Report

Zachary Roth | July 2, 2009, 5:49PM

The release of the long-awaited CIA inspector general report on torture has been postponed once again.

The ACLU, which is suing to have the report released, just announced that the government is asking for yet another postponement on the date of the report's release -- this time, until August 31. The CIA had earlier said it would release the report June 19. That was then pushed back to June 26, and then again to July 1.

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Barack Obama

More Obama Secrecy -- This Time On Cheney's Plame Interview

Zachary Roth | July 2, 2009, 2:46PM

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at this point. But the latest example of the Obama administration mimicking the Bushies in opting for secrecy over openness feels like one of the most infuriating yet.

The Justice Department is declining to release Dick Cheney's interview with federal investigators looking into the Valerie Plame leak, arguing -- as it did under President Bush -- that doing so would discourage future high-level officials from cooperating with criminal investigations.

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CIA

Ex-CIA Officer Charged With Sexual Assault

Rachel Slajda | July 1, 2009, 12:11PM

The CIA's former station chief in Algeria has been indicted on sexual assault charges, the Washington Post reports.

Andrew Warren, who was the CIA's top officer in the North African country, was charged with drugging and assaulting a Muslim woman in his official residence in February 2008. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Warren had been sent back to America when the investigation was announced in January. At the time, the Justice Department was looking into assault allegations from two women. When they investigated his home, they found tapes of him engaged in sex acts, one with an apparently semi-conscious woman. The CIA says he has been fired.

Warren has said sex with both women was consensual.

Here are the details of the allegations:

The woman who made the 2008 allegation told investigators that she had known Warren for several months and that he invited her to his residence on Feb. 17 and gave her a tour. She said that after drinking two apple martinis, she suddenly felt paralyzed, though she could speak and see, authorities wrote in court documents.

The woman was then sexually assaulted, she told authorities. An investigator with the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service wrote in court papers that the woman's symptoms were consistent with being drugged.