Cheney's Silence

After coming out of his secret hiding place and showing up on every talk show except Oprah in recent months, former Vice President Dick Cheney must have seen his shadow. Maybe he felt he had sufficiently frightened the American public with predictions of another terrorist attack on American soil, and was able to declare "mission accomplished" and go back into hiding.

Or perhaps he got wind of Panetta's plans to visit Congress, and wisely decided to keep quiet for a few weeks. Last week's revelation that the CIA had failed to inform Congress of a covert "program" in violation of the National Security Act of 1947 was compounded by news this past weekend that this was under direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

CIA Director Leon Panetta didn't learn about the program until he was in office for almost 5 months, and within 24 hours notified both the House and Senate subcommittees. Panetta and members of the Senate and House intelligence committees have not said what the secret program actually was, although there has been widespread media speculation that the program in question involved the creation of groups whose mission was to assassinate al-Qa’eda operatives.

Much of this speculation has been fueled by current and former CIA employees that claim such a program was "on again-off again." But none of them can actually say with certainty that this was the program that caused Panetta to rush over to Congress with such urgency.

If this is actually what the "secret" CIA program was about, I can only say that the lack of curiosity inside the beltway is astounding. It's not like George Bush didn't make his intentions clear. A Washington Post article published shortly after 9/11 (CIA Weighs 'Targeted Killing' Missions) described the steps Bush took to authorize exactly such a mission. And in numerous public statements, Bush made his plans very clear.

At least up until now, there has been bipartisan agreement on this objective. Even Obama, in effect, sanctioned assassination in the October 7 Presidential debate: "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority."

Given all this, wouldn't you think Congressional intelligence committees would have asked about this at some point in the last eight years? Wouldn't you think Panetta would have looked into this after a few days in office? The CIA has said the al-Qa’eda program never went beyond "brainstorming," so what was it that Cheney wanted to be kept secret?

Cheney's silence is telling us that we haven't heard the whole story.