Newsweek: Don’t Shoot; The CIA's kill teams were modeled on Israel's hit squads

[laststeamtrain]

Don’t Shoot

The CIA's kill teams were modeled on Israel's hit squads
Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff
Newsweek Web Exclusive

A ferocious dispute between the CIA and Congressional Democrats centers on an ultra-secret effort launched by agency officials after 9/11 to draw up plans to hunt down and kill terrorists using commando teams similar to those deployed by Israel after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, according to a former senior US official.

Officials of the CIA's undercover spying branch, then known as the Directorate of Operations, on and off over the last several years repeatedly floated and revised plans for the such operations, which would involve sending squads of operatives overseas, sometimes into friendly countries, to track and assassinate Al Qaeda leaders, much the same way Israeli Mossad agents sent assassins to Europe to kill men they believed responsible for murdering Israeli Olympic athletes, the former official said. But several former and current officials said the highly-classified plans, which last week provoked into a bitter argument between congress and the CIA, never became "fully operational," and CIA Director Leon Panetta put an end to the program in June.

According to two former officials—who, like others quoted in this story, asked for anonymity to speak about sensitive matters—shortly after 9/11, the Bush White House consulted with the Directorate of Operations about expanding the agency's powers to track or lure terrorists. Top CIA officials ultimately concluded the program posed an unacceptable risk of failure or exposure, according to another former official. As a result, the initial plans proposed by officers of the Directorate of Operations— now known as the National Clandestine Service—were put on hold by CIA director George Tenet before he left office in 2004, former

officials said. Tenet's two successors, Porter Goss and Gen. Michael Hayden, kept the plans in the deep freeze. But a former official said that until Panetta killed the program outright last month the CIA never totally abandoned the plans for kill teams; agency personnel believed it was important to have them ready as an option for the president to use, and they continued to try to refine the idea.

Over the last two years, agency officials held at least three high-level meetings about the program. But they did not make much progress, an official said. The most recent discussions were so tentative, said the official, that the agency did not believe it was necessary to inform the the Congress or senior White House officials, including the President, Vice President and National Security Advisor, about them.

The extreme secrecy surrounding the program led seven Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee to publicly accuse top CIA officials of concealing "significant actions" from the Congress dating back to 2001. The members have refused to give details about the plans, which remain classified. But the New York Times reported this weekend that Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA to withhold information about the program from the House and Senate intelligence oversight panels.

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http://www.newsweek.com/id/206607

[OHdem10]

1. We might be surprised at the number of Americans who would

have no problem with Hit Squads going after Terrorists.

The President can waive laws and order assasinations. Sometimes
things may sound illegal which really are legal.

[laststeamtrain]

3. Nothing surprises me about my fellow Americans.

Every so often I have to go to a mall for something or I see a top ten list of books, recordings, movies etc.

I stopped being surprised years ago. Now I'm just sad & darkly amused.

[laststeamtrain]

2. ...