Is a new "Iran-Contra" brewing? Signs are Pentagon is evading oversight.

[BurtWorm]

The Pentagon is supposed to coordinate all intel activity with Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence (may he get the hell out of office soon), but the Pentagon doesn't want to let go of all of its toys.



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/politics/29intel.html?pagewanted=print

Republicans See Signs That Pentagon Is Evading Oversight
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - Republican members of Congress say there are signs that the Defense Department may be carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the new director of national intelligence.

The warnings are an unusually public signal of some Republican lawmakers' concern about overreaching by the Pentagon, where top officials have been jockeying with the new intelligence chief, John D. Negroponte, for primacy in intelligence operations. The lawmakers said they believed that some intelligence activities, involving possible propaganda efforts and highly technological initiatives, might be masked as so-called special access programs, the details of which are highly classified.

"We see indications that the D.O.D. is trying to create parallel functions to what is going on in intelligence, but is calling it something else," Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.

Mr. Hoekstra said he believed that the purpose might be to obscure the extent of Pentagon intelligence activities and to keep them outside Mr. Negroponte's designated orbit.

[enid602]

1. Paraguay

There are currently about 500 US special ops forces in Paraguay (of all places), supposedly there for humanitarian purposes. Very close to Brazilian, Bolivian and Argentine borders. These countries are very suspicious of our presence in Paraguay.

[julianer]

2. Why aren't they proud

of Negroponte's new death squads? They are fighting for freemockracy after all :sarcasm:.

What is worth investigating are coalition links with the Badr brigades. This is the group linked with Iran via SCIRI (part of the Iraqi govt) that is suspected of various terror attacks in Iraq - blowing up the house of a Sadr bodyguard yesterday for example.

They won't want any of that to come to public explanation I shouldn't think.

[FreedomAngel82]

3. Of course not

Why else was Nagreponte chosen anyways? Notice everyone in Bush's cabinet has ties to his father. For someone who surely is in competition with daddy he uses all of daddy's people. I'm beginning to suspect that whole competition with daddy thing is just a media ploy and Bush junior is really working for Poppy and they're really closer than what they want us to believe (remember in F911 when we see a video of both Bush's at a Carlyle Group meeting? They're very chummy).

[SpiralHawk]

10. Freemockracy ! LOL

That's great, juls -- the Republican Party Platform

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. my., my, my

what can I say? Stunned? Nope, Surprised? Nope, shocked, Nope... expecting to see this? Of course, has anybody clued the good Congressman on the Office of Special Plans under the control of Under Secretary for Policy William Feith?

There are days I swear...

[enough]

5. kick

[JHB]

6. Iran-Contra wasn't the Pentagon

It's hard to tell what's going on here. Lack of intelligence oversight is inherently bad news, but given who is complaining I think it's possible or even likely the Pentagon is trying to create an intel apparatus they can rely on without depending on the politicised crap that would come out of Negroponte's ass "designated orbit".

[BurtWorm]

7. Or Rummy is just a power greedy bastid?

:shrug:

[KittyWampus]

9. JHB's Take Is Where I Came Out Too. The Pentagon Shouldn't Be

presumed guilty here. The rouge quasi-legal intel outfits the Neo-Cons are creating should, though.

Also, the Pentagon has to have some good eggs in there who might leak stuff.

[BurtWorm]

11. No, the problem is lack of oversight.

If petty bureaucracy is the cause, that's better than rogue activity. But Congress must have overshight.

[Armstead]

8. Iran Contra seems so inoicent these days by comparison

In comparative terms that wouldn't even be a blip on the radar today. It would just be considered business as usual in this environment.