Hosenball/Isikoff: The CIA's kill teams were modeled on Israel's hit squads

[babylonsister]

No one is really responsible, nothin' to see here, or so everyone is trying to tell everyone else.

Don’t Shoot
The CIA's kill teams were modeled on Israel's hit squads
By Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 14, 2009


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.

Cheney has not commented. Two former officials familiar with Cheney's role in the scheme maintained that the program was not the former vice president's idea; one of the officials said that when discussion about the program surfaced at the CIA during the final years of the Bush Administration, Cheney was not involved in any way, and that Cheney was not, at least late in the administration, responsible for ordering the agency to continue to withhold information about the program from Congress. Instead, the agency itself decided to withhold Congressional briefings because it did not believe that the program had become operationally advanced enough to warrant them. But other officials confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Cheney was involved in discussions about the program and had pressed the CIA not to inform Congress about it. Some of the officials said that Cheney's involvement may turn out be the most politically explosive aspect of the controversy.

more...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/206607?from=rss

[scheming daemons]

1. The point is NOT about what the program did... but hiding it from congress is against the law

[babylonsister]

2. Some in the CIA are trying to provide cover for Cheney. Someone is lying. nt

[Spazito]

5. I suspect the program itself was against the law as well...

which is why it was hidden from congress. Rule of law was NOT operational with the Cheney cabal and it's enablers.

[aquart]

3. Oh, look. Blame the Jews.

[babylonsister]

4. Get a grip. That's the least important part in this article. I'm

trying to figure out who's responsible.

[KittyWampus]

7. Babylonsister, do you think our CIA needed pointers from the Israelis?At this point, don't you think

the best way for Cheney to try and protect himself is to distract and cause extraneous arguments?

[babylonsister]

10. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. They supposedly

honed their torture techniques by studying other countries' methods.

And this could easily be a distraction, but it's not distracting me too much.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. You are that naive to believe that

intel organizations do not borrow, steal and copy tactics and methods from each other?

[dionysus]

13. well, mossad is a bunch of truly badass mofo's who excel at the commando shit. just sayin

[KittyWampus]

6. It seems sort of odd to suggest our CIA needed to learn from relative newbies

this story line does have an ick factor to it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Just a point of history, the MOSSAD's history is older than the State of Israel

they go to the 1920s and 1930s and both the Irgun and the Palmach had intelligence organizations.

The CIA goes to the Special Service of WW II.

The foundation of the CIA goes straight to the National Security Act of 1948... so I would not call the Mossad a bunch of newbies.

That said, they are a little more aggressive in pursuing their enemies than our CIA... at least on the uptake. Our guys tend to be a little more secretive. And yes, Intel outfits take, or steal, or borrow ideas from each other ALL THE TIME.

[Leftist Agitator]

17. Are you really THAT obtuse?

Get your head out of your ass, and quit trying to smear any critical mention of Israel as anti-semitism.

[Flaneur]

18. Cool. How do you do those auto-responses?

The ones that pop up on any thread remotely critical of Israel, or in this case, that even mentions Israel.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. "Kill teams" aka: murderers, assassins, thugs, terrorists.

At least "kill teams" is a bit more accurate than the usual heroic monikers given to scum.

[FarCenter]

9. Mossad didn't always assassinate the right target -- The Lillehammer Affair

"The Lillehammer affair refers to the murder by Mossad agents of a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchiki, in Lillehammer, Norway on July 21, 1973. The agents had been sent by Israel as part of Operation Wrath of God to assassinate Ali Hassan Salameh, the leader of the Black September Organization, a Palestinian group that carried out the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. They mistook Bouchiki for their target and shot him repeatedly as he walked back from a cinema to his apartment with his pregnant wife. Two members of the assassination team were arrested the next day as they re-used a getaway car to go to the airport. After their interrogation the whole cell was arrested. Incriminating documents and the keys to a network of safe houses were discovered."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair for more.

Killing Al Quaeda operatives in European countries is a risky affair.

Killing their financial backers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere around the world, would be even more risky.

[redqueen]

14. That's funny how you think killing the financial backers was

anywhere near getting on the agenda.

[FarCenter]

15. Assassination would imply soft targets in benign environments

Sending assassination squads into Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or even into Somalia, Sudan, the Mahreb, Syria, Iran, etc is not practical. That is a job for Special Operations Command, not CIA. Although in the latter group, CIA contracted mercenary forces might be used.

So it is most likely that assassination would be used against Al Queda operations involving support, logistics, communications, finance, etc. in countries that are friendly or neutral to the US.

[timeforpeace]

16. Other than being incompetent and never killing anybody, they were exactly like Mossad.