Ex-Powell Aide Suggests CIA Assassination Program Was Actually Active

[tekisui]

Source: The Raw Story

The secret CIA program allegedly aimed at assassinating suspected terrorists abroad has raised the eyebrows of at least one former senior Bush Administration official who hints that the program may have actually gone into effect, despite the denials of the agency and congressional staff who have been briefed.

The aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, was chief of staff to Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell. He says he heard “echoes” of the program from US ambassadors abroad, who informed him that clandestine military teams were being dispatched to their countries.

“We, very early on, after 9/11, at the State Department, learned from our ambassadors in the field that there were teams being dispatched to their cities, to their countries, and these teams were clandestine and essentially aimed at capturing al Qaeda leaders or al Qaeda affiliates and interrogating them,” Wilkerson told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday. “So the fact that it might have gravitated over to the CIA or the CIA might have joined in, which is something that happens a lot these days with Delta Force and other special operators is no surprise to me.

“What I suspect has happened is what began to happen while I was still in the government, and that was we’re killing the wrong people,” Wilkerson added. “And we’re killing the wrong people in the wrong countries. And the countries are finding out about it, or at least there was a suspicion that the countries might find out about it, and so it was shut down. That’s my strong suspicion.”

more: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/15/wilkerson-cia-program-active/

[ThirdWorldJohn]

1. Another thing that Colin powell will deny any Knowledge of. n/t

[FarCenter]

2. There is no doubt that abduction teams were active

The only question is whether assassination teams were also at work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/world/europe/16cnd-cia.html

Italy Indicts 26 Americans in C.I.A. Abduction Case

Published: February 16, 2007

ROME, Feb. 16 — An Italian judge today ordered the first trial involving the American program of kidnapping terror suspects on foreign soil, indicting 26 Americans, most of them C.I.A. agents, but also Italy’s former top spy.

The indictments covered the episode in which a radical Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who disappeared near his mosque in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, says he was kidnapped. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, was freed this week from jail in Egypt, where he says he was taken and then tortured.

Despite the indictment, issued by a judge in Milan, it is unlikely that any of the Americans will ever stand trial here.

All the operatives, which included the top two C.I.A. officials in Italy at the time, have left the country. Moreover, Italy has not requested their extradition, and if it did, there seems little chance the Bush administration would agree.

But the indictment nonetheless marked a turning point in Europe, where anger is high at the secret American program of “extraordinary renditions” that whisked away terror suspects in contravention of the law after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

<SNIP>

[ControlledDemolition]

3. Who exactly would be 'the wrong people'? n/t

[nashville_brook]

4. wow -- who's the assholes who are unrec'ing this?

[robertpaulsen]

5. K & R!

:kick:

[jasi2006]

6. If the program was not active, Panetta would not have "shut it down."

The fact that the program was "shut down" means that it was still "active."