What started seemingly as a bipartisan spat over who lied to whom about what when it comes to Bush's torture regime has now morphed into a full-fledged scandal, with a team of WaPo writers digging in.
Four months after he was sworn in, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta learned of an intelligence program that had been hidden from Congress since 2001, a revelation that prompted him to immediately cancel the initiative and schedule a pair of closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill.
The next day, June 24, Panetta informed the House and Senate intelligence committees of the program and the action he had taken, according to Democratic and Republican members of the panels....
The program remains classified, and those knowledgeable about it would describe it only vaguely yesterday. Several current and former administration officials called it an "on-again, off-again" attempt to create a new intelligence capability and said it was related to the collection of information on suspected terrorists that was instituted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Sen. Feinstein, who's now in charge of the Intelligence Committee and has taken over the supposedly massive investigation being conducted by it, says of the program, "Instructions were given not to brief Congress." One former Bush official interviewed by WaPo blew the whole thing off as an "off and on" program that wasn't any big deal. Another former intelligence official says the program was "sensitive" and that it should have been disclosed to Congress, particularly when members had been told they'd be fully briefed on intelligence activities.
Republicans who have been trying to downplay the briefing Panetta gave them have a bit of a truthiness problem now as well. Both Pete Hoekstra and Mike Rogers have said that the program "never quite got there" or wasn't "ever implemented," are contradicted by the Bush administration official who definitely confirmed that the program, run by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, was implemented. It might have been off and on, but it was definitely on during the last eight years. Remember, it was begun in 2001 following 9/11 and Panetta didn't find out about it and put an end to it until the day before he met with the Intelligence Committee last month.
Yesterday I reported that the program seemed to have been related to torture, including the possibility that it had something to do with Cheney's purported assassination team. We've found out enough about it now, from reporting by Newsweek's Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff to know that it was not, because it was not covert and it was related to intelligence gathering. What's clear about it is that it was alarming enough to Panetta to cut if off and immediately brief Congress. Ambinder covers some of the possibilities for what this program was, all of which are plausible, but at this point, shots in the dark.
The revelations have led to calls for a House investigation and, of course, piqued interesting in that elusive Senate Intelligence report. It will hopefully back the administration off of it's veto threat of legislation that would expand classified intelligence briefings beyond the Gang of Eight to the full Intelligence Committees. It's to Panetta's credit that he revealed this program--to the full Intelligence Committee, and it reflects the kind of transparency between the executive and Congress that our system demands. Congress needs to reassert real oversight over the intelligence and national security activities of the government. Torture and illegal warrantless wiretapping should prove that, if nothing else.
In the meantime, we can at least take heart that, even if only momentarily, it's made one obnoxious blowhard on cable TV change his tune.