CIA Vet: Agency Doesn't Need Secret Program To Target al Qaeda

By GottaLaff

Remember that Ultra Super Duper Secret Illegal Cheney CIA Program that I posted about earlier? Well, well, well, looks like it was Ultra Super Duper redundant... unless it was those darned Americans they were targeting:

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we've been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization.

Since the war on terror began, said Cannistraro, the CIA has routinely conducted operations targeting top Qaeda leaders. "The CIA runs drones and targets al Qaeda safe houses all the time," said Cannistraro, explaining that there's no important difference between those kinds of attacks and "assassinations" with a gun or a knife.

Cannistraro said the Defense Department has also conducted such targeted efforts, under an initiative that New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh has written about. [...]

But Cannistraro cautioned that that DOD program has nothing to do with the secret, unidentified CIA program which Cheney is said to have hid from Congress, and which CIA director Leon Panetta ended last month.

As for what the program did involve, Cannistraro suggested that it involved Americans as targets, and that it went beyond surveillance, but declined to elaborate. He added that, though Cheney may have directly ordered the CIA to keep Congress in the dark, the veep wasn't acting alone. "The approval was from the president," said Cannistraro.

But prosecuting would throw us into a tizzy. Don't let on, but I think we're already in one.