Guardian: CIA planned al-Qaida assassinations in friendly countries, officials say

By GottaLaff

Sy Hersh originally reported about Cheney's assassination ring, and I posted about that here. Now this:

Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate of al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials.

Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.

The CIA apparently did not put the plan in to operation but the US military did, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the programme. [...]

Another former senior intelligence official responsible for dealing with al-Qaida said that assassination plans were reined in after similar covert operations by the military were botched and proved to be embarrassing, particularly the killing in Kenya. [...]

The official said he believes from conversations with serving members of the CIA that the area of real concern in Congress is that the planned operations may also have involved the covert surveillance of American citizens, a particularly sensitive subject in the US.

There appears to be common agreement among knowledgeable former intelligence officials that the controversy goes beyond the immediate question of assassination and capture of al-Qaida operatives as there have been numerous killings and detentions since the 9/11 attacks. One former official said that the Bush administration discussed the assassination question in the context of a ban introduced in the 1970's in response to several failed CIA attempts to murder Fidel Castro and concluded that as the US had declared itself at war with Al-Qaida and the Taliban the ban did not apply.

Peter Bergen, a senior security analyst at the New America Foundation, said that the secret operation must have gone further than that to have created such a backlash in Congress. "If it's an assassination programme of al-Qaida leaders that is hardly surprising. Clinton had an assassination programme against Bin Laden. There have been 27 drone missile strikes against al-Qaida alone this year," he said.

But we shouldn't look back. Just keep moving along...