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After a few days of reporters digging into the details of a controversial CIA program, and one big scoop about the programâs contents, some people in Washington apparently decided to start talking. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times all weigh in today with stories that point to a similar conclusion: the program was designed to assassinate top al Qaeda officials, was never implemented, and was killed by last month by new CIA chief Leon Panetta. Panetta also informed Congress for the first time of the programâs existence, and Democrats there blew a gasket about not being informed earlier–the event that precipitated the press inquiries that led to todayâs stories.
The stories–which cite as sources âcurrent and former government officials,â âU.S. intelligence and congressional officials,â âcurrent and former national-security officialsâ and âformer U.S. intelligence officialsâ–second yesterdayâs scoop by Journal reporter Siobhan Gorman, who broke the news that the program was designed to âcapture or killâ al Qaeda operatives. And while they are mostly rooted in anonymous sources, the stories all get on-the-record comments–in most cases, from Sen. Christoper âKitâ Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee–that serve as confirmation.
The stories all take slightly different angles, and thus have different strengths. The NYT offers the fullest treatment of the legal issues surrounding assassinations of terrorists, the Post weighs in with the nugget that the White House wasnât involved in Panettaâs decision to cancel the program, the Journal situates the news in the context of an ongoing debate about congressional oversight of intelligence activity, and the LAT features the closest look at talks within the CIA, along with a case that former vice president Dick Cheneyâs connection to the program have been overstated.
But despite the varying perspectives, the full details of the program arenât yet public. And there are enough inconsistencies in what has been reported so far to suggest that there may be more to the story.
The biggest question may simply be: Is this all there is? As several commenters have noted, it should be a surprise to no one that the U.S. government was seeking ways to kill specific al Qaeda leaders. Bond, the Republican, tells the Post that âIf the CIA werenât trying to do something like this, weâd be asking, âWhy not?ââ Most Democrats, for their part, seem less aggrieved about the programâs contents than about they fact that they were kept in the dark. As todayâs stories all note, the U.S. uses Predator drones to target individuals, an act that doesnât seem legally distinct from an on-the-ground assassination. And the LA Timesâs sources tell that paper âPanetta may have been more concerned about the fact that the initiative had been kept secret from Congress than he was about the merits of the program.â
Itâs hard to square those points, though, with a few details that emerged earlier. For example, a Sunday New York Times story that focused on Cheneyâs role in concealing the program noted that âthere was no resistance inside the C.I.A.â when Panetta decided to end the effort. That story also flagged comments from Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who said he believed the program only would have been approved in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Both of those data points suggest there may be more going on here.
Yesterday, the Guardian carried a story–not referenced in any of todayâs articles in the American press–that may point toward an answer to this question. The program was designed to target al Qaeda operatives âin friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments,â according to reporter Chris McGreal. But much hinges on the definition of a âfriendly countryâ there. Thatâs a term that could technically apply to Pakistan, which gets named in the LATâs lede today, and which is an obvious place to go hunting for terrorists.
A few voices on the Web are floating other possibilities–that the program couldâve had a domestic component, or otherwise targeted Americans. Thereâs no real substantiation for that speculation yet, and it may prove unfounded–indeed, itâs quite possible that Congressâs response is not proportional to the size of the revelation. In either case, major papers should keep pushing hard on this story. Hopefully, weâll learn more details soon.
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