The Democrates will do anything it seems to protect Nancy, their beloved speaker of the house. Including trashing the CIA and those in former administrations such as Vice President Cheney. They have a long history of this dating back to the Church commissions in the 1970's. They will do absolutely anything to protect Nancy Pelosi and it now appears that Leon Panetta the current head of the CIA may have come to Nancy's rescue, despite his earlier remarks that seemed to be in conflict with her previous statements. Something in definately going on here and the CIA is caught in the middle of a political dog-fight. This is not good for the security of the country.Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed it merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta's June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.
Panetta did not agree.
Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it was canceled.
Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration's surveillance program that was the subject of an inspectors general report this past week. That report noted that Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in Bush's inner circle could even know about the secret program.
But revelations about Cheney's role in making decisions for the CIA on whether to notify Congress came as a surprise to some on the committees, said another government official. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program publicly.
An effort to reach Cheney was unsuccessful.
A former intelligence official who was familiar with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden's tenure at the CIA said Hayden never communicated with the president or vice president about the now-canceled program and was under no restrictions from Cheney about congressional briefings. The official said Hayden was briefed two or three times.
Exactly what the counterterrorism program was meant to do remains a mystery. The former intelligence official said it was not related to the CIA's rendition, interrogation and detention program. Nor was it part of a wider classified electronic surveillance program that was the subject of a government report to Congress this past week.
The official characterized it as embryonic intelligence gathering effort, and only sporadically active. He said it was hoped to yield intelligence that would be used to conduct a secret mission or missions in another country -- that is, a covert operation. But it never matured to that point.
The Cheney revelation comes as the House of Representatives is preparing to debate a bill that would require the White House to expand the number of members who are told about covert operations. The White House has threatened a veto over concerns that wider congressional notifications could compromise the secrecy of the operations.
That provision, however, would have no effect on programs like this one.
The former intelligence official familiar with Hayden said Congress has a right to contemporaneous information about all CIA activities. But he said there are so many in such early stages that briefing Congress on every one would be too time consuming for both the CIA and the congressional committees.
The New York Times initially reported about Cheney's direction not to tell Congress of the program on its Web site Saturday. Fox News
