In yet another example of the inability of Democrats to keep their mouths shut when it comes to the country’s secrets, news of a top secret meeting between CIA Director Leon Panetta and House and Senate intelligence committees last week concerning a discussed, but never operational, program was promptly - and I would think illegally - leaked to the media.
Apparently for the past 8 years the CIA had been fooling around with the idea to assassinate high value Al Qaeda targets with a small team of operatives on the ground, bullet to the brain kind of thing, rather than with missiles from the air, which tend to cause quite a lot more collateral damage.
Sounds reasonable to me.
However the program never went very far. It turns out putting together a traveling hit squad and getting them in place isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Under orders by Vice President Dick Cheney, Congress was never briefed on the program.
Even though it never got beyond an early planning stage, the fact that the CIA, and we are talking about the CIA here, not Boy Scouts of America, even considered the targeted killing of Al Qaeda leadership without say so from Congress has gotten Democrats up in arms.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called on Monday for the House Intelligence Committee to investigate “whether the intelligence community was directed by the vice president to create a program and intentionally withhold that information from Congress.” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin has also publically called for an investigation while Sen. Russell Feingold was quoted as saying "Individuals who ordered that Congress be kept in the dark should be held accountable."
Congress was kept in the dark from what, an idea? What are you going to prosecute the CIA for, thought crimes?
Personally, if I were Dick Durbin, I’d be calling for an investigation how supposedly Top Secret information told to a few select members of Congress became front page news around the world in three whole days.
Of course all of this feigned outrage is just a political smoke screen. Ever since Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to Congress “all the time” without a single shred of evidence, mostly because it never happened, and got called out for it, Democrats have been looking for a way to hit back.
The crime committed here wasn’t by Dick Cheney, but by those Democrats
So they jumped, without looking down first.
The crime committed here wasn’t by Dick Cheney, but by those Democrats who are sharing the nation’s secrets with news organizations for short term political gain, even if it means compromising the country’s security. How can Democrats be trusted to keep us safe, when they won’t even follow the laws on the handling of top secret information?
This story, in an ironic twist not at all helpful to the Democrat’s case against the CIA, should never have seen the light of day.
