Posted by Tina
There’s a good chance that large segments of our society have never heard much about “Top Secret” planning, or at least have little understanding of what those words mean in practice. Therefore, they might believe this story of mystery and scandal…ooo-ooooh…means Dick Cheney should go to jail…or WORSE!
** The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday. The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it. – New York Times **
That news is certainly dramatic and sensational but…if you read all the way to the end of the story, and many people won’t bother, you’ll discover the following pertinent information:
** One intelligence official, who would speak about the classified program only on condition of anonymity, said there was no resistance inside the C.I.A. to Mr. Panetta’s decision to end the program last month. ** “Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” the official said. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.” ** Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, who was the C.I.A. director when the unidentified program began, declined to comment on Saturday, noting that the program remained classified. ** In the eight years of his vice presidency, Mr. Cheney was the Bush administration’s most vehement defender of the secrecy of government activities, particularly in the intelligence arena. He went to the Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers to his task force on energy, and won. ** Government does a lot of top secret planning. Many projects are never implemented, but it would be foolish for our government not to keep some things under the lock and key that the “top secret” designation ensures. One famous example of a project that was successfully implemented is the Manhattan Project. A better comparison, however might be secret plans from the John F. Kennedy presidency:
**JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF DOCUMENTS ON US-CUBAN WAR PLANS AND COVERT …The National Archives released pages of previously classified files from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These documents (formally called Records Group 218 and records Group 335) have also been called the Califano Collection, and include materials originally classified “Top Secret/Sensitive” and in sections labeled “JCS Central Files,” Lemnitzer Papers,” “Taylor Papers;””Wheeler Papers;” and “Califano Papers.” The documents deal with contingency plans to topple the Castro regime (and to invade Cuba) in the period 1961 – 64. Included are documents pre-Bay of Pigs (i.e., the JCS approval of the original invasion plan), then post Bay of Pigs material as to what went wrong; then plans to oust Castro in 1962; and finally plans to oust him in 1963 and 1964, under the guise of a U.S.-inspired coup. The news stories released in mid November -which focused primarily on some rather hare-brained “James Bond” type schemes really do not capture the full extent of what is in this collection. **
“People & Events: Operation Mongoose: the Covert Operation to Remove Castro from Power” – PBS
**Brushing aside a CIA National Intelligence Estimate which said that Castro enjoyed too much support in Cuba to be overthrown, Robert Kennedy organized a secret project, code named “Mongoose.” On January 19, 1962, in a pep talk to the team, Kennedy called deposing Castro “the top priority of the U.S. government — all else is secondary — no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.” *** The Game of Espionage Small, covert, special operations — not another large-scale military invasion — would be the method this time. Kennedy’s term of art was “counterinsurgency,” also described as “social reform under pressure.” He was so enamored of the fearless commandos and real-life James Bonds who did such work that he once invited Special Forces troops to Hickory Hill to instruct his children how to swing from trees. *** Ops Mastermind The man RFK chose to run the operation was legendary CIA operative Edward Lansdale, whose exploits fighting Communists in the Philippines in the 1950s made him a model for a character in Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American. Playing on Kennedy’s desperation and distaste for bureaucratic inertia, Landsdale hatched a series of operations which were to climax in a “Touchdown Play” by October 1962. Though highly skeptical in private, CIA Director Richard Helms spent around $100 million on manpower and equipment for a spy base in Miami. This did little, however, to address the fact that the Americans had very few “assets” left in Cuba, so tight was Castro’s grip. *** Plausibile Deniability The CIA had been plotting to assassinate Castro since the summer of 1960, even before John Kennedy was elected. A congressional investigation of the CIA later uncovered eight separate plots of varying ridiculousness between 1960 and 1965. But did either John or Robert Kennedy actually order him killed? History will probably never know. The Kennedys knew the meaning of the term “plausible deniability” all too well, and had been taught the old Boston Irish political rule, “never write it down.” *** A Shameful Legacy Though it happened under the radar, history has revealed that Operation Mongoose was, in its own way, every bit as disastrous as the Bay of Pigs. “It was an expensive and embarrassing failure,” summed up Thomas. “Castro after all is still alive in Cuba, and the people who tried to get him are long since gone. And the way they went after him, by hiring the Mafia, was something that has long-term effects on U.S. foreign policy. People still see the CIA as this sinister, nefarious force. It was a fundamentally foolish thing to do and Bobby bears real responsibility for it.”**
What Bobby did is sweetly deemed “fundamentally foolish” and it is said that he “bears real responsibility”. But he is not referred to as incompetent and he is not considered corrupt or traitorous. Of course when Jack and Bobby were in the White House most Americans still felt patriotically tied to America and were well aware of the importance of keeping programs and information for national defense puposes secret .
No one in his right mind today would blame VP Cheney for keeping this information secure, especailly during an era when a U.S. Sentor, Patrick Leahy, a former Justice Department Lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, and the New York Times had been found leaking and publishing secret information, see here, here, here, and here, that compromised national security. (As an aside, it is also interesting to note that after leaving Justice, Tamm, a Clinton holdover at Justice, went to work for Equal Justice USA. Equal Justice is funded by the Quixote Center, an organization operating under a George Soros grant.)
Nancy Pelosi is in considerable legal trouble over her denials about being properly advised by the CIA regarding waterboarding. President Obama’s numbers are tanking fast and his pet project, healthcare reform, is not doing very well either…time for more of Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals.” Pick a target…Palin or Cheney…isolate him, and let the smears, accusations, whispers and scandalous charges begin!