Today, from Leon E. Panetta. You know, the titular Spook-in-Chief:
WASHINGTON — Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior al Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials.
The plans were never carried out, the officials said, and Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, canceled the program last month.
Officials at the spy agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic obstacles. How could the role of the United States be masked? Should allies be informed and might they block the access of the C.I.A. teams to their targets? What if American officers or their foreign surrogates were caught in the midst of an operation? Would such activities violate international law or American restrictions on assassinations overseas?
Yet year after year, according to officials briefed on the program, the plans were never completely shelved because the Bush administration sought an alternative to killing terror suspects with missiles fired from drone aircraft or seizing them overseas and imprisoning them in secret C.I.A. jails.
Mr. Panetta scuttled the program, which would have relied on paramilitary teams, shortly after the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center recently informed him of its existence. The next day, June 24, he told Congressional intelligence committees that the plan had been hidden from lawmakers, initially at the instruction of former Vice President Dick Cheney...
The best way to lie is to tell part of the truth, and then shut up...
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