Normally when something goes awry, the first person (if he can be considered that) people think of is Dick Cheney. For obvious reasons.
So when we started hearing whispers that the CIA has been duping Congress for years about all their super secret spy programs, our natural assumption was that if you delved deeper you’d eventually find Dick. Sorry, Nancy, not this time.
Turns out we were right! According to CIA director Leon Panetta’s testimony to congressional intelligence committees, the Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on DIRECT ORDERS from that lovable cuddlebug, former vice president Dick Cheney.
Now, Mr. Panetta only found out about this top-secret “program’s” existence on June 23, and canceled the hell out of America’s little underground KGB project the very same day!
Of course, no one will say what Cheney’s secret doomsday project involved except that it was not the CIA interrogation program or domestic intelligence activities. Only that the “unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress in the tense months after Sept. 11, when the Bush administration believed new Al Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment and brainstormed about radical countermeasures.” Like drowning suspects without actually killing them!
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said he believed Congress would have only approved of the program “in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.” The 13th or 14th? Forget about it.
The inspector general’s report about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance activities revealed that Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, wouldn’t let the flippin’ Pope know about their secret little program without direct approval from the boss man himself.
Unfortunately, Mr. Addington could not be reached for comment.
It’s hard to talk when your tongue is in a shoebox under Dick Cheney’s bed.