Dick Cheney kept Congress in dark over CIA counterterrorism action

guardian.co.uk
The former US vice president Dick Cheney directed the CIA not to inform Congress about a counterterrorism programme that the CIA director, Leon Panetta, ended last month, according to revelations by US intelligence officials.

The programme, the nature of which is not known, was set up eight years ago after the 9/11 attacks, reported the New York Times, citing a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta's briefing to the House and Senate intelligence committees on 24 June.

Upon learning of the programme a day earlier from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and called an emergency meeting with the committees the following day. He told them the programme had existed but had now been cancelled.

Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration's surveillance programme. Last week, an inspectors' general report noted that Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in Bush's inner circle could know about the secret initiative.

Revelations about Cheney's role in making decisions for the CIA on whether or not to notify Congress came as a surprise to some on the committees, said another government official who, like the other sources, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the issue in public.

The nature of the counterterrorism plan remains a mystery. The former intelligence official said it was not related to the CIA's rendition, interrogation and detention programme. Nor was it part of a wider classified electronic surveillance programme.

The official characterised it as an embryonic intelligence-gathering effort, that was only sporadically active. He said it was set up to yield information that would be used to conduct a secret mission or missions in another country, but it never matured to that point.

The two sources said Congress had not been briefed about other CIA activities.

The revelation about Cheney comes as the House of Representatives prepares 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.