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Topic: Seymour Hersch: Cheney ran private assassination ring. (Read 1455 times) |
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Blunderov
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Seymour Hersch: Cheney ran private assassination ring.
« on: 2009-03-13 05:17:55 » |
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[Claudius] "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out."*
Via:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BLA20090312&articleId=12686
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'
by Eric Black
Global Research, March 12, 2009
REUTERS/Fadi Al-AssaadJournalist Seymour Hersh speaking in Doha at an Al Jazeera forum on the media in 2007.
At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”
Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.
In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”
Hersh didn’t take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but that it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be “effective...that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical.”
The evening of great conversation, featuring Walter Mondale and Hersh, moderated by Jacobs and titled “America’s Constitutional Crisis,” looked to be a mostly historical review of events that have tested our Constitution, by a journalist and a high government official who had experience with many of the crises.
And it was mostly historical, and a great conversation, in which Hersh and Mondale talked about the patterns by which presidents seem to get intoxicated by executive power, frustrated by the limitations on that power from Congress and the public, drawn into improper covert actions that exceed their constitutional powers, in the belief that they can get results and will never be found out. Despite a few references to the Founding Fathers, the history was mostly recent, starting with the Vietnam War with much of it arising from the George W. Bush administration, which both men roundly denounced.
At the end of one answer by Hersh about how these things tend to happen, Jacobs asked: “And do they continue to happen to this day?”
Replied Hersh:
“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.
"It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.
"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.
"I’ve had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?’
"But they’re not gonna get before a committee.”
Hersh, the best-known investigative reporter of his generation, writes about these kinds of issues for The New Yorker. He has written often about JSOC, including, last July that:
“Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference.”
(“Finding” refers to a special document that a president must issue, although not make public, to authorize covert CIA actions.)
Here is a tape of the full Mondale-Hersh-Jacobs colloquy, a little over an hour, without the audience Q and A. If you want to look for the Hersh statement quoted above, it’s about at the 7:30 mark.
The rest of the evening was, as expected, full of worry and wisdom and quite a bit of Bush-bashing.
Jacobs walked the two elder statesmen through their experiences of:
The My Lai massacre, which Hersh first revealed publicly and which he last night called “the end of innocence about us and war.”
The Pentagon Papers case, which Mondale called the best example of the “government’s potential for vast public deception.”
Henry Kissinger’s secret dealings, mostly relating to the Vietnam War. (Hersh, who has written volumes about Kissinger, said that he will always believe that whereas ordinary people count sheep to fall asleep, Kissinger “has to count burned and maimed Cambodian babies.”)
The Church Committee investigation of CIA and FBI abuses, in which Mondale played a major role. (He talked about the fact that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover not only spied on Martin Luther King but literally tried to drive him to suicide.)
The Iran Contra scandal. (Hersh said the Reagan administration came to office with a clear goal of finding a way to finance covert actions, such as the funding of the Nicaraguan Contras, without appropriations so that Congress wouldn't know about them. Mondale noted that Reagan had signed a law barring further aid to the Contras, then participated in a scheme to keep the aid flowing. Hersh said that two key veterans of Iran-Contra, Dick Cheney and national security official Elliot Abrams, were reunited in the George W. Bush White House and decided that the key lesson from Iran-Contra was that too many people in the administration knew about it.)
And the Bush-Cheney years. (Said Hersh: “The contempt for Congress in the Bush-Cheney White House was extaordinary.” Said Mondale of his successor, Cheney, and his inner circle: “they ran a government within the government.” Hersh added: “Eight or nine neoconservatives took over our country.” Mondale said that the precedents of abuse of vice presidential power by Cheney would remain "like a loaded pistol that you leave on the dining room table.")
Jacobs pressed both men on the question of whether the frequent abuses of power show that the Constitution fails, because these things keep happening, or whether it works, because these things keep coming to light.
Mondale stuck with the happy answer. “The system has come through again and again,” he said. Presidents always think they will get away with it, but eventually reporters like Hersh bring things to light, the public “starts smelling this stuff,” the courts and the Congress get involved. Presidents “always, in the long run, find out that the system is stronger than they are.”
Hersh seemed more troubled by the repetitions of the pattern. The “beautiful thing about our system” is that eventually we get new leaders, he said. “The evil twosome, Cheney and Bush, left,” Hersh said. But he also said “it’s really amazing to me that we manage to get such bad leadership, so consistently.”
And he added that both the press and the public let down their guard in the aftermath of 9/11.
“The major newspapers joined the [Bush] team,” Hersh said. Top editors passed the message to investigative reporters not to “pick holes” in what Bush was doing. Violations of the Bill of Rights happened in the plain sight of the public. It was not only tolerated, but Bush was re-elected.
And even Mondale admitted that one of his greatest successes, laws reforming the FBI and CIA in the aftermath of the Church Committee, were supposed to fix the problem so that “we would never have these problems again in the lifetime of anyone alive at the time, but of course we did.”
UPDATE: The CIA responds to Seymour Hersh (via MinnPost)**
http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/12/7344/the_cia_responds_to_seymour_hersh_via_minnpost
The CIA responds to Seymour Hersh (via MinnPost)
By Eric Black | Published Thu, Mar 12 2009 1:53 pm
"Utter nonsense," is the quote from CIA spokester George Little.
In case you're out of context, I wrote yesterday about comments famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh made Tuesday night at the U of M, which included a description of a story he is working on that he said would show that "the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen."
CIA spokester Little emailed me:
"I saw your story on Seymour Hersh’s recent allegations regarding CIA activities since 9/11. If you wish, you can attribute the quoted portion that follows to me, in name, as a CIA spokesman:
'This is utter nonsense.'"
I spoke to Little to clarify whether he was aware of the basis for Hersh's statement (which I am not, only that it's based on his reporting) or whether he was categorically stating that nothing the CIA has done post-9/11 could be reasonably characterized as domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. He said it was a categorical denial. He doesn't know what Hersh claims, but any claim that the CIA has engaged in domestic spying is "complete and utter nonsense," saith Little on behalf of the CIA.
I have solicited a comment from Hersh.
*[Blunderov] From "I, Claudius". from the BBC 1976 adaptation of the Robert Graves novel. Courtesy Wikiquotes http://www.wikiquote.org/
**[Bl.] "A hit! A palpable hit!" (Hamlet)
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Blunderov
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Re:Seymour Hersch: Cheney ran private assassination ring.
« Reply #1 on: 2009-03-16 12:48:59 » |
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[Blunderov] This could get interesting for Cheney?
democraticunderground.com/
Kucinich wants House to investigate (Cheney) assassination (ring) claims
Source: Plain Dealer
WASHINGTON -- Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich wants the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate allegations by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the White House operated an "executive assassination ring" during the presidency of George W. Bush.
In a letter to Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns of New York, Kucinich explained that Hersh made the allegations on Tuesday, March 10, before an audience at the University of Minnesota.
According to Kucinich's letter: Hersh "stated, 'Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving... It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. . .Congress has no oversight of it.'"
Such a practice would violate longstanding U.S. policy regarding covert actions and illegally bypass Congressional oversight, Kucinich said.
"If substantiated, the allegation would have far reaching implications for the United States," Kucinich said in the letter dated March 13. "Such an assertion from someone of Hersh's credibility that has a long and proven track record of dependability on these issues merits attention. Mr. Hersh is within a year or more of releasing a book that is said to include evidence of this allegation. However, we cannot wait a year or more to establish the truth. As such, I request that the Full Committee immediately begin an investigation to determine the facts in this matter."
Read more: http://blog.cleveland.com/openers/2009/03/kucinich_want...
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Blunderov
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Re:Seymour Hersch: Cheney ran private assassination ring.
« Reply #2 on: 2009-03-16 13:57:26 » |
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[Blunderov] Hope this story doesn't go dead but Hersch seems to have gone shtum. Maybe a subpoena would fix that but I doubt it. Hersch has an integrity not often seen in the MSM.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-Did-Cheney-Have-Murder-by-Robert-Arend-090315-473.html
Who Did Cheney Have Murdered?*
by Robert Arend Page 1 of 1 page(s)
www.opednews.com
There is a kind of hush, that started with a muted gasp, that came from whispers of Cheney assassination squads, murmured by Seymour Hersh during topic "America's Constitutional Crisis" at the University of Minnesota on March 10, 2009.
"It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us." Source: rawstory/March_11_2009.
Mr Hersh made reference to a March 9, 2009 New York Times story "U.S.Halted Some Raids in Afghanistan" that revealed "The commander of a secretive branch of America's Special Operations forces last month ordered a halt to most commando missions in Afghanistan, reflecting a growing concern that civilian deaths caused by American firepower are jeopardizing broader goals there."
But is this new news or old news, given fresh exposure after breaking through from new media to old media, like The Downing Street Memos that took the mainstream media years to embrace, and will it have any more influence on spurring genuine investigations, trials and judgements than Downing and the many other revelations that lingered online before going mainline?
Yet the New York Times printed a story headlined : "American Hit Squads: Rumsfeld Weighs Covert Activities by Military Units" back on August 12, 2002. Authors Thom Shanker and James Risen wrote: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is considering ways to expand broadly the role of American Special Operations forces in the global campaign against terrorism, including sending them worldwide to capture or kill Al Qaeda leaders far from the battlefields of Afghanistan, according to Pentagon and intelligence officials". "Proposals now being discussed by Mr. Rumsfeld and senior military officers could ultimately lead Special Operations units to get more deeply involved in long-term covert operations in countries where the United States is not at open war and, in some cases, where the local government is not informed of their presence. This expansion of the military's involvement in clandestine activities could be justified, Pentagon officials believe, by defining it as "preparation of the battlefield" in a campaign against terrorism that knows no boundaries." The full article can be found here.
In a five page article for the New Yorker titled "Moving Targets" dated December 15, 2003, Seymour Hersh writes: "A new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members, Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to report by January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination."
In the same article, Hersh reveals Israel's involvement in planning operations in Iraq: "According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers-again, in secret-when full-field operations begin."
Specifically mentioned in the New Yorker article is Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. Hersh writes: "The rising star in Rumsfeld's Pentagon is Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, who has been deeply involved in developing the new Special Forces approach....Cambone also shares Rumsfeld's views on how to fight terrorism. They both believe that the United States needs to become far more proactive in combatting terrorism, searching for terrorist leaders around the world and eliminating them."
In a December 9, 2003 Amy Goodman interview of Seymour Hersh, Hersh, speaking about Donald Rumsfeld, said, "And he has put in the Army positions of command people who are much more supportive of what he and some his aides want to do; that is work with the Israelis and others to begin killing people. And so, this is his show. I'm sure [the] President, Cheney. They all work very closely together. I'm not sure where the C.I.A. is on it."
Did the foundation of special ops assassination squads targeting terrorist leaders, that started with Rumsfeld, eventually morph into a personal killing squad for Dick Cheney once Rumsfeld was gone? In the Minnesota symposium, Hersh said, "Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that, if you read it carefully, mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command. JSOC it's called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ... "
Perhaps Rumsfeld only had High Value Targets assassinated via special squads and unmanned but man-controled drones. Perhaps the targets were limited to Iraq and Afghanistan and the few hostile countries surrounding. Perhaps the "collateral damage" was kept to a minimum, or not. Once in Cheney's exclusive control, however, did the disciplined list give way to the broader convenience for the Vice-President? Were political and personal enemies of himself and Bush added? Who else in the world who may have been a threat to Cheney's warmongering, even to his personal and political survival, may have made the list?
Mr. Hersh seemed genuinely ill-at-ease over letting his cat out of the bag. A book planned within two years, Hersh wishes to discuss the Cheney assassination squads no further. Perhaps, for the sake of truth and justice, Congress should subpoena Mr. Hersh for a better preview of his future book.
*[Bl] Some candidates? Let the conspiracy theories be unleashed - this meme could prove most contagious! Who knows what else what might get sucked into the slipstream?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3785115
<snip>Hats off to Dennis, as usual....
But don't forget the long list of 'sudden deaths' that happened here in the US over the last 8 years.
Bruce Ivins, Mel Carnahan, Jean Palfrey, Paul Wellstone, Mike Connell, and several more that I can't remember off the top of my head.
Not to mention the attempted anthrax murders of Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle.</snip>
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