Word: cia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...several former CIA officers and intelligence experts contacted by TIME found that explanation problematic. For one thing, they say, the mere fact that the program apparently merited Cheney's close attention should have been a red flag. "Even if the program was dormant, the top officials would have known about Cheney's instructions, and they should have told Panetta right away," says a former operations expert...
...CIA deliberately keep its own director in the dark about a secret program? The latest storm to break over Langley emerged after the New York Times reported over the weekend that former Vice President Dick Cheney had ordered that the program be kept from Congress's oversight committees. Apparently, CIA Director Leon Panetta was told of the program's existence on June 23, four months after he took over the agency. Within 24 hours, he had canceled it and briefed the congressional oversight committees of its existence. Amid the uproar over how and why the agency kept Congress...
...details and specific target of the program have yet to be made public. The New York Times, citing unnamed officials, says that the CIA had plotted since 2001 to find and kill al-Qaeda leaders abroad. Two former CIA officials tell TIME there's another, somewhat less dramatic, possibility: a plan to conduct domestic surveillance. Spying on Americans is outside the CIA's purview and would be highly controversial - good enough reason for Cheney to want it kept under wraps. (Check out the seven clues to understanding Dick Cheney...
Paul Pillar, a former deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, points out that when a new director takes charge, it falls to senior officials to figure out what he needs to know and when. "You have officials one or two rungs down who have to decide what the boss needs to see first and what can wait," he says. Though not shocked that Panetta wasn't told until June 23, Pillar adds, "In retrospect, the [Cheney] angle ought to be sufficient grounds for someone to think, This does deserve the boss's attention...
...Zegart, a national-security expert and professor of public policy at UCLA. But Zegart points out that Panetta isn't alone in his ignorance. "There are two big 'so whats' to the latest news," she says. "One is: What's going on in the Executive Branch that the CIA director doesn't even know about a program that the former Vice President thought was important enough to keep secret? The second is: What's going on in Congress that oversight...