CIA Adds New Chapter in Dark History of “Special Programs”

This week House Democrats leaked a letter disclosing that the CIA misled congress about an unspecified, illegal “special program.” What was it?  Wiretapping US citizens or maybe torture?  No one’s saying.  In an interview with Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, Rep. Anna Eshoo, (D-Calif.) claimed she could not discuss what was a “highly classified program” but she mentioned that CIA Director Leon Paneta “stopped the program the day after he was informed.” Waterboarding was officially ended during the Bush years, so it must be something else. Eshoo also revealed that when Panetta disclosed the secret program to House Intelligence Committee members, “the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans.” If the CIA did something that “stunned” House Republicans, it’s got to be darker than wiretapping US citizens.

So what could the CIA’s special project be?  Today’s LA Times brought up a story first raised by legendary reporter Seymor Hersh in a March 2009 discussion sponsored by the University of Minnesota. According to Hersh a secret army of CIA operatives was roving the world assassinating targets chosen by Dick Cheney: “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.”

Does an “executive assassination ring” sound too bizarre to be true?  Consider just a few tidbits of CIA history:

• In the early 1960s CIA partnered with the mafia to kill Castro.
• In an attempt to discover a truth serum, CIA opened a brothel in Greenwich Village to test LSD on unsuspecting johns.  The name of the program . . . Operation Midnight Climax.
• During the Vietnam War, CIA funded an anti-communist tribal army by dealing heroin through a front-company called Air America.
• In the 1980s CIA helped fund the Contras by dealing cocaine.

As a historian, I’m not surprised by the idea of a secret CIA hit squad.  And I’m not saying the CIA shouldn’t be trying to kill those directly responsible for planning 9/11.  Hell if Osama Bin Laden were sitting in a Pakistani cafe and I had him in my rifle sight, I’d gladly pull the trigger myself.  Unfortunately history teaches us that secret, unmonitored assassination rings tend to kill the innocent as well as the guilty.  And then WE become guilty of terrorism.

Today’s LA Times quotes an “unnamed former intelligence official” who claims that if the nature of the CIA’s special program could be revealed it would be seen as “no big deal.”  That may be true, so let’s see House Dems or Panetta himself divulge ALL the details.  Until then keep in mind what Saddam Hussein said to an FBI interrogator shortly before his execution: “The sins of a government are not a few.”