Don’t Shoot

According to the 9/11 commission, in December 1998, four months after Al Qaeda attacked two U.S. embassies in Africa, President Clinton signed a "memorandum of notification" that first authorized the CIA to use Afghan tribesmen to kill Osama bin Laden, if it became necessary during an operation intended to capture him. Clinton later softened that directive in a subsequent February 1999 memorandum, which led to confusion about how far the agency could go in hunting Al Qaeda's top operative, according to the commission report. 

At the time, agency officials under Clinton were reluctant to conduct operations that might result in the killing of top terrorist leaders overseas, according to Richard Clarke, who served as Clinton's top counterterrorism adviser. "They just didn't want to do it," said Clarke. But all ambiguity about the agency's "kill" authority was eliminated after 9/11. On Sept. 25, 2001, President Bush approved revised orders that were as "as broad a brush to kill Al Qaeda" as any intelligence program in U.S. history, said one official. White House officials and intelligence agencies drew up lists of names of terrorists targeted for attack, according to current and former officials.

Two officials familiar with details noted that none of the Democrats on Capitol Hill who have stoked the uproar over the program have alleged it was illegal. But even if it was legal under post-9/11 authorities, it is not hard to understand why a "kill" squad comparable to the Mossad's "Wrath Of God" teams, which were dispatched to kill terrorists throughout Europe after the Munich Olympics, were a touchy subject within the agency. Aside from the risk of exposure, there was also the risk of mistakes or collateral damage. As part of the Israeli operation, for example, one Mossad team mistakenly assassinated an innocent Moroccan waiter in Norway whom they mistook for a top Palestinian terrorist. The hit resulted in the capture and imprisonment of some of the Mossad agents.

It's not the legality or wisdom of the program that has many members of Congress angry at the CIA—it's that they say they were kept in the dark about it. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials asserted that, had the agency briefed Congress about the program, the legislators likely would have supported the additional efforts to kill terrorist leaders. Both the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as congressional intelligence committees, have been strong supporters of an ongoing campaign by the Pentagon and CIA that uses unmanned drone aircraft to track and kill suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It was CIA Director Panetta who inadvertently touched off the current controversy on June 24 when he gave what one official described as "emergency briefings" to House and Senate Intelligence Committee members. Panetta described how he had recently learned about the program and issued an order terminating it. Officials said Panetta also told the committees that Cheney had ordered the agency not to share information with Congress about the program. Now some former officials and agency supporters on Capitol Hill are accusing Panetta of maladroitly handling the controversy by exaggerating Cheney's role, thereby feeding red meat to the agency's enemies and dealing a self-inflicted wound to an agency already besieged over allegations of other Bush-era lapses, including the use of harsh interrogation techniques on captured terror suspects.

Despite the drama and finger-pointing, the details of the program remain largely unknown. The CIA, not surprisingly, is doing its best to keep it that way. Said spokesman Paul Gimigliano: "The agency has not commented on the substance of the effort, which is still, at this stage, highly classified." 

© 2009