USA assassination team OPERATING RIGHT NOW

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'

By Eric Black | Published Wed, Mar 11 2009 11:17 am

Investigative journalist Sy Hersh dropped a bombshell revelation on Monday about international killings ordered under Bush.

At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota [Monday] 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 officials 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.

http://www.minnpost.com/client_files/audio/Politics/HershInterview.mp3 - 53mB
http://www.cce.umn.edu/media/greatconversations/hersh_jacobs_mondale/hersh_jacobs_mondale.mp3 - 19mB

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 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.”

http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring

THE C.I.A. Responds:

"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.

7 Comments: Hide/Show Comments

(#1) On March 12, 2009, Author Editor Vic Livingston says:

It's technically "NOT" CIA -- alone.

It is a "multi-agency" coordinated "action" involving many security/intel/law enforcement/revenue agencies -- federal and local.

It is decentralized, with units in every community in the nation.

And its attacks are ongoing -- even as I write this.

For the full story, see, "American Gestapo" and related stories at

http://My.NowPublic.com/scrivener

#3) On March 12, 2009, Author Editor Beryl John-Knudson says:
So, just a "Little" bit hurts?...

And I suppose it's inaccurate ("utter nonsense") also to believe that CIA stands for Chaos In Action?

"Utter nonsense" sounds like one incredible subjective response from an objective field man, in the 'profession' of imformation gathering...and got to say also, I haven't heard that term used since my Great Aunt Bertha passed away.

Rest in peace I say, again.
(#4) On March 12, 2009, Author Editor Robert Moreland says:
A CIA spokesman, really? Wow ... Hersch must have hit a sore point. I hope this person that said he was a "CIA Spokesperson" had that official designation and had permission from his superiors namely the director of the CIA Leon Panetta, and the President of the United States to make such a statement.

I would hope that you would seek some authentication that this person does indeed have the authority to make such a statement. This seems a highly unorthodox method of relaying such information to the public. This method which amounts to heresay in that I can't be assured that Mr. Little's comments have any veracity except perhaps of his own opinion. Why would they send flunky with such a blunt message to be re-iterated by you? Is it because the bigger heads don't want to be on the chopping block?

What this smacks of is cover up and a clandestine back channel way of keeping something on the qt.
I'm sure Panetta would be happier not having to engage a scandal from the Bush era ... he has a lot of fish in the kettle to fry; but this method raises more questions than it answers, seems unprofessional, and allows me to shake my head that there is more to the story not being told and trying to make sure it isn't.

Get back to us, with verification from Panetta that this guy is for real and conveys an actual CIA message, or else I'll just chock it up to some codger wanna have more power than he does making a statement that doesn't mean anything.

Backhanded slipshot messages just raise my eyebrows and concern ... now I think more than ever that Cheney had domestic persons targeted for elimination. After all his best friend lawyer apologized to Cheney for Cheney shooting him. Hard to put something past someone with that much power and the will to use it.
(#5) On March 13, 2009, Author Editor John McCarthy says:
http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com
The CIA has denied any involvement in my case since 1968. Just one year ago, an FOIA request for information about Project Cherry was answered by the new era of responders by saying 'that information remains classified."
Now that alone is PROGRESS.

Seymour Hersh wrote about me in The Price Of Power.

I wrote about me here.

http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id1.html

Then, in 2000, we found irrefutable evidence that members of the National Security Council had disregarded presidential directives issued during 1966 during NSC meetings, during wartime. The State Department had unilaterally declassified once top secret documents of the minutes of the NSC meetings, much to the chagrin of the CIA and now we know why: Treason In Wartime.

http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id48.html
(#6) On March 13, 2009, Author Editor John McCarthy says:
http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com
If the Obama administration wants to forget the past, mass murder of 911 and war crimes, then we must tell all the judges in Amerika to cancel all murder, rape, armed robbery, A % B domestic cases because if they go forward with these cases then there will be no justice and liberty for all. Might as well change the entire system!
(#7) On March 13, 2009, Author Editor Bob Dobbs says:
It might be instructive to note that the prime mission of the CIA is deception. Truth is not one of their objectives, so their denial should be regarded in that light.

Also, the sterling record of Mr. Hersh as a journalistic upholder of truth should be equally observed when attempting to discern the veracity of the article.

Stumble It!