[Marxism] "Executive Assassination Ring" Answered to Cheney, Had No Congressional Oversight

[David Thorstad]

This seems like a significant item, but note that Hersh states: "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." This is repugnant bullshit. Americans ought to stop 
excusing their own criminality by using September 11, 2001, as a 
justification.
David
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*http://www.alternet.org/story/131153/***


Minnesota Post
March 12, 2009
Seymour Hersh: "Executive Assassination Ring" Answered to Cheney, Had No 
Congressional Oversight
By Eric Black

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/ 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/world/asia/10terror.html?hp> 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 
<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh?printable=true>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.)

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