(AFP/File/Saul Loeb)

by Scott Shane
July 8, 2009

WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.

In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.

In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”

In a related development, President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-called Gang of Eight — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both houses of Congress and the two Intelligence Committees.

A White House statement released on Wednesday said the proposed expansion of briefings would undermine “a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters.” Democrats have complained that under President George W. Bush, entire programs were hidden from most committee members for years.

The question of the C.I.A.’s candor with the Congressional oversight committees has been hotly disputed since Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to disclose in a 2002 briefing that it had used waterboarding against a terrorism suspect. Ms. Pelosi said the agency routinely misled Congress, though she later said she intended to fault the Bush administration rather than career intelligence officials.

Since then, Republicans have called Ms. Pelosi’s complaint an unwarranted attack on the integrity of counterterrorism officers and have demanded an investigation. Democrats have rebuffed the demand.

In a statement Wednesday night, a C.I.A. spokesman, George Little, noted that the agency “took the initiative to notify the oversight committees” about the past failures. He said the agency and Mr. Panetta “believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed.”

Fuente: The New York Times

also…

C.I.A. Reviewing Its Process for Briefing Congress

Leon Panetta, director of the C.I.A., ended an unidentified program that was disclosed to Congressional Intelligence Committees. (NYT)

by Scott Shane
July 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency is conducting an internal review of how it briefs Congress on secret programs, intelligence officials said on Thursday, as Democrats and Republicans traded barbs over an admission by the agency’s director that the C.I.A. failed for eight years to inform the Intelligence Committees of one unidentified program.

The agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, assigned a senior C.I.A. officer “to take a look at what happened and to explore what the C.I.A. can do to improve its reporting to Congress,” said an official familiar with the instructions, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The review began late last month after Mr. Panetta, who took the helm of the agency in February, was told for the first time about the unidentified program by C.I.A. subordinates, officials said. He ordered the program ended, requested the review of briefing practices and arranged to meet the Senate and House Intelligence Committees in closed-door sessions June 24 to inform them of the program.

The nature of the program was the subject of speculation in Washington on Thursday but remained a mystery. Officials said it did not involve interrogation but declined to describe it further, saying the matter was highly sensitive and legitimately classified.

Several members of Congress said the program, begun in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, involved creating a capability that was never used.

“There was talk, planning, maybe a little training,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the House committee’s ranking Republican. “But it was never executed.”

Mr. Panetta “put a stake in the heart of it so that it would never come back,” Mr. Hoekstra said.

Mr. Hoekstra said he believed Congress would not have approved of executing the plan. “Maybe on Sept. 12,” he said, but not later, when the fear of a wave of additional terrorist attacks began to diminish.

The question of what the C.I.A. tells Congress has sharply divided lawmakers along party lines since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of having failed to inform her in a September 2002 briefing that it was using the simulated drowning technique called waterboarding during the interrogation of a man suspected of being a terrorist.

The C.I.A. asserted that Ms. Pelosi had been told about the waterboarding, and Republicans have accused her of attacking the integrity of American intelligence officers. Ms. Pelosi has played down the issue, and on Thursday she distanced herself from the furor over Mr. Panetta’s revelations, saying the Intelligence Committees would handle it.

“I’m sure they will be pursuing this in their regular committee process,” Ms. Pelosi said. “And that’s the way it will go.”

In a letter to Mr. Hoekstra this week, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, said Mr. Panetta’s June 24 briefing “led me to conclude that this committee has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one case) was affirmatively lied to.”

Seven other Democratic members of the House committee gave a similar account in a letter sent June 26 to Mr. Panetta. The letter was originally classified but was declassified and released this week after Mr. Reyes’s letter was made public, said Representative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California, who drafted the letter and was among its signers.

Republicans largely played down Mr. Panetta’s disclosure, saying the failure to brief the committees was unfortunate but not a major lapse because the program in question never got beyond the planning stage.

“If they’d done this thing and hadn’t told us about it, I’d be screaming from the tallest building in Washington,” Mr. Hoekstra said. “But it was on-again, off-again and never happened.”

Ms. Eshoo strongly disagreed with that assessment. She said that whatever the status of the program over the eight years of the Bush administration, the failure to brief Congress may have violated the law requiring that Congress be kept informed of intelligence activities.

“The whole committee was stunned” by what Mr. Panetta disclosed at the June 24 briefing, Ms. Eshoo said. “I think this is as serious as it gets.”

Ms. Eshoo said she would urge the entire committee to investigate the matter.“We have to know who ordered the program, where did the money come from and who gave the order not to inform Congress,” she said.

The intelligence briefing rules have caused division among Democrats, too, with President Obama this week threatening to veto the intelligence authorization bill if Congress passed new briefing rules in the House version. The House proposal would allow leaders of the Intelligence Committees to inform all committee members of covert action programs, rather than limiting such secrets to the so-called Gang of Eight — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both houses and of the Intelligence Committees — as under current law.

Many Democrats in Congress believe the Gang of Eight provisions were abused during the Bush administration to hide programs from most Intelligence Committee members. But in light of the veto threat, Congressional staff members said Thursday that Mr. Reyes would work toward a compromise on the briefing rules.

Fuente: The New York Times