When director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, defending the CIA's not informing Congress of an anti-al Qaeda assassination program, told The Washington Post, "It was a judgment call" and that "we believe in erring on the side of working with the Hill as a partner," was he creating a new precedent for the intelligence community? For decades, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have often taken the less-said-the-better road when it comes to keeping Congress posted on its doings.This hasn't always been an ideological or partisan matter. Washington geezers should recall that back in the 1980s, Senator Barry Goldwater, the die-hard conservative Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee, often decried Bill Casey, Ronald Reagan's CIA chief, for not being forthcoming with the committee.

So when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the CIA has lied to her or when it turns out that an assassination program--operational or not--has not been briefed to Congress, it really ought not to be a big surprise. There are plenty of hard-working, diligent folks at the CIA,and I imagine some might have argued that the assassination program ought to have been shared with the agency's congressional overseers. Yet institutionally, the CIA has frequently been more tight-lipped than it should have--which is, of course, a natural tendency for spies and covert operators.

And when you throw into the mix Dick Cheney, who reportedly urged that this program be kept secret from Capitol Hill, the inclination to keep legislators out of the loop probably increases by a factor of 10--or 100.

There's still a lot not known about this kill-al-Qaeda program, as Slate points out. But that Post article reports that it was dormant but about to be reactivated. Thus, it was brought to CIA director Leon Panetta's attention--but months after he had taken the job. He then quickly notified Congress that Congress had never been notified about it. And since then, the rest of us have been left to puzzle over what really went on with this project.

Which brings me to this point: it would not be too hard for a congressional intelligence committee to mount a quick probe to determine what did happen and to produce a report safe for public consumption. WIthout disclosing all the details of the program--some of which might have to remain classified--the House or Senate intelligence panel certainly could tell the public what Cheney's role was in keeping the program from Congress and examine whether the CIA violated any laws (or just good Washington manners) by doing so.

This dust-up has generated a lot of smoke this past week. The public deserves some light. Will Congress deliver?

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Frightening report from NPR's website:

A scary anecdote from Iran. A trusted colleague - who is married to an Iranian-American and would thus prefer to stay anonymous - has told me of a very disturbing episode that happened to her friend, another Iranian-American, as she was flying to Iran last week. On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said "no", the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

This is very disturbing. For once, it means that the Iranian authorities are paying very close attention to what's going on Facebook and Twitter (which, in my opinion, also explains why they decided not to take those web-sites down entirely - they are useful tools of intelligence gathering).

Social networking can empower political opposition and dissidents. But it can also help security forces track them. During the red scare witch hunts in the United States, suspected communists were asked to name the names of friends and relatives in the party. These days, the authorities could just check out your Facebook or MySpace pages.

Speaking of excessive security activity, I was on NPR's Diane Rehm Show this morning to discuss the recent news reports about a possible torture probe at the Justice Department, the CIA withholding information from Congress regarding a super-secret assassination program that targeted al Qaeda leaders, and Dick Cheney's role in all of this.

One point I hammered: the House and Senate intelligence committees can and should investigate why the CIA did not brief Congress about this assassination program, focusing on the reports that Cheney ordered the spies not to tell the nation's elected representatives about this operation (which may not have become operational). Cheney's been mum about this. (What, no big speech at AEI?) But the public has a right to know if the vice president blocked an intelligence agency from meeting its obligations to inform Congress about its actions. Such an investigation could be conducted quickly and without blowing details of the program at issue. All you have to do is examine any emails or memos related to this and call in a few intelligence officials, a couple ofaides in Cheney's office, and Cheney himself, and ask them what happened. What are they going to do? Take the Fifth? That would be within their rights, but it would speak volumes about their fidelity to republican-style government. 

Want some amazing summer reading? Check out the Unclassified Report on the President's Surveillance Program.

The title may not be a grabber. But this report, which was produced by the inspectors general of the Defense Department, the CIA, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is a scorcher. It covers how the Bush administration went about implementing its warrantless wiretapping program--which, the report makes clear, was just one of several new and top secret intelligence programs initiated after 9/11 that were legally dicey.

The report was released on Friday--the day of choice for government spinners trying to draw as little attention as possible to information. (Saturday newspapers--especially during the summer--are the least read editions of the week.) The report did get full write-ups in the major papers, and these reports focused on the obvious point: the warrantless wiretapping was of limited value and did not, as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have claimed, lead to counterterrorism operations that saved countless lives. The news stories also zeroed in on another key element: that the legal analysis supporting the warrantless wiretapping program and the other hush-hush intelligence programs (which the report does not identify) was of questionable merit.

But to get a full view of how far off the tracks the Bush-Cheney administration went, you have to read the full 36 pages. They detail how one mid-level attorney in the Justice Department--the infamous John Yoo--was able to cook up for the White House legal justification for these intelligence operations without any oversight from others at Justice. it's hard to consider this part of the report without coming to a harsh legal conclusion: this was nuts. Completely nuts.

The report also notes that because the White House--at Cheney's insistence--wanted to keep information about the warrantless wiretapping restricted to a small circle, this data could not be put to good use. The IGs also reveal that after senior Justice Department officials and FBI director Robert Mueller raised questions about all these programs, the White House modified or nixed some of them. Ponder that for a moment: the Bush administration ended anti-terrorism intelligence programs because of legal objections. If the Democrats ever suggest or do anything like this, Cheney and other GOPers go ballistic. More rank hypocrisy.

So put down that thriller or romance novel, and grab a copy of this report--a compilation of five separate classified reports--and read all about Bush era hijinks. You'll laugh. You'll cry.

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In the latest issue of The New Yorker, CIA chief Leon Panetta says of Dick Cheney:

I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics.

Cheney today struck back, saying, "I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted."

Hours later, the CIA put out a statement:

The Director does not believe the former vice president wants an attack. He did not say that. He was simply expressing his profound disagreement with the assertion that President Obama's security policies have made our country less safe. Nor did he question anyone's motives.

This explanation hung on a thin reed: that Panetta had said that it was almost as if Cheney wanted another attack, not that he actually desired one. Still, it did look as if Panetta had been brushed back by Cheney.

And Chris Matthews, Michael Isikoff, and I sliced and diced this episode on Hardball:

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I'm on the run today, but I noticed that Ben Smith at Politico had an intriguing item:

The Republican National Committee yesterday removed a controversial video comparing Nancy Pelosi to Bond girl Pussy Galore from its YouTube account.

Today, the RNC asserted its copyright to the video to remove any trace of it from YouTube, asking the service to take a copy of the video down from the account of a Politico reader who had reposted it.

"This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Republican National Committee claiming that this material is infringing," says the e-mail from YouTube, forwarded to me by the reader.

An RNC spokesman yesterday wouldn't explain why the committee took the video down.

UPDATE: The video resurfaces elsewhere.

The GOP video used clips and music from James Bond movies to poke at Pelosi for having accused the CIA of lying to her about its use of waterboarding and other matters. Judging from the RNC note to YouTube, it seems that some Bond-connected party decided to play Dr. No and told the GOP that it had unfairly swiped Bond imagery or music. I suppose it's possible that the complaint came from a media outlet upset that this GOP video had used one of its news clips. But political parties are always stealing that sort of material for silly attack ads. In this mystery, I'm betting that the Bond copyright people--a gang as ruthless and relentless as SMERSH--dispatched one of their best licensed-to-sue operatives to end this evil GOP conspiracy.

Political lesson of the day: don't mess with Bond, James Bond.

RAIN, SOTOMAYOR, AND ME. From the Thursday's night edition of MSNBC's "The Ed Show." I don't know if you can tell, but I was being rained on, as we discussed the SCOTUS nominee.

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I'm trying to keep track of all the Bush-era news today: what to do with the military commissions, what the CIA did or didn't tell Congress about waterboarding, how to handle those photos of abused detainees. The so-called war on terrorism was rather messy on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's watch. And the cleanup job isn't easy. Below is a look at just one of the many subplots that I posted elsewhere today:

Here's a good example of what's been wrong with congressional oversight of the intelligence agencies for decades: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the CIA did not tell her at a September 2002 briefing (when she was the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee) that it had used waterboarding on a captured al Qaeda operative; the CIA says it did. And this dispute apparently cannot be settled. From The Washington Post:

Government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified briefings, suggested that the record might never be clear as to what Pelosi and [Republican Rep. Porter] Goss were told. One official familiar with the congressional briefings acknowledged the difficulty of establishing exactly what lawmakers were told. Internal CIA memos about the briefings were "not designed to be stenography" but were based on recollections after the fact, the official said. There were no recordings or precise transcripts, he said.

At the White House press briefing on Monday, CNN's Ed Henry asked a question that I had tried to put to Obama's press team on Friday, after press secretary Robert Gibbs had declined to call on me: Where are those torture documents Dick Cheney wants?

The ex-veep-who-won't-go-away has been saying in interviews that he's requested the release of two classified CIA documents that supposedly outline all the essential intelligence that was produced by torture-assisted interrogations. (He, of course, does not call it torture.)

In response to Henry, Gibbs had no information to share. "I'll check on where that is," he said.

Should the new Obama Administration dig through all the dark ugliness of the Bush-Cheney years--torture, renditions, the destruction of evidence, etc.--and start prosecuting former Bush officials, including the veep? I appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with hawk-of-all-hawks Frank Gaffney Jr. to discuss the matter.

By the way, if you haven't seen Stephen Hayes piece in which Cheney grouses about Bush not pardoning Scooter Libby, check it out. The article is a hoot. I encourage Hayes, Cheney's sympathetic chronicler-in-chief, to fuel more feuding between this out-of-power couple.

With one hand, he giveth, with the other....

By tapping Leon Panetta to be CIA chief, Barack Obama sent a clear signal: no to torture. A year ago, Panetta wrote an article declaring, "We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances." And he included waterboarding--which the CIA has used---as torture. In fact, Obama's reported first choice for the CIA job, John Brennan, a career CIA official, had had his chances scuttled after bloggers and others griped that he had been soft, if not supportive, when it came to torture and CIA renditions. A New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer identified him as a "supporter" of so-called enhanced interrogation methods. And in a 2006 PBS interview, Brennan said, "we do have to take off the gloves in some areas" but without going so far as to "forever tarnish the image of the United States abroad." He added that the "dark side has its limits."

Well, Brennan didn't get the top post at Langley. But Obama has selected him to be his chief counterterrorism adviser in the White House. The job requires no Senate confirmation. So Brennan will not be inconvenienced by questions regarding any past involvement with CIA renditions and waterboarding. (Brennan has reportedly told Obama he had no direct role in CIA's abusive interrogation policies and even internally expressed reservations.)

Is this another sign of the Big O's pragmatism? Brennan, no doubt, knows plenty on the subject of counterterrorism. And he has called for breaking with the Bush policy on Iran and the Middle East. For instance, he has criticized Bush and his aides for unduly bashing Iran. But tapping him does partially negate the message conveyed by the Panetta pick.

I think people are going to have to get used to this sort of Obama give-and-take. Critics certainly don't have to accept it. But they should expect more of these sorts of episodes. I assume there will be plenty of other instances when Obama will exasperate and hearten his supporters simultaneously. (And don't forget about Rick Warren.) In this particular case, Obama supporters can only hope that Brennan will now use whatever experience he collected on "the dark side" for the forces of good.

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Yesterday, I posted a piece noting that Leon Panetta, Barack Obama's choice as CIA director, could draw opposition from CIA insiders and vets because he has been a fierce foe of waterboarding (a torture tactic used by the CIA), has advocated greater congressional oversight of CIA covert operations, and in the 1990s, as President Clinton's budget chief, pushed for cuts in the CIA's budget. Yet the first important blasts came from Democrats. Both Senator Dianne Feinstein, the incoming chair of the Senate intelligence committee, and Senator Jay Rockefeller, the outgoing chair of the committee, huffed that Panetta was no intelligence professional.

Their knee-jerk response--which seemed to contain a resentful dose of no-one-in-the-Obama-camp-asked-me-about-this--could give cover to those who object to Panetta on policy grounds and to CIA people who don't want an outsider taking control of a troubled agency that screwed the pooch on 9/11 and Iraq WMDs. Remember Curveball?

My CQ blogger colleague Jeff Stein raises a good point: