CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress about a counterterrorism assassination program run by the agency before knowing all the facts, a renowned writer on intelligence says.

When Steven Aftergood read Adm. Dennis C. Blair's written responses to a Senate Intelligence Committee questionnaire the other day, something looked familiar.

And indeed, it was.

The Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), had given the committee a statement about Russian attacks on American spy satellites that "was simply lifted, almost word for word," from a Moscow newspaper, Aftergood reported Thursday in Secrecy News, the must-read newsletter he's edited for many years.

Leon Panetta, the former congressman and White House staffer who runs the CIA, says people should forget about the past and move on.

I totally sympathize with him. The mistakes I've made - man, I'd like people to just forget about them!

A former deep-cover CIA operative says the spy agency's congressional briefers routinely shade the truth or hide facts altogether from congressional overseers.

"They mumble, they dissemble, and there's a lot of  'on the one hand . . .'" said the retired official, who spent 25 years as a CIA operations officer but now writes blistering, unauthorized critiques of the spy agency using the pen name "Ishmael Jones."