Don't ya just love it.

OJ

assassination ring

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive
assassination ring'
By Eric Black | Published Wed, Mar 11 2009 11:17 am

REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad
Journalist Seymour Hersh speaking in Doha at an Al Jazeera forum on
the media in 2007.


At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota last
night, 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 official 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.



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 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.”

On Mar 12, 12:38*pm, wrote:
Don't ya just love it.

OJ

assassination ring

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive
assassination ring'
By Eric Black | Published Wed, Mar 11 2009 11:17 am

REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad
Journalist Seymour Hersh speaking in Doha at an Al Jazeera forum on
the media in 2007.

At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota last
night, 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 official 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.

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 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.”

Did They [It] Save One American Life Good.

Did They [It] Save One Thousand American Lives Great.

Did They [It] Save One Million American Lives Wonderful.

Sounds like the US Government Defending America
and Protecting American Lives - GBTUSA ~ RHF

~ RHF wrote:


Did They [It] Save One American Life Good.

Did They [It] Save One Thousand American Lives Great.

Did They [It] Save One Million American Lives Wonderful.

Sounds like the US Government Defending America
and Protecting American Lives - GBTUSA ~ RHF
.

Bull****. Rules are rules.

wrote:
On Mar 12, 3:09 pm, Mike wrote:
Secret
assassination groups depriving individuals of their lives without due
process of law? So, descent into savagery is justified in fighting
terrorists?

Your ethics suck, Roy. I'm beginning to think that you may have an
actual deficiency of cognitive capability.

Here are your Neo-Communist Liberal Fascist ethics served on a silver
platter:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1133927/posts

Soon you to will enjoy your "ethics" under Islam.


How is that different from a video of an F-16 guiding a smart bomb into
a building? I find both repulsive.

In article ,
dave wrote:

wrote:
On Mar 12, 3:09 pm, Mike wrote:
Secret
assassination groups depriving individuals of their lives without due
process of law? So, descent into savagery is justified in fighting
terrorists?

Your ethics suck, Roy. I'm beginning to think that you may have an
actual deficiency of cognitive capability.

Here are your Neo-Communist Liberal Fascist ethics served on a silver
platter:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1133927/posts

Soon you to will enjoy your "ethics" under Islam.


How is that different from a video of an F-16 guiding a smart bomb into
a building? I find both repulsive.

That depends on who is in the building.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Michael W. Bryant, the dufus who once claimed to have a PhD, wrote:

On Mar 12, 3:59�pm, "~ RHF" wrote:


Did They [It] Save One American Life Good.

Did They [It] Save One Thousand American Lives Great.

Did They [It] Save One Million American Lives Wonderful.

Sounds like the US Government Defending America
and Protecting American Lives - GBTUSA ~ RHF
�.

No confusions of ends and means for you, right, RHF? Secret
assassination groups depriving individuals of their lives without due
process of law? So, descent into savagery is justified in fighting
terrorists?

I've a question, PhDufus: When you made your "...someone would cap you pretty
quickly. And most of us would be cheering." comment, were you using an LTI
computer?

dxAce
Michigan
USA

And, as always, don't let your children attend Louisville Technical Institute.
They've hired at least one dufus who once claimed to have a PhD, and who knows,
there may be more dufi there.

On Mar 12, 1:09*pm, Mike wrote:
On Mar 12, 3:59 pm, "~ RHF" wrote:



Did They [It] Save One American Life Good.

Did They [It] Save One Thousand American Lives Great.

Did They [It] Save One Million American Lives Wonderful.

Sounds like the US Government Defending America
and Protecting American Lives - GBTUSA ~ RHF
.

No confusions of ends and means for you, right, RHF? Secret
assassination groups depriving individuals of their lives without due
process of law? So, descent into savagery is justified in fighting
terrorists?

Your ethics suck, Roy. I'm beginning to think that you may have an
actual deficiency of cognitive capability.


MWB - War Is Hell & We Are Fighting A War On Terror. ~ RHF

Rule # 1 - Kill The Terrorist Before They Can Kill Any Of Us [.]

Rule # 2 - Take The Fight To The Enemy
and Fight Them In Their Homeland Not Ours.

Rule # 3 - Destroy Their Ability To Fight and Wage Terror.

Note - There Aren't Many Rules. ~ RHF

On Mar 12, 4:55*pm, dave wrote:
~ RHF wrote:

Did They [It] Save One American Life Good.

Did They [It] Save One Thousand American Lives Great.

Did They [It] Save One Million American Lives Wonderful.

Sounds like the US Government Defending America
and Protecting American Lives - GBTUSA ~ RHF
*.

- Bull****. *Rules are rules.

Dave - War Is Hell & We Are Fighting A War On Terror. ~ RHF

Rule # 1 - Kill The Terrorist Before They Can Kill Any Of Us [.]

Rule # 2 - Take The Fight To The Enemy
and Fight Them In Their Homeland Not Ours.

Rule # 3 - Destroy Their Ability To Fight and Wage Terror.

Note - There Aren't Many Rules. ~ RHF

~ RHF wrote:



MWB - War Is Hell & We Are Fighting A War On Terror. ~ RHF

"War on Terror" was a Bush era facade, used to justify all manner of
criminal activity. It has officially ended. You'll have to come up
with some other lame excuse for behaving badly.

In article ,
dave wrote:

~ RHF wrote:



MWB - War Is Hell & We Are Fighting A War On Terror. ~ RHF

"War on Terror" was a Bush era facade, used to justify all manner of
criminal activity. It has officially ended. You'll have to come up
with some other lame excuse for behaving badly.

Oh no Dave it continues and like all things obomination expect an
extrapolation of any policy that hurts this nation!

--
Telamon
Ventura, California