Probe of Cheney's Covert CIA Plan Urged
The CIA never briefed Congress on a sensitive counter-terrorism plan because former Vice President Dick Cheney told CIA officials not to.
That's what Democrats say the CIA director Leon Panetta told them when he met with the Intelligence Committees last month immediately after he learned about the program and killed it.
Cheney's direct involvement is fueling calls for an investigation, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.
"This can't stand to have something operating for almost a decade with not one member of Congress ever having been informed," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif.
Government sources describe the secret plan as "an on-again, off-again" program, conceived after 9/11, that never got off the ground.
It reportedly involved taking out major al Qaeda figures at close range.
"I'm sure that there's a lot of programs that we've never been briefed on that an administration may have thought about doing but never implemented," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.
Republicans accuse Democrats of manufacturing outrage to provide cover for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who came under fire when she said this about waterboarding: "The CIA was misleading the Congress. They mislead us all the time!"
If Vice President Cheney did say to the CIA "don't tell Congress," is that against the law?
"It's probably skirting the law," said CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "The question is what do you do with that. And I don't think that there is going to be any will on Congress to prosecute him."
Potentially more serious is the investigation being considered by the attorney general who says he will decide soon on whether to investigate the Bush admininstration's tough interrogation tactics.
