The Barnacle Branch Still Evading Oversight

I’ll have several things to say about Sy Hersh’s latest. For the moment, though, I just wanted to lay out his central argument: that Dick Cheney is abusing the structure of command and Congressional oversight to launch a covert campaign against Iran.

Hersh reports that President Bush signed a Finding authorizing broad actions against Iran. Here’s how Andrew Cockburn described the finding, in a piece cited by Hersh:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border — whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law’s throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

The fans of regime change have managed to implement such a plan while evading oversight in a couple of ways. First, the hawks pushed out Admiral William Fallon on March 11 rather than reading him in on some of the stuff they were doing with Specials Ops forces in the Middle East.

Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility.

[snip]

“He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O.”—area of operations. “That was not happening,” [Marine General Jack] Sheehan said. “When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”

As Hersh explains, post-9/11 the Bush Administration weakened Goldwater-Nichols, largely by giving Special Ops its own command and reporting structure.

The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

So the first thing the war hawks did was put in a bunch of operations controlled centrally, outside the traditional chain of command, largely with Dick Cheney’s paws on it.

The problem, though, is that Special Ops still relies on CIA for certain capabilities–language skills and local ties–which meant CIA had to be brought into the operations.

But the borders between operations are not always clear: in Iran, C.I.A. agents and regional assets have the language skills and the local knowledge to make contacts for the JSOC operatives, and have been working with them to direct personnel, matériel, and money into Iran from an obscure base in western Afghanistan.

And the CIA, because covert actions must be approved by a Presidential Finding, and because the plans included targeting of high value targets, demanded that Bush sign a finding authorizing the CIA to be associated with operations that will kill high profile figures.

One issue has to do with a reference in the Finding, the person familiar with it recalled, to potential defensive lethal action by U.S. operatives in Iran.

[snip]

The language was inserted into the Finding at the urging of the C.I.A., a former senior intelligence official said.

The Finding was signed some time around March 21–just ten days after Fallon’s resignation.

Yet according to the Barnacle Branch and Unitary Executive rules, the Bush Administration doesn’t have to tell Congress what Special Ops is doing.

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.

[snip]

“This is a big deal,” the person familiar with the Finding said. “The C.I.A. needed the Finding to do its traditional stuff, but the Finding does not apply to JSOC. The President signed an Executive Order after September 11th giving the Pentagon license to do things that it had never been able to do before without notifying Congress. The claim was that the military was ‘preparing the battle space,’ and by using that term they were able to circumvent congressional oversight.

And one of the things Bush has authorized without telling Congress about it is the targeting of high value targets.

One of JSOC’s task-force missions, the pursuit of “high-value targets,” was not directly addressed in the Finding.

[snip]

“Everybody’s arguing about the high-value-target list,” the former senior intelligence official said. “The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney’s office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.”

So apparently, Dick’s got a list of people he wants assassinated before he leaves office–and he’s getting impatient.

I’m curious. One high-value Iranian-associated target, Imad Mugniyah, was assassinated in Lebanon just over a month before this Finding was signed, on February 12. And Ahmadinejad is intent on proving that the US tried to assassinate him when he was in Iraq in early March. Are these the (one successful, one attempted) assassinations that got the CIA worried enough to demand a Finding?

Update: Changing my "saw say" per Leen

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44 replies
  1. perris says:

    Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility.

    oh my GOD!

    what these neo cons want is to “just say” they need funding and BING, they will get WHATEVER THEY WANT

    this is simply another method to steal our treasure, they can’t come out and tell bush, “give me trillions of dollars” so they came up with this “authorization”

    I’m sorry, this is a declaration of war without the benefit of congress

    nancy AND bush AND hagel said if bush attacked Iran without congressional approval they WOULD look into impeachment

    time to call them on that claim

  2. Leen says:

    EW in your first sentence it says “saw” instead of say.

    Sy Hersch and Alexander Cockburn two of my favorite truth tellers. Sy Hersh has been trying to wake the American public up for five years about the neo-cons efforts to attack Iran. Scott Ritter and others have been making those efforts even longer.

    Time is a wastin it’s time to Impeach that barnacle and the barnacle branch.

    What happened to the legislation that Senator Webb was trying to get passed which would have required the Bush regime to come through congress before they attack Iran?

  3. JohnLopresti says:

    I think Barack Obama’s way is going to be stronger and win, in this policy approach. Hersh and Cockburn are helping. Iran aint Nicaragua where a Reagan finding can authorize a bush war. Like Fallon said, there are 80 million people in Iran. My Iraqi uncle said very much the same thing when I saw him during the Iran-Iraq war several decades ago, something like, Iran is so much larger than Iraq no way Iraq wins conventional conflict. But Iran is a regional hegemon. I heard excerpts this week from an extensive telephone interview Cockburn gave to public radio station, but their website is unfamiliar to me. I will post a link to that audio if I find it. The topic was the current civil war in Iraq, where Cockburn has set up shop, so to speak. There is a lot of hype right now about public law waivers to guarantee at least four years of oilco profiteering, all of which never mentions the price sensitivity of oil in war zones. The one thing this administration wants to avoid is talk of peace in the middle east. Preserving instability there fills private coffers of oil magnates.

  4. bobschacht says:

    Thanks for this, EW! I’m particularly interested in this sentence from Hersch:

    Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran.

    “Ahwazi Arabs” brings us to a part of Iran that I know something about. The population from Ahwaz to the Iraqi border is mostly Arab, and also happens to be where most of Iran’s oil refineries are. Don’t you think Cheney would love to get his (Halliburton’s) hands on Iran’s prime oil assets?

    I knew that Fallon’s resignation was going to mean trouble. I just hope that Hersch’s article will encourage counter-moves to bottle up this bit of WH adventurism.

    Bob in HI

    • perris says:

      I knew that Fallon’s resignation was going to mean trouble

      how aggressive is Fallon going to be exposing these traitors?

      If he is the general of integrity we are led to believe, he will do more out of the armed forces then he could have done while still under command

  5. klynn says:

    JohnL @ 8 and bobs @ 9 –

    Thank you. Both comments import information to add to this Cheney-Iran picture.

  6. Neil says:

    We’re assassinating “high value targets”. The expression “high value” makes me laugh. If they were of value, we wouldn’t kill them, right? The whole point of view is turned on its head when it comes to people in our government who are in charge of the murder list. And if these asshats are no better at managing the murder list than they are managing the no-fly list then we murdering some people without justification.

    We kill those who are of negative value to our perceived “national interest” which doesn’t merely mean health and well fare but also means financial security, secure financial interests and securing access to markets and natural resources admittedly owned by others. We are way out on a limb thee days when we cite national security interests.

    So the next question is this, are these murder list people leaders in terrorist organizations or political leaders who advance a politics we perceive as a threat to our “national interests”. Either way, isn’t this precisely the kind of policy that caused the blow back most recognizable as 9/11?

    It’s time for the armed services committee to get up to speed on this and ask the big questions, does a presidential order to assassinate foriegn people in foreign countries, becuase it is an act of war, require the president to get congressional approval? Who chairs the armed service committee anyway?

    armed-services.senate.gov

    • perris says:

      It’s time for the armed services committee to get up to speed on this and ask the big questions, does a presidential order to assassinate foriegn people in foreign countries, becuase it is an act of war, require the president to get congressional approval?

      it is an act of war and congress has insisted he will be impeached if he initiates this war without their approval

      we need to hold their feet to the iron, time is short, if we really want elections this cycle we better make sure the president does not engage Iran

  7. chrisc says:

    IIRC, the way they (Rumsfeld? Cheney?) got around that pesky terrorist designation for the MEK was to have the members swear an oath of loyalty to democracy or something like that. Pooof! They are not terrorists anymore. They are liberators. Dedicated to democracy in Iran. Think those “democracy funds” are paying for political assassinations?

  8. DefendOurConstitution says:

    In this game of chess, is Cheney ok giving up the gambit of North Korea with the understanding that he will get his attack on Iran?

  9. Leen says:

    Sy Hersh told us about the special ops in Iran in one of his articles a while back

    the Iran Plans
    http://www.newyorker.com/archi…..417fa_fact

    Sy’s warnings
    “The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”
    “The planning is enormous,” the former senior intelligence official said, referring to the activity at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, in Florida; the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, in Virginia; and the U.S. Strategic Command, in Nebraska. “Space assets, SLBMs”—submarine-launched ballistic missiles—“tactical air, and sabotage, coöperation from the Turks and the Russians.” He added that the plans include “significant air attacks on their countermeasures and anti-aircraft missiles—a huge takedown.” He depicted the planning as hectic, and far beyond the contingency work that is routinely done. “These are operational plans,” the former official said.

    Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions—rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing—since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.

  10. emptywheel says:

    Via Juan Cole, McClatchy has more on a SF operation killing Maliki’s relatives.

    Senior Iraqi government officials said Saturday that a U.S. Special Forces counterterrorism unit conducted the raid that reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, touching off a high-stakes diplomatic crisis between the United States and Iraq.

    [snip]

    “This is a Special Forces operation, an antiterrorism unit that operates almost independently so there’s been no coordination with the local forces on the ground,”

    [snip]

    Iraqi officials in Karbala said the operation began at dawn Friday with U.S. aircraft delivering dozens of American troops to the rural Shiite Muslim town of Janaja, which is populated mostly by members of the Maliki tribe. Authorities said the raid apparently was aimed at capturing what the military calls a “high-value target,” often a reference to the leader of a militant cell.

    Raed Shakir Jowdet, the Iraqi military commander of Karbala operations, told journalists Friday that the Americans had acted on faulty intelligence. He said four U.S. military helicopters and a jet fighter soared over the area that morning. About 60 U.S. ground forces then stormed the town, “terrifying the families,” Jowdet said. At least one man was detained, though some Iraqi authorities said more were taken into custody.

    Given Maliki’s close ties to Iran, it sure makes you wonder, huh?

  11. Leen says:

    Yesterday I watched this debate (for the third time) about the controversial paper and book the “Israel Lobby” by Mearsheimer and Walt. Each time I watch it I am struck by something else. During the debate Mearsheimer brings up how the right wing radicals support for the invasion of Iraq was based on their desire to see Syria, Iran and Iraq taken out and it did not matter in what order. (anybody else notice how the Project for a New American Century..Pnac) is no longer up. I sent hundreds of people there letting them know that they could go read the regime change plans for themselves.

    If you have never watched this debate that took place at Cooper Union several years ago, it is worth the time. Of course this debate was not shown or given any time in the MSM as one of the questioners at the debate brings up.

    http://www.scribemedia.org/200…..ael-lobby/
    Last March, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published an article in the London Review of Books. Entitled “The Israel Lobby: Does it Have too Much Influence on US Foreign Policy,” it drew swift charges of anti-Semitism in the editorial pages of American newspapers.

    Here is what Aipac has up at their site right now (this was added recently) about what Iaea El Baradei “allegedly” said about Iran .

    IAEA Chief: Iran Could Build Nuclear Bomb in Six Months

    ElBaradei warned of Iran’s enrichment activity.
    IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei recently said that with Iran’s current nuclear capabilities, the country would need “six months to one year” in order to produce one atomic bomb. “It would need this period to produce a weapon, and to obtain highly-enriched uranium in sufficient quantities for a single nuclear weapon,” ElBaradei said. The interview, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on June 20, was translated by MEMRI. In recent months, Iran has accelerated its efforts to enrich uranium – a key step toward developing nuclear weapons – violating multiple binding U.N. Security Council demands that the Islamic Republic suspend its illicit nuclear program.
    http://www.aipac.org/130.asp#13475

    ####I have written to Professor Juan Cole ( who responded to requests a few years back to clarify what Iranian President Ahmadenejad had actually said about Israel) I have asked him to clarify what El Baradei recently said about Iran and to put it into context instead of Aipac’s likely mis interpretation of what he said.

    For the last five years in Aipacs “take action” box they have focused on Iran constantly. Asking people to support Sanctions, legislation to cut Iran off etc. Most of us know that Aipac has been hammering our congress hard to pre-emptively strike Iran.

    After the last Aipac conference members of Aipac flooded the hill pushing for this legislation.
    H.con Res. 362
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…..N.RES.362:

    Co-sponsors
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…..00362:@@@P

    Truthout did an article about this resolution
    http://www.truthout.org/articl…..h-act-iran

    JUST WHY ARE OUR REPS GOING ALONG WITH THIS BUILD UP TOWARDS A PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE ON IRAN?

    JUST WHY IS THE MOST RECENT NIE REPORT BEING IGNORED?

    • BooRadley says:

      AFAIK, Saddam was the Sunni counterweight to Shia Iran. We broke Saddam’s army and in so doing pretty much handed the whole region to Iran. No one has done more to help Iran than George Boosh.

      Especially as it dawns on everyone that we can’t afford to stay much longer, there may be significant pressure from Saudi Arabia, other countries in the region, perhaps even Russia, to bloody Iran’s nose. Since oil prices are so high, it appears the WH has figured out that their only remaining option is the covert stuff.

      I’m not defending it either diplomatically, strategically, or tactically. I’m just trying to identify the pressure points that exist in the region.

  12. Bushie says:

    Many in Congress seem hell bent on taking action against Iran. TPM Cafe posted a sense of the Congress resolution with 197 cosponsors. In the resolution, Congress calls for, in effect, 100% blockade of Iran, i.e. boarding inbound and outbound ships, detailed inspections at boarder crossings, etc, etc.

    http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/ 2008/ 06/ 21/ 169_house_77_dems_and_26_senat_1/

  13. bobschacht says:

    Say, didn’t John Conyers say that the HJC would start impeachment hearings if Cheney initiated action against Iran? If Bushie @ 21 is right, he won’t go anywhere with it. But maybe it would be something to work on.

    Bob in HI

  14. FormerFed says:

    Where is the Demo portion of the Gang of Eight on this issue? Supposedly they know the “innermost secrets” of what is going on.

    As I understand the current Demo members of the Gang would be Reid, Jello Jay, Pelosi, and Reyes. Is this correct? If this membership is correct, it doesn’t give you much confidence in holding back the Bushies on their hellbent rush to bomb Iran before they leave office.

    And again I ask, what can we run of the mill citizens do to stop this craziness?

    I nominate Seymour Hersh for the highest honor that can be given to him for his outstanding life work.

  15. IntelVet says:

    “The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney’s office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.”

    So, Cheney now has sleeper cells in Iran?

    What, exactly, makes the US any different than any other terrorist state, like Israel?

    • Leen says:

      Just how much money did Manucher Ghorbanifar ask for to undermine the Government of Iran? How soon after those secret meetings put together by the upstanding citizen Micheal “faster Please” Ledeen did Condi Rice ask Congress to shell out the dough to undermine the government of Iran?

      What will ever come from those over due and delayed findings …. the SSCI Phase II?

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        With the time remaining in the Bush junta, all Cheney can hope for is to take out the first page or two on his list – ignoring, of course, the evil that I think JFK pointed out, that what goes around comes around.

        Cheney might destabilize Iran and keep Iraq in chaos (ignoring, for a moment, whether those working on his list speak Spanish as well as Arabic), but the result would be heightened chaos. Good for war profiteering, but not for the America he claims to serve and protect. He would assure nothing but yet higher oil price, higher spending on war, and easier recruitment for those bent on doing us harm.

  16. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Interesting insight. Subverting the overt, the legally mandated chain of command is Cheney’s thing. He’s been advocating it since he and Rumsfeld tried to run Ford’s presidency, a gambit that succeeded in getting that era’s Cheney – Henry Kissinger – removed from office.

    He did it from the House when he supported Reagan’s Iran-Contra program, claiming in his committee’s outrageous dissenting opinion that Reagan and his cohort had broken no laws, because the Congressional ban on funding the Contras was invalid legislation because it “infringed” on the President’s purportedly exclusive authority to manage foreign affairs – though he hadn’t the power or confidence to test that raw assertion in court. But he put his views on the record. He failed, in part, when as Bush I’s SecDef he was unable to persuade a smarter and better advised president to invade Iraq and change its regime in 1992.

    Most dramatically, Cheney’s done it throughout the Bush II presidency. Starting with when he chaired his vice president search committee, then named himself as the winning candidate.

    Cheney has run a clandestine organization out of the vice president’s office ever since. He still has an active network of Boltons and Wolfowitzes in top positions throughout the government. It once included not only those two pillars of competence and sound judgment, but his daughter at the Middle East desk at State and a son-in-law at OMB. It once also included the SecDef, Rumsfeld and his top lawyer, Bill Haynes, and Scooter Libby. It still includes David Addington, once his top lawyer and de facto White House Counsel and Attorney General (certainly during Gonzales’ tenure), who is now his chief of staff and keeper of the VP’s id.

    In other words, Cheney’s people sat in at most of the top decision making meetings on the administration’s most important policies. War, oil, the environment, agency staffing, diplomacy, intel. He created a shadow government for himself and for a President lacking the energy, intellect and judgment to run things himself.

    It worked so long as Cheney had Bush’s ear and Cheney’s opinion made Bush feel competent. If someone else becomes the last to whisper into Bush’s ear, and points out to Junior how he’s been cuckolded in his presidency by Cheney – perhaps with a series of choice quotes about what Cheney really thinks of his puppet – and should there ever be liability attached to conflict between himself and Dick – well then, all bets are off. Scooter and a few military/intel/agency heads had better hope it happens, if at all, after they’ve obtained their pardons or shredded their hard drives.

  17. Leen says:

    CALL YOUR REPS. If they have all ready co-sponsored H. Con Res 362 tell them that there is still time for them to take their names off this warmongering legislation.

    If they have had the will to stay off this list call them and say thank you and let them know to vote no no no on H.CON RES 362

    IS YOUR REP ON THIS LIST?
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…..00362:@@@P

  18. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Needless to say, [T]he kinds of clandestine operations cited here are traditionally regarded as Acts of War. The murder of a head of state or prime minister, for example, would probably justify all out war. Such acts would furnish the basis for armed retaliation against US interests. So long as that retaliation was proportional to the damage done, the other side would win legally, politically and morally. It would also result in a doubling of the price of oil, further employment losses, and increased inflation in the prices of food, energy, transport and insurance.

    Any escalation by the US based on the false premise that it was a response to a “first act” by the other side would not be tenable. Not unless the MSM repeated its fawning, uncritical coverage and the rest of the world accepted it and remained silent. Given the likely maelstrom that would engulf the Middle East, and its impact on the developed world, something tells me, that wouldn’t happen this time around. “Fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again….”

    Or will Cheney be right: the only thing history teaches us is that we fail to learn from it.

    • bobschacht says:

      Needless to say, [T]he kinds of clandestine operations cited here are traditionally regarded as Acts of War. The murder of a head of state or prime minister, for example, would probably justify all out war.

      Wasn’t WW I started by just such an assassination?

      Archduke Ferdinand comes to mind…

      Bob in HI

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Exactly. Aided by hubris, incompetence, rigidity, bad intelligence, poor communications and a fatalistic sense that “this had to happen sooner or later – but we can control it.”

        • Leen says:

          And an immense amount of pressure from Aipac and other lobbying groups committed to attacking Iran

  19. IntelVet says:

    Perhaps we should put out our own terrorist’s pictures on playing cards and make a show of presenting the deck to bin Laden. You know, like Cheneys likeness on the ace of spades, Addington’s on the one-eyed jack of clubs, etc. and so on.

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