The stories are everywhere. Dick Cheney ordered the CIA not to tell Congress what they were doing with respect to a particular assignment they had been given by him. It seems that the Dark Lord felt he couldn’t trust the members of Congress to keep this darkest of secrets. Maybe Dick felt that the Congressional people weren’t loyal enough Americans – at least not as loyal as he is. Or maybe he felt that they couldn’t be entrusted with information so essential to the security of the country. After all, they were only the elected representatives of the people of the United States. The problem is that there is a law that requires the President to disclose to the appropriate Congressional committees just what covert actions are being taken by the CIA or any other government agency.
The law also says that in extraordinary circumstances the reporting can be limited to just a few individuals in Congress, such as the Chairmen of the Intelligence committees, the Speaker of the House, and so forth. There is no provision in this law for the President to just keep Congress completely in the dark about any covert action.
Here are a couple of things to consider: 1. What is the role of the Vice President regarding the CIA, according to the Constitution of the United States? That’s pretty simple – he has no role. The Vice-President, under the Constitution has virtually no authority to do anything. He is the President-in-waiting in case something happens to the real President. That doesn’t mean he can’t do things on behalf of the President – like carry messages and so forth. But the important thing is that when doing so, he is speaking on behalf of the President. The Vice-President is not empowered to do anything – except be President of the Senate and vote when there is a tie. He has no other legal authority. So, did Dick Cheney authorize or order the CIA not to talk to Congress? He couldn’t authorize such a thing. If he ordered it, he was ordering it on behalf of President Bush – he was just the messenger.
2. Does the President have the authority to tell the CIA not to divulge covert activities to Congress? No, he doesn’t. The law is clear. If he thinks the situation warrants it, he can limit the number of people who are informed; however, he has to tell some stipulated members of Congress, otherwise he is in violation of the law.
3. What was the CIA doing that was such a dark secret that only the Dark Lord could know about it? Did they have a super secret plan to assassinate the leaders of Al Qaeda? Was that the darkest of dark secrets that no one could ever know about – especially Congress? I don’t think so. Wasn’t it fairly obvious when we started carpet bombing Afghanistan with B-52 bombers after 9/11 that we wanted to kill someone? After all these years of taking potshots at suspected Al Qaeda types with Predator drones wouldn’t the Al Qaeda guys have figured out that we were out to kill them? If we had made a public announcement that besides the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force who were gunning for Al Qaeda that we were also unleashing a couple of guys from the CIA, would that have made any difference to Al Qaeda? Would they have then suddenly figured out that we were trying to kill them by any means possible? I don’t buy it.
It does seem that the Dark Lord ordered the CIA not to talk to Congress about something they were doing. It also seems to me that he had no right to do so, and that he violated the law – once again (I’m referring to the torture thing here, of course). Of course, a lot of this would never have happened if Congress had any backbone and stood up to Bush and Cheney long ago, instead of just looking the other way. Perhaps now it is finally time for Congress to stand up and do its job. It’s time for a real and thorough Congressional investigation into what the Dark Lord was doing all those years. If our elected representatives can’t get up the gumption to do that then we would be forced to admit a terrible truth – we have a pretty sorry excuse for a government.
