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Director Leon Panetta of the CIA briefed Intelligence Committee members on Capitol Hill last month about secrets he inherited. Only now are those secrets starting to make news. Both NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' Nancy Cordes gave the story a shot. Yet, as murky as spy stories often are, their coverage created as much confusion as insight. The topic was an order issued by President George Bush in late 2001 to have the CIA assemble assassination squads to track down leaders of al-Qaeda "outside of war zones, in fact anywhere in the world," as NBC's Mitchell put it.
Mitchell pointed out that this green light for assassinations was no secret, reminding us of NBC News' own coverage of the go-ahead in December 2001. Yet the CIA, at the time, never briefed Congress about the hit squads. CBS' Cordes came up with a pair of contrasting explanations for keeping the secret. Her unidentified "government sources" told her that it was an "on-again-off-again plan" that "never got off the ground." Her unidentified sources among Congressional Democrats told her Panetta's explanation: then-Vice President Dick Cheney "told the CIA" to withhold the briefing.
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