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Seymour Hersh: Cheney left allies behind in national security posts and may still influence events

By Eric Black | 04/01/09

Expanding again on remarks he first made at the University of Minnesota, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says that former Vice Pres. Dick Cheney left friends and allies embedded in military and national security agencies who keep him apprised of developments and may enable him to still influence policy.

After yesterday's post about Hersh's appearance on CNN, in which he explained further what he meant three weeks ago in Minnesota, several MinnPost readers and commenters suggested that I also listen to what Hersh said Monday on the NPR program "Fresh Air." Thanks for the suggestion. Here's the full audio of that interview. The Cheney stuff is in the second half.

Hersh continues to clarify and explain what he meant about an "executive assassination wing" (he expresses regret over using that term, although he doesn't retract anything he said) that reported to the office of Veep Cheney. The trained killers of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has been killing specific people (Hersh is now shying away a bit from the term "assassination") for years. JSOC members are promoted or denied promotion based in part on how many kills they accomplish, Hersh said.

Two things that were different during the Bush-Cheney era, says Hersh, were that 1) the list of those to be killed was submitted for "final clearance" to Cheney's office (no other vice president has ever had such a role), and 2) in the days after 9/11, these operations were "funded off the books" so that even the highest-clearance most secret congressional bodies didn't have any opportunity for oversight through the appropriations process. When some of these members of Congress complained to Cheney that things were being done behind their backs, he replied, according to Hersh: "I'm not going to give you clearance. If you don't like it, sue me."

Terry Gross, the outstanding interviewer of the Fresh Air program, did obtain a statement from an unnamed JSOC spokester who said that Hersh was wrong. The carefully worded statement said that all U.S. military programs go up the chain of command, through the secretary of defense to the president and that the vice president is not part of the military chain of command. JSOC also said that "Congress  has oversight over all U.S. military operations, including special operations."

But towards the end of the interview, Hersh revealed something additional. Gross asked him if people with knowledge of events during Bush-Cheney days are still reluctant to talk about them, for fear of retaliation by Cheney. Hersh replied:

"I’ll make it worse. I think he’s put people left. He’s put people back. They call it a stay-behind. It’s sort of an intelligence term of art. When you leave a country and, you know, you’ve been driven out the, you know, you’ve lost the war. You leave people behind. It’s a stay-behind that you can continue to have contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do. Cheney’s left a stay-behind. He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on. Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on. Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point. But he’s still there. He’s still a presence."

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Comments (1)

Submitted by daniel teodoru on April 11, 2009 - 8:23pm.

It is heart breaking to see that America operates in a cloud of incompetence and this is cloaked by self-serving secrecy and then media hype. In that sense, Hersh's exposure is not helpful. But then, Hersh is reporting that which he aquires as a SIGNAL not as a FACT, a signal that there was something rotten in the Bush Administration. It is up to citizens to query Congress and make sure that responsible people are monitoring what a proven irresponsible and indecisive presidency is doing, worse still, is done in its name. I cannot imagine anyone surprised that we are going after people whom we associate with 9/11. But the issue is whether secrecy is a cover-up for incompetence or a stealthy benifit towards the goal of national security. In a few minutes on CNN Hersh cannot go over all of this. He did his job in signalling Americans to what is done in their name. If the citizens were really responsible they would have in hand enough background to appreciate what poor judgement characterized the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Administration. But every American should know that when he/she is abroad, he/she bears personal responsibility for what is done by his/her employees Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and JSOC and cannot plead the bliss of ignorance. What is really not fully appreciated is the trememdous permisive impact of secrecy in that it allows incompetence and corruption to be covered up. Through the Obama years, despite efforts to cover-up, we will be exposed through leaks as to how criminally negligent and incompetent were people in authority, indeed even corrupt. The two notoriously incompetent Bush White House lawyers quoted by CNN parce words to obfuscate. But the fact is that Hersh SIGNALLED rather than INFORMED us that skuddugery is underfoot at OUR PERSONAL RESPONIBILITY as US citizens by the very Administration that allowed the collapse of our economy at the hands of its Robber Baron benefactors. This without a drop of monitoring by our elected representatives, the Congress, that had more than once saved us from an overwhelmed and gone wild Executive Branch. Now, Mr & Mrs Amerca, do your job and DEMAND to know why Bush derailed us from getting binLaden in 2001-- now it is 2009!-- and bogged us down in Iraq. YOU ARE ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE for your "ain't my kid going to Iraq" disconnect syndrome. Hersh did you a favor and gave you a heads up. Be greatful and get to doing your citizen's job and demand Congressional oversight!