Covert CIA Program Watch: GST Leaked to Washington Post

U.S. President George W. Bush (C) speaks to the press as Porter Goss, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) looks on during Bush’s visit to the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia, March 3, 2005. President Bush sought to reassure CIA employees on Thursday that they would not lose influence under an intelligence reorganization that created a new overall director for intelligence services.

The Washington Post has Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.

GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.

And, what is the point of weakening American anti-terror efforts by leaking this story?

What is the motive of the reporter and the Washington Post?

What is the motive of the CIA or NSA leakers?

Some former CIA officers now worry that the agency alone will be held responsible for actions authorized by Bush and approved by the White House’s lawyers.

Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed and controversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholar in residence at the University of Virginia. “It seems to me the agency is taking the brunt of all the recent criticism.”

So, is the CIA worried about these “Black Programs”? Flap thinks not.

But, some of the folks in the MSM who hate the President want to weaken his Presidency at the expense of an unsafe America and exposing Americans to more terrorist danger.

Duane R. “Dewey” Clarridge, who directed the CIA’s covert efforts to support the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, said the nature of CIA work overseas is, and should be, risky and sometimes ugly. “You have a spy agency because the spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don’t want it to do those dastardly things, don’t have it. You can have the State Department.”

Indeed.

But a former CIA officer said the agency “lost its way” after Sept. 11, rarely refusing or questioning an administration request. The unorthodox measures “have got to be flushed out of the system,” the former officer said. “That’s how it works in this country.”

The world is a dangerous place.

These unorthodox measures may offend the “LEAKER” of this story but do not offend Flap and the majority of Americans who enjoy our safety from terrorism.

The Justice Department should discover the identity of the source of this story and prosecute him/her to the fullest extent of the law.

No hero here!

Captain Ed has Exempt Media Blows Cover On Another Key Counterterrorism Program

In other words, Priest’s sources want to use the Post to fight the housecleaning that Porter Goss has initiated and to play a little CYA along with their years-long pushback against the Bush administration. They hijacked the front page of the newspaper to file complaints about having to engage the enemy in the war on terror, and when confronted about those rogue elements that have spent their efforts fighting the Bush administration rather than Islamofascists, they sob to Post reporters about their “image”.

One day, these leaks will end, but the question will then be whether we have any effective defense left against the terrorists, or if we have tipped our hand so badly that our enemies will adapt and find ways around our efforts to launch another attack. If that happens, these same media outlets will be screaming about the administration’s failure to keep us safe. However, we won’t be fooled; the responsibility will be on those who took it upon themselves to cripple the very programs that have kept us safe for the past four years.

Technorati Tags: CIA, GST, President Bush, Peter Goss, Global War on Terror