Homeland Security

The standoff between Congress at the executive branch over a secret CIA assassination program is heating up.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) is challenging Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair's assertion that the program was legal. This follows an announcement on Friday by Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) that the House Intelligence Committee would investigate whether the CIA acted illegally by keeping Congress in the dark about the program.

In a letter to Blair, obtained by Greg Sargent, Feingold calls out the intelligence chief's comments in a Washington Post story, in which he claimed the program was within the bounds of the law.

Feingold is now challenging Blair to get DNI lawyers to back up that claim:

According to a story on Thursday in the Washington Post, you stated that the failure to notify the congressional intelligence committees about a program recently cancelled by CIA Director Leon Panetta did not violate the law. I disagree and believe that the program in question fit squarely within the notification requirements of the National Security Act. I therefore request that you provide me with your analysis, and any analysis by the DNI General Counsel, supporting your conclusion.

Feingold sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, raising the prospect that panels in both chambers will now bring pressure against the intelligence agencies.

The war in Iraq cost the GOP politically, the former head of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) admitted this weekend.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said that the war in Iraq was a war of choice, and one that became associated with Republicans, costing them a toll in the last two election cycles.

"The reality is that if you engage in a war of choice -- and Iraq was a war of choice -- it

The House Intelligence Committee will investigate whether the CIA acted illegally by keeping Congress in the dark about plans for a secret assassination program, the committee's chairman announced today.

House leaders learned about the program in late June, when CIA Director Leon Panetta personally briefed them. Panetta had learned about the program just one day earlier.

"After careful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will conduct an investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1947," Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), the committee chairman, said in a statement.

The plan to assassinate top Al Qaeda leaders was shut down by then-CIA Director George Tenet in 2004, but re-activated by his successors. Leon Panetta once again cancelled the program the day he learned about it.

A highly classified program aimed at capturing or killing high-value al Qaeda operatives is the program CIA chief Leon Panetta disclosed to members of the House Intelligence Committee last week, leading to calls for investigating the agency.

Though the exact details of the program are unknown, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the CIA was acting to carry out an order signed in 2001 by President George W. Bush. Panetta reportedly told Congress he had ended the program.

Nonetheless, disclosure of the program eight years after Bush signed the order has angered many Democrats, some of whom have called for an investigation into the CIA's record of truthfulness with members of Congress.

Panetta testified about the program in June, and told Congressional panels he had only learned of it himself a few days beforehand. Panetta said the CIA had been ordered to withhold information from Congress by then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

"We should have been briefed before the commencement of this kind of sensitive program," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News Sunday. "[W]e were kept in the dark. That's something that should never, ever happen again."

But it is Panetta who is taking heat from Congressional Democrats now. Late last month, seven Democrats on the House committee wrote a letter to Panetta urging him to publicly correct a statement he made earlier this year in which he said it is not the CIA's policy to mislead Congress.

Sources told the Journal that money had been spent on the program, apparently for training purposes, but that no action in the field had occurred.

--Reid Wilson

Former Vice President Dick Cheney "must be held accountable" for having allegedly directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said Sunday.

Israel joined a chorus of Democratic lawmakers on Sunday to call for an investigation into Cheney's role in keeping information from members of Congress who are required to be briefed. Israel, however, seemed to go a step further, suggesting that Cheney had lied -- and that the former vice president should face repercussions.

Israel tweeted Sunday evening:

You deserve the truth and Dick Cheney lied. Must be held accountable.

The New York Times reported Sunday that Cheney personally ordered a still-undisclosed program concealed from members of Congress.

That program had made headlines this week after Democratic members of Congress wrote CIA director Leon Panetta asking him to apologize to lawmakers for insisting, contrary to the assertions of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), that the CIA had never misled Congress in its classified briefings.

Attorney General Eric Holder, meanwhile, has reportedly been eyeballing naming a special prosecutor to investigate Bush administration counterterrorism initiatives.

Cross-posted to the Twitter Room

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) isn't feeling as safe in federal buildings after a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found major flaws in the Federal Protective Service (FPS), which guards a number of federal buildings.

"Well I did until after I saw this investigation," Lieberman said on Fox News in response to a question about whether he feels safe in federal buildings.

The GAO report released Tuesday found that the FPS often failed to detect bomb-making materials smuggled into high-profile federal buildings in the past year. One of those test targets included the office of an unnamed U.S. Senator, according to the Washington Post.

"It was jaw-dropping; it was infuriating," Lieberman said of the report, going after the guards in the FPS themselves for their performance, calling them "guards who obviously don't appreciate the importance of what they're doing in an age of terrorism."

Lieberman called for a dramatic "shake-up" of the agency, but stopped short of calling for the firing of the director. The Connecticut centrist, who is the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said he's unwilling to give the FPS much more money, too.

"This is outrageously unacceptable failure by a federal government agency," he said. "This is a sick agency, and its sickness endangers a lot of Americans."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday she hadn't yet received the briefing that led Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee to accuse the CIA of misleading Congress.

Pelosi, who'd previously accused the CIA of having misled lawmakers about the agency's interrogation tactics, resisted getting involved in a letter Intelligence Democrats sent to CIA Director Leon Panetta this week, demanding he apologize over his agency's briefings to Congress on an unspecified program.

"I have not had that briefing from Director Panetta," Pelosi said in her weekly news conference. " I've seen the letters from the members, and obviously they have concern."

Pelosi wouldn't address whether those claims made by her colleagues had bearing on her own claims about the CIA in May, but said that the Intelligence Committees in both the House and the Senate would be left to conduct their own investigations into the alleged lies.

"I'm sure they will be pursuing this in their regular committee process and that's the way it will go," she said.

For their part, Republicans have accused Democrats on the committee of politicizing the CIA issue and national security.

It's only Democrats who are saying the CIA misled Congress in briefings over the past eight years, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) asserted Thursday.

The top GOP member of the House Intelligence Committee, accused House Democrats of playing politics by sending CIA Director Leon Panetta a letter accusing his agency of having lied to congressional leaders in briefings.

"It's one of the most bizarre episodes in politics that I've seen in my time here in Washington," Hoekstra said during an appearance on CBS this morning. "These are all Democrats saying the CIA lied."

The accusation dredges up the nearly two-month-old claims made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that lawmakers were lied to about interrogation tactics in briefings. That was met by a blunt rejoinder by Panetta, a Democrat, who insisted the CIA had never lied to Congress nor intended to mislead lawmakers.

"They sent that letter on stationery making sure that that letter was available to the press, but also making sure that we on the Republican side didn't get the letter," Hoekstra continued.

"So to me it looks like they're working on the political equation," he said of House Democrats. "They're not trying to foster a bipartisan consensus on national security."

Vice President Biden took a shot at the deceased former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during a trip to Iraq this weekend, saying Hussein would be "rolling over in his grave" at the naturalization ceremony held in one of his palaces on Saturday.

Biden oversaw a ceremony for members of the armed services to be sworn in as American citizens as part of his weekend-long trip to Iraq.

"We did it in Saddam's Palace and I can think of nothing better than," Biden said at a luncheon afterward, according to a pool report. "That S.O.B. is rolling over in his grave right now."

According to an earlier pool report, the ceremony took place in the rotunda of Hussein's Aw Faw Palace, which is located on the premises of what is now Camp Victory in Baghdad.

"As corny as it sounds," Biden said at the ceremony, "Damn I'm proud to be an American."

Hussein was executed by hanging after having been convicted by Iraqis of committing various atrocities during his time in power.

The Treasury Department took steps to curb terrorism in Iraq today, designating an Iranian materials supplier and an Iraqi militia group as terrorists.

In a release, the Treasury targeted Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a known adviser to Iraqi insurgent groups and a materials supplier, and the Iraqi Shia extremist group Kata'ib Hizballah for aiding and providing "lethal support" to well-known terrorists groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The department invoked Executive Order 13438 against these groups, which takes aim at insurgent and militia groups and their supporters.

"These designations play a critical role in our efforts to protect Coalition troops, Iraqi security forces, and civilians from those who use violence against innocents to intimidate and to undermine a free and prosperous Iraq," said Stuart Levey, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

According to the release, the State Department also deemed Kata'ib Hizballah a terrorist group under Executive Order 13224. These executive order outlaw any financial transactions between these groups and U.S. entities as well as freezing any assets these groups have under U.S. jurisdiction.

Earlier this week, the Treasury Department took similar actions against Hong Kong Electronics, an Iranian firm known to have funneled funds toward North Korea's nuclear program.