Ex-Powell aide suggests CIA assassination program was actually active

David Edwards
Raw Story
Thursday, July 16, 2009

The secret CIA program allegedly aimed at assassinating suspected terrorists abroad has raised the eyebrows of at least one former senior Bush Administration official who hints that the program may have actually gone into effect, despite the denials of the agency and congressional staff who have been briefed.

The aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, was chief of staff to Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell. He says he heard “echoes” of the program from US ambassadors abroad, who informed him that clandestine military teams were being dispatched to their countries.

“We, very early on, after 9/11, at the State Department, learned from our ambassadors in the field that there were teams being dispatched to their cities, to their countries, and these teams were clandestine and essentially aimed at capturing al Qaeda leaders or al Qaeda affiliates and interrogating them,” Wilkerson told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday. “So the fact that it might have gravitated over to the CIA or the CIA might have joined in, which is something that happens a lot these days with Delta Force and other special operators is no surprise to me.

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“What I suspect has happened is what began to happen while I was still in the government, and that was we’re killing the wrong people,” Wilkerson added. “And we’re killing the wrong people in the wrong countries. And the countries are finding out about it, or at least there was a suspicion that the countries might find out about it, and so it was shut down. That’s my strong suspicion.”

CIA Director Leon Panetta announced this month that he’d shut down the program last month when he first learned about it.

The State Department, under Colin Powell, asked the Pentagon which countries were being targeted but found out little information from then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Wilkerson asserts.

“After some hemming and hawing, which was Rumsfeld’s forte, he finally admitted that he had dispatched some of these teams,” Wilkerson explained. “I don’t think we ever knew the full range of his deployments.” Wilkerson believes the CIA became involved in the program of targeted assassinations later.

“It’s laughable [the idea] that the CIA has never lied to Congress,” Wilkerson quipped. “They lie to Congress on a routine basis,” said Wilkerson. Historically, it’s presidents that take the fall when the CIA lies to Congress. Wilkerson says it’s unprecedented for a vice president to fill that role as Cheney appears to have done.

This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast July 14, 2009.

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5 Responses to “Ex-Powell aide suggests CIA assassination program was actually active”

1. hologram5 Says:
   July 16th, 2009 at 7:06 am

   Of course it was active. It has been active for probably 15 to 20 years. These guys are sleazy and slitherous like snakes. They lie, cheat and start wars all in the name of the mighty dollar. Where do you think most of the drugs that come into the USA come from? The CIA of course.

2. reconmarine Says:
   July 16th, 2009 at 11:44 am

   I am not supposed to talk about the assassination of JFK jr. but it was one of my best “wet works”. The Queen wants us to kill most of the Kennedys by airplanes. We rigged small explosives on the wings of his plane. In some ways it was like the Princess DIe assassination, wherein we used small c4 devises on the steering, brakes etc. and a programmed chip for the throttle. Chips are good, like RFID, 666.

3. Frank Williams Says:
   July 16th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

   Boring! Everyone knows this was going on and it was the right thing to do! Notice how so many jihadis just disappeared from neighbourhoods where they were two a penny? It all happened in about a year after 9/11. Poof! And they were gone…

4. Jim Lunsford Says:
   July 16th, 2009 at 2:11 pm

   I really don’t know what this program is/was about. None of us do, of course. In a free society, we all would have known by now. After all, at one time it was public knowledge on things like the Iran/Contra trial in which we discovered the CIA was the biggest cocaine cartel in the world. There hands were later implicated quite easily into the crack epidemic which started in LA. Somehow, I think this one goes beyond the assassination rings authorized by Darth Cheney. Whatever it is, it must be horrific. And it must come out into the open.

5. Incriminally Sane Says:
   July 16th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

   The CIA has had an assassination system in place since it’s inception and EVERY PRESIDENT knows full well what goes on within the organization, so, whenever they try to hide these facts, watch their faces and the lies will shine through.