Washington, July 17: CIA officials were proposing to activate a programme to train anti-terrorist assassination teams overseas when agency managers brought the secret programme to the attention of CIA Director Leon Panetta last month, according to two US officials familiar with the matter.
The plan to kill top Al Qaida leaders, which had been on the agency’s backburner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals to initiate what one intelligence official called a “somewhat more operational phase”.
Shortly after learning of the plan, CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated the programme and then went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers.
The Obama administration’s top intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, defended Panetta’s decision to cancel the programme.
Blair also asserted that the CIA did not violate the law when it failed to inform lawmakers about the secret programme until last month.
Blair said agency officials may not have been required to notify Congress about the programme, though he believes they should have done so.
-Agencies