Attention whore and Congressman Patrick “Please Do Ask and Tell” Murphy appeared on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday to express his complete shock at the Bush Administration’s  plan to kill high-level Al Qaeda leaders that some say Vice President Dick Cheney ordered kept secret from Congress.

Murphy, who belongs on the Intelligence Committee about as much as I belong on the Good-Looking, Tall and Athletic Committee, finds the whole thing “disturbing.”

Congressman Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that “it’s disturbing” that former Vice President Dick Cheney may have ordered the CIA to withhold information from Congress.

The refusal to disclose a top-secret program to the few members of Congress authorized to review the sensitive material was “absolutely not” appropriate, Murphy told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Sunday’s State of the Union.

No offense, Pat, but I think most people knew that the Bush Administration wanted to kill Osama bin Laden and was formulating plans to do so.  It’s hardly breaking news.

The program, which is really more accurately described as a “plan” because it never actually went into action, remained “secret” until it was cancelled by CIA Director Leon Pannetta.  Pannetta then briefed Congress about it, and it took all of two weeks for the still top-secret information to make it onto the front page of the New York Times.

Former CIA director Mike Hayden disputes Murphy’s entire premise, saying not only was he not told by anyone to keep the plan secret, but also that Congress actually was briefed on the plan that never became a program all along.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Hayden said that top members of Congress were kept well informed all along the way, notwithstanding protests from some that they were kept in the dark.

“One of the points I had in every one of the briefings was to make sure they understood the scope of our activity,” said Hayden, who also previously headed the National Security Agency.

“At the political level, this had support,” said Hayden.

It’s not like Murphy, who thinks it’s unfair to call terrorists jihadists, is known to let facts get in the way when there’s camera time to be found.  And we should be thankful Murphy chose to slam our efforts to defeat Al Qaeda on CNN this time and not state-run Iranian TV like he did last summer.

In reporting the super top-secret plan that evil Cheney wanted kept secret, the New York Times should have taken a look at their own archives.  A plan that appears identical to the one suddenly making news – conveniently just when Congress needs a boost to their 17% approval rating and the Obama Administration needs a distraction from the hearings on their racist Supreme Court nominee – was reported in the paper in 2002.

The Bush administration has prepared a list of terrorist leaders the Central Intelligence Agency is authorized to kill, if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be minimized, senior military and intelligence officials said.

The previously undisclosed C.I.A. list includes key Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as other principal figures from Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, the officials said. The names of about two dozen terrorist leaders have recently been on the lethal-force list, officials said. “It’s the worst of the worst,” an official said.

President Bush has provided written legal authority to the C.I.A. to hunt down and kill the terrorists without seeking further approval each time the agency is about to stage an operation. Some officials said the terrorist list was known as the “high-value target list.” A spokesman for the White House declined to discuss the list or issues involving the use of lethal force against terrorists. A spokesman for the C.I.A. also declined to comment on the list.

As it turns out, Congress actually was briefed on the plan that Murphy finds “disturbing” which also never went into action and was not ordered kept secret.  And one more minor note: The plan was actually authorized by Congress.

Congress originally authorized the CIA to develop the secret counterterrorism program that is now drawing fierce criticism from House Democrats who say they were kept in the dark all along, a former senior intelligence official told FOX News on Monday.

“This was not a program. It never began,” the former official said. “The authority was given by Congress to develop this idea. … There was no need to brief it. It wasn’t a reality.”

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Tagged

al Qaeda, CIA, Congress, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Patrick Murphy, War on Terror