In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.
This is how the system is supposed to work:
Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.
Those Democrats -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes -- have failed to provide oversight of the funds they delegated to covert operations.
There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.
Hersh describes the Finding as "a compromise, providing legal cover for the C.I.A." to engage in rendition and torture and other actions that might result in death. The CIA director says the ambiguous language only authorizes "Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm." It's less than clear that the Bush administration agrees with that interpretation.
One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that “no lethal action, period” had been authorized within Iran’s borders. As of June, he had received no answer.
How long before John McCain's musical foreign policy strategy -- "bomb bomb bomb, bomb Iran" -- becomes reality? Covert activity is not awaiting the outcome of the next election. Will missiles fly and bombs drop before November? What will happen after the election?
Barack Obama has said that, if elected, he would begin talks with Iran with no “self-defeating” preconditions (although only after diplomatic groundwork had been laid). That position has been vigorously criticized by John McCain.
