DOD runs secret missions with no oversight: Seymour Hersh broke the story: Pentagon dogs strike back: NY Times & CNN confirm its all true

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Annals of National Secrecy | Ari Berman: "01/26/2005 @ 09:58am permalink

Last week in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh broke one of his most revelatory stories to date, alleging that the Pentagon is running secret intelligence missions free from Congressional restraints on the CIA.

According to Hersh, these "black reconnaissance" operations--as the Pentagon calls them--are now active in as many as ten countries in the Middle East and South Asia, including Iran. In an effort to infiltrate terrorist organizations, the teams are doing CIA-type work without CIA restrictions or Constitutional checks. ...
...
Instead of denying the existence of the secret teams outright, the Pentagon and its attack dogs struck back with an extraordinary smear campaign. "Mr. Hersh's article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed," wrote Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita in a sharply worded statement. Washington Times columnist Tony Blankley accused Hersh of espionage. Former White House speechwriter (and "Axis of Evil" originator) David Frum said Hersh had endangered US lives. Michael Ledeen, a tireless Iranian conspiracy theorist, called the article "plain crazy," and "classic Hersh incoherence." Richard Perle--who famously dubbed Hersh "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist" in March 2003--told Charlie Rose: "It was a typical Sy Hersh piece. That is to say it was full of inaccuracy." ...
...
The next day, The New York Times and CNN ran follow-up confirmations and DiRita quickly changed his tone. "It is accurate and should not be surprising that the Department of Defense is attempting to improve its long-standing human intelligence capability," DiRita said in a classic non-denial denial. John McCain called for Senate Armed Services Committee hearings. And Senator Chuck Hagel worried that the Pentagon had once again concentrated too much power in too few hands. "That's when a country gets into a lot of trouble, when you brush back the Congress and you don't have oversight and you don't have cooperation, and I see too much of that out of this Pentagon," Hagel said.

So Hersh was right. Now the Pentagon owes Congress an explanation, while Mssrs. DiRita, Blankley, Frum, Ledeen and Perle owe Hersh an apology.