CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE Agency (CIA) director Leon Panetta has admitted that the agency misled and concealed actions from Congress repeatedly from 2001 to last June, according to a letter from six Democratic members of the House intelligence committee.
The letter was sent on June 26th, two days after Mr Panetta told the committee in a closed hearing that he had just shut down a CIA programme that had been concealed from Congress and that he himself had only learnt about the previous day.
The letter asked Mr Panetta to retract a statement he made in May to the effect that “it is not our policy or practice” to mislead Congress. “Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week,” the letter said.
The representatives gave no details of the nature of the secret programme revealed by Mr Panetta but one member of the intelligence committee said it had been in operation since 2001.
The CIA is obliged to keep Congress informed about covert intelligence activities. The most sensitive information is disclosed only to a group of top committee and congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight. Democrats want more information shared with the full intelligence committees in the House and Senate.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi sparked controversy earlier this year when she said the CIA had lied to Congress, a charge Mr Panetta denied.
House intelligence committee chairman Silvestre Reyes is considering an inquiry into the secret programme the CIA concealed for almost eight years. In a letter to Pete Hoekstra, the leading Republican on the committee, Mr Reyes said Mr Panetta’s admission “led me to conclude that this committee has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notification and (in at least once case) was affirmatively lied to”.
