 Former US vice president Dick Cheney |
Seymour Hersh says an 'executive assassination ring' in the US military was in direct contact with the Bush administration's second-in-command.
Hersh, an esteemed investigative reporter, quite unintentionally dropped the bombshell during a "Great Conversations" event at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday that centered on Nixon-style abuses of executive power by succeeding US leaders.
According to Hersh, former Vice President Dick Cheney condoned and was informed about the operations carried out by the alleged covert unit, which he dubbed an "executive assassination ring."
In response to a question by the event's moderator on instances of intelligence activities in grey areas of the law, like the Watergate scandal -- which encompass a range of abuses of law including campaign fraud, political espionage and improper tax audits that eventually led to the resignation of the 37th US president, Richard Nixon, -- Hersh explained two cases of active operations throughout the Bush administration.
"After 9/11, [the CIA] was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state; without any legal authority for it," the legendary reporter replied.
 Seymour Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1970 for exposing the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. |
"Congress has no oversight of it "It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on," Hersh stated.
With an almost unlimited authority under Bush, "they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us," the Pulitzer Prize winner mused.
In an emailed statement Hersh later said he had not planned to touch on his new unpublished findings, saying it would take a few years to gather the required proof and substance.
With an almost unlimited authority under Bush, "they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us," the Pulitzer Prize winner mused.
In an emailed statement Hersh later said he had not planned to touch on his new unpublished findings, saying it would take a few years to gather the required proof and substance.
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