The Proper Republican Response to CIA Revelations

CIA Director Leon Panetta's recent admission to members of Congress that the CIA kept a program secret from everyone, including Congress, under orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney has brought the expected witch hunt from the left and cries of witch hunt from the right. This would be my response:

1) Let's call a spade a spade. The level of executive privelage used by the second Bush administration clearly went beyond what was necessary to keep us safe. There is a difference between using military commissions to keep secrets uncovered about terrorist activities and resulting from ongoing investigations, vs. hiding certain executive/intelligence activities because they were probably illegal.

2) An investigation here is appropriate. This is different than the liberal attempt to haul everyone who ever spoke to the former President concerning waterboarding and other forms of enhanced interrogation and its potential illegality. Those are policies that have since been abolished by the new administration, and crafting a legal opinion (such as what John Yoo and other lawyers did) or carrying out activities that you were told were legal (such as what the CIA operatives involve did) should never be considered wrong. That was their job, and they were told by every one of their superiors that they were doing it properly. In this case, there is the potential for blatent, knowledgeable violations of the law.

3) As mentioned above, this investigation should not touch the CIA operative who carried out this operation, if they were simply told by their superiors that it was legal and had no reason to suspect otherwise.

4) As believers in limited, constitutional government, we should be apalled that the Vice President, a position that exists, even in the new, expanded government, solely to break tie-votes in the Senate and advise the President/lead Presidential commissions, was issuing commands such as this.

5) While this should be carried out in a way that is as transparant as possible, the specifics of this program should not be revealed to the public until it can be confirmed that it was illegal. We also shouldn't jump to conclusions about the legality of this. While morally we can be opposed to the VP having such powers and select committees not being briefed, this may have been within the realm of the law. Whether we like this or not, we need to remember that.

Relevant Link: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24821.html