Spilling the Beans On Our Foreign Policy

Reports recently have revealed that former VP Cheney had an extensive role in covering up a controversial CIA program to assassinate Al-Qaeda leaders. Because the VP had interfered with covert CIA operations, I definitely believe that certain Congressional leaders should have been made aware or updated of CIA actions, for practical reasons of upholding checks and balances in Governmental interference with the CIA and simply for a broader consensus of the decisions made. Typically, the CIA has varying amounts of Congressional oversight, although that is principally a guidance role.

With that said, I do think that media exposure of past CIA operations regarding assassination plots of al-Qaeda is a threat to our national security and unnecessary exploitations of our foreign policy. Such information is universally dispersed, and not just to the American people. Therefore, such controversial information should be kept within and between the Government and the CIA.

While I may not agree with the article in whole, National Review's Andrew Mccarthy makes a valid point:

"No one expects the CIA to alert congressional leadership every time some agent conjures up a potential operation or to waste Congress’s time with briefings to explain the agency’s current thinking on matters (like how to neutralize al-Qaeda) that everyone knows the agency is working on. After all, if Congress wants to inquire about such things, it can ask. At the same time, if the CIA is about to embark on an effort that could have significant policy or security consequences, it is in the interest of the president and the country that bipartisan congressional leadership be given a heads-up."