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Title: John Dean: Cheney is guilty of 'murder' if Hersh claims are true
Source:
Raw Story
URL Source: http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=14779
Published: Mar 14, 2009
Author: David Edwards and Rachel Oswald
Post Date: 2009-03-14 06:31:53 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 515
Comments: 11
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s bombshell earlier this week that Vice President Dick Cheney controlled an “executive assassination ring” continues to reverberate throughout Washington, with Nixon aide John Dean going so far as to accuse the former VP of murder if the charges are true. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann visited the issue on his show Countdown Thursday night where he discussed the legal implications of Hersh's allegations with Dean, who was White House legal counsel under President Richard Nixon. “It’s potentially a war crime,” Dean said of the reported assassination ring. “It’s potentially just outright murder and it’s clearly in violation of the Ford Executive Order.” Hersh told the students at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday that the assassination squad was “a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. In the Bush-Cheney Days, they reported directly to the Cheney, Cheney office. They do not report to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to Mr. Gates, the secretary of defense. They report directly to him. Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring, essentially.” “If this is true you have to prosecute this. There is no way around this,” said Olbermann, noting the 1976 executive order of President Gerald Ford which explicitly outlawed the engagement of political employees in political assassination. Cheney was Ford’s chief of staff at the time the order was issued. “By the time Cheney was back in the West Wing it appears that Cheney had forgotten his own boss’s executive order, or worse, he had decided to ignore it,” Olbermann said. Dean told Olbermann that “the President’s the only one you can argue who may have the authority to engage in assassinations. Newsweek editor Howard Fineman shared with Olbermann his own investigation into the veracity of Hersh's claims. Fineman said his talks Thursday with sources in the intelligence community had revealed that while they are skeptical of the existence of any assassination ring, they had too much respect in Hersh's reporting to dismiss the allegations outright and that they warranted further study. However, not everyone is buying the claims made by Hersh. The Weekly Standard's Bill Roggio writes, "Hersh has made a living of making fantastic claims that don't quite live up to the hype. Chalk this one up as another Hersh fantasy." Claims by the CIA that the Hersh allegations were “utter nonsense,” are not surprising, said Fineman. “If there is in fact such a thing... and the CIA was kept in the dark about it, the last thing they would want to do right now is to admit it,” Fineman said. Fineman said he has been told by aides to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has proposed forming an independent ‘Truth Commission’ to investigate abuses of the Bush administration, that not many members of the Senate have signed on to the proposal as of yet. However, the new allegations by Hersh may be shocking enough to push more senators over to Leahy’s side, Fineman said. “This could be that thing, depending on how much it pans out,” Fineman said. “One more really serious allegation…I think you’re going to see a lot of senators wanting to join Sen. Leahy’s side on this.” This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Mar. 12, 2009. Download video via RawReplay.com
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#1. To: Ada (#0)
Darth considered himself the de facto president. The man was and is the clearest case of demon possession I have ever seen. We are very fortunate he didn't start thermonuclear war. He tried his best (or worst).
“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston
The high level corruption on every side of the aisle prevents any real discussion relative to prosecutions of these murdering fuckwads. Boycott the FED, resist the FED, deny the FED, fuck the FED. The FEDERAL RESERVE and the FEDERAL GOVT. are one and the same thing.
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces. De La Boétie
Show us one example of where Hersh was wrong.
As long as claims made by established commentators, investigators and journalists remain mere allegations, such claims will never be proven niether "wrong" nor "right." An unfortunate result of the the last half century of court precedents with regard to defamation is to render a remedy against publication of such claims quite difficult irrespective of the truth of those claims when the person who is the object of those claims is a "public person." The unintended effect of requiring "actual malice" to obtain in such cases makes suits for libel, slander and defamation so difficult to litigate that today they rarely occur at all. Hereby, reporters like Hersh may allege the most heinous acts on the part of public officials and no one any longer expects those officials to call their lawyers and repair to the courts for a remedy. It no longer matters if it's Hersh or Fineman or Alex Jones. It may all be tossed into the bin as "tinfoil."
Join 2x4 Tuesdays & protect your RKBA. Perhaps because they fear what would be revealed in the discovery phase of a trial.
Yes of course. But today no Freeper or other fanatic raises his voice to say "Mr. Vice President you should sue these scoundrels!" His failure to do so is not a monument to the lack of substance that might be revealed in such a suit, but to his inability to succeed in it due to a technicality. Cheney's people will quietly tell the rubes that, unfortunately, the former VP is a public figure, and that precedents that have issued from a liberal bench make it impossible for him to prevail against such scurrilous attacks. That's why we never hear anything more substantive in response to charges like those made by Hersh than "No comment."
Join 2x4 Tuesdays & protect your RKBA. Loddy, you certainly have a fine way of incising directly to the scrofulous cancer in our government that is quite admirable and much-appreciated.
"The 'uniter' has brought the entire world together - to despise and deride us." lodwick
Bub - at this stage of the game, I've gotta keep it simple (so that I can understand it myself)...and my English Composition teacher in HS, one Miss Minnie Lee Smith, drilled into our little mush-heads to never use ten words, when three would do.
Personally, I wish politicians would wage war by killing each other and leaving the rest of us alone.
Amen. That's the way it was way, way, way, back in the day. Let the 'leaders' duke it out.
Note: The US Dept of Justice is manned by Eric Holder. Enuff said.
#2. To: Ada (#0)
#3. To: Ada (#0)
"Hersh has made a living of making fantastic claims that don't quite live up to the hype. Chalk this one up as another Hersh fantasy."
#4. To: lodwick (#3)
where Hersh was wrong
www.righttokeepandbeararms.com
#5. To: randge. all (#4)
Hereby, reporters like Hersh may allege the most heinous acts on the part of public officials and no one any longer expects those officials to call their lawyers and repair to the courts for a remedy.
#6. To: lodwick (#5)
www.righttokeepandbeararms.com
#7. To: lodwick (#5)
Perhaps because they fear what would be revealed in the discovery phase of a trial.
#8. To: Bub. all (#7)
Thank you.
#9. To: Ada (#0)
No place is better than Turtle Island.
#10. To: Turtle. all (#9)
Personally, I wish politicians would wage war by killing each other and leaving the rest of us alone.
#11. To: Ada (#0)
"If this is true you have to prosecute this. There is no way around this," said Olbermann
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