This wasn't part of the campaign platform of Barack Obama but eventually, Obama was going to have to confront the "deep state" ---high level elements of domestic and foreign intelligence services in America.

The latest bombshell to drop was reported by the Guardian, a newspaper based in the UK:

Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials.

Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.

This bombshell was discussed by Jane Mayer on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann last night (In fact, Olbermann's show covered a wide range of stories involving the "deep state" and institutionalized lawlessness under the Bush Administration.)

 The NY Times reports that Cheney was in fact linked to the decision to conceal it and Leon Panetta, the current head of the CIA, "ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day."

Democratic senators are condemning concealment of the assasssination squad program.

Democratic Senator and Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein has taken issue with the plan for Mossad-like squads saying that news of concealment of this program from Congress by Cheney "is a big problem because the law is very clear."

Few are taking issue with the fact that America may have planned assassination squads even though that in and of itself presents moral quandaries. 

In March of this year, writer and investigative reporter for the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, created a frenzy when he suggested at the University of Minnesota that "the Bush administration ran an executive assassination ring that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney." (Exactly what we are hearing now.)

Hersh appeared on Democracy Now!  to discuss his claims & assertions on March 31st. 

One wonders why Obama and those taking the reins of the CIA claim to have just found out about the program on June 23rd instead of in March when Hersh was creating a stir on the Internet and briefly in the news. 

Additionally, it appears that the CIA is not just at the center of a controversy that involves Cheney concealing a program involving assassination squads.

RAW STORY reports: 

A former U.S. intelligence agent said in a report published Monday that terror suspect Abu Zubaydah was subjected to simulated drowning months before the Bush administration’s Department of Justice had written memos approving the use of waterboarding.

The claim strikes a serious blow to repeated Bush administration arguments that no laws were broken in the torture of prisoners because legal guidelines had been closely followed.