White House too unethical for Negroponte

Think Progress posts a clip from an interview with Sy Hersh on his latest article that expands on the points I made in this post yesterday and says the most explosive revelation he discovered is that the White House is spending buckets of money on covert operations without oversight or authority from the Congress. Hersh says:

“We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11.”

This is part of the administration's new strategy for damage control. Having finally realized they empowered Iran and Shia extremists by continuing the occupation of Iraq, they are now funding Sunni extremists with black money. These are the guys who are killing our troops and want to -- as Bush is fond of saying -- do us harm. These are the al Qaeda types that Cheney claims the Democratic Party is empowering by insisting the White House justifies its actions. I guess Cheney thinks rhetoric is more useful to the AQ than hard cold cash. And this could certainly explain some of those missing and misspent billions of dollars we funneled into Iraq. But I find the revelation about Negroponte even more interesting.

BLITZER: Your bottom line is that Negroponte was aware of this, obviously, and he wanted to distance himself from it? That is why he decided to give up that position and take the number two job at the State Department?

HERSH: He — that is one of the reasons, I was told. Negroponte also was not in tune with Cheney. There was a lot of complaints about him because he was seen as much of a stickler, too ethical for some of the operations the Pentagon wants to run.

Those of you who remember Iran-Contra and Negroponte's role in the death squads there will appreciate the irony of this situation. I've been pretty hard on Negroponte since he joined the administration but maybe he found a conscience in his later years. All I can say is if the White House is so unethical that Negroponte doesn't want to be associated with them, they must be behaving in an extremely criminal manner indeed.