Presidential Slush Fund for Terror

Update: Here is the Sy Hersh article being talked about.

Here are links to Tristero [look for “Thus, The Gates Of Hell” the article-link seems broken] and Digby [look for “Rube Goldberg Policy Contraption” the article-link seems broken] talking about the article.
*
Crooks And Liars catches a scary interview Blitzer on CNN has with Sy Hersh. It is scary in many respects:

that the brain trust in the Administration has decided to tilt Sunni (and thus, al-Qaeda, and Sunni killers of US troops in Iraq) against Shiia (read Iran);

that a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours;

that there is all kind of money washing through the middle east, the source of which is the US government, being used for covert ops, unauthorized by anyone other than the president’s henchmen;

that John Negroponte’s decision to step down as Intelligence Chief and become a Deputy Secretary of State was in part because he opposed these under the counter dealings; Negroponte was too ethical!

…we have been pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia is putting up some of this money, for covert operations in many areas of the Middle East where we think that the — we want to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.

…So America, my country, without telling Congress, using funds not appropriated, I don’t know where, by my sources believe much of the money obviously came from Iraq where there is all kinds of piles of loose money, pools of cash that could be used for covert operations.

All of this should be investigated by Congress, by the way, and I trust it will be. In my talking to membership — members there, they are very upset that they know nothing about this. And they have great many suspicions.

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, and we should be arresting these people rather than looking the other way…

Awash in Cash