HOW TO GET A MEDAL

When Fredo awarded Tenet the Medal of Freedom last December, I was stunned. How could Tenet get anything but a curt dismissal after 9-11 and Iraq? I then came across this passage from The Price of Loyalty and it started to make a little more sense:

Page 190
In the corner, O’Neill sat in a wide leather chair, devouring the pile of documents that George Tenet had passed out in the meeting. [At Camp David, 9/15/01 - Steve J.] It laid out a span of covert activity around the globe, including plots and assassinations – a plan to neutralize people disposed against the U.S. government by any means necessary. At its core was the enabling provision that there be virtually no civilian oversight.

Almost no oversight means that Fredo can act with virtual impunity and Fredo likes that. In 2002, Fredo authorized the NSA to bypass the FISA courts.

Dana Priest at the WaPo has written a report on this CIA program(s) and we see the same pattern of handling issues: keep it inside the WH and don't let others know what's going on:

When the CIA wanted new rules for interrogating important terrorism suspects the White House gave the task to a small group of lawyers within the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel who believed in an aggressive interpretation of presidential power.

The White House tightened the circle of participants involved in these most sensitive new areas. It initially cut out the State Department's general counsel, most of the judge advocates general of the military services and the Justice Department's criminal division, which traditionally dealt with international terrorism.

Presumably, those lawyers at Justice included John Yoo, who believes that there are practically no limits on Presidential power. Fredo likes that kind of thinking.

A little more disturbing is the fact that Fredo apparently also likes knowing the details of these "black ops":

"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations."

Fredo is starting to make Noxin look relatively OK.