WASHINGTON - — WASHINGTON - -The CIA kept a highly classified counterterrorism program secret from Congress for eight years at the direction of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, according to sources familiar with an account that agency director Leon Panetta provided recently to House and Senate committees.
The sources declined to provide any details on the nature of the program, but said that the agency has opened an internal inquiry in recent days into the history of the program and the decisions made by a series of senior officials to withhold information about it from Congress.
Cheney's involvement suggests that the program was considered important enough by the Bush administration that it should be monitored at the highest levels of government, and that the White House was reluctant to risk disclosure of its details to lawmakers.
Panetta killed the program June 23 after apparently learning of it for the first time four months after he became CIA director. He then called special sessions with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
The CIA's relationship with Congress has become a source of controversy in Washington in recent months, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, accused the agency of lying to members about its use of water-boarding and other harsh interrogation measures after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The secret counterterrorism program was put in place shortly after those attacks but was never fully operational, sources said. Current and former intelligence and congressional officials have offered different viewpoints on the program's significance.
A senior congressional aide said the magnitude of the program and the decision to keep it secret should not be played down. "Panetta found out about this for the first time and within 24 hours was in the office telling us," the aide said. "If this wasn't a big deal, why would the director of the CIA come sprinting up to the hill like that."
An aide to Cheney did not respond to a request for comment.
By law, the CIA is required to make sure that congressional committees are "kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity." But there is latitude in the language for programs and operations deemed extremely sensitive, or those that might be considered routine. Former U.S. intelligence officials said that Panetta's predecessors, including retired Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, did not feel they were constrained from informing Congress about the program, but regarded the activity as falling well short of the threshold for congressional notification.
