I previously posted Hersh’s article before I had read it through to the end. This interview with Hersh on CNN illuminates the last and most shocking part of the New Yorker article, which relates that John Negroponte quit his job because of Iran-Contra style activity, in this case off-the-shelf operations using the Iraqis’ budget money to fund covert operations. There’s not much detail about what those operations were, but the implication is that it was death squads.
Hersh: There has been some violence. 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…
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. (full transcript below the fold)
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