Seymour Hersh: Secret U.S. Forces Carried Out Assassinations in 'a Lot of' Countries, Including in Latin America

Amy Goodman: Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh created a stir last month when he said the Bush administration ran an executive assassination ring that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney. Hersh made the comment during a speech at the University of Minnesota on March 10th.

Seymour Hersh: Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination wing, essentially. And it's been going on and on and on. And just today in the Times there was a story saying that its leader, a three-star admiral named McRaven, ordered a stop to certain activities because there were so many collateral deaths. It's been going in -- under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving.

Amy Goodman: Yesterday, CNN interviewed Dick Cheney's former national security adviser, John Hannah. Wolf Blitzer asked Hannah about Sy Hersh's claim.

Wolf Blitzer: Is there a list of terrorists, suspected terrorists out there who can be assassinated?

John Hannah: There is clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted process, inter-agency process, as I think was explained in your piece, that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States, or are suspected of planning operations of war against the United States, who authority is given to the troops in the field and in certain war theaters to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true.

Wolf Blitzer: And so, this would be, and from your perspective -- and you worked in the Bush administration for many year-- it would be totally constitutional, totally legal, to go out and find these guys and to whack 'em.

John Hannah: There's no question that in a theater of war, when we are at war, and we know -- there's no doubt, we are still at war against al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and on that Pakistani border, that our troops have the authority to go after and capture and kill the enemy, including the leadership of the enemy.

Amy Goodman: That's John Hannah, Dick Cheney's former national security adviser. Seymour Hersh joins me now here in Washington, D.C., staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. His latest article appears in the current issue, called "Syria Calling: The Obama Administration's Chance to Engage in a Middle East Peace."

OK, welcome to Democracy Now!, Sy Hersh. It was good to see you last night at Georgetown. Talk about, first, these comments you made at the University of Minnesota.

Seymour Hersh: Well, it was sort of stupid of me to start talking about stuff I haven't written. I always kick myself when I do it. But I was with Walter Mondale, the former vice president, who was being amazingly open and sort of, for him -- he had come a long way … since I knew him as a senator who was reluctant to oppose the Vietnam War. And so, I was asked about future things, and I just -- I am looking into stuff. I've done -- there's really nothing I said at Minnesota I haven't written in the (New Yorker). Last summer, I wrote a long article about the Joint Special Operations Command.

And just to go back to what John Hannah, who … I think ended up being the senior national security adviser, almost -- if not the chief of staff, deputy chief of staff for Dick Cheney in the last three or four years, what he said is simply that, yes, we go after people suspected -- that was the word he used -- of crimes against America. And I have to tell you that there's an executive order, signed by Jerry Ford, President Ford, in the '70s, forbidding such action. It's not only contrary -- it's illegal, it's immoral, it's counterproductive.