Cheney's Death Squads

The New York Times just reported that Leon Panetta, the current head of the CIA, had this week informed Congress of an intelligence activity that has been going on for 8 years. NYT doesn't say what it is, but they report that Panetta just found out about it himself. This intelligence activity has apparently been discontinued by Panetta and he wanted to let Congress know that what the CIA has been doing for the last 8 years is no longer happening. But what is it?

The Huffington Post gives us a possible answer:

Another theory being bandied about concerns an "executive assassination ring" that was allegedly set up and answered to former Vice President Dick Cheney. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, building off earlier reporting from the New York Times, dropped news of the possibility that such a ring existed in a March 2009 discussion sponsored by the University of Minnesota.

"It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," Hersh said. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it," he added. "It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."

So is this just the latest revelation to come from the Bush Administration's War on Terror? The latest in the history of U.S. intelligence murdering political opponents abroad in defiance of international law? In this case, the story is a bit more sinister because this particular unit was unknown even to the head of the CIA, but was under the direct control of Cheney's office. The Bush years were indeed ugly: torture, secret surveillance, and now, secret death squads payed for by our tax dollars.
Will Congress continue to shirk its duties to oversee the intelligence community which has clearly been running amok for years?