Report: Cheney told CIA stay mum
WASHINGTON, July 11 (UPI) -- The CIA kept Congress in the dark for eight years about a secret counter-terrorism program on orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, sources said.
Citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter, The New York Times reported Saturday CIA Director Leon Panetta informed members of the House and Senate committees on intelligence about Cheney's involvement in the decision to withhold knowledge from Congress about the program. Panetta canceled the program June 23 when he was first briefed on its existence -- four months after he took office.
The program was begun in 2001, following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Officials this week would describe it only in general terms, calling it "off again, on again" and saying it was part of the effort to gather intelligence on terrorism suspects.
Democrats on the two intelligence panels said they should have been briefed on the program during the terms of the Bush administration.
"Instructions were given not to brief Congress," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said.
Republicans suggested the program was not a major initiative and congressional briefing was not required. They also suggested Democrats were seeking to use the development to back up claims by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., that she was not briefed on the interrogation techniques used by the CIA.
The Times said Saturday Cheney could not be reached for comment.
The federal government issued a report Friday indicating Cheney's office played a significant role in limiting awareness of a plan by a small group of government officials to eavesdrop without warrants.
Car bomb kills at least 4 in Mosul
MOSUL, Iraq, July 11 (UPI) -- At least four people were killed Saturday when a car bomb exploded in a market in Mosul in northern Iraq, authorities said.
The bomb injured 40 people, the BBC reported, citing police sources.
Mosul, an ethnically diverse city 250 miles northwest of Baghdad, has continued to be hit by violence as most of Iraq has become more peaceful.
The bomb Saturday went off in an area where most of the residents are Shabak, a minority group whose members consider themselves to be Kurdish and follow religious practices combining elements of Islam with other beliefs.
Mexican police, soldiers slain by gangs
MEXICO CITY, July 11 (UPI) -- Several Mexican police officers and soldiers were gunned down in seven cities Saturday in what officials said were attacks by drug traffickers.
CNN reported the coordinated attacks left three federal officers and two soldiers dead and six police officers wounded.
The government-run news agency Notimex said assailants armed with rifles and grenades struck in the Michoacan state cities of Morelia, Zitacuaro, Zamora, Lazaro Cardenas, Apatzingan, La Piedad and Huetama, the U.S. news network reported.
The attacks followed the recent capture of a high-ranking member of the drug gang La Familia (The Family), CNN said.
Violated cemetery now a crime scene
ALSIP, Ill., July 11 (UPI) -- The entire Chicago-area cemetery where employees allegedly violated graves has been declared a crime scene, police said Saturday.
The move means family members and the news media will be barred from Burr Oak Cemetery for at least five days, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The cemetery manager and three gravediggers were arrested Wednesday on charges of digging up bodies and reselling the plots.
Two of the defendants, Keith and Terrence Nicks, are related to Robert Nicks, a former Cook County employee charged in 1995 with robbing a corpse in the county morgue of money and drugs, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Investigators say as many as 300 graves may have been violated at Burr Oak and authorities say they have been unable to locate the section devoted to children's graves.
The cemetery is the final resting place of many prominent black Chicago residents, including jazz singer Dinah Washington and Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955. Till's original coffin, replaced when his body was exhumed in 2005, was discovered in a shed this week.
The episode has caused Illinois officials to call for increased cemetery regulation.
"The honor system isn't working anymore," Alsip Mayor Patrick Kitching told the Tribune.
