PART OF THE INTERVIEW:
Amy Goodman: Explain what the Joint Special Operations Command is and what oversight Congress has of it.
Seymour Hersh: Well, it's a special unit. We have something called the Special Operations Command that operates out of Florida, and it involves a lot of wings. And one of the units that work under the umbrella of the Special Operations Command is known as Joint Special Op -- JSOC. It's a special unit. What makes it so special, it's a group of elite people that include Navy Seals, some Navy Seals, Delta Force -- what we call our black units, the commando units. "Commando" is a word they don't like, but that's what we, most of us, refer to them as. And they promote from within. It's a unit that has its own promotion structure. And one of the elements, I must tell you, about getting ahead in promotion is the number of kills you have. Of course. Because it's basically devised -- it's been transmogrified, if you will, into this unit that goes after high-value targets.
And where Cheney comes in and the idea of an assassination ring -- I actually said "wing," but of an assassination wing -- that reports to Cheney was simply that they clear lists through the Vice President's office. He's not sitting around picking targets. They clear the lists. And he's certainly deeply involved, less and less as time went on, of course, but in the beginning very closely involved. And this is the elite unit. I think they do three-month tours. And last summer, I wrote a long article in The New Yorker, last July, about how the JSOC operation is simply not available, and there's no information provided by the executive to Congress.
Amy Goodman: What countries, Sy Hersh -- what countries are they operating in?
Seymour Hersh: A lot of countries.
Amy Goodman: Name some.
Seymour Hersh: No, because I haven't written about it, Amy. And I will tell you, as I say, in Central America, it's far more than just the areas that Mr. Hannah talked about -- Afghanistan, Iraq. You can understand an operation like this in the heat of battle in Iraq, killing, I mean, taking out enemy. That's war. But when you go into other countries -- let's say Yemen, let's say Peru, let's say Colombia, let's say Eritrea, let's say Madagascar, let's say Kenya, countries like that -- and kill people who are believed on a list to be al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-linked or anti-American, you're violating most of the tenets.
We're a country that believes very much in due process. That's what it's all about. We don't give the President of United States the right to tell military people, even in a war -- and it's a war against an idea, war against terrorism. It's not as if we're at war against a committed uniformed enemy. It's a very complicated war we're in. And with each of those actions, of course, there's always collateral deaths, and there's always more people ending up becoming our enemies. That's the tragedy of Guantanamo. By the time people, whether they were with us or against us when they got there, by the time they've been there three or four months, they're dangerous to us, because of the way they've been treated.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/134347/seymour_hersh%3A_secret_u.s._forces_carried_out_assassinations_in_%27a_lot_of%27_countries%2C_including_in_latin_america/
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