From The Guardian's story:

Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials.

Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.

The CIA apparently did not put the plan in to operation but the US military did, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the programme.

A former intelligence official said the plan was hatched in the cauldron of the September 11 attacks when officials were pushing various forms of unilateral action and some settled on the Israelis as an example.

"One of the most sensitive areas has been what we do in friendly countries that don't want to co-operate or maybe we don't have enough confidence to entrust them with information. If you have an al-Qaida guy wandering around certain bits of the world we might decide that we need to deal with that ourselves, directly, without making a lot of noise," he said. "There was a plan to deal with that. It was much talked about in the CIA and the military had its own operation."

Another former senior intelligence official responsible for dealing with al-Qaida said that assassination plans were reined in after similar covert operations by the military were botched and proved to be embarrassing, particularly the killing in Kenya. He did not give details of the operation.

The official said he believes from conversations with serving members of the CIA that the area of real concern in Congress is that the planned operations may also have involved the covert surveillance of American citizens.

There appears to be common agreement among knowledgeable former intelligence officials that the controversy goes beyond the immediate question of assassination and capture of al-Qaida operatives as there have been numerous killings and detentions since the 9/11 attacks.

One former official said that the Bush administration discussed assassinations in the context of a ban introduced in the 1970s that responded to several failed CIA attempts to murder Fidel Castro, and concluded that as the US had declared itself at war with al-Qaida and the Taliban, this ban did not apply.

In the aftermath of September 11th when the entire world was on the American side, it is difficult to conceive of most foreign governments not co-operating with US intelligence on these matters. The main exception would have been Pakistan whose intelligenc services, the ISI, retains links to Al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups. Furthermore, extra-judicial assassinating Al Qaeda operatives in the field is a far different cry from assassinating foreign leaders. Based on what we know now, it still remains puzzling as to why Vice President Cheney would order the details of this secret CIA program, and now apparently a DOD program as well, concealed from the Gang of the Eight in the Congressional leadership.