Secret CIA Program: Kidnapping Family Members?

In the post below I said that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the secret CIA program recently shut down was something as gruesome as kidnapping family members of suspected terrorists. It was simply something that occurred to me, based I think on vague memories of hearing charges of such activities.

Now I've found this:

Jul. 14, 2006 | Congress has demanded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hand over a raft of documents to Congress that could substantiate allegations that U.S. forces have tried to break terror suspects by kidnapping and mistreating their family members. Rumsfeld has until 5 p.m. Friday to comply.

It now appears that kidnapping, scarcely covered by the media, and absent in the major military investigations of detainee abuse, may have been systematically employed by U.S. troops. Salon has obtained Army documents that show several cases where U.S. forces abducted terror suspects’ families. After he was thrown in prison, Cpl. Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader at Abu Ghraib, told investigators the military routinely kidnapped family members to force suspects to turn themselves in.

More:

In a hearing before Shays' Government Reform subcommittee last February, [Army Spc. Samuel] Provance testified that the Army had retaliated against him. Provance also made the disturbing allegation that interrogators broke an Iraqi general, Hamid Zabar, by imprisoning and abusing his frail 16-year-old son. Waxman was shocked. "Do you think this practice was repeated with other children?" he asked Provance. "I don't see why it would not have been, sir," Provance replied.

Cheney's Secret CIA Program: The Cover Story

The story we've been hearing since yesterday is that the secret and possibly illegal CIA program recently killed by chief Leon Panetta has to do with assassinations attempts on Al Qaeda leaders.

A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

Bull. Shit. Or, at least, there is much, much more to this story. But we'll hear this "assassinating Al Qaeda operatives" aspect of it shouted from Right Wing mountain tops, along with choruses of "They're terrorists! We're supposed to kill them! Dems are soft on terror!" in order to distract from the programs alleged illegality, and whatever else it involved.

I wouldn't be surprised, given that “the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans," to find out that the program involved something as gruesome as kidnapping and threatening family members of suspected terrorists.