Washington  - A secret operation halted last month by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director planned assassinations of al-Qaeda targets, a newspaper reported Monday.

The activities of the highly classified US operation weren't clear, and the agency refused to comment, but some officials said it followed a 2001 presidential directive to capture or kill al-Qaeda operatives, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing intelligence officials.

It quoted current and former officials as saying the agency spent money on planning and training but the initiative was reportedly not fully operational when CIA Director Leon Panetta ended it in June.

Some members of Congress accused the CIA and former president George W Bush's administration of deceiving lawmakers and deliberately failing to inform them of programme activities as required by law.

Panetta acknowledged that it had not been properly vetted with Congress. The new director under President Barack Obama said he only learned about it on June 23 and ordered it to end immediately.

Officials quoted by The Wall Street Journal said the project's proponents were seeking to build teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attacks.

"It was straight out of the movies," the paper quoted one former intelligence official as saying. "It was like: Let's kill them all."

The administration of then-president Gerald Ford banned political assassinations by the CIA in response to investigations into intelligence abuses in the 1970s. After the 2001 terrorist attacks on US soil, Bush issued a directive authorizing the agency to capture and kill al-Qaeda members, the report said.

Also in September 2001, as CIA operatives were preparing for an offensive in Afghanistan, officials drafted cables that would have authorized assassinations of specified targets on the spot, the newspaper said.

The recent revelations have made the secret programme a new focus in a long-running battle between the US executive and legislative branches about oversight of the country's intelligence agencies. (dpa)