Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) may have inadvertently leaked classified information during a Fox News interview, disclosing an aspect of a FISA court’s decision regarding warrantless wiretapping. Today, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, may have unintentionally done the same thing.
This time, the forum wasn’t Rupert Murdoch’s Republican TV network, but rather, one of Murdoch’s Republican newspapers: the New York Post. Ironically, Hoekstra wrote an op-ed condemning leaks.
Unfortunately, at a time when the threat to our nation from foreign terrorists is growing, the Democratic Congress refuses to show responsible leadership.
* Leaks to the news media have seriously undermined anti-terrorist intelligence programs. Instead of condemning these leaks for the damage they have done to our national security, Democrats have tried to exploit them to attack the Bush administration for spying on Americans, a charge that has been repeatedly proven untrue.
* The Democratic 9/11 bill that passed Congress last month included a clause to declassify the top line of the U.S. intelligence budget – a move that will give our foes more information on our activities, but do nothing to protect us from terrorists.
* The 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill cut human-intelligence programs but directed U.S. intelligence agencies to study global climate change.
Now, on the substance of Hoekstra’s claim, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that he’s wrong about Dems wanting to cut human-intelligence programs. That certainly sounds wrong, and Hoekstra’s not exactly reliable on these issues.
But more importantly, the op-ed’s bullet points included some information that apparently wasn’t supposed to be released.
Raw Story’s Michael Roston noted today that Hoekstra’s op-ed is already drawing criticism for an inadvertent leak.
“It looks like Rep. Hoekstra is playing games with classification rules by making his claim publicly,” said Dr. Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “I suggest that he go investigate himself.”
Aftergood’s remark is tied to the Intelligence Committee’s report on the Fiscal Year 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill. The human intelligence budget cuts that Hoekstra complains about are found only in the classified portion of the legislation.
“In the classified annex, the majority cuts human intelligence programs counter to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission,” according to the ‘Minority Views’ section of the report. […]
“If you live by secrecy, you die by secrecy,” [Aftergood] said. “Rep. Hoekstra has been an ardent defender of the secrecy barriers surrounding the intelligence budget and a harsh critic of leaks. Ironically, he now finds himself unable to coherently defend what he claims is a mistaken budget choice.”
It’s probably worth noting that Hoekstra’s reputation as a hack makes this all the more believable.
* In February, immediately before a congressional debate on the president’s surge policy, Hoekstra distributed a memo to the GOP caucus, arguing, “The debate should not be about the surge or its details. This debate should not even be about the Iraq war to date, mistakes that have been made, or whether we can, or cannot, win militarily. If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose.”
* In November 2006, Hoekstra pushed the administration to publish online a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The idea was to let far-right bloggers “prove” that Saddam had WMD, but Hoekstra’s plan led to the accidental release of secret nuclear research, including a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
* In July 2006, Hoekstra called a humiliating press conference to announce, “We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” — despite failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And now this guy is leaking in New York Post op-eds? Maybe House Republicans can find someone a little less reckless (and a little brighter) to serve as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee?
