Pelosi could have objected to waterboarding but didn’t at the time, becoming a critic only later on
As political spectacles go, one would be hard pressed to find anything as ridiculous as the Washington Romper Room now starring Congressional Democrats and the CIA. If only the consequences weren’t potentially so damaging for national security.
There’s apparently no limit to how far Speaker Pelosi’s friends on the Hill are willing to go to salvage her reputation. The intentions are transparent enough. The Reyes letter was addressed to Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on Intelligence. Mr. Hoekstra yesterday said the media received the missive before he did. And two days after the Panetta testimony last month, six Democratic Members of the committee called on the CIA Director to “correct” his statement in May that the CIA doesn’t lie to Congress. He didn’t. The six are allies of Speaker Pelosi. Her public standing—and poll numbers—have been battered since her run-in with Mr. Panetta and the facts this spring.
House Democrats have set out to hobble the CIA and further handcuff the executive branch. Republicans, naturally, were frozen out. At Speaker Pelosi’s insistence, gone would be the right of the President to limit disclosure of sensitive information to the so-called Gang of Eight—the House Speaker and Minority Leader, Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairmen and ranking Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. This authority would pass to Congress. The bill would also expand disclosure requirements for all sorts of intelligence activities.
This is a recipe for more leaks and more compromised CIA operations. Congress claims it needs to better monitor Presidential intelligence decisions. But the real lesson of the last few years is that Congress wants to know about, and often second-guess, intelligence decisions without being responsible for the result. Mrs. Pelosi could have objected to waterboarding but didn’t at the time, becoming a critic only when it became a political uproar. Senator Jay Rockefeller could have resisted warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda but instead wrote a letter and stuck it in a drawer.
