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Audacity of Truth
"Change" You Can Believe In:
"Nixon didn’t try to do that. They couldn't control (the media). They didn’t try. [...] What the hell do they think we are, puppets?"
- Liberal opinion writer Helen Thomas, describing the Obama admin's penchant for heavily scripting public appearances & press conferences - 7/1/09
House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra suspends Democratic staff member over possible leak of classified info to the NYT
Via the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON – House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.
In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions.
The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21.
“I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee’s minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic,” LaHood wrote Hoekstra, R-Mich., late last month. “This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply ‘look bad.’ But coincidence, in this town, is rare.”
A spokesman to Hoekstra, Jamal Ware, confirmed that a committee staff member was suspended this week. He said the staff member is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review.
“Chairman Hoekstra considers security highly important, and the coincidence certainly merits a review,” he said.
I eagerly await the results of the review. Now, if it’s found that this Dem staffer was the person who leaked selected portions of the NIE to the NYT, I look for Congressional Democrats and MSM editorial pages to decry the “witchhunt”, condemning the administration for “striking at the heart of democracy by trying to silence whistleblowers” etc etc … all of which will be done in an attempt to try and shirk responbility for actions they’ve taken a part in which have given aid and comfort to the enemy, and helped further influence the American people that the Iraq war is the “wrong war.” Leakers of classified information, and their willing accomplices in the press remind me of little children who, when they get their hands caught in the cookie jar, look at their parents with a wide eyed but unrepentant look as if to say “but that’s what kids DO.”
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, by the way, is the same guy who pushed for and got the release of some of the post-war intelligence documents found in Afghanistan and Iraq. These documents have helped further our understanding of the enemy, of Saddam’s intentions towards the west as well as his WMD capabilities. Hoekstra is also the guy who (along with Sen. Rick Santorum) not only announced that we had indeed found WMD in Iraq, but issued a public plea to the intelligence community to declassify more WMD-related documents found in Iraq after the war.
In a time when we’re all frustrated with Republicans to varying degrees, remember that Hoekstra’s one of the good apples. Thanks to Pete Hoekstra for being tenacious and on the ball when it comes to getting the information out that we need to know, and trying to keep the information that terrorists would like to know out of the hands of the MSM.
Hat tip: ST reader DS
Update I: Read more via Malkin, Captain Ed, Iowa Voice
Update II: Surprise, surprise. Democrats like Jane Harman are outraged. (Hat tip: Malkin, who flashes back to comments Harman made back in April on Fox News about the leaking of classified documents)
Update 10:02 PM: The Dem staffer has been identified (hat tip: ST reader Stoo in the comments)
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Who says the Democrats aren’t socialists/communists? To them, achievement of power, the ends justify the means, including intentionally losing a war.
Hmmm didn’t see this earlier ST, may as well delete that post of mine from your WED/THUR open thread.
Here’s the GOP’s campaign motto: “I have no credible information.”
No prob, sanity.
- This could make Foley look like a walk in the park. Harman is whistling past the cemetary. If it proves out that she was in anyway connected with this the Dems will have a Big Fat Greek piano falling on their heads at a most inauspicious time. Lahhod was already angry with some of Harmans foot dragging and obstructionism, as well as things she did in releasing intel in the past. As he put it on FOX this morning….”If Congresswoman Harman wants to play politics with our Nations security, I want her to know our side can give it back to her in spades….”
- Ouch!
- Bang
The suspended staffer has now been identified.
Stratasphere has more.
Here is the Democrats’ campaign motto: “We have never been this outraged since the last time we were this outraged.”
Or perhaps it should be: “We were enraged before we were outraged.”
Nothing in the leaked portion of the NIE endangered national security. It was an analysis that could have been done by just about any group of policy wonks who had access to the necessary statistics. It was classified to protect the Bush Administration from embarassment, an act which in itself is illegal. Here’s the relevant paragraph from EO 13292, signed by President Bush in 2001:
[emphasis mine, of course]
http://www.fas.org/sgp/bush/eoamend.html
The act of classifying this information is quite probably as illegal as the act of leaking it.
Cujo funnily wrote, “Nothing in the leaked portion of the NIE endangered national security. It was an analysis that could have been done by just about any group of policy wonks who had access to the necessary statistics. It was classified to protect the Bush Administration from embarassment,”
That is your opinion. Why not ask the creators of the document for the reason of classification. You would get an entirely different answer than your opinion. Therefore your opinion is INCORRECT.
Additionally, the declassifying of the area of the report to give context SHOWED pretty clearly that not only was this not an embarrasing report to Bush, but that the leaker and legacy drive by media were in error as to their conclusions of what the report was saying.
I’m happy that Bush declassified the report so as to pretty clearly show guys like you Cujo that your opinions are pretty far off from the FACTS….
So… You disagreed with the 3 year old decision to go to war in Iraq. That decision is long gone. Why not look at what we do going forward today? Are you one of those who are for “redeployment” so as to create a humanitarian crisis? If you disagree that pulling out would create a humanitarian crisis that is fine. That is your right to disagree. Just say so. People can believe your opinions or they can believe somebody else.
Why not ask the creators of the document for the reason of classification.
We have. Their only replies are tripe and nonsense. Having read the report that Bush leaked by partially declassifying it and the newspaper articles based on the portions leaked by someone else, I have no reason to believe otherwise.
I’m happy that Bush declassified the report so as to pretty clearly show guys like you Cujo that your opinions are pretty far off from the FACTS
Not sure what kind of anti-matter universe you live in, but even the portions Bush leaked are pretty damning. Some statements, which seem to be added for “balance” suggest that a few things are going well, but they provide no supporting data. The bad we can see on our TVs and read about in the papers. The only data that would be hard to obtain for ordinary folks has to do with the Al Qaeda population in Iraq. Since that evidence was probably obtained using torture, er excuse me, “tough interrogation”, I don’t think you can trust it any more than anyone else’s estimates.
So… You disagreed with the 3 year old decision to go to war in Iraq.
An assumption, and not a relevant one. Many folks who agreed with the decision now agree it was a bad one.
Why not look at what we do going forward today?
What’s going forward is that things are getting worse, and will continue to get worse as long as our policy there remains “stay the course”. Unlike you, I’ve noted the insanely optimistic pronouncements of the Administration about Iraq, starting with how the insurgency was “in its last throes”, and how they have continued to be so divorced from reality that you have to wonder what fairy tales they’re reading. Every report of how many security forces are trained and ready to go there is almost immediately contradicted, and even after three years they don’t seem to be keeping anything secure. There is no good news from Iraq that balances the bad news of increasing violence, instability, and government corruption and sadism.
Are you one of those who are for “redeployment” so as to create a humanitarian crisis?
What a ridiculous question. Are you one of those who believe that we should remain there so the violence and chaos can continue unabated? Of course not. That you would even suggest such a thing makes me question your ability to think rationally.
Cujo funnily wrote, “but even the portions Bush leaked are pretty damning.”
Yeah. Damning to the drive by legacy media types… The conclusions were contrary to the supposed leaked conclusion. You might need to get some alternate sources of information… Like the entire declassified report itself. Go to the source… Let me know what sentence in there you think is damning and to whom.
Cujo thinking he was smart quibbled with “stay the course”
Stay the course does not mean do not change tactics. Only STUPID liberals think this is a POINT. The generals/officers and soldiers on the ground have been adapting and changing tactics in order to defeat the enemy. Again you need alternate sources because this has been stated numerous times. The phrase “stay the course” is in reference to not cutting and running or leaving or redeploying or whatever you want to call the strategy that precedes a humanitarian crisis. If you Cujo think our military folk are STUPID and are doing nothing different from day to day and are not changing tactics, finding new ways to find and disarm IED’s, etc, I don’t know what to say to respond to you.
Cujo irrelevantly wrote, “There is no good news from Iraq that balances the bad news of increasing violence, instability, and government corruption and sadism.”
So the answer is redeploy / cut and run? No. The answer is to figure out a way to win. Do you want us to win? Do you want to avert a humanitarian crisis? Or are you in favor of giving aid and comfort to the enemy with your rhetoric and making things harder for us to succeed?
Cujo ignored my question by saying, “What a ridiculous question.” No. It’s not ridiculous. What happened when we left Vietnam? What would’ve happened if we didn’t help reconstruct Germany and Japan for 10 and 7 years? What happened because we didn’t intervene in Ruwanda, Darfur, many other places? We are responsible for removing the Iraqi government just like we removed Japan’s and Germany’s. As a Superpower we should act responsible and humane and try to get stability enough to be able to be next door to Iran and other nations in such a hate filled area of the world. The terrorists themselves have said openly and in videos (do you believe them) that their intention is to win in Iraq and then move past that to establish an Islamic caliphate.
Cujo asked a question and I won’t ignore it. He asked, “Are you one of those who believe that we should remain there so the violence and chaos can continue unabated?” It isn’t unabated. The premise of the question is false. More Iraqi security forces are killed than American this last year. We need to support them instead of letting an unabated slaughter take place. You seem to think they only fight because we are there and will stop fighting once we leave. If that were true (let’s use logic Cujo) they would only need to quit fighting for a few months and we’d be gone. They are NOT after making us leave. Do you Cujo understand this now? Explain logically how you think differently.