Betsy's Page
Dick Cheney explains why the administration didn't expand their briefings on the NSA surveillance of Al Qaeda intercepts to all the members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.
<<< Mr. Cheney says key members of Congress--the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, and sometimes both parties' top leaders from each chamber--were fully informed.
"These sessions with Congress, most of which I presided
over . . . answered every question that they wanted to
ask. We've always said, look, if there's anything else
you need to know, just let us know."
The lawmakers, Mr. Cheney says, shared the administration's view that secrecy was essential.
"Public debate and discussion about the program would
have done--in our view and in the view of members of
Congress who were consulted--damage to our capabilities
in this respect. We'd rather not have this conversation
about this program, except for the fact that the New York
Times went public with it."
Yet after the Times broke the story, Democratic members of Congress changed their tune from the one Mr. Cheney says they had sung in private. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Intelligence Committee Democrat, released a handwritten July 2003 letter to Mr. Cheney in which he said he was "writing to reiterate my concern regarding the sensitive intelligence issues we discussed." We asked Mr. Cheney if he remembered Mr. Rockefeller iterating his concern in the first place. "No, I recall the letter just sort of arriving, and it was never followed up on."
Meanwhile Rep. Jane Harman, Mr. Rockefeller's House counterpart, has opined that the administration broke the law by failing to brief every member of the intelligence committees. Says Mr. Cheney,
"If we had done that since the beginning of the program
back in '01--I ran the numbers yesterday--if we did the
full House and Senate committees, as well as the elected
leadership, we'd have had to read 70 people into this
program" instead of eight or nine. Expecting that many
congressmen to keep a secret is a faith-based initiative. >>>
betsyspage.blogspot.com
opinionjournal.com |
