Whistleblowers informed GOP House intel chairman about programs Bush didn't brief Congress on
RAW STORY Published: Sunday July 9, 2006
On a Sunday morning talk show, Republican House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra explained the circumstances which led to him writing a letter to President Bush which said that not informing Congress about "special projects" may be illegal and warned him that he may lose support from some party members on national security matters, RAW STORY has found.
"Mr. Chairman, I know that you supported and were briefed on the NSA warrantless wiretap program, on the tracking of terror finances," said Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace. "Are you saying that as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, that you were not briefed about other secret programs?"
Hoekstra then explained that whistleblowers had informed him about programs the president hadn't briefed Congress on.
"This is actually a case where the whistleblower process was working appropriately," said Hoekstra. "Some people within the intelligence community brought to my attention some programs that they believed we had not been briefed on."
"They were right," Hoekstra added. "We asked by code name what some of these programs, about some of these programs."
"We've now been briefed on those programs," said Hoekstra. "But I wanted to reinforce to the president and to the executive branch and the intelligence community how important, and by law, the requirement that they keep the legislative branch informed of what they are doing."
Hoekstra added that he took the president's failure to inform Congress "seriously," and that it wasn't an "optional" responsibility.
"There are lots of programs going on in the intelligence community," said Hoekstra. "We can't be briefed on every little thing that they are doing, but in this case, there was at least one major, what I consider significant activity that we had not been briefed on that we have now been briefed on."
"And, I want to set the standard there, that it is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing," Hoekstra said.
Excerpts from the FOX News Sunday transcript:
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MR. WALLACE: Chairman Hoekstra, I want to move. We have a couple of minutes left, to one other subject. As we reported earlier, you wrote President Bush a letter in May in which you charge that the administration may have violated the law by failing to inform Congress about various secret programs. And let's put up some of what you had to say. You wrote, "The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play 20 questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution."
Mr. Chairman, I know that you supported and were briefed on the NSA warrantless wiretap program, on the tracking of terror finances. Are you saying that as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, that you were not briefed about other secret programs?
REP. HOEKSTRA: Chris, that letter focused on three things that our committee has a passion about. Number one, getting the right people in the right leadership spots in the intelligence community, second thing is standing up the office of the Director of National Intelligence to make sure that that reform effort moves forward, and the third thing is doing complete and aggressive oversight of all of the programs in the intelligence community.
This is actually a case where the whistleblower process was working appropriately. Some people within the intelligence community brought to my attention some programs that they believed we had not been briefed on. They were right. We asked by code name what some of these programs, about some of these programs. We've now been briefed on those programs. But I wanted to reinforce to the president and to the executive branch and the intelligence community how important, and by law, the requirement that they keep the legislative branch informed of what they are doing.
MR. WALLACE: Chairman, the president always says in these cases that congressional leaders, including you as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, are briefed. How do you explain this failure, and how seriously do you take it?
REP. HOEKSTRA: Well, I take it very, very seriously. Otherwise I would not have written the letter to the president. You know, the -- how do you explain it? There are lots of programs going on in the intelligence community. We can't be briefed on every little thing that they are doing, but in this case, there was at least one major, what I consider significant activity that we had not been briefed on that we have now been briefed on. And, I want to set the standard there, that it is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing.
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RAW STORY covered Hoekstra's May letter to President Bush yesterday, after the New York Times reported on it.
"I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed," Rep. Hoesktra wrote in May. "If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies."
"The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution," Hoekstra added in the letter obtained by the Times.
Is the United States winning the war on terror? Not according to more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy hands. They see a national security apparatus in disrepair and a government that is failing to protect the public from the next attack.
By FOREIGN POLICY & The Center For American Progress July/August 2006
Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans understandably rallied around the flag. Having just suffered the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil, huge percentages believed another attack was imminent. But Americans also had enormous faith that the Global War on Terror would help keep them safe. Just one month after 9/11, for instance, 94 percent of Americans told an ABC News/Washington Post poll that they approved of how the fight against terrorism was being handled. The United States then quickly went to war in Afghanistan, closing down a terrorist sanctuary and capturing or killing a number of high-level al Qaeda operatives in the process.
Since 2001, terrorists have found their targets on almost every continent, with bombings in Bali, London, Madrid, and elsewhere. Five years on, however, America has yet to experience another attack. But Americans appear less convinced that their country is winning the war on terror. In the face of persisting threats, including a growing number of terrorist attacks around the world, numerous reports show that Americans are losing faith in their government’s ability to wage the war successfully and to protect them from the terrorists’ next volley. Barely half of Americans today approve of the way in which the war on terror is being handled, and more than one third believe the United States is less safe today than it was before 9/11.
These pessimistic public perceptions could easily be attributed to the high cost, in both treasure and lives, of counterterrorism efforts. After all, Americans are constantly being told by their elected leaders that their pessimism is wrong, that the war is being won. But they’re also told that another attack is inevitable. Which is it? To find out, FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for American Progress teamed up to survey more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike. The FOREIGN POLICY/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index is the first comprehensive effort to mine the highest echelons of America’s foreign-policy establishment for their assessment of how the United States is fighting the Global War on Terror. Our aim was to draw some definitive conclusions about the war’s priorities, policies, and progress from the very people who have run America’s national security apparatus over the past half century. Participants include people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, retired top commanders from the U.S. military, seasoned members of the intelligence community, and distinguished academics and journalists. Nearly 80 percent of the index participants have worked in the U.S. government—of these more than half were in the executive branch, one third in the military, and 17 percent in the intelligence community.
Despite today’s highly politicized national security environment, the index results show striking consensus across political party lines. A bipartisan majority (84 percent) of the index’s experts say the United States is not winning the war on terror. Eighty-six percent of the index’s experts see a world today that is growing more dangerous for Americans. Overall, they agree that the U.S. government is falling short in its homeland security efforts. More than 8 in 10 expect an attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade. These dark conclusions appear to stem from the experts’ belief that the U.S. national security apparatus is in serious disrepair. “Foreign-policy experts have never been in so much agreement about an administration’s performance abroad,” says Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and an index participant. “The reason is that it’s clear to nearly all that Bush and his team have had a totally unrealistic view of what they can accomplish with military force and threats of force.”
Respondents sharply criticized U.S. efforts in a number of key areas of national security, including public diplomacy, intelligence, and homeland security. Nearly all of the departments and agencies responsible for fighting the war on terror received poor marks. The experts also said that recent reforms of the national security apparatus have done little to make Americans safer. Asked about recent efforts to reform America’s intelligence community, for instance, more than half of the index’s experts said that creating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has had no positive impact in the war against terror. “Intelligence reform so far has been largely limited to structural reorganization that in most cases produced new levels of bureaucracy in an already overly bureaucratic system,” says index participant Bill Gertz, a journalist who has covered the intelligence community for more than 20 years.
The index’s experts were similarly critical of most of the policy initiatives put forward by the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush since September 11. Eighty-one percent, for instance, believe the detention of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, negatively affects the war on terror. The index’s experts also disapprove of how America is handling its relations with European allies, how it is confronting threatening regimes in North Korea and Iran, how it is controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and its dealings with failing states, to name just a few. “We are losing the war on terror because we are treating the symptoms and not the cause,” says index participant Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “[O]ur insistence that Islamic fundamentalist ideology has replaced communist ideology as the chief enemy of our time ... feeds al Qaeda’s vision of the world.”
These conclusions about the United States’ performance in the war thus far are all the more troubling considering that, although Americans appear to be growing tired of the war on terror, the index’s experts appear to believe that the battle has just begun. Accordingly, a majority agrees that the war requires more emphasis on a victory of ideas, not just guns. That is hardly surprising, considering that nearly 80 percent believe a widespread rejection of radical ideologies in the Islamic world is a critical element to victory. To win the battle of ideas, the experts say, America must place a much higher emphasis on its nonmilitary tools. More than two thirds say that U.S. policymakers must strengthen the United Nations and other multilateral institutions. At the same time, the experts indicate that the U.S. government must think more creatively about threats. Asked what presents the single greatest danger to U.S. national security, nearly half said loose nukes and other weapons of mass destruction, while just one third said al Qaeda and terrorism, and a mere 4 percent said Iran. Five years after the attacks of September 11, it’s a reminder that the greatest challenges may still lie ahead.
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With Friends Like These
Wars have a way of making unlikely bedfellows, and the Global War on Terror is apparently no different.
Asked to name the country that has produced the largest number of global terrorists, the index’s foreign-policy experts pointed to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan—three of America’s marquee allies in the Muslim world. Nearly two thirds (62 percent) identified Saudi Arabia as the leading culprit. Thirteen percent pointed to Egypt, and 11 percent said Pakistan produces the most terrorists. “The jihadist movement,” says index participant and Sarah Lawrence College Professor Fawaz Gerges, “was born in Egypt in the late 1960s. After September 11, however, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the leading theater of jihadist-Salafist thought and action.”
Although these three states may be widely believed to be incubating terrorists, the cooperation they have offered the United States in fighting terrorism presents a more mixed picture. Approximately two thirds of the experts say that U.S. cooperation with Egypt and Pakistan has been effective. The experts are more divided as to whether Saudi Arabia is doing what it can to counter the terrorist threat.
These perceptions cut to the heart of some of the dilemmas facing the United States. Egypt, for instance, has received more than $50 billion in U.S. military and economic assistance since 1979, yet it resisted recent U.S. efforts to promote political reform. America designated Pakistan a major non-NATO ally in 2004, despite allegations that it has not done enough to capture bin Laden. Saudi Arabia has helped crack down on financial support flowing to terrorist groups, but Saudi leaders have been slow to move against radical elements within their own population. Is the United States doing a poor job of choosing its friends? Maybe. Then again, it may just be keeping its friends close, and its enemies closer.
A room full of foreign-policy experts can be a tough crowd. So it’s hardly surprising that the index experts were highly critical of how the various branches of the U.S. government are fighting the war on terror. Only the National Security Agency received an above-average score of 5.2, on a 0 to 10 scale, where 0 represents the worst possible job of guarding the United States. Every other agency received below-average marks.
Experts gave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the worst grade. Its average score was just 2.9. In fact, 36 percent of the experts indicated that the newly created DHS has had a negative impact on America’s national security, and nearly 1 in 5 thought the department’s funding should be slashed. The U.S. State Department received relatively high marks. Surprisingly, this opinion was not limited to the liberal internationalist wing of foreign-policy elites. Even conservative experts, who have sometimes taken a dimmer view of the State Department’s diplomatic efforts, believed that the department’s budget is a good investment and that it should be moderately or substantially increased. Overall, 87 percent of the index’s experts believe that Foggy Bottom requires more funding, including 72 percent of conservatives.
The index’s experts also have a strong opinion of how that money should be spent. Nearly 80 percent agree that a widespread rejection of extremist ideologies around the globe is critical to “winning” the war on terror. Yet the experts simultaneously rated America’s public diplomacy efforts the lowest of any policy initiative, with a median score of just 1.8. Clearly, few believe that the United States is doing its best to win friends and influence people.
Americans are consistently told that the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil is a question of when, not if. The index’s results overwhelmingly agree that the next attack is just a matter of time.
Eighty-four percent of the experts said they believe a terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001, is likely or certain to happen in the next five years. More than a quarter said a 9/11-scale attack is certain to occur in America within the next decade. Asked about the likelihood of a smaller strike akin to the July 2005 London bombings, 91 percent agreed that such an attack is likely or certain by 2016; more than half said that such an attack could happen this year.
But how will the terrorists strike? Roughly two thirds of the experts said that some part of America’s infrastructure—a port, train station, or major landmark—will be targeted. That is no surprise, given that terrorists have repeatedly struck these locales in the past. But it may be more alarming that almost the same percentage predict that the next attack will come in the form of a suicide bombing. These results, says index participant Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp., “reflect a recognition of how easy terrorism has become.” Such attacks, he says, “are cheap, unpredictable, and difficult to prevent. All that is required is the will to kill and the will to die, neither of which seems in short supply today.”
Americans have never feared a suicide bombing the way the people of Amman or Jerusalem have. But there may be reason to think that will soon change. A recent study by Rand found that 81 percent of all suicide attacks in the past 30 or so years have occurred since Sept. 11, 2001, and the primary motivation for each of these attacks was a military intervention or occupation such as the ongoing operations in Iraq. The odds that America can continue to elude the world’s most popular form of terrorism may be fading fast.
If you could make something a higher priority in fighting the war on terror, what would it be? A little more than one third of the index’s experts said killing or capturing terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden. About the same number favored promoting democracy in the Muslim world. More than two thirds said stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states. But devising a more aggressive energy policy?
It may surprise, but the index’s experts said that ending America’s dependence on foreign oil may be the U.S. government’s single most pressing priority in winning the war on terror. Eighty-two percent of the experts said that policymakers should make ending America’s dependence on foreign oil a higher priority. And nearly two thirds said that current U.S. energy policies are actually making matters worse, not better. “We borrow a billion dollars every working day to import oil, an increasing share of it coming from the Middle East,” says index participant and former CIA director James Woolsey. “[F]or example in Saudi Arabia, billions are transferred to the Wahhabis and like-minded groups who then indoctrinate young people to hate Shiites, Sufis, Jews, Christians, and democracy, and to oppress women horribly.”
If U.S. policymakers don’t take this vulnerability seriously, terrorists do. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s No. 2, has labeled the global energy infrastructure a key strategic target for terrorists. In February, Saudi Arabia’s government foiled an al Qaeda plot to attack the Abqaiq oil facility, the country’s largest. Some 30,000 security forces are now guarding the country’s oil fields. Global oil markets are so tight that even the threat of a supply disruption can cause a spike in price. These tight markets are partially responsible for the higher prices Americans will pay at the pump this summer. But the index suggests that there may be a greater price for our energy policy: losing the war on terror.
The Specter bill -- in addition to its other multiple flaws [ http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2006/07/specters-deal.html ] -- would solve this problem almost entirely for the administration. Section 702(b) of the bill (entitled "Mandatory Transfer for Review") protects the administration in numerous ways from meaningful judicial review:
First, it requires (if the Attorney General requests it, which he will) that all pending cases challenging the legality of the NSA program (which includes the EFF and ACLU cases) be transferred to the secret FISA court. Thus, the insufficiently deferential federal judges would have these cases taken away from them.
Second, it would make judicial review of the administration's behavior virtually impossible, as it specifically prohibits (Sec. 702(b)(2)) the FISA court from "requir(ing) the disclosure of national security information . . . without the approval of the Director of National Intelligence of the Attorney General." That all but prevents any discovery in these lawsuits.
Third, it quite oddly authorizes (Sec. 702(b)(6)) the FISA court to "dismiss a challenge to the legality of an electronic surveillance program for any reason" (emphasis added). Arguably, that provision broadens the authority of the court to dismiss any such lawsuit for the most discretionary of reasons, even beyond the already wide parameters of the "state secrets" doctrine.
When the Specter bill was first announced last week, it appeared it would be politically difficult to block its enactment. The only real impediment to a legislative resolution of the NSA scandal has been Specter's inability to induce the White House to agree to any proposal. Once Specter obligingly crafted a bill which gives the White House everything it could possibly want and then some, the White House finally agreed to allow Specter to legalize its program, and it was hard to see how a bill which has the support both of the White House (and therefore all White House Senate allies) and Specter could be derailed.
But this article [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072001708.html ] this morning from the Washington Post's Dan Eggen (one of the best journalists on this story) suggests that the Specter bill may already be experiencing some significant problems. It begins by noting that the Specter bill was one "personally negotiated by President Bush and Vice President Cheney" -- a fact that I had not seen reported previously and which reflects just how important it is for the President to have a legislative solution which protects his from the consequences of his illegal eavesdropping behavior.
Eggen also clearly recognizes that the claim by the Post and other newspapers last week that the Specter bill is a "compromise" is false, and was merely the self-serving characterization peddled by the parties involved (which, thanks to Eggen's gullible colleagues, became the lens through which the Specter bill was described):
The proposal was billed as a rare and noteworthy compromise by the administration when unveiled last week. But the legislation quickly came under attack from Democrats and many national security experts, who said it would actually give the government greater powers to spy on Americans without court oversight.
Eggen reports today that the Specter bill "ran into immediate trouble this week, as Democrats and other critics attacked the proposal while key GOP leaders in the House endorsed a different bill on the same topic." The plan of both Specter and the White House appeared to be to push a quick vote by the full Senate on this bill. Barbara O'Brien [ http://www.mahablog.com/ ] was on a conference call with the ACLU this week and reported [ http://www.mahablog.com/2006/07/19/road-to-hell-news-roundup/ ] that Specter "is determined to bring his bogus bill . . . to a vote this week." But according to Eggen, that plan is now derailed:
Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, canceled a markup session for his proposal that had been scheduled for yesterday. He announced instead plans instead (sic) for a full committee hearing Wednesday on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the 1978 statute at the center of the debate.
One problem, according to Eggen, is that key House Republicans who either are facing tough re-election campaigns or who are looking for fights with the White House -- including Heather Wilson, Pete Hoekstra, and Jim Sensenbrenner -- have introduced mildly less deferential legislation than Specter's bill (virtually everything, by definition, is less deferential), and have made some noises that they would not support Specter's bill. Additionally, even generally accommodating Democrats such as Jane Harman have, at least thus far, expressed relatively steadfast opposition to the Specter bill, although it is unclear whether any Democratic support would be necessary to enact this bill (Senate Democrats, however, could and should filibuster this legislation).
There is still a real chance to derail the Specter bill. When it was announced, the shining "concession" which Specter touted [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/13/AR2006071300835.html ] was the White House's verbal, highly conditional "promise" to submit the question of the constitutionality (not the legality, but only the constitutionality under the Fourth Amendment) of warrantless eavesdropping to the FISA court (something which the bill does not actually require). But the White House's agreement to submit this question to the FISA court was conditioned upon there not being any changes at all to the Specter bill in its current form -- something that seems unlikely if House Republicans continue to push their own legislative solution and key Democrats continue to object to the Specter bill. As the Post put it [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/13/AR2006071300835_2.html ] on the day the agreement was announced:
If Congress amends the bill in any way that Bush disapproves, he will not be obligated to submit the wiretap program to the FISA court for review, Specter said.
In terms of the political climate for these issues, today is a much different -- and better -- world even as compared to three months ago. Discussions of Bush's executive power abuses are no longer confined to blogs, the Boston Globe, and the office of a Senator from Wisconsin. That there is a pressing need for checks to be imposed on the Bush administration's limitless claims to power is now a mainstream and widely recognized view. Media elites finally understand it and political officials can discuss these matters with much less resistance than before.
Many Republicans who are facing tough re-election battles, such as Rep. McDonald, need to demonstrate that they do not simply roll over for the White House. Democrats have an opportunity to impose a serious defeat on the White House by taking a real stand against this truly destructive Specter bill. It is not difficult to make clear that opposition to the Specter bill is not an anti-eavesdropping position, but simply a desire to preserve the safeguards and checks and balances which our country has had for the last 25 years and with which all Presidents before the current one -- Republican and Democrat alike -- easily complied without complaint while defending the nation.
The Specter bill is a true menace to checks and balances on the executive branch, to the restoration of the rule of law, to the critical constitutional principles re-affirmed by the Supreme Court in Hamdan, and to the fundamental principle that political officials who break the law must be held accountable. It would also return the country to the pre-FISA era when the executive branch could eavesdrop on Americans with no meaningful oversight or limits, a situation which led to widespread abuse. It is critical that this bill be blocked and, surprisingly, there seems to be real opportunities to do just that. The question now is whether Congressional Democrats, and/or key Republicans, will seize that opportunity.
UPDATE: I have an article regarding many of these issues in the current issue of In These Times -- entitled "Rechecking the Balance of Powers" -- and it is now available online [ http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2730/ (F6 note -- my next post, a reply to this post)]. The article discusses the Bush administration's manipulation of the "state secrets" doctrine, its general efforts to block all methods for judicial review of its actions, and the effect which Hamdan will have on these tactics as well as on the administration's radical theories of executive power generally.
Copyright 2006 Glenn Greenwald (emphasis in original)
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