As everyone goes to the movies this summer and buys tickets to this summer’s biggest blockbuster on the screen, there is a struggle every bit as titanic going on in Washington between Congress, the CIA, and the Resident, as to where the power actually resides.
This is a tale of betrayal, lies, and covert actions, as well as a struggle for yet more executive power.
This would be a comedy if we could play all the sound bites of Hussein claiming that then President Bush had overstepped his authority, and executive power needed to be scaled back. There are many of those- Hussein was very critical of executive power, but then at the time he was a slacker first- term newbie Senator, playing grown- up.
Oh, how the worm has turned- it is an axiom that no one who becomes president ever wants his power to be diminished, and Hussein is NOT an exception to this rule.
Add to this tale of woe, the turncoat spy within the CIA, “Deep Nose”, or as he is known in society, Leon Panneta, the snoop in charge of covertly dismantling the spy agency, at the time where we can least afford to do so- but that has never stopped liberals before (see: Carter years, 1976- 1979).
And to complete this trifecta of incompetence, is Congress, who wants complete access to everything the CIA has, claiming that the CIA lied to Congress. The trouble with this is that Congress is an irresponsible, lying leaky body of people who have their own agendas, and probably would say anything to anybody for money- yes- that does make them whores in politics, but what else is new?
In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.
In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”
nytimes.com
This is typical of the ankle- biters in Congress, and could usually be ignored as the trivial annoyance it usually is, but in this resolution, the committee is seeking less executive power in revelations to the full Congress, and Hussein doesn’t want that at all.
In a related development, President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-called Gang of Eight — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both houses of Congress and the two Intelligence Committees.
A White House statement released on Wednesday said the proposed expansion of briefings would undermine “a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters.” Democrats have complained that under President George W. Bush, entire programs were hidden from most committee members for years.
nytimes.com
And then you have Leon Panetta, the stalking horse for the liberals who want to dismantle the CIA- This man is trying to have it both ways, leaking info to Congress, while working for the Resident.
In an interview yesterday, Reyes declined to expand upon the allegations in his letter, saying “it’s all classified information.” Late last night, he issued a statement crediting CIA Director Leon E. Panetta with bringing the issues to the committee’s attention at a June 24 briefing.
.washingtonpost.com
This is a complex game we have here, made more complex by Nanny Pelosi’s rambling accusation that the CIA had lied to her, when it could be verified that the CIA had in fact, told her everything she needed to know- she just, apparently, didn’t have the intelligence to keep the knowledge in her head.
Pelosi initiated the CIA feud when she accused the agency of intentionally misleading her, and not telling her about the use of waterboarding, in a September 2002 briefing on interrogations.
CIA documents released two months ago included notations indicating that Pelosi was informed at the 2002 briefing about waterboarding. Republicans have suggested Pelosi has not told the truth about her knowledge and support of the enhanced interrogation technique, an allegation they plan to repeat in today’s debate.
washingtonpost.com
Well, this is going to play out with all the angst and tension of the play “King Lear”, on the national stage, showing our enemies just how like the Keystone Kops we are in real life. What a governmental SNAFU this has become, all because eventually, thieves fall out.
And boy oh boy, are they beginning to fall out now.
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