During her brief appearance before the House Government Oversight Committee, Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent at the center of the Prosecutor Fitzgerald's recent prosecution of Scooter Libby, said the nation's intelligence needs to be depoliticized:
"I really feel passionately about this," Plame said. "You have to get the politics out of our intelligence process." Otherwise, she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the president cannot make national security decisions based strictly on unbiased fact.That is something about which Plame, a self-described Democrat, and I agree. But this agreement requires a little history lesson.
In the battle over how to staff the 108th Congress, Senate Democrats successfully insisted on changing the staffing structure of the Select Committee on Intelligence. The Democrats’ change divided the committee's staff into two groups, reporting separately to the panel's Republican chairman and Democratic vice chairman.
In a prescient moment, Senator Pat Roberts (R. Kansas), then the incoming chair of the Committee, warned:
We should preserve our Intelligence Committee staff as a single unified staff that works for the committee as a whole under the supervision of the chairman and the vice chairman. The minority apparently wishes to divide the committee staff for the first time in history into majority — minority or partisan camps.Roberts said the panel has been a unique institution in the Senate and was envisioned from its start in 1976 to operate under different rules than other committees. He contends the committee has worked well and effectively with a professional nonpartisan staff as originally intended and should continue to do so.
The committee has made no comparable change in its history. When the committee was formed in 1976, members were allowed to nominate one staff member each to be placed on the panel's payroll and handle that member's committee issues. But over time, it became clear that the staffers felt a greater sense of loyalty to their sponsoring member rather than to the committee as an institution, and according to committee reports, some staffers worked on non-intelligence issues for their member. That system was scrapped at the beginning of the first session of the 104th Congress, and replaced with a system where staffers were assigned to work with specific senators on intelligence-related work.
Before the end of 2003, the impact of the Democrats' politicization of intelligence was clear. On November 4, 2003 Fox News' Sean Hannity revealed a Intelligence Committee Democratic staff memo that laid out a strategy for making political hay out of Intelligence Committee investigations into pre-war intelligence.
Among the strategies suggested in the Democratic staff memo:
"Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials."Asked for his reaction to the memo on "FOX News Sunday," Senator Roberts, said he was stunned:"Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. The best time to do so will probably be next year."
I was stunned by this memo, shocked by this memo. We have a 30- year history in the Intelligence Committee of nonpartisan activity, dating clear back from the Frank Church days. And what this memo has done is really poisoned the well.That anyone associated with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence could plot the politicalization of intelligence information, as plotted in the leaked memo, angers and sickens me. As Senator Miller said this is at least the “first cousin” of treason.[. . .]
Read the memo. "Pull the trigger"? "Castigate the majority"? "Wait till next year"? It really prejudges the whole inquiry. It says that we're guilty until proven innocent, in regards to the use of the memo.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was designed to create a bipartisan approach to ensure that staffers and senators do not misuse the classified material to which they are given access. An arrangement that can only work if there is trust within the committee. Trust that the Democrats' politicization of intelligence has exploded.
Valerie Plame is right, the nation's intelligence needs to be depoliticized. Somebody maybe next time Plame testifies she could give the Democrats a memo.
Sounds Interesting....
Posted by: marygsolis | Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 04:30 AM
i agree
Posted by: Benchoola | Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 04:27 AM
the facts are a very stubborn thing
Posted by: Benchoola | Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 02:52 AM
The problems at Walter Reed were primarily chickenshit, and we all know the patron saint of chickenshit is the democrat party.
And we all know Plame was not covert within the law. just wait until some democrat is charged with a crime that is not really a crime, ut almost.
Posted by: Walter E. Wallis | Monday, March 19, 2007 at 12:43 PM
It's great to know that Sean Hannity is the final word on TRUTH. What flavor Kool Aid is the administration distrbuting this week. I hope it's strong they have a great deal to be in denial about this week. Do you have Karl Rove on speed dial? I'm sure Mr. Hannity and his friend in the administration have already begun the investigation to proove that Walter Reed and the Justice Dapartment scandals are the fault of the far-left and the liberal media.As someone who I know very well has said many time "the facts are a very stubborn thing" . I think it's time for him to begin to listen to his own advise.
Posted by: jay hariton | Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 04:19 PM