The awful hypocrisy of intelligence policy

In a recent article, Nancy Pelosi pushed the Intelligence oversight committees in Congress to investigate Dick Cheney and whether he withheld information from Congress. Interestingly enough, the Vice President is a member of the Legislative Branch as President of Senate so I suppose he is guilty of withholding information from himself. Secondly, so what if the Vice President said it. He is not the Commander-in-Chief and federal employees are not bound to honor illegal orders.

The honest truth is that the intelligence community hates talking to Congress. The main reason lies in the fact that everything intelligence folks tell members of Congress is on CNN 15 seconds after they hear it. In the 1980's the Senator who is currently leading the Sotomayor confirmation sham was kicked off the Senate Intelligence Committee for releasing classified intelligence to reporters. The Wikipedia entry is overly kind on the matter and I encourage further research.

Another example of this is Senator Dick Durbin's decision to read classified FBI reports on the floor the Senate. His point, we're mean to insurgents and that loud music and hot and cold cells are just down right torture.

So, this latest episode the in assault on the intelligence community is not surprising at all. I was not at all shocked to learn that a Clinton White House appointee with no experience in the intell community decided to cave in so he could screw over CIA employees to save Nancy Pelosi. The program in question, by the way, is a program to kill the heads of Al Qaeda. Thanks Dems! It's not that Bill Clinton's refusal to kill Bin Laden was bad enough, but this is just sick. While Clinton made a judgement call about Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leadership gets to live on today so that Nancy can remain above accountability and out of trouble. Simply disgusting. Hope and Change -- Chicago style!