Pelosi Fulfills a Campaign Promise

Nancy Pelosi is a woman of her word. During the campaign, she promised oversight, and we are going to get it.

The incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced late last week that the new congress will step up intelligence oversight. This answers complaints by security specialists and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle that Congress has been lax in monitoring the highly secretive, some might even say paranoid, intelligence community.

The new oversight will be administered from a task force within the all-powerfull House Appropriations Committee. The new oversight task force will examine the intelligence budget, monitor spending, and keep the classified books.

"I know it will make the American people safer," Pelosi said of the task force. For the first time, there will be a conduit of information between the authorization side of the intelligence budget (authorizatuion does the actual intel gathering efforts) and the appropriations side (which determines how the money should be spent).

The Intelligence Budget is one of the most top-secret documents in Government. Very few congresspersons are authorized to see it - they can only look at it in a secured room - and after they view it they can not discuss what they have seen either in public forums or even in the congress. Some information in the Intelligence Budget can only be seen by the chairpersons and select ranking members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.

Incoming Speaker Pelosi is of the opinion that the requested intelligence budget should be public, and a greater number of lawmakers should have access to the information in the intelligence budget. Some information in the Intelligence Budget can only be seen by the chairpersons and select ranking members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.

One of the key recommendations of the September 11 Commission was the creation of just such an oversight committee, but the idea never saw the light of day during the Reign of Republican Incompetence. (God forbid they would ever take any steps to foster accountability). She was quick to add that her embrace of openness "isn't a view that is shared by all in Congress." Nor is this embrace of openness received well by the Bush administration, but they want to classify yesterdays lunch menu and tonights TV listings, so really, who is surpeised at that bit of "news"?

That age of accountability I've been agitating for? Well don't count your chickens before they hatch, but prospects are looking better every day that I just might get that pony for Christmas.

This kind of ignorance has no business on the House Intelligence Committee

I expect better than this. Good lord, man! How can you be a member of the House, have held a seat on Intelligence all this time, have just been appointed chairman of that powerful and important committee, and you're still a little fuzzy on the religious doctrine that drives al Qae'da? How can this be? How can this possibly be??? I simply must know how this is possible. Until this question is answered, my mind shall remain boggled.

Of course the uproar in Washington wasn't about the fact that the incoming House Intelligence Committee Chairman couldn't answer the questions asked...noooo, not in Washington. In Washington, the derision was directed at the reporter who asked the questions.

like a number of his colleagues and top counterterrorism officials that I’ve interviewed over the past several months, Reyes can’t answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed against us in the Middle East.
It begs the question, of course: How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don’t know basics about the battlefield?
To his credit, Reyes, a kindly, thoughtful man who also sits on the Armed Service Committee, does see the undertows drawing the region into chaos.

***Snip***

Reyes stumbled when I asked him a simple question about al Qaeda at the end of a 40-minute interview in his office last week. Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.

We warmed up with a long discussion about intelligence issues and Iraq. And then we veered into terrorism’s major players.

To me, it’s like asking about Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: Who’s on what side?

The dialogue went like this:

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?”

“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up a l Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.

Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil.

It’s been five years since these Muslim extremists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center.

Is it too much to ask that our intelligence overseers know who they are?

Boy Howdy! I could not possibly agree more! I not only expect the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to know these things, I expect most of my fellow citizens to know at least that much, or shut the hell up.

Congressman Reyes, you absolutely must become a regular visitor of one Juan Cole. In fact, get him on the phone, bring him to your offices and do not come out until he has educated you on these matters. Good lord man! You now represent all Americans, Mr. Reyes, and some of us are more than willing to hold every last one of you accountable.