Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence (2005)

[kentuck]

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2005/HowSenate_Intelligence_chairman_fixed_intelligence_and_diverted_blame_fromWhite_House__0811.html

<snip>
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued an order to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and his cabinet members that severely curtailed intelligence oversight by restricting classified information to just eight members of Congress.

"The only Members of Congress whom you or your expressly designated officers may brief regarding classified or sensitive law enforcement information," he writes, "are the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate."

The order is aimed at protecting "military security" and "sensitive law enforcement."

But what was said to be an effort to protect the United States became a tool by which the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.

<snip>

The Senate and House intelligence committees were created in the 1970s after a series of congressional investigations found that the CIA had acted like a "rogue elephant" carrying out illegal covert action abroad.

By the late 1990s, members of the committees and their staffs were seeing more than 2,200 CIA reports and receiving more than 1,200 substantive briefings from agency officials each year to assist them in their role of providing proper oversight.

But the little-reported 2001 Bush directive changed that, ensuring that only two members of each committee received full briefings on intelligence operations, and preventing committee staffs from carrying out meaningful research.

Tom Reynolds, spokesman for the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Jane Harman (D-CA), downplayed the significance of the order, saying members continued to have access. He acknowledged, however, that the "gang of eight" had higher-level clearances.

The spokesman for the Senate Intelligence Committee deferred comment to the White House; the White House did not return requests for comment.

At the time of the order, Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) chaired the House Intelligence Committee. His counterpart in the Senate was Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), whom Sen. Roberts replaced in 2003.

....more

[havocmom]

1. Thanks for posting this. We need to pound back on the attacks on DEMs

Like, how would the minority party have been able to do anything even if they were told (which was limited

[L. Coyote]

3. Push back! Will Porter Goss be prosecuted for lying to Congress?

Goss was in the Pelosi briefing, and in 2005 he know nothing about torture!
Either that, or he committed the crime of lying to Congress.
Stupid pukes don't even understand the implications of all their LIES! :rofl:

Will Porter Goss be prosecuted for lying to Congress?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5671623

"We don't torture"

On March 18, 2005, Reuters reported that Porter Goss "defended his spy agency's current interrogation practices but could not say all methods used as recently as last December conformed to U.S. law.

"U.S. officials do not view torture as a method for gaining vital intelligence, Goss said. But he acknowledged some CIA operatives may have been uncertain about approved interrogation techniques in the past."

Goss told the Senate Armed Services Committee "'The United States does not engage in or condone torture, ... I know for a fact that torture is not productive. That's not professional interrogation. We don't torture.'"

[jaysunb]

6. The "push back" needs to begin right here.

I'm always amazed at the short memories of recent events and FACTS among so called progressives.
There were countless threads about the skulldugery of Pat Roberts & Porter Goss re the intell and it's disemination.

Thanks for posting this. Maybe it'll help jog a few memories and encourage people to try and deal in FACTS.

:hi:

[notadmblnd]

2. Pat Roberts was the gate keeper. I said it then,

I say it now.

[bleever]

4. They changed the rules, rigged the game, and set everyone up.

All this attention on process will only spell woe for those who methodically corrupted and co-opted it.

K&R.

[spanone]

5. you know they did. cheney knows where all the bodies are buried. he knows all the angles.

[havocmom]

7. Kick

for Goss' complicity in lying. Pelosi seems to have a point.

[Wednesdays]

8. K&R

:kick: