DIMWIT DEM INTELLIGENCE

You may recall House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) got into hot water this Spring when she asserted the CIA "misleads Congress all the time."

Ms. Pelosi made that statement after claiming the CIA had never briefed her in 2002-2003 on the waterboarding of some high level al Qaeda captives. 

 Her statement was challenged by current CIA Director Leon Panetta, former CIA Directors Gen. Michael Hayden, Porter Goss and George Tenet, and by the then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich).

You may not recall this, because the Democrats, who have a comfortable majority in the House, were able quickly to quash Republican efforts to have a formal investigation of Ms. Pelosi’s charge.  The story died away.

For Democrats generally, and Ms. Pelosi in particular, this was a good thing.  According to a Rasmussen poll in May, 63 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the CIA, just 35 percent had a favorable view of Ms. Pelosi.

So it was a puzzlement to many when the House Intelligence Committee leaked a letter written June 26 to Mr. Panetta from Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex), the current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and six other Democrats (of 13) on the committee charging the CIA "concealed significant actions from the members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week."

The letter made no mention of what those "significant actions" were, but subsequent leaks indicated it was a plan to assassinate al Qaeda leaders.  According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Panetta had told lawmakers Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the CIA not to tell Congress about the assassination plan.

There were two problems with Ms. Feinstein’s story.

The first is that the assassination plan never got off the drawing board, so there was no program on which to brief members of Congress.

The second is that former CIA Director Hayden flatly denied Mr. Cheney had ordered him not to tell Congress about the plan which never got off the ground, and Mr. Panetta’s boss, Admiral Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, wouldn’t back up what Mr. Panetta is alleged to have said. 

Mr. Panetta himself has kept a discreet silence since the flap went public.

The leakers initially got the headlines they wanted, but as the facts come out, the story cannot end well for Democrats.  Few Americans are outraged the CIA contemplated killing our enemies during a time of war. 

Further, the Democrat currently in the White House is doing precisely that right now with Predator drone missile attacks on al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. 

Swing voters are already uncomfortable about the attacks on the CIA, and — should there be another terrorist attack on the U.S. — the downside risk for Democrats is enormous.  So why wouldn’t they let this sleeping dog lie?

Because Mr. Reyes is a dimwit.  Ms. Pelosi chose him for chairman over the far better qualified Rep. Jane Harman (D-Ca), who’d been the ranking Democrat when the GOP controlled Congress, because of her personal animosity to Ms. Harman. At the time of his elevation, Mr. Reyes didn’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shia, an appalling failing in a member of the Intelligence Committee.

Another theory is that because President Obama’s poll numbers have been dropping, something must be done to distract attention from the economy and to fire up the moonbat base.

In any event, Democrats are clamoring yet again for an investigation of the warfighting policies of President Bush which cannot end well for them or for America. 

"The incredible amount of partisanship Democrats have introduced into intelligence matters is demoralizing the U.S. intelligence community, causing sensitive information to be disclosed and encouraging our enemies," Mr. Hoekstra said in an op-ed in the New York Post yesterday (7/20).

The politicization of intelligence is especially harmful at this time because the CIA is in need of adult oversight.  Apparently the assassination plan (which would have avoided the "collateral damage" of the Predator strikes) never became operational because the CIA didn’t think it could pull it off. 

"It’s bad enough that our intelligence operatives haven’t been able to kill our enemies," said columnist Jonah Goldberg.  "But it compounds the outrage when you broadcast that fact to the world."

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.