Congress Kept In Dark On Spying

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Congress Kept In Dark On Spying
Washington Correspondent Geoff Elliott
11 July 06

A SENIOR Republican congressman has hit out at the Bush administration’s intelligence practices, saying the White House concealed at least one large operation in possible violation of the law.

The revelations by Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the powerful House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, deal a blow to President George W. Bush’s repeated assurances that the White House has complied with its disclosure requirements to Congress.

Mr Hoekstra appeared on Fox News yesterday after The New York Times published a letter at the weekend that he had sent to Mr Bush on May 18. In the letter Mr Hoesktra alleged there was yet another intelligence program that the administration had not told Congress about.

Mr Hoesktra has made it clear the operation in question was different from the wiretapping controversy or the covert monitoring of international financial transactions that the White House has been defending in recent weeks.

Mr Hoekstra’s letter to Mr Bush was also notable for his claim that there was a dissident faction within the CIA that he said "intentionally undermined" the President’s policies.

This confirmed rumours that have long circulated in Washington about the existence of a dissident group, which critics claim has selectively leaked stories to the media about the Bush administration’s intelligence operations.

US law requires that the intelligence panels of the Senate and the House of Representatives be informed of the Government’s intelligence activities.

Mr Hoekstra said his intelligence committee learned about some undisclosed operations from whistleblowers who alerted Congress to what they believed were illegal activities.

This led to Mr Hoesktra writing an angry letter to Mr Bush reminding the President of his legal responsibility to "fully and currently" inform Congress of intelligence operations.

"If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies," Mr Hoekstra wrote.

Last December, The New York Times caused a storm by exposing the Bush administration’s program of authorising wiretaps on US citizens in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks without court warrants. The program’s critics maintain it is illegal.

Mr Hoekstra said that since he sent the letter the administration had complied with his demand but he added he was taking the situation "very, very seriously".

"I want to set the standard there that it is not optional for this President or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing," Mr Hoekstra told Fox.

The criticism from Mr Hoekstra is particularly significant because the Michigan Republican has been a close ally of Mr Bush on the controversial intelligence operations, including the warrantless wiretap and financial monitoring scandals.