So, tonight I picked up a week-old U.S. News and World Report I hadn't read off my coffee table and was stunned to flip it open and find a blurb about the unbelievable Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), House Intelligence Committee Chairman, who until yesterday I had never heard of.
He's the guy who pushed so hard to put all those nuclear secrets - you know, the ones - vetted in passing by linguists, in
Arabic, up on the web.
Yeah, that guy.
Well a week ago was a different story entirely... U.S. News was talking about him, saying (you're not going to believe this, follow to the flip:)
"One day after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra suspended a Democratic staffer for allegedly leaking the supersecret National Intelligence Estimate on global terrorism, GOP officials pounced on the issue to embarrass Democrats. "...we hope that the Democrats didn't leak that document to the New York Times just to score political points," said a House leadership aide on Friday. "Al Qaeda has a subscription to the New York Times," he added. The report embarrassed the administration because it suggested that the war in Iraq had prompted more terrorism. Republicans hope that their tactics will raise concerns that a Democratic Congress would be too loose with critical classified information.
(emphasis mine)
Rub your eyes and read it again if you have to.
The man who pushed for crowd-sourcing of what should have been top secret information vital to our national security, earlier this month fired a Democratic staffer (without any evidence, btw) for possibly leaking a NIE that had no new news but did embarrass every warmonger by saying that the war in Iraq is making us less safe. (The illustrious Hoekstra, I have found out, in June of this year, claimed there were so WMD's in Iraq, and in August attacked the CIA for refusing to say Iran is a bigger threat, and stood up for the illegal NSA wiretapping.)
Is there any doubt that nothing is beneath these people, nothing, if they think it would be politically advantageous?
I don't know why exactly I'm so surprised; I feel foolish for believing that there were, even in the eyes of these sociopaths, lines that couldn't be crossed regarding our safety as a nation. PUBLISHING NUCLEAR SECRETS TO THE WEB IN ARABIC, I thought was one of them. The hypocrisy is unbelievable. I don't know if Al Qaeda gets the NYT, but they probably have access to an internet connection.
So thanks, Pete. So glad you're chair of the Intelligence Committee. Which is also ironic, since you apparently have none.