I don’t want to let pass the reinstatement of security clearances for House Intelligence Committee staffer Larry Hanauer without commenting on what an ugly incident this was.
Here you have a mid-level Democratic staffer stripped of his ability to do his job by the committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) as political payback against Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking member who publicly released a report of an internal committee investigation of whether and how convicted felon Duke Cunningham used his position on the committee to advance his corrupt schemes.
Poor Hanauer was caught in the middle. His security clearances were suspended not because of anything he had to do with the Cunningham report but because in the course of doing his job he had requested and received a copy of the National Intelligence Estimatee on Iraq, another classified report that was later leaked to the New York Times.
There was no evidence that Hanauer was in any way connected to the leak. None. There was only the coincidence of timing. Bear in mind that numerous people inside government had access to the report, and Hanauer was only one of them. But look, Rep. Ray Lahood (R-IL) has admitted that this was payback, a shot across Harman’s bow. Walter Pincus walks us through the all details again in a piece today in the WaPo.
Hoekstra’s tenure has committee chairman has been one long decline into politicization of intelligence and of the oversight process. He hit rock bottom with the Hanauer incident. He was sitting on the Cunningham report because of its embarrassing findings: his fellow GOP committee member was running amok engaged in criminal conduct right under Hoekstra’s nose. He and the Administration had been sitting on the politically explosive NIE on Iraq, which mysteriously didn’t get distributed to members of the Intel Committee as it normally would have.
In one last spasm of coverup and denial, Hoekstra–and the rest of the GOP leadership–lashed out at a mid-level staffer. It’s a disgrace.
