Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who opposes the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary defense, drew the ire of Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) on Tuesday after he complained that Hagel omitted to disclose several speeches to the committee.
“He didn’t remember those speeches,” Levin told Vitter at a committee hearing. “He’s not trying to hide speeches. If he gave us 80 speeches, I couldn’t give you a list of every speech I’ve made in the last five years. Particularly informal speeches. There’s no way. And if I gave you a list which had 90% of the speeches that I had, I’d be doing pretty well. So unless you think that he intentionally misled this committee and have any evidence of that we will accept your list for the record.”
Vitter responded: “I can’t tell you what his intent was. I can just tell you the facts. Putting that to the side, is it not reasonable for us to review these six speeches we now know about before we vote?”
“Those speeches, you could continue, if there’s 80 out there that he’s spoken to, 80 organizations after these six come in you may discover, hey there’s two other organizations on that 80 that have found transcripts,” Levin said. “This could go on forever. We need a secretary of defense.”
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