Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) may have inadvertently leaked classified information during a Fox News interview, disclosing an aspect of a FISA court’s decision regarding warrantless wiretapping. On Thursday, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, may have unintentionally done the same thing.
ABC News’ (and TPM alum) Justin Rood explains.
For the second time in as many weeks, a senior House Republican may have divulged classified information in the media.
In an opinion article published in the New York Post Thursday, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., reported the top-secret budget for human spying had decreased — the type of detail normally kept under wraps for national security reasons.
“The 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill cut human-intelligence programs,” Hoekstra wrote in the piece, in which he also criticized “leaks to the news media.”
Formerly the chairman of the intelligence committee, Hoekstra is now its highest ranking Republican. In its recent budget authorizations, that committee kept from public view all figures and most discussion of spending on such classified items as human spying. Hoekstra’s apparent slip was first noted on the liberal Web site, Raw Story.
“If Mr. Hoekstra wants to break ranks and disclose that information, that’s fine with me,” said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert who has long pushed to declassify overall spending on intelligence. “But it is the sort of thing he has harshly criticized in the past.”
Given Hoekstra’s hackish history, this week’s alleged disclosure is par for the course. After all, Hoekstra has had a series of recent intelligence-related embarrassments.
* In November 2006, Hoekstra pushed the administration to publish online a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The idea was to let far-right bloggers “prove” that Saddam had WMD, but Hoekstra’s plan led to the accidental release of secret nuclear research, including a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
* In October 2006, Hoestra “stripped the credentials of a Democratic committee aide he believed may have leaked a then-classified document to The New York Times. A month later, he quietly reinstated the aide’s access.”
* In July 2006, Hoekstra called a humiliating press conference to announce, “We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” — despite failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
* In June 2006, Hoekstra and Rick Santorum wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed, alleging that some officials in the intelligence community are attempting to destroy the Bush administration — and America itself.
Maybe House Republicans can find someone a little less reckless to serve as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee?
