New York Times:
The select committee, which would include the lawmakers who set intelligence policy as well as those who oversee the intelligence budget, is intended to address a central commission finding that Congressional oversight of intelligence matters was dysfunctional and needed to be more centralized. The committee will review intelligence spending requests, conduct hearings, make financing recommendations and assess how the money is spent.
The initiative is the latest indication from the Democratic leadership that it intends to be aggressive in the opening weeks of Congress, when the party coming into power may have its best opportunity to push through major changes.
“It’s with really some degree of excitement, frankly, that I make this proposal,” said Ms. Pelosi, who served on both the Appropriations and Intelligence committees. “I know it will make the American people safer.”
After the Sept. 11 commission issued its report in 2004, the Republican-led Congress explored the idea of making in-house changes sought by the panel. But few were seriously pursued after lawmakers ran into the traditional resistance from senior members of Congress unwilling to surrender any authority.
The Democratic proposal, which would apply to the House only, does not go as far as the commission recommended, but one member of the panel welcomed it on Thursday as a substantive step.
“I think it is a creative, bold solution,” said Timothy J. Roemer, a former Democratic congressman who served on the panel and consulted with lawmakers on the new committee. “You can’t point to the F.B.I. to clean up its culture and ask the C.I.A. to improve human intelligence without cleaning up your own backyard.”
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By Jackie T. Gabel, December 17, 2006 at 1:01 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
mite is right !
“Progressives” are celebrating their November “victory,” however it’s understood Pelosi’s job is to avoid the constitutional crisis that 911 truth would precipitate. 9/11 as an inside job is an open secret inside the beltway, and in the financial circles of New York and London. Implementing the recommendations of the 911 Commission cover up is a cruel farce to be played out for the heartland, but seen from the power centers as an essential extension of the cover up for the 911 coup.
In 1975 and 1976, the Church Committee published fourteen reports on the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies, their operations, and the alleged abuses of law and of power that they had committed. These include infiltration of the media, which is probably far more thorough now than it was then. Moreover, obvious through any careful analysis is the real nature of the the numerous security “failures” ahead of 9/11, clearly the work of agency moles. These “failures” are now being hung out as “incompetence” an escape hatch for the 911 traitors, the same gang that runs al Queda and promotes the myth of Islamo-fascism descendants of the Iran Contra cabal, also at the core of the Iraq Study Group and now slated to run the Pentagon.
To be sure, there is a wide world of terror out there. It devastates whomever it touches, spreading chaos and havoc wherever it erupts. The naive citizenry of this nation cannot begin to handle the fact that the intelligence agencies of this nation are not staffed with persons morally strong enough to resist using this powerful weapon. The truth is that all the alphabet spooks have been up to their asses in terrorism; especial false flag terrorism for decades (including the ‘93 WTC bombing and the Oklahoma bombing). Additionally they have done and continue to run kidnapping, death squads, arms and drugs all over the world.
Among the few moral and dedicated officers are numerous thugs paid to follow any orders they get many severely compromised by wretched personal histories. Then there are the pathetic basket cases recruited by the boat load and often sacrificed as patsies. There are probably more unwitting than witting operatives caught up in these dirty little networks, mostly working within small cells on a need-to-know basis. There are so many black-ops/psy-ops programs going on, very few on the outside ever manage to learn who’s doing what. Even the operatives mostly don’t know what’s going on why they’re ordered t do whatever. Take this recent stunt with the presumed Imams ejected from an airliner in Phoenix and the attendant publicity blitz in its wake psy-op written all over it; the purpose of which is simply to perpetuate fear of terror, the myth of Islamo-fascism; keep it in the news; keep one and all afraid, very afraid and ultimately resentful of the laws now being drafted vis-à-vis the profiling issue.
These Straussian, neocon madmen must be shown to their cells. Their elitist, warmongering, Nietzschien, superman, proto fascist insanity we have suffered too long. For the sake of our very humanity and for the peace of the entire world we can afford to suffer them no longer.
Investigate, indict, prosecute and execute!
Support 911Truth - End War of Terror!
Report thisBy DennisD, December 16, 2006 at 1:21 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Why not combine the House & Senate intelligence committees and create just one oxymoron.
Report thisBy Lord Byron, December 15, 2006 at 4:55 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Better oversight?? What does it matter??? Democrats won’t even cut the purse strings on the 170 billion requested by the Bush administration to keep this Iraqi occupation going!
Pelosi is going to keep this war going for the rest of the year into 2008. She’s now culpable in this fiasco of a “war.”
Report thisBy Jon B, December 15, 2006 at 2:58 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
NYT reports “Mr. Boehner took the opportunity to take a jab at Ms. Pelosi, accusing her of backtracking on a high-profile campaign pledge to adopt all of the remaining recommendations of the commission that Republicans resisted. The commission, for instance, had proposed a new joint House-Senate intelligence panel.”
Intelligence Oversight is for the people, not partisan nonsense. I hope Pelosi will keep her words. The trustworthiness seems lacking in Pelosi. She needs to explain why she voted for Iraq war and didn’t withdraw her support of the war after false WMD evidence became public.
It would be nice to have an honest speaker who isn’t into double talk.
Report thisBy mite, December 15, 2006 at 2:07 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
To:Rep. Nancy Pelosi
So you want to form an Oversight committee for Intelligence that addresses budget, and abuses so you say.
Well here is a start:
Open a Independent Group to examine 911 truth with members from the 84 different countries that lost family. http://www.911mysteries.com
Explore the secret treaty between Bush, Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin designed by the Council on Foreign Relations to make a ~North American Union. http://www.cfr.org http://www.spp.gov
Reinstate the protections of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights that the Patriot Acts 1 & 2 destroyed from the 911 lie. Destroy the Military Commissions Act 2006, and End the Homeland Security Dept.
Review the 16th Amendment that was not ratified by a 3/4 majority by the States thus is not law.
Sit down and Read the Consititution and Bill of Rights and then think about the Oath you took.
Give us back our Freedom of Press, and leave our Internet alone.
End the CFR, Trilateral Commission, memberships of all elected officials. Did you know Cheney is a member and used to be its Chairperson; he never mentioned that when he deceived the voters of Wyo.
Form a committee to research the Federal Reserve Act 1913 and IRS 1914 after you read the Consitution. Article 1 Sec: 8
Report thisBy Busta, December 15, 2006 at 11:46 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Which criminal/little brain will she chose to run this one.
Report thisBy mrJJ, December 14, 2006 at 11:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2076137.ece
A devastating attack on Mr Blair’s justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain’s key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.
The Government’s case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction
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