Crazy Pete Hoekstra’s Misplaced Priorities on Keeping Secrets
As I pointed out last week, Crazy Pete Hoekstra, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, says we can’t have whistleblower protection included in the stimulus package because it would compromise our national security if intelligence community whistleblowers could safely tell Congress (in a classified setting) about fraud and wrong-doing.
After which, Crazy Pete promptly went to Iraq and posted the classified details of his and John Boehner’s trip to his Twitter account.
A delegation led by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, arrived in Iraq earlier today, and because of Rep. Peter Hoekstra , R-Mich., the entire world — or at least Twitter.com readers—now know they’re there.
“Just landed in Baghdad,” messaged Hoekstra, a former chairman of the Intelligence panel and now the ranking member, who is routinely entrusted to keep some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets.
Before the delegation left Washington, they were advised to keep the trip to themselves for security reasons. A few media outlets, including Congressional Quarterly, learned about it, but agreed not to disclose anything until the delegation had left Iraq.
Nobody expected, though, that a lawmaker with such an extensive national security background would be the first to break the silence. And in such a big way.
Not only did Hoekstra reveal the existence of the lawmakers’ trip, but included details about their itinerary in updates posted every few hours on his Twitter page, until he suddenly stopped, for some reason, on Friday morning.
See, we can’t have whistleblowers share secrets in classified settings. Because that takes all the fun, for members of the Gang of Eight, out of sharing secrets via Twitter.
…shakes head …amazed
I swear, you can’t write this stuff.
Things like this would be very entertaining, if it wasn’t for the fact that’s he’s one of the guys seemingly intent on destroying the republic.
He’s also gonna run for Governor of MI.
Destroying the Republic. Then double destroying MI.
Republicans are a Southern Party and don’t really care about what they do to the rest of the country.
Crazy Pete? And would there be more than 2 votes (his and his wife’s) he’d be getting?
He’ll be DeVos’ candidate. So he’ll be backed by millions and have the whole Dutch Reform wingnut community behind him.
So, uh, yeah, he’ll get well more than 2 votes.
If Hoekstra keeps this up, Geraldo will be out of a job soon …
It is his way of telling Al-Quaida to BRING IT ON!
He is ready to go mano a mano with them!
Someone noticed and took his toy away from him, I gather.
Good.
Now, charge him with violations of security rules, so he loses his credibility on these issues.
This incident should be grounds for his removal from all Intelligence briefings, because he’s obviously a security risk.
Bob in HI
Yup.
And ditto randiego@1 — you could not make this up.
I swear to god, going back to TNH, it seems like there have been like a dozen of these “Crazy Pete blows secret info” posts. Seriously……
True ‘nough.
I did not name him Crazy Pete for nothing, you know.
It’s both his loose lips and his propensity to push the most ridiculous kinds of propaganda.
Though I’m particularly chuffed by his little Twitter fuck-up. The MI GOP has really led the way in “adopting” cool technologies like Facebook and Twitter.
So hopefully, they’re teaching the rest of the party to be as stupid as they are.
This story might be expected of a teenage son who accompanied a politician on a trip. Totally thought-free, without regard to consequences or global distribution of the medium.
The technologies of the 21st century combined with the carefree recklessness of a stoned Michigan teenager, circa 1974.
This guy is a walking, talking national security risk.
guess you ain’t heard
turns out America don’t much like LUSH LIMPBALLS
lush has 20 million devoted followers, and 280 million people in the process of being convinced that lush limpball’s ditto heads are a cancer on the country
the repuglitards ain’t as popular as they think they are
all ya got to do is get crazy pete tied to lush limpballs, and then pete might have a problem gettin TWO votes
Just before the election, Move America Forward (Howard Kaloogian, Melanie Morgan, Sal Russo and friends) under the name “Our Country Deserves Better PAC” were doing this informational bus tour and seemed to spend a lot of time in Michigan. I wondered why since Michigan was clearly not in play in late October. I think they even raised some money to run some local anti-Obama ads in Michigan..
I can’t bear to link to MAF website, but it is remarkably similar to Military Families United in focus and substance.
They are collecting money to run a “Keep Gitmo Open” ad:
I suspect these “informational” PACS are funneling support to Hoekstra and other vermin like him for the next election.
For years now I’ve had it in my head the Crazed Dutchman was Illini — owing perhaps to a bit of auld country name conflation with the recent former Mumbler of the House & the [obviously mistaken] impression the land of Abraham, Barack & Rod is far more wildly diverse of political DNA. The realization he’s actually from some backwater district in Michigan is flooring me. But Michigan’s a pretty big town & I–as perhaps many out-of-towners here–know so little of it: e.g. all I’ve seen is airports near City Primevil & Ann Arbour & of course those two [quite apparently] unrepresentative pieces.
So perhaps you – & Fearless Leader of course & any others with a good theory – can explain to us how in hell this complete whack job has been able to fool so many of those presumably mostly native white ‘ganders so thoroughly for so long. And maybe give us hope for the state’s future out of the next gubernatorial election.
Deeeeelighted to find that linky goes to cq vs. one of them thar dfh blogs *G*….should mean it gets seen by a expanded range of eyes which would be a veddy good thing. That degree of stoopidity could have resulted in two special elections…of much greater importance, led to the deaths of some members of our military.
What exactly would it take to get his security clearances yanked?
The internet is winning! Long live sunshine in politics!
better yet
I’m from Southern California so it will be up to Marcy and others to explain where Crazy Pete gets all of his support.
I am keeping an eye on Howard Kaloogian. Howard Kaloogian grew up in Michigan but he lives in the San Diego area. He was in the CA state assembly and unsuccessfully ran for Duke Cunningham’s old seat. Kaloogian is the one who posted that picture of lovely, peaceful downtown Baghdad on his website that was sleuthed out by dkos bloggers and properly identified as a scene from an Istanbul, Turkey suburb.
Kaloogian chaired the Recall Gray Davis committee and is the founder and co-chairman of Move America Forward. Kaloogian seems to be the front man/ chief agitator. Behind the scenes Sal Russo of Russo, March & Russo is the money man (and probably brains) behind Kaloogian’s adventures. I just sortof intrigued by where and how they get all their money and how they spend it.
Their “Our country Deserves Better PAC” did a 14 day tour from Sacramento to Washington DC at the end of October. They were in MI for 3 days then went to Ohio for a day and zipped back to Michigan and then went from Michiganfor a day and from there travelled straight to DC for the final day. I am curious as to why they spent so much time in Michigan when it wasn’t a swing state in the election.
Crazy Pete,
http://www.moviewavs.com/php/s…..u-dick.wav
How much power is going into that non-descript strip mall in Virginia. Who’s watching the coming and goings?
…and here I was thinking that Hoekstra was a ’stealth’ candidate. I don’t really watch the TV news that much, just nationwide stuff like KO, Rachel, Shuster.
But, judging by these posts, he’s right out in the open. Michigan was stupid enough to elect Engler twice, and voted for that shameful ban on gay marriage; so I suppose we must consider it to be in play.
But I’m hoping Barack can do enough good things to keep us Deep Blue.
Wasn’t Hoekstra and Roberts also part of the group that insisted on putting unvetted Iraqi records captured or turned over to the US and UN after the Iraq War on line so that they could be translated by ARABIC SPEAKERS to see if they contained any evidence of plans to develop the evil WMD’s? Turned out there WERE plans and schematics, but these all pre-dated the first Gulf War (dating from the Iraq-Iran War period) and had been turned over already by the Iraqis.
But these ended up on-line where any Arab-speaking terrorist could have easily gained access to them, even when the objective evidence showed that Saddam had never used these.
Here he goes again! I think that there are many other cases of this guy blabbing or revealing secrets (or distorting what he claimed were secrets) for partisan reasons.
Hoekstra was also the one to release the Army report, without important details, that troops had discovered canisters with traces of toxic nerve gas in Iraq. Trimmed out was the fact that the canisters were decades old, the traces were so slight that it supported the idea that these were degraded vestiges from the war b/w Iran and Iraq…and would have not have been usable even during the first Gulf War. He passed on similar assertions about artillery shells found with nerve gas…once again “traces” on rusting shells actually turned over to Polish troops for huge bounties (over $20K/ shell) by individuals who were probably involved in either the Badr Brigades or another militia.
Hoekstra has fed Joe Klein restricted information from his access within the Intelligence Committee
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/…..joe-klein/
Of course, is it “classified” if it is so factually in error that it only resembles the actual presentation superficially?
Then there was Hoekstra’s assertions about Iran’s active nuclear weapons programs, supposedly based upon secret information presented in the Intelligence Committee, which turned out to be diametrically opposed to the NIE released a year later by the Intelligence Community.
His assertions that “Plame was not covert….” while blocking the Intelligence Committee’s entire report on the WH leaks. His efforts to block the release (with Roberts of Kansas) the Phase II report on the “use of intelligence on Iraqi WMD’s by the WH before the Iraq War”…his manipulations of intelligence data from the public are replete.