DiFi Will Cave on Intelligence Reform
As I’ve noted before (here and here), confirmation hearings for James Clapper have gotten bogged down in a dispute between the Administration and both houses of Congress over whether Congress should have the tools to exercise real oversight of intelligence functions.
Right now, Nancy Pelosi is holding out for both extended notification to the Intelligence Committees and GAO audit power over intelligence community functions. But, in spite of earlier claims that she would not hold a confirmation hearing for Clapper until the intelligence authorization passed, DiFi now appears to be softening that stance. She told Chris Wallace yesterday that she will move forward with confirmation hearings provided that Obama chat to Pelosi about her intelligence related concerns (starting at 14:07).
Chris Wallace: One of your other hats that you wear is Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee–Director of National Intelligence Blair has been fired. The Acting Director Gompert is resigning. Meanwhile, House and Senate Democrats are deadlocked over the intel reform bill and the whole question of Congressional oversight of spy agencies. How quickly are you going to get this resolved and how quickly are you going to confirm so that we have a Director of National intelligence?
Feinstein: Well the process has begun, he has received the questions. On Friday–
Wallace: This is General Clapper?
Feinstein: Yes, General Clapper. Friday I learned the questions have been answered. They were at the White House. We would expect to receive them this week. We can move. I have requested that the President call the Speaker and try to move our Intelligence bill. the reason the Speaker has a problem with it is because we removed two things which the White House found to be veto-able. One was an extension of notification on certain very sensitive matters to all Members rather than the Gang of Eight. The second was Government Accountability Office, we call it the GAO, oversight which was anathema to the White House. We took that out. The bill passed the Senate, our committee, and the Senate unanimously. We have conferenced it, we’ve pre-conferenced it, with the House Committee. We believe we are in agreement, we’re ready to move. If the Speaker will allow them to go to conference then we can move the bill–
Chris Wallace: But very quickly, will you hold up confirmation hearings for Clapper until you get resolution on the intel report?
Feinstein: Well, I have asked that the President would please talk to the Speaker. If he does that, I will move ahead.
Now, to be fair, Obama’s threatening a recess appointment for Clapper in any case. And–as Wallace pointed out–the resignation of Acting Director of National Intelligence David Gompert and the planned retirement of his possible replacement has ratcheted up pressure to get a permanent replacement in (I’ll point out once again that there seems to be a double standard between the treatment of ODNI and OLC). So the choice is likely between a recess appointment with no intelligence reform and a confirmation hearing with intelligence reform (Clapper’s approval is not assured).
But Pelosi’s making a stand to fix two of the problems that the Bush Administration exploited–and which the Obama Administration, particularly given their veto threat, may plan to exploit as well. DiFi appears to be saying that the principle of real Congressional oversight is worth nothing more than a conversation with the President.
(my bold)
Difi stands for no balance of powers? Someone should ask her why she is willing to part with the Balance of Powers and how she benefits and how the citizens benefit.
I hope Pelosi stands loudly on her evidence about not being briefed on torture as her motivation for intel reforms. (BTW, I would link to your post about Pelosi being right about not being briefed in the second to last paragraph.)
This is an interesting post to read after the Prince post. They seem to be related to a degree.
Oh, they’re definitely related. If the IC is going to play games w/Prince going forward, they’re going to be able to bc they avoided GAO audits of their contracts. It’s probably that simple.
And I actually empathize with DiFi’s position here, too. If you assume that Obama would recess Clapper, then you’re really better off pushing through the intel reform because it does have SOME good things, and if you don’t have any intel authorization generally, then the committees are basically just show. DiFi actually is a good SSCI Chair in that she is trying to use it to effect policy, and some of her intell views are not that bad.
Plus, I do think there’s a possibility of rejecting Clapper, which would mean you’d get an intel bill AND avoid Clapper.
Mostly, as I hope to point out later, one of the probs is that no one takes Pelosi’s issues seriously, bc no one has reported on them.
I hope you expand your entire comment @3 into a post. That is one incredible comment.
Thanks for writing it. (You could also make the Pelosi link ..the “F-ing Right” post in your last paragraph above.)
Well, I’ve been working on a “If Nancy Pelosi is proved fucking right but no journalist reports it, does it even happen?” post.
Oh I caught the next post you are working on (looking forward to it). Just hope you can work in the Prince and the DiFi points too.
Your problem is you keep trying to make things public. What you need to do is go to the WaPo or NYT as an anonymous source.
ROTFL!!!
If I were Marcy, I’d stay out of rifle range of both WaPo and NYT.
Boxturtle (I’m thinking Kathy at WaPo has Marcy’s picture on her toilet paper)
Lovely, we get a shitty guy (Clapper) that no one wants AND no oversight. That’s the DiFi we all know and love…
Marcy, you have more respect for DiFi than I do. She always seems to lose at tacticly useful times for unfettered intelligence power.
But she makes it look like a good fight almost every time.
Boxturtle (I can’t even remember her last sternly worded letter)
I think it was directed at MoveOn for their Betrayus ad…
So you’re saying that the President has influence over the legislative process? Well I never.
Christy has a fresh cross-post up: Rest In Peace, Sen. Robert C. Byrd
Ahhh, please don’t get me started on the Big D. or I prefer to call her, the “commercial Republic”.
She is the icon or exemplar for America’s “decent into Hell1” AND I suppose in that I were exercising some Common Sense, I would write no more relative to this post.
However, my sense of humor is and has been contagious. Take, for example, if Big D. has any Sonoran Desert “con-johnsons” she would have drafted and dumped into the Senate legislative hopper, the Articles of Impeachment for George W. Bush, when he announced that one of the many strategies for his War of Choice was premised on “pre-emption”. To wit, America has never “formally” adopted “pre-emption” as part and parcel to any public policy. Thus, my expecting her to have some ‘principles’ is not going to happen in her life time, let alone mine.
And in keeping with my political behavior for these past ten years of focusing on the notional for the “damage by Democrats to Democrats”, I feel that I must express my exasperation with my fellow Democrats. And more so from my perspective of my moniker and that being “Native American/Chicano/Military Veteran”.
Consequently, political “bogus artifices” are not just restricted to Democrats, but if Democrats place any “value” on my vote, then holding, Big Biz D. and the like-minded accountable for perpetuating a “commercial Republic” as defined by the First Chief Justice Marshall of SCOTUS fame,continues apace. Regardless, no Native American Rez is “safe” from the majority and which will be follwed after Social Security has been “privatized”. And sadly, when it comes to national security, economic security is conveniently ignored if one understands the history of the first Imperial Presidency of the Democratic Faithful, and that being Andrew Jackson and his expediency for dissolving the Cherokee Nation of Georgia and due the exploration for the then newly found gold.
Finally, “trusting” the Democrats is a hard feat to achieve when Democrats cannot resist the deep pockets of the lobbyists.
Jaango
Kee-rect. And I’m not sure who’s to blame for that. Certainly the nearly brain-dead national press, who doesn’t seem to know what to report if the WH or Pentagon press office doesn’t tell them (and there are some notable exceptions to this coma-like functioning, of course). Or should Pelosi or her office be more active in reaching out, call news conferences, cultivate their own people in the press? I’d think the latter at least empowers Pelosi and would leverage her position. But I think she grew up in an insider milieu, and doesn’t believe in laundering dirty sheets in public (unless forced to, as with her news conference after CIA slimed her).
In any case, great coverage, Marcy.
The interview had one other item of newsworthiness, though I haven’t time to cover myself, and that was Feinstein joining with Senator Graham in calling for the political take-out of the “civilian” part of the administration’s Afghanistan team, i.e., Holbrooke and Eikenberry. Hence, no real surprise here, Feinstein joins with Lieberman, Kit Bond, Graham, and the others in completing Petraeus’s coup at HQ, which only makes me wonder if McChrystal didn’t fall on his sword so that the Vulcans could take over again. How happy Karzai (and his brother) will be to hear the Democratic Party leader of the SSCI wants to shit-can Holbrooke and Eikenberry.
In the meantime, Graham went on and on about how we can’t stick to an actual November 2011 date for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Such a date is only aspirational… yeah, that’s ok. Reminds me (quite O/T) of the American Psychological Association, who split the beneficence portion of the ethics code for psychologists from the actual, operational side, so that psychologists could adhere to governmental/organizational demands over their own ethical code (though this particular aspect of the APA’s ethical rules supposedly just changed). Doing no harm was “aspirational”, not an enforceable rule. Military and CIA psychologists could do their bit without any worry that some do-gooder civilian professional watchdog group would come down on them for doing their patriotic duty and helping create a torture program.
Di Fi is a war monger. How much money does her husband make off of them?
How many dead people can be attributed directly to her words and actions?
She is obsessed with *controlling* drugs. Why?
What is in it for her? Does she have a taste for toddler BBQ?
I don’t look at her anymore because when I do,
I see the blood of children.
Dianne Feinstein caving on key Constitutitional issues involving Congressional oversight of an increasingly out-of-control executive branch? Why, who could have ever imagined such a thing?
[/snark]
She’s one of my senators, and I haven’t voted for her since the ’90’s. She’s a standard-issue corporatist with, I believe, a war-profiteer husband.
Feinstein has never met a US war of imperial aggression that she doesn’t just love… Just the other day, she said that if General Betrayus thought that we need to stay in Afghanistan a few more years, that was fine by her… FineWARstein, imperialism for all occasions…
Reagan and the GOP stole the election from Carter by treason – working with the Likud of Israel to stop the hostages from being released. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/06/27/the-cialikud-sinking-of-jimmy-carter/
What are the odds that a Reagan as Traitor hearing will be now held by anyone in Congress, or even a meeting about CIA lack of oversight?
The Mukasey vote for Att. Gen. Thanks again Di.
I think you’re putting in too many long hours Marcy. Get some rest :-)
Cave?
That implies she actually believes in constitutional rights … which we know she doesn’t
O/T kinda. This is quite curious, may be spurious and I am doing my best to fend off hopey-ness.
Pentagon appeals to defense industry for lower cost weapons, services
LINK.
And just contemplate a wildly hypothetical result–things military (including those devil-drones) made cheaper because made in China. (Sorry, it’s been a bad day and I’m trying to find some humor to keep me going.)