Lawmakers were late to learn of secret program, official says
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration briefed top lawmakers on a significant intelligence program only after a key Republican committee leader angrily complained of being left in the dark, House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra said yesterday.
Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, would not describe the program but said it was significant enough that the administration should have briefed him and others voluntarily, without waiting for them to learn of it through government tipsters.
``There was at least one major -- what I consider significant -- activity that we had not been briefed on that we have now been briefed on," Hoekstra said on ``Fox News Sunday." ``Some people within the intelligence community brought to my attention some programs that they believed we had not been briefed on. They were right."
Hoekstra said the briefings took place after he complained in a May 18 letter to President Bush of hearing about ``alleged intelligence community activities" not described to committee members in classified briefings.
``If these allegations are true," he wrote Bush, ``they may represent a breach of responsibility by the Administration, a violation of law and . . . a direct affront to me and the Members of this committee."
Yesterday, Hoekstra appeared mollified. But he said he still believes the administration falls short of its legal obligations to brief key congressional members on significant intelligence operations.
``I wanted to reinforce to the president and to the executive branch and the intelligence community how important, and by law the requirement, that they keep the legislative branch informed of what they are doing," he told Fox News. ``It is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing."
Numerous Democrats and civil liberties groups have alleged that the administration ignores laws involving due process and congressional notification in conducting surveillance and intelligence programs in the name of fighting terrorism.
Until Hoekstra's May 18 letter was disclosed in yesterday's editions of The
Hoekstra's remarks left unclear the nature of the intelligence programs he was alluding to in his letter. He did not specify whether they involved domestic surveillance, a contentious area in which newspapers have reported about programs involving warrantless wiretaps, massive gathering of phone records, and monitoring of international bank transactions.
Hoekstra, like many other GOP lawmakers, has defended the programs as important tools in combating terrorism, and he has resisted Democrats' calls for full-blown inquiries into the programs' legality.
Hoekstra also had shown deep interest in an April report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that Iranian troops had buried in the 1980s and were uncovered in 2004.
Hoekstra and Senator Rick Santorum said the shells justify claims that deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but the administration has not embraced those assertions. 