Pelosi drops her intelligence post pick

WASHINGTON -- House speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that she would not appoint Representative Alcee L. Hastings to chair the House Intelligence Committee, bowing to public furor over Hastings' fitness to lead a panel charged with overseeing the nation's top-secret intelligence secrets and methods.

Hastings, now the committee's second-ranking Democrat, had long been Pelosi's choice to become committee chairman when the House switches to Democratic control in January. But pressure built on Pelosi to change her mind because of Hastings' impeachment and removal from a federal judgeship in connection with bribery charges in the 1980s.

In a meeting yesterday in Pelosi's office, Pelosi told the Florida Democrat that he will not be her choice to head the panel. She did not announce her selection and is still considering alternatives to the committee's current top-ranking Democrat, Representative Jane Harman of California, according to a Pelosi aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"Congressman Alcee Hastings and I have had extensive consultations, and today I advised him that I would select someone else as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee," Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in a statement released by her office.

"Alcee Hastings has always placed national security as his highest priority," she continued. "He has served our country well, and I have full confidence that he will continue to do so."

Hastings, 70, expressed disappointment with the decision but said he would seek "better and bigger opportunities in a Democratic Congress." "Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet," Hastings said in a statement.

Pelosi's consideration of Hastings was emerging as a political distraction for House Democrats. Republicans and some outside groups had demanded that Pelosi not choose a scandal-tarred figure to head a committee that oversees vital intelligence.

"It would put someone who has a track record of abusing the public trust in a position of prominence in her Congress," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative-leaning watchdog group.

Congress removed Hastings from his federal judgeship in 1989 in connection with allegations that he accepted a $150,000 bribe in return for giving lenient sentences to two defendants. He was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate but acquitted in a 1983 criminal trial.

Hastings, who went on to win a seat in Congress in 1992, had been scrambling to secure the intelligence post in recent days. Last week he circulated an angry, rambling letter to his Democratic colleagues in which he accused the FBI of evidence-tampering and conservative commentators of making uninformed judgments.

"I hope that my fate is not determined by Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Barone, Drudge, anonymous bloggers, and other assorted misinformed fools," Hastings wrote. "I have been entrusted with America's secrets. And, I have never violated that trust."

The decision to bypass Hastings could damage Pelosi's strained relations with the Congressional Black Caucus. The caucus clashed with Pelosi earlier this year over her efforts to press Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana to resign his primary committee post when investigators found $90,000 in his freezer.

In an interview just hours before Pelosi made her announcement on Hastings, the caucus chairman, Representative Mel Watt, said Pelosi was hesitating because of a media-driven furor over Hastings' past.

"She had made the decision, and the press had decided or somebody had decided that they don't want it to happen," said Watt, a North Carolina Democrat. "It's important for minority members to be considered for all of these positions when they've paid their dues and done what they're supposed to do."

In a statement issued after Pelosi's decision was made public, Watt said of Hastings, "He would have made an outstanding intelligence chairman, and we still hope he will at some point in our nation's future."

Pelosi now faces a difficult choice in finding a new intelligence panel chairman. Harman, who has been the committee's top Democrat for four years, would normally be the choice to become chair wo man . But Pelosi has long had a chilly relationship with her fellow Californian. Harman did not criticize the administration before the war over its use of intelligence data, leading some Democrats to question her candidacy.

Liberal bloggers are circulating comments Harman made endorsing the administration's case for war in 2002, including one statement where she cited "a growing Al Qaeda presence in Iraq."