Monday, July 10, 2006

THE MARKUP

A spokesman for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence just confirmed to me that Russ Tice was not the source who tipped Chairman Peter Hoekstra to previously undisclosed intelligence programs (I speculated about Tice's involvement in this post). The spokesman writes:

Chairman Hoekstra's source is not someone who has revealed their name publicly or who would promote themselves as such. There will be much idle speculation on this topic, but the facts are the Intelligence Community has come forward with the requested information, and the Chairman is satisfied with their commitment to be forthcoming with the committee.

This still leaves an important question unanswered: Why did intel officials fail to brief the intel committees on these programs? Was it a good-faith difference of opinion over what constitutes a "major program"? Or was the administration deliberately trying to hide something from Congress? The latter seems unlikely. Hoekstra is a close congressional ally who has supported all of the president's other intelligence-gathering initiatives, and once he complained he was brought into the loop to his satisfaction. My guess is this was an oversight that intel officials corrected once Hoekstra brought it to their attention.

UPDATE: The folks at TPMmuckraker have another guess:

... another candidate has stepped forward: Dave Gaubatz. Gaubatz, a former Air Force special investigator who worked as a civilian employee in Iraq, has volunteered that he's the "whistleblower." [...]
Gaubatz told me that the program Hoekstra referenced Sunday, the "major" activity the Intelligence Committee wasn't briefed on, is a Defense Department program run out of the Air Force Research Lab. Gaubatz said that there were “several programs” there that the Congressman wasn't aware of, but “one major program” in particular. He wouldn't give too many details about the program, but said that "it pertains to WMD and ways to move the WMD."
Gaubatz's story fits on two key points. However, my call to the House intelligence committee to confirm that Gaubatz is the one hasn't been returned.

The WMD stuff would certainly be of interest to Hoekstra, but this hypothesis doesn't square with the HPSCI spokesman's statement (above) that Hoekstra's source "is not someone... who would promote themselves as such."

Of course, there could be more than one.

UPDATE II: HPSCI spokesman says nope, not Gaubatz either.

07/10 01:39 PM Share