From NRO’s The Corner:
It appears that the Department of Justice is playing politics with the Times Square bombing plot by refusing to brief Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), the Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. During a classified briefing on Thursday members of the intelligence community refused to answer one of Senator Bond’s questions, according to Bond “We called the agency of the intelligence community that should have that information, and they advised us that the Department of Justice is running it and they told us they should not share it with the Intelligence Committee.” Bond further noted that the stonewalling was directed at him personally, “The Intelligence Community has been told they should not speak to the Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee — that’s me.” Bond suspects politics is behind it, which isn’t a stretch given his criticism of the administration’s handling of the Christmas Day Bomber, and his comments on Wednesday that Shazad is not entitled to Miranda rights (a bit of a misstatement as, barring some exception, Miranda would be required if prosecutors want to use the fruits of a custodial interrogation against Shazad).
In any case, someone may want to tell AG Holder that absent some reason to believe that Vice Chairman Bond will disclose intelligence without authorization, the intelligence community is legally obligated to keep Congress “fully” and “currently” informed.
Indeed, someone should tell Holder – but I bet that Holder already knows this. The trouble is that if Bond is informed, it might come out that the Obama Administration was relentlessly incompetent in handling the affair and as we know, if anything hurts the Obama Administration, it must not come out.
Dissent might have been the highest form of patriotism back in 2008, but now we know that slavish devotion to Obama is the highest form or patriotism. Thus, Holder is just being patriotic in stonewalling Bond. Additionally, it is just as important to remember that “the people have a right to know” was only operational until January 20th, 2009. On that date, “the people don’t need to know” became the rule.
At least they aren’t letting out no-bid contracts to KBR, right?
Darn!
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