Never Mind
Jul 27th, 2005 at 9:01 pm by Susie
Well, guess what? Sen. Pat Roberts is saying the Senate Intelligence committee won’t be holding Plame hearings, after all:
Roberts said that Plame, along with several other cases, points to problems related to how the intelligence community protects its officers and to ambiguities in the definition of who has cover and what levels of cover exist.
But any Rove probe wouldn’t be appropriate for Intelligence to handle until after the Justice Department finishes its inquiry, if at all, Roberts said.
Democrats point out that Republican-led congressional investigations and hearings often overlapped with Justice probes during the Clinton administration.
But Roberts said he’s too busy with other intelligence concerns - the aftermath of the London bombings and other terror threats - to get caught up in a political squabble.
Roberts pointed out that in the 1990s, when former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was under a Justice investigation and Roberts headed the House Agriculture Committee, Roberts refrained from investigating Espy, a Clinton appointee.
Let the Justice Department do its work, and then Intelligence will do what’s appropriate, Roberts said.
“It’s silly that someone would assume that we should take the role of a special prosecutor,” he said.
UPDATE: Kevin is still suspicious of Roberts’ motives.
Sure, Roberts is too busy. Someone told him to back off. I wonder who? The key is the sixth paragraph: Let the Justice Department do its work, and then Intelligence will do what’s appropriate, Roberts said. ( Someone said, “Lay off or we’ll leak about your ?”)
Turf war.
CIA vs. White House.
Don’t screw around with the Company.
I’ve always said these guys made a mistake crossing the CIA, even before the Plame leak. They hung 9/11 around Tenet’s neck, ignored the incompetence of the FBI and then they outted one of the agencies NOCs, thereby blowing 20 years of work and who knows what else in terms of permanent damage. The CIA has brought down regimes around the world, some of them smarter than these chumps. It’s what they do.