Er, I hate that expression. Wish there was another one for it. Ah well; Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a current candidate for the 2010 Michigan gubernatorial elections, claims to be outraged – positively simmering – at House Speaker Nanci Pelosi for her accusing the CIA of being less-than-honest with her towards the practice of torture in the US. He's been saying that these accusations against the CIA are "outrageous" on CNN, and then on Fox News, he said that it was one thing to criticize the CIA's performance, but that accusing them of downright lying to Congress is simply impardonable. Or something.
Which side do you think he's on: Pot, or Kettle?
Hoekstra's repeated objections to Pelosi accusing the CIA of having lied to Congress is quite odd given the fact that he's made nearly identical claims on multiple occasions. As Marcy Wheeler first noted, Hoekstra wrote a letter to President Bush in 2006 accusing the intelligence community of withholding information on their activities from Congress. "I have learned of some alleged Intelligence Community activities about which our committee has not been briefed," Hoekstra wrote. He said that he believed the Bush administration's failure to fully brief his committee could constitute "a violation of law"[...]
Similarly, in 2007, Hoekstra described a closed-door briefing by representatives from the intelligence community (including CIA) on the National Intelligence Estimate of Iran's nuclear capability, saying that the members "didn't find [the briefers] forthcoming." More recently, in November 2008, Hoekstra concluded that the CIA "may have been lying or concealing part of the truth" in testimony to Congress regarding a 2001 incident in which the CIA mistakenly killed an American citizen in Peru. "We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress," Hoekstra said of the incident.
"I can accuse them of lying, but you can't! CAN'T!" seems to be what's going through Hoekstra's mind right about now.
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