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Dems split on Cunningham report |
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By Jonathan E. Kaplan
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Posted: 07/19/07 07:52 PM [ET] |
Five Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee were on the losing end of a vote last month to make public a declassified report on jailed Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.).
Democratic Reps. Rush Holt (N.J.), Anna Eshoo (Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), Alcee Hastings (Fla.) and John Tierney (Mass.) voted to make the 23-page report public, while seven of their Democratic colleagues voted the other way.
The Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of the report earlier this week and reported that the committee vote occurred.
The media account left committee Democrats privately speculating as to which lawmaker leaked the report.
The vote and subsequent leak triggered a bitter dispute between Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the committee.
In 2006, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the panel, persuaded then-Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) to hire an independent investigator, attorney Michael Stern, to investigate potential wrongdoing among committee members and staffers.
While there was no official agreement between Hoekstra and Harman, Hoekstra believed there was an understanding that the report would remain secret, said a Democratic committee member who helped mediate the agreement between Harman and Hoekstra.
Stern, a former attorney in the House General Counsel’s office, issued a 59-page report in July 2006, and produced the 23-page summary as well as a five-page executive summary.
The report got swept up in election-year politics. Weeks before the election, Republicans accused a Democratic staffer of leaking the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Hoekstra stripped the staffer of his security clearance and ordered an investigation. (It was subsequently determined that the fingered staffer did not leak the documents.)
Harman released the five-page summary of the Cunningham report last October, which added more bitterness to the already poisoned atmosphere.
At the time, Hoekstra said the decision was “disturbing and beyond the pale,” and accused Harman of wanting “to politicize the committee and this critical inquiry.”
After Democrats captured control of Congress, the panel was forced to vote on whether to make the report public by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who asked to see it.
The vote split Democrats into two camps.
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) voted against making the report public to protect staffers who were not guilty of any wrongdoing.
“It was embarrassing enough, and it was important that comments in the report did not reflect poorly on someone when whole facts were not there to support them,” he said.
Another Democrat who voted no said that the report had a “witch hunt” quality to it.
The Cunningham scandal raised questions about how congressional staffers on the Intelligence Committee handled the ex-lawmaker’s requests for earmarks that were later determined to be bribery payoffs to defense contractors.
In a statement, Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said, “My view was that the report was an internal review, principally of staff activity, and that the full report — with all of the names of staff — was not intended for dissemination beyond the committee.”
Even lawmakers who voted to release the report agreed that some staffers looked bad amid Cunningham’s corruption.
“Some staff didn’t come off well,” said another Democratic lawmaker, referring to the report. “It’s not pretty.”
The five Democrats had similar reasons for voting to make the summary available to the public.
Tierney and Eshoo voted to release the findings because the investigation was paid for with taxpayer money and the report did not disclose methods or sources that would endanger national security.
Hastings did not elaborate on the rationale of his vote.
“I thought it should have been released,” he said.
Harman, who no longer serves on the Intelligence panel because Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) opted not to extend her term, declined to say whether she would have released the 23-page version if she were the chairwoman.
“We still don’t know the whole story,” Harman said. “I felt that we should have subpoenaed [Cunningham].”
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