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July 26, 2005

My letter to Senator Pat Roberts

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: July 24, 2005 - July 30, 2005 Archives

In response to the news that Sentator Roberts - who has claimed that his committee doesn't "have time" to fulfill their promise to investigate the use and/or misuse of intelligence prior to the beginning of the Iraq War - will be convening hearings on how the CIA makes use of "cover" in clandestine operations as well as investigating the Fitzgerald investigation into the Valerie Plame leak, I have sent Sen. Roberts the following message:

Words cannot BEGIN to express my anger at learning that rather than convening the long promised - and long delayed - hearings on the use (and likely misuse) if intelligence by the administration in the lead-up to the Iraq war, you have decided, instead, to investigate how the CIA is making use of "cover" and investigating the Fitzgerald investigation into the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity.

In spite of the fact that the incident leading to both of these investigations took place over 2 years ago, your committee showed NO interest in either one until the situation began to look bad for Senior Administration officials, and now, all of a sudden, you think they need to be investigated? I would remind you, sir, that you were elected to represent the people of Kansas and to work in the best interest of the citizens of the United States - NOT to protect the Republican Party or attempt to distract people from the unethical - and potentially criminal - behaviour on the behalf of the administration.

As your constituant, I demand that you immediately end all plans for investigations into the CIA's use of cover and the Fitzgerald investigation, and instead make use of the time you obviously do have available for hearings, and open the investigation you promised your committee would have after the election into what intelligence was made available to the administration, how it was used, and why - at least according to what information is publicly available - it appears that only intelligence that either directly supported or could be manipulated to appear to support the administration's desired goal for war was given any attention, while information that would have served to derail the war plans was either discared or ignored completely.

Kansans who weren't already aware that our Senator is a partisan hack should start to wake up and smell the coffee. Between first delaying the investigation into the use of intelligence into the lead-up toward the Iraq War until after the election and then cancelling it outright, claiming they didn't have time to do it, it should have been obvious that Roberts doesn't actually care if the President and his administration lied our way into an illegal and immoral war.

Now, however, he's gone even farther. Rather than putting the resources of the Senate Intelligence Committee into helping determine who leaked the identity of a covert operative - not only ruining her career, but blowing the covers of the front company she worked for and of any other agents who worked for that firm, as well as putting any field assets they may have been working with into jeopardy - Roberts, instead, wants to go in and determine if, perhaps, it wasn't the CIA's fault she was outed (though there is yet to be ANY kind of evidence linking the CIA itself to the disclosures made by Rove/Novak/Cooper/Libby and company) AND to see if the prosecutor is handling the case properly.

Neither of these investigations does any actual good. As it currently stands, neither the CIA nor their use of cover is in any way resonsible for Valerie Plame's outing - that was the dooing of whomever gave the information to Rove and Libby, who then passed it on to the journalists. And until the Fitzgerald investigation is complete and the results are known, it's pretty hard to investigate it without interfering with Fitzgerald's ability to perfrom the investigation compeltely and tonoroughly.

Posted by thorswitch at July 26, 2005 10:47 AM

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Posted by: Craig at July 26, 2005 05:27 PM

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