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Name That Power Grab!

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By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, July 10, 2006, at 6:48 PM ET

On July 8 the New York Times' Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane reported that Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a very testy four-page letter to President Bush a couple of months ago complaining that the Bush administration hid from Congress the existence of certain fairly substantial (and, the Times strongly suggests, potentially quite controversial) intelligence activities. The Times assured readers that these activities are not anything the public has yet heard about. What's striking is that Hoekstra has until now been almost pathologically gung-ho about the war on terrorism, as the first three pages of his letter make clear. But even Hoekstra has his limits, apparently.

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The phrase "fully and currently" appears in the legislation creating the Senate intelligence committee but not, weirdly, in its House counterpart. In practice it has meant that the chairmen and ranking members of the two committees get briefed on all intelligence activities save "covert action," i.e., military or quasi-military operations undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Hoekstra even supported Bush's dubious claim that the National Security Agency may bypass the special courts established by Congress to grant warrants for such activities.
Intelligence-agency whistleblowers alerted Hoekstra to the mystery intel program's existence, Hoekstra said July 9 on "Fox News Sunday."
It's not clear whether Hoekstra's saying the mystery intel program violates the law or whether he's saying Bush's failure to inform Congress about its existence does so. From the context, though, he probably means the latter.
You and I, however, are stuck doing precisely that. Annoying fact: Since the New York Times story appeared, no reporter has yet asked at a White House briefing, "So, er, what IS this secret Bill of Rights-raping program you didn't dare tell Congress about?" Of course, press spokesman Tony Snow wouldn't (and probably couldn't) answer the question, but that's never stopped the press-room jackals before. Is it possible that Bush's campaign to portray the media as unpatriotic and irresponsible is actually starting to intimidate reporters?
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By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, July 10, 2006, at 6:48 PM ET
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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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