News and Document archive source
copyrighted material disclaimer at bottom of page

NewsMinecabal-elitefamiliesrockefeller — Viewing Item


Rockefeller urges permanent senate intel panel { June 10 2003 }

Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
   http://www.thehill.com/news/061003/rockefeller.aspx

http://www.thehill.com/news/061003/rockefeller.aspx

JUNE 10, 2003
Rockefeller urges permanent status and end of term limits for Senate intelligence panel
By Sarita Chourey

Declaring that the eight-year term limits imposed on members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is "a vast intelligence disservice to America," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is calling for the Senate to remove the term limits and make the panel a permanent standing committee.

As the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rockefeller has questioned whether the Bush administration manipulated intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq.

Rockefeller called the term limit a terrible idea, saying members must step down just as they "are coming to the point where they have the knowledge, the self-confidence and the intuition that branches out from that, which is called creativity."

Rockefeller noted that members of both the House and Senate panels are forced to step down after eight years before they have fully grasped the material and established relationships within the 14 intelligence agencies they oversee that would allow them to "go halfway down some agency and call someone up.

"That’s terribly important to be able to have that capacity. In eight years, you cannot get it," he declared in an interview with The Hill.

In an obvious reference to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who is a heart surgeon, Rockefeller compared members of the intelligence panel to a surgeon in training who has completed eight years of training but not yet performed surgery.

"I’ve thought a lot about healthcare, and it took me about 12 years to learn healthcare -- to understand what the testimony was about, to ask questions without someone showing you a piece of paper over your shoulder, that you could follow up on the question," he said.

He added that intelligence after Sept. 11 "is much more complicated than healthcare because the factors in healthcare stay about the same but intelligence changes every day."

He added: Every previous commission "that has ever been put together on intelligence has come to exactly that conclusion."

He said that he has discussed the issue with Frist and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and will ask them to take steps to remove term limits and give the committee a permanent status.

That would require gaining bipartisan support for changing Senate rules, according to Jay Carson, a Daschle spokesman, who said Daschle is prepared to discuss the issue with Frist and Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kans.), as well as Rockefeller.

Rockefeller, with six years left in his term on the committee, denied self-interest is involved in his opposition to term limits. "That’s not my thought," he said. "My thought is that every single Democrat on the Intelligence Committee has been on for two years" except for Carl Levin (Mich.), who is in his sixth year, and that most of the Republicans are serving their first year.

"Is that what you want from the Intelligence Committee? Is that what Americans would expect?" Rockefeller asked.

But he also said his questioning of the administration’s handling of prewar intelligence is not aimed at embarrassing President Bush.

"That is not the point. Politics and intelligence have to be totally separate," he said. "I don’t spend any of my time thinking about that." He also defended Vice President Dick Cheney after disclosures that he made multiple trips to the CIA to question analysts studying Iraq’s weapons programs and links to al Qaeda.

Rockefeller said that after the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals, the terms were shortened out of fear members would be "co-opted by the CIA."

He explained that the threat of global terrorism has made the work of both the Senate and House intelligence committees more important and difficult.

"Pat Roberts and I talked about it a lot," he said. "You look at the next five years, 10 years, 15 years with the assumption that terrorism is with us for decades to come and that you have to prepare in terms of personnel and technology, data-sharing, data-mining, international cooperation. -- You have to prepare for those years in terms of the resources you have. -- You have to be ahead of the curve. "

He added that the Bush administration’s recently adopted doctrine of preemption puts an added burden on the intelligence community.

"If you put this under the doctrine of preemption, then that triples the importance of doing all of this accurately. -- You better be damn certain you have the best intelligence anybody has ever had."

Rockefeller, who said he reads hundreds of pages of unclassified intelligence material every day in addition to a smaller amount of classified material, conceded President Bush faces a comparable challenge in assessing reports.

Rockefeller is one of three at-large members of the Intelligence Committee, which includes two members of the Foreign Relations Committee and two each from Armed Services and Judiciary.

"Everybody in the world wants to get on the Intelligence Committee," Rockefeller said. "And whether or not that has something to do with -- [term limits], I don’t know."




iraq-intelligence
American family by david rockefeller { June 12 2003 }
Buchanan says big brother and rockefeller took conservatives
Case against kissinger
Chase funded nazis { July 11 2000 }
Chase named holocaust asset lawsuit
Chase rockefellers banked on nazis
Cheney asks rockefeller commission to coverup { February 20 2004 }
David rockefeller kissinger bilderberg china
Jay rockefeller iraq war { June 22 2003 }
Jay rockefeller questions intelligence transcript { July 20 2003 }
John rockefeller papers dulles
Jpmorgan chase dispute { January 2 2003 }
Jpmorgan chase near enron settlement { July 16 2003 }
Kissinger chooses nelson rockefeller { May 27 2004 }
Kissinger confers with david rockefeller { May 27 2004 }
Kissinger during watergate { May 26 2004 }
Kissinger married rockefeller aide
Kissinger records david rockefeller estate
Kissinger rockefeller whitehouse pipeline
Kissinger [jpg]
Mrs rockefeller alien shelter { August 6 2003 }
Nixon calls military greedy bastards { October 8 1999 }
Nixon kissinger rockefeller
Nixon rockefeller wild hare { April 27 1971 }
Nixon watergated rockefeller file
Phony rockefeller pleads guilty
President hayes warns of corporations and rockefeller { August 29 2003 }
Recall created because rockefellers bought politicians
Rockefeller asks open china
Rockefeller commission covers up cia activities { December 22 1974 }
Rockefeller drug laws
Rockefeller file ch1 4
Rockefeller file ch5 8
Rockefeller file ch9 11
Rockefeller gets sec subpoena { July 25 2003 }
Rockefeller kissinger aids
Rockefeller now criticizes bush on going to war
Rockefeller thinks tariffs will be lifted { December 3 2003 }
Rockefeller urges permanent senate intel panel { June 10 2003 }
Rockefeller [jpg]
Rockefellers looking for change at exxon { April 30 2008 }
Rockefellers roads { August 12 2003 }
Scapegoating nixon for watergate { March 30 1972 }
Sen jay calls intel czar negroponte sound choice
Senator rockefeller address steel crisis { January 30 2001 }
Senator rockefeller financial disclosures
Senator rockefeller pushes bush on intelligence reform
Steel tariffs causes job loss { September 19 2003 }

Files Listed: 48



Correction/submissions

CIA FOIA Archive

National Security
Archives
Support one-state solution for Israel and Palestine Tea Party bumper stickers JFK for Dummies, The Assassination made simple