Webloggin » Hindsight Provides Little Oversight for Some on Congressional Oversight Panel

Clown Sitting on Fence Dave Matthews has a live rendition of Jimi Thing on the Live Trax II cd where he basically states that politicians on both the left and the right are full of sh*t. After watching a House Congressional Panel hold hearings on the NY Times Swift Bank publication I have to agree.

Stuart Levey, the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Department of the Treasury testified to the Kelly Panel that the leak was very damaging to an “extremely successful” terrorist tracking program.

“I can’t remember a single day when my intelligence book hasn’t included concrete leads from this program and most often many more than one.”

This did not discourage the usual suspects from being outraged that they weren’t briefed on the program. Perhaps they are upset that they didn’t get to leak it first.

Get this, the wah wah’s apparently are upset that the Congressional oversight committee on intelligence was briefed but the rest of them were not.

The Dems are returning to the playbook by pretending to defend the program in one breath and attacking the administration for the same program in another. Georgia Representative David Scott went so far as to accuse the administration of committing a crime.

“We’re not here to talk about the Swift program or what it’s done or all of this, that’s fine, there’s no problem with that. But it’s important for this administration to understand that they have violated the law. They have not allowed Congress to do its job.”

Don’t you hate it when politicians lie for the sake of a camera? The House Committee on Financial Services issued a press release to announce the hearing in advance. The headline on the release reads “Kelly Panel Will Evaluate Terrorist Finance Tracking Program”.

This pretty much sums up what the Representatives were there to talk about despite what Rep. David Scott will lead you to believe.

Leave it up to a wayward Republican to defend the New York Times. Texas Republican Ron Paul couldn’t shove his foot in his mouth fast enough as he virtually ignored the expert Treasury official’s testimony on the extent of the damage.

“I don’t think the terrorists were tipped off to anything. He Ha, you know, we’ve been monitoring financial transactions for thirty years.”

Nice, more information for the terrorists to chew on courtesy another big mouth politician.

Ok, I’ll bite on the obvious 5000 pound elephant sitting in the room. I would like to have a couple of questions answered myself in light of the revelation that we have been monitoring financial transactions for the last 30 years.

Why have the terrorists have been so successful despite this “30 year” surveillance? 9-11 comes to mind. I think perhaps Ron Paul is exaggerating a bit on the 30 year program. In any event it is clear that Swift was not a 30 year program.
But let’s assume that Paul is spilling the beans and the government did indeed run a 30 year financial tracking program. Why haven’t they been able to use it their advantage by leveraging that information to shut down the importation of illegal drugs, North Korean weapons sales, Oil for Food scandals and other such things? Of course we don’t know what they shut down for sure but one would expect that some of the bigger scandals would have been revealed by such a program.
The leakers of classified information do not appear to be the targets of Congressional focus. I would like to know why these programs were secret for 29.5 years only to be exposed in a time of war with little to no prosecution of the leakers?

Seriously, do any of our leaders deserve to be in Congress if they aren’t asking the same common sense questions?

Update
My guess is that the Swift program was as important as the Treasury department said it was and the NY Times blew it big time. I would also hazard a guess that there might be some CYA happening on Capital Hill in the event that the administration starts cracking down on the leakers.

This is exactly what is being reported by Reuters.

The Bush administration is preparing a crackdown on intelligence leaks to the media and will try to pursue prosecutions in some recent cases, the chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.

I am skeptical that anything much will come of such investigations. These leaks have become a staple of Washington politics and no one is interested in losing a vital tool in the propaganda war that is typical of beltway politics.

Michelle Malkin demonstrates the same reserved sense of skepticism on the slim hope that leakers will be brought to justice. I’ll believe it when I see it.