INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
C-SPANS NEWSMAKERS
Guest:
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Ranking Republican, House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence
Reporters: Tim
Starks, Scott Shane
Moderator: C-SPAN
Tape Date: Thursday April 23, 2009
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C-SPAN/NEWSMAKERS
Host: Greta Brawner
Guest: Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Ranking Republican, House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Reporters: Tim Starks, Scott Shane
GRETA WODELE, HOST: This week's newsmakers is Representative
Peter Hoekstra who Congressman from Michigan and the ranking Republican on
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, joining us from Capitol
Hill today on Thursday. And then also
in the studio with me is Tim Starks and he is the Intelligence Reporter with
CQPolitics.com and Scott Shane, Intelligence Reporter with the New York Times.
Tim Starks has the first
question. Go ahead.
TIM STARKS, INTELLIGENCE
REPORTER, CQPOLITICS.COM: Hi,
Congressman. You've written in the last
week about interrogation methods. It's been
a big subject in the news. I want to
ask you to respond to some of the pragmatic arguments about the methods that
you've defended the Bush Administration using.
That is that maybe they produced some leads, but they also produced some
unreliable information and produced a cost to our reputation abroad. How would you respond to those
arguments?
REP. PETER HOEKSTRA (R-MI),
RANKING REPUBLICAN, HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE: Well, I would say that in the intelligence
community, you're always worried about the information that you collect, getting
inaccurate or false information through intelligence means is nothing, nothing
new at all. Anytime you collect
information through the intelligence community, through any one of the number
of different ways that we collect it what you're always looking for is to
find a thread, verify two or three different ways to make sure that it's
accurate. And many times, we find that
a thread that we're pulling on accurately is really bad information.
That's nothing new in the
intelligence community. That's
something that we sort and sift through each and every day and it really
distinguishes a good intelligence community from a bad one. A good intelligence community can tell the
difference between good and bad information and that's a you know I'm not at
all surprised that that would come out of interrogations, regardless of what
methods that you use you know.
I think the bottom line on
this is that whether you're talking to former Director Kenneth, former Director
of the CIA, Mike Hayden, Porter Goss or even the current director of National
Intelligence, they have all said that through this process of enhanced
interrogations, in sorting through the good and bad intelligence, we were able
to get information that was meaningful to our national security efforts and
that helped keep America safe.
SCOTT SHANE, INVESTIGATIVE
REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Congressman,
this is Scott Shane. If I could ask a
related question: Does it bother you at
all that these methods were borrowed from the military SEER training program,
which was created grew out of a military training created in the 1950s based
on Chinese Communist interrogation methods, which were studied because they had
produced false confessions. American
pilots who'd been captured, after enduring these kinds of methods had given
false confessions. And in those days,
that was called torture. So the program
was essentially based on Communist torture methods which were known to have
produced false confessions. Isn't that
a sort of odd basis on which to build an interrogation program?
HOEKSTRA: Well, I wouldn't say that that's what this
interrogation program was built on. I
think what this interrogation program was built on was a broad collection of
taking a look at how interrogations have been done. How they've been done you know how they're done in a law
enforcement here in within the United States. How they've been used and administered through other conflicts,
through other wards, who used what. And
as you went through this whole process, the people who were responsible for
developing this regiment of interrogations that were eventually approved and
implemented, both through the Executive Branch and, in many cases, were
reviewed by Congress and approved by Congress, that they were then put into
effect.
I'm not necessarily worried
about what technique came from what time of previous use of interrogation. It is whether the interrogations that we
were going to put into a program, whether from a legal standpoint we believed
that we met U.S. law. And the second
thing is whether we believed that they would be effective. The Administration and others that looked at
this program looked at the techniques, reached a conclusion that number one,
they were consistent with U.S. law; and secondly, reached a conclusion that
they would they would be effective at getting information for America.
STARKS: Congressman, you mentioned that these
these tactics were reviewed by Congress.
There have been some Republicans who said that Democrats who are now
complaining about this are being disingenuous because they knew about them
then, they should have spoke out then; but if they would have spoke out then,
wouldn't they have been leaking classified information? And what should they have done if they had
objections.
HOEKSTRA: No absolutely not they wouldn't have been
leaking classified information because all of us are on the intelligence
community. We are there because we are
appointed by our respective leaders. In
this case, now, the Democrats are there because they've been appointed by the
Speaker of the House. I'm there and my
Republican colleagues are there because we are appointed by the Minority Leader
Mr. Baer?. I'm not saying that they
should have spoken up and gone to the media, but I can tell you that over the
last number of years, where there's been where there has been information
that has been provided to me, on occasion, I have been concerned. And what I do when I have a concern about
information that is provided to me, I go to the person who appointed me to be
the chairman or the ranking member.
Just recently, I went to
Leader Boehner about something that I had been briefed on. I knew he had not been briefed on that
information. I made the call. I made the decision to go to Mr. Boehner and
to talk to him specifically about this, to raise the issues, to raise the
concerns that I had. He then has the
responsibility for making the final call as to whether he will go to the next
step, which is bringing it up to the attention of the President of the United
States. I think you're well aware of
I think you broke the story a few years ago where I had some concerns about
what was going on in the intelligence community and wrote a classified letter
to the president of the United States, raising my concerns about what was going
on.
So it's not
disingenuous. That's exactly why we're
on the committee: because our
respective leaders hold us accountable for reviewing the information; and if we
see something that we are concerned about or that we object to, that it's our
responsibility to go to our leadership and raise the issue with them. We are their designees on the intelligence
committee.
SHANE: Congressman, could I ask you about the Gang
of Four system? In looking back and
talking to the people that were briefed the Gang of Four at that time in 2002
we found wildly varying memories of what they had been told and when they had
been told it, and a fairly widespread opinion among both members and staffers,
that that kind of informal Gang of Four system does not work. One of the oddities that we found was that
there were some staff members staff directors who were briefed in 2002; but
the rest of the actual members of that committee weren't briefed on this
program 'til 2006. Isn't that you know
is there any better way to do this?
HOEKSTRA: I think there really is a better way to do
it. And many of us have brought that
up. Excuse me, we brought that up
during the Bush Administration, we have brought that up with I'm sure we will
bring it up with the Obama Administration, and we have talked already with
Director of National Intelligence Blair and I think we've also had discussions
with the CIA Director Leon Panetta, asking them to review this process.
I can also tell you that on
certain occasions, the Gang of Four has worked very, very well. You may remember you know a year-and-a-half,
two years ago when the Israelis took out potentially reported nuclear
facility in Syria. That was the case
when the whole process of Gang of Four briefings and these types of things you
know all worked very, very well.
And I think that again you
know when you go into a Gang of Four briefing, one of the things and one of
the questions that we ask and we ask among ourselves in the Gang of Four, is it
appropriate that this is only a Gang of Four issue and should there be a
broader distribution of the information that we have received? And if we believe that there's a broader
if there's a necessity for a broader distribution for the information that we
just received, it's our responsibility to do two things: highlight that to the intelligence
community, saying there needs this information needs to be more widely
disseminated; and also to go to our leadership and say, "we have received
classified information, it has been very, very limited. We can't share it with you, but I just want
to tell you that I believe that limiting it to the Gang of Four is wrong and
that we need to have a discussion with the Director of National Intelligence
and perhaps with the president that you and other members of Congress should
have this information available to you.
That is what our leadership
or let's put it this way, that's what my leadership, Speaker Denny Hastert, and
current Minority Leader John Boehner have instructed me to do as in the role
as the ranking member or the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee: to be their eyes and ears, to make sure that
the intelligence community and the leadership in the intelligence community are
doing the appropriate things by my evaluation.
And if I disagree, then I need to go to them and raise the issue.
STARKS: Congressman, question about everyone's
obligation here. There's been some
debate after President Obama sent some mixed signals some seemingly mixed
signals about what kind of prosecutions might be in order for anyone who has
committed any kind of offenses related to these harsh interrogation
tactics.
But one common complaint
that's been raised is that it's not the White House's decision who should be
prosecuted or not prosecuted, that it's a lawyer's decision. There's also been a U.N. official who has
said recently that if the U.S. does not investigate, then they're in violation
of international agreements. What's
your sense of who's responsible for doing what and who should be doing what?
HOEKSTRA: Well, I mean, you're absolutely right. I think the message that's coming out of the
Obama Administration over the last week have been totally confusing. They have not served the national security
interests of this country very well.
Last week Thursday or Friday, when these memos were first released, the
President said you know "we're only looking forward, we're not looking
back. No one will be
prosecuted." I believe on some of
the morning talk shows, Rahm Emanuel you know "we're moving forward, we're
not looking back."
And then all of a sudden, at
the beginning part of this week, Eric Holder was saying, "well," you
know "we may need to take a look at the lawyers who wrote these opinions." The President then came out and said you
know "we're going to let the lawyers decide this." Well, didn't you talk to the lawyers when
you made this announcement? Didn't you
talk to the lawyers before you went to the CIA and had kind of a campaign rally
at the CIA you know? I think that this
is it's clearly a legal decision.
But the attorney general does
work for the president of the United States.
The president shouldn't be guessing about what is going to happen after
he makes a decision. He should have a
clear understanding of the ramifications of what is going to happen before he
goes out and makes a decision. He
didn't do that in this case. He also
didn't do that when he announced that he was going to release the 250 prisoners
or move or transfer the 250 prisoners from Gitmo. He has no idea as to where they're going to go or what their
final disposition is going to be, but he made the announcement that you know
Gitmo was going to be closed. It's kind
of the situation where it's ready, fire, aim.
They're implementing decisions that jeopardize our national security
without having a plan in place or understanding what the effects of the
decision are going to be.
SHANE: Congressman, as you know former Vice
President Cheney has called for more information to be released about the
effectiveness of these techniques and so on.
That sort of is is in line with what Senator Leahy and others have
talked about, which is a full public airing of these programs. Do you support some kind of a commission of
inquiry to look into this program, get everybody who worked on it to speak
about it, either with or without immunity?
HOEKSTRA: I think that you know if you would have
asked me would I have supported the vice president's request for making more of
this information public a couple of weeks ago, the answer would have been I'd
be maybe concerned about that. But now
that we've started to selectively declassify information, it's kind of like,
all right now let's release as much as we can without seriously jeopardizing
national security.
I can tell you that I've
already you know gotten feedback from people in the intelligence
community. They believe that this has
jeopardized national security. I can
also tell you that I've talked to people from other from foreign countries
who are involved in the intelligence gathering. They're very nervous about what is going and where and what
this is going to do to our intelligence capabilities. Hey, we are still under the threat of radical Jihadists, Al Qaeda
and the Taliban; and then to go out and now put in place a commission, an
independent commission to do this, I think has perhaps very dangerous
repercussions. And again, before going
"ready, fire, aim," let's think through exactly what the process
would be, let's think let's try to calculate what the repercussion or the
damage might be before we make a decision.
Right now, I've got I have
reservations for that. I think most of
this work can and should be done within Congress and it should it should
start with Congress taking a look at itself.
STARKS: Congressman, a question about a different
subject and about what Congress role is on this subject. In the last couple of weeks, there have been
reports in Congressional Quarterly and
the New York Times about
Congresswoman Harman being picked up on a wire tap about a plan to conduct
surveillance about a member of Congress who was unnamed. Two questions: What concerns, if any, do you have about those reports? And two, what did you know about those
alleged incidents prior to their publication and what do you still want to know
about them if you don't know if you didn't know about them at all?
HOEKSTRA: Yes, I think you know obviously if we
believe that the intelligence community is targeting members of Congress, that
would raise some real red flags under what jurisdiction and those kinds of
things. If it is a case where someone
in the intelligence community has targeted a foreign individual, a spy for a
foreign country and you know a person within the Congress calls that person, of
course they're going to be picked up on the wire tap. But you know we're looking into both of these allegations, how
they occurred, if they occurred and if so, what was done with the information
excuse me. And that is you know
that's exactly what the role of the Oversight Intelligence Oversight
Committee should be. As some of these
reports are raised, it is our job to peel back the layers, see exactly what
happened and to see if there was anything that was done that was illegal or
inappropriate.
SHANE: You've complained, as you've noted in the
past, about the White House both under the previous administration, I guess
this one as well not informing Congress adequately and the intelligence
communities in particular. And I
believe you made that comment about this recent report, that NSA had exceeded
its authority in some ways. Can you
tell us what you know about that, what you're able to say about it and you know
what you feel about the process now of keeping intelligence communities
informed?
HOEKSTRA: Well, what happened with the NSA is that
they knew at a point in time that they might have operated outside of the
guidelines that were established for them by the FISA Court. They then took their sweet old time about
informing Congress. Guess what? That's not an option for them. The requirements in the law are very, very
clear: that the intelligence
community's responsibility is to keep us totally informed on a timely
basis. They didn't do it. And so when that happens, what it does is
that it raises red flags for us in regards to were they planning on maybe never
telling us but eventually, they didn't find a way around telling us? Were they trying to hide something? It just damages their credibility and forces
us and requires us to take a harder and a deeper look into their motivations
for not telling Congress.
And you know the problem that
we've had is you know now the Bush Administration and what we're starting to
see with the Obama Administration is the same pattern. When individuals or organizations within the
intelligence community fail to keep Congress fully informed and informed on a
timely basis, there are no repercussions in the community. The agencies don't pay a price, individuals
don't pay a price. There's no
accountability. These administrations
and Congress has to get better in putting in place accountability measures
SHANE: What price should they pay? What accountability system do you imagine?
HOEKSTRA: Well, I think in certain cases you know I'm
not sure again whether this case merits it, but I can tell you that you know,
we're also now investigating the shoot down of the Peruvian by the Peruvian
Air Force of a missionary plane eight years ago. And it appears from an Inspector General report that people lied
and misled Congress and people operated outside of the rules. In those kinds of what may be clear-cut
cases, number one, individuals should lose their job within the community, they
should lose benefits within that they may have acquired while working in the
community, and the information ought to be turned over to the Justice
Department that they are and they should maybe be held accountable from a
criminal standpoint because they operated outside of the rules.
This latest thing with the
NSA, it appears they just didn't want to inform Congress. From my perspective, at a minimum, there
should be a reprimand for the people responsible for not making that decision. And if we found out that it was conscious
decision not to inform Congress, then people's then people should be removed
from their positions.
STARKS: Isn't Congress somewhat at the mercy of the
administration though, in what you're describing? I mean, you you've called for Department of Justice
investigation into that Peruvian plan shootdown
HOEKSTRA: Right.
STARKS:
but it's kind of up to the Department of
Justice. Have you heard anything, for
instance, on what they're going to do with that? Have you heard anything about the declassification of more of
that IG report? But even in those cases
though, it still seems that it's at the discretion of the administration,
unless Congress changes something in another way.
HOEKSTRA: It is at the a lot of excuse me a lot
of that is at the discretion of the administration. Congress has to get better at using the levers that it has at its
disposal. Restricting access to certain
funds or certain expenditures through the appropriations process in saying,
"you're not going to have access to this money until you do these
things." In this case, it may be the declassification of certain
documents.
You know on this Peruvian Air
Force shoot down of the missionary pilot, we've know you know now we've passed
the point of statute of limitations.
There will be no prosecutions in that case. I am I can't tell you how extremely disappointed and really
angry I am about how the community has handled this. Innocent Americans died because of what appears to be sloppy work
by the CIA. And I am afraid that no one
will be held accountable because the CIA and the leadership of the CIA did a
slow roll on this and they waited out the process. And it is very, very unfortunate and yes, like I said, I'm
mad. But you're right, I'm not sure
exactly what I can do about it at this point.
SHANE: Congressman, if I could return to the
element of the interrogation question.
As Tim mentioned, the International Convention Against Torture that the
United States is a signatory too and you know has always sort of been a proud
party of, has always kind of denounced other countries for torture, that
requires that countries, where there is a credible allegation of torture,
conduct a criminal investigation and prosecute those who are responsible, if the
allegations are found to be credible.
Is there do you see some loophole there now that you know we have the
details of the treatment, 266 waterboardings against two guys and slamming
people against the walls and so on you know I would assume that that would be
considered credible allegations of torture.
Do you think that that we now have to conduct that investigation?
HOEKSTRA: Well, I don't think that you can assume that
those are credible allegations of torture.
You know that's why those legal memos were released last week because
the legal opinion said that those were not considered torture and you know
again, you have to read the memos in detail and you know very well that these
people were not slammed against a brick wall or anything like that. These were walls that were very flexible
walls. They gave off a loud noise, but
when pushed against them, the walls gave away.
And so you know there was a long discussion within the
administration. And there was a
discussion, I believe and we will get the details and I hope will be released
in public that when this information was reviewed by members of Congress,
Republicans and Democrats, that they agreed that these things were not
torture. And so you know I think the
assumption that you made is not a fair assumption.
SHANE: Well, I'm not I'm not offering my own
opinion. The president, vice president,
the attorney general and the CIA director have all said they believe
waterboarding is torture. And the CIA
has said three people were waterboarded.
HOEKSTRA: Now that is correct. In the in the past in the last
administration, and the legal memos and these types of things said that they
believed in the specific way the waterboarding was performed was not
torture. Now that happened you know I
was not briefed on those practices or the techniques because those things were
done well before I became chairman of the Intelligence Committee. You know I think we you know we will
probably go through and have a more detailed discussion, trying to iron out the
differences, interpretations of some of these techniques, of the prior
administration versus how the current administration is viewing what happened.
STARKS: Question for you, Congressman, about
Afghanistan. You had said, when the
president put forward his new plan that you thought NATO needed to be more
involved. Im wondering, hasn't that always been the idea, that NATO should be
more involved? And how can the
president possibly get countries where there is some political resistance in those
countries? How can the president get
those NATO allies to come on board.
HOEKSTRA: Well, obviously, the president's recent trip
to Europe, the president's address to Central and South America, he's
demonstrating or trying to demonstrate a new tone and a new style of American
diplomacy that is designed to win over the public opinion in these countries
and have them have a more positive opinion of the United States. This is one of his you know one of the fundamental
tenets of his foreign diplomacy that he will have and create a new image for
America and abroad that will improve the public perception of America and will
make it easier for these countries to participate in what is going on in
Afghanistan and other efforts around the world.
So that is how the president
has said he is going to change the current or the past reality and to get our
allies into a position where they can effectively be more helpful to the United
States of America. So that that's the
president's goal
STARKS: It
HOEKSTRA:
the president has said he wants to get
NATO involved and the president believes he is in a position to change the
public opinion and to have them be more involved.
STARKS: It sounds like you're convinced that his new
approach is going to work.
HOEKSTRA: No, I'm not convinced it's going to
work. I I hope it does work because
these are very, very serious issues.
They threaten Europe, they threaten the United States and you know I
would like nothing better that, number 1, our allies step up more forcefully
and in a more meaningful way to help us in Afghanistan and in these other areas
where we face threats. And then once we
are there, that we work effectively as a unit to achieve our strategic
objective. We all want the same thing. We want to be successful in defeating and
in containing and defeating this threat.
I hope he I hope he is successful, absolutely.
WODELE: Congressman, real quick before we let you
go, I want to go to Thursday's Wall Street Journal piece that you wrote. Your opinion piece where you say you want a
list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended
briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques. What will you do with that information?
HOEKSTRA: Well, I think I would hope that we would
get it in a format that the information would be public. I think members of Congress need to be held
accountable. It's so easy for members
of Congress to point fingers at the administration, to point fingers at the CIA
or other people in the intelligence community and say, "look what they
did." But I think we'll also find out that in many of these cases, where
Congress is pointing its fingers at different places, that members of Congress
will have had the information, will have reviewed it and in one form or
another, may have approved of the techniques that other members of Congress now
are you know expressing outrage over.
WODELE: Congressman Peter Hoekstra, Ranking
Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence thank you
for being this week's Newsmakers.
HOEKSTRA: Hey, great, thank you.
WODELE: Scott, let me turn to you first. What did you hear from the congressman about
the interrogation debate and what's next?
SHANE: Well, it seems that he is wary of a big
commission or some kind of big investigation.
But he has at the same time, he's asking for more information. He wants to know more about congressional
briefings. He agrees with Vice
President Cheney that these memos about the effectiveness of the technique
should be made public. So even on the
side of those who are worried about a sort of out of control commission looking
into this, they are not satisfied with the sort of state of their knowledge
right now.
WODELE: Tim Starks?
STARKS: You know there are members of Congress who
are concerned about the methods that were used that would like to see the
information that Vice President Cheney said he wanted out. I think Scott summed it up really well.
WODELE: What do you think about Congressman Hoekstra
asking for dates, names, locations of members of Congress who were briefed on
this? What do you think is going to be
the reaction of his colleagues up on Capitol Hill?
STARKS: Yes, I think you know if you look at the
kinds of at least on the House side, where I was just reading the proposal
for a commission there there is no mention of any kind of looking into what
Congress' role was in this. I I
haven't read the Senate side legislation, I don't know if it's the same.
SHANE: Senator Leahy has specifically said that an
inquiry like this should include what members of Congress were told, how they
reacted, including Democrats. So he's
tried to make this a little bit less partisan.
WODELE: All right.
Well, you during this discussion, you also asked him about the Gang of
Four. Can you explain that to our
viewers and what you heard from his answer?
SHANE: Yes, I mean, when they created the
intelligence committees the Senate and House intelligence committees after
the Church Committee revealed a lot of abuses by the agencies in the
mid-70s. There was system created
subsequently for the so-called Gang of Eight, which is the top Republican,
Democrat for each of the two intelligence committees and for the House and
Senate itself. And they're for covert
actions only. The agencies are allowed
to inform only this Gang of Eight.
That's in the law and it's supposed to exclude all staff members and all
other members of the committees.
But over time, an informal
system of the Gang of Four has arisen, which has no basis in statute, which are
just the top two people from each party on the two intelligence
committees. And very commonly, the CIA
will come with a sensitive program and say, "we only want to brief the
Gang of Four." And the rules are very informal. Sometimes a staff member or two listen in. Sometimes they don't. And but a lot of staffers and members are
quite concerned about it. I know that
Dianne Feinstein, the senator who is in now the chairman of the Intelligence
Committee, has said, is as someone who is on the outs on that system for
years, she doesn't like it. And she
wants the Gang of Eight, the Gang of Four system to be used very, very
sparingly. Only in situations where
there's really a sort of moving operation and only for you know 48 hours or 72
hours or something like that. And not
one of these situations which occur repeatedly under the Bush Administration
where an entire program remained from most members of the committees for years.
STARKS: There actually has been some interest from
the Obama Administration's top intelligence officials during their nomination
process to say, "We need to use this Gang of Eight process less." I
don't think we've had any sense yet of whether that's going to happen, but
there's been an express commitment to it.
WODELE: All right.
Tim Starks, you also asked about NSA wiretapping. What did you hear from the congressman.
STARKS: He didn't exactly answer the question about
what he knew about this, but it was interested to hear him say he was
interested in it and he was looking into it, that he had some concerns about it
under the if the circumstances are such that. Both of the reported instances that we had kind of fit into the
example of what he was saying wouldn't necessarily be a concern for him, which
was that there was somebody who was already under surveillance and the lawmaker
was picked up. Or that there was a in
the case of the unnamed lawmaker, that there was an attempt to expand that
surveillance perhaps. But it didn't
seem to fit into the case that as they reported by the Times and CQ.
WODELE: And what's next on this issue?
STARKS: Well, like you said, there's a committee
inquiry into this. There is also some
debate that has been going on in the last few days about do we now look at this
as part of a broader questions, about other subjects. But right now, there's been a little bit of tiptoeing by other
lawmakers to decide whether they want to get involved and to what degree.
WODELE: All right.
Tim Starks, Intelligence Reporter with CQ Politics; and Scott Shane,
Intelligence Reporter of the New York
Times. Thank you both very much
SHANE: Thank you.
STARKS: Thank you.
WODELE:
for your time this morning, appreciate
it.
END