Opinion: Senate Intelligence Committee alum on Russia probe
Opinion: Former Intelligence Committee lawyer scopes out the Russia probe landscape
By
KEITH RAFFEL |
PUBLISHED: April 7, 2017 at 10:00 am | UPDATED: April 7, 2017 at 10:48 am
Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, appears more interested in serving the president than his colleagues. Reporters and editorial writers appear shocked by this behavior. I’m not.
Right after graduating from law school and infected by youthful idealism, I joined the Senate Intelligence Committee as its third attorney in 1977. Within nine months, the other two had left. So there I was, 27 years old and senior counsel to the committee tasked to watch over the CIA, NSA and other clandestine three-lettered agencies.
During my stint there, I learned these five lessons. Recent headlines show they still apply.
1. What the Senate Intelligence Committee does counts for more than what its House counterpart does. Senators’ longer terms mean they can take a longer-term view. The way the two houses’ rules work, even in this hyper-partisan age, make the Senate a more collegial place. No surprise then that it will be left to the Senate Committee to take the lead in investigating Russian influence on last November’s presidential election.
2. In the hurly-burly of Washington politics, leaks are a weapon. In a mystery novel, the key to figuring out the guilty party is “cui bono,” Latin for “Who benefits?” The same question applies to tracking down leakers. Some recent leaks, for example, point to White House staffers and House members who wish to deflect attention from charges of Russian meddling.
3. Once intelligence committee members know the most precious of secrets, they are constrained from speaking out. When I was committee counsel, closed briefings on communist activity in Central America stopped those who should have known better from denouncing ill-advised initiatives. Public hearings matter. Efforts by the White House or Chairman Nunes to prevent former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying in public are suspicious at best.
4. The intelligence committees were set up largely to serve as a check on the Executive Branch—but not to serve as its investigative arm. The current administration can itself probe whether intelligence agencies were wiretapping the Trump campaign. It cannot be relied upon to probe relations between the campaign and Russian officials and proxies.
5. Who is president and who controls each house of Congress does affect the committees’ work. Just before recessing in the fall of 1980, Congress passed the Classified Information Procedures Act whose primary sponsor was then-Sen. Joe Biden. The law has become a vital tool in trying spies and rogue agents. But there was no vote on a bipartisan bill establishing a Director of National Intelligence to coordinate the activities of all 17 government intelligence agencies. When the Senate reconvened, the incoming Reagan administration deep-sixed it. Only in the wake of 9/11 was the DNI position established.
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At a hearing after the Republicans swept to a Senate majority in 1980, Sen. Barry Goldwater, Mr. Conservative, turned around and asked me a question. A staffer he’d appointed started to answer and Goldwater stopped him cold. “I didn’t ask you; I asked him,” he said, pointing to me. In his mind, political party ought not matter when it came to intelligence activities.
An independent commission might be best-suited to uncover what the Russians and the Trump campaign were up to last year. However, the White House and majorities of both houses of Congress are bound to oppose setting one up. So I’ve pinned my hopes on my alma mater, the Senate Intelligence Committee, where some vestige of Goldwater’s bipartisanship just might still remain.
Keith Raffel of Palo Alto served four years as counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, ran for Congress and founded an award-winning Internet software company. He’s the bestselling author of five mysteries and thrillers. He wrote this for The Mercury News.
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