The former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said last week that there is an undercurrent of “dissent and dislike” for President Obama among the rank-and-file of the Central Intelligence Agency. This hostility, former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) told HUMAN EVENTS, is the result of the continuing investigations of CIA agents regarding enhanced interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists—investigations, he emphasized, “of which the President and [U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder should say, ‘These proceedings are closed.’”
In a wide-ranging interview from his Western Michigan home at the start of the Memorial Day weekend, Hoekstra—who served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from 2002-06--gave poor grades to the Obama Administration for its handling of U.S. intelligence operations
“And what’s really amazing is that all the things in the realm of intelligence that Obama badmouthed as a candidate in ’08, he has now embraced as President,” said Hoekstra, “He has been much more aggressive in the use of predator drones than the Bush Administration was. The Obama Administration has acknowledged that enhanced interrogation techniques helped get the information that led to the successful raid on bin Laden’s compound. And President Obama has never closed down the U.S. operation at Guantanamo, as Candidate Obama promised to do over and over again. Under Obama, the U.S. has continued the policy of unlimited detentions and the use of military tribunals.”
“Quite frankly, who would have thought Barack Obama would have sent an assassination team to get bin Laden?”
“The reason the Patriot Act has to be extended and done so in segments it has,” said the former congressman, “is that people such as Barack Obama [when he was senator from Illinois] kept warning that its enactment would lead to the curtailing of civil liberties and these were the compromises that had to be made in order to pass it.”
