New Intel Chair Pete Hoekstra, Overseer or Overlooker?

One of the most disturbing stories in the news this week had to be a report in the Monday October 18 New York Times by Neil A. Lewis, describing the pattern of abusive procedures that were regularly used at Guantanemo.  Military officials had asserted that such "harsh and coercive" treatment had not occurred except in isolated circumstances, but new information from a number of people, including military guards, intelligence agents and others, confirmed allegations of mistreatment by former prisoners with chilling details of treatment of prisoners that one official said "fried them".

This "highly abusive" treatment had occurred over a long period of time, and had "migrated to Abu Ghraib"; in other words, abuses at Guantanemo had apparently served as the model for the shameful abuses at Abu Ghraib. The harsh techniques at Guantanemo were abruptly suspended in April 2004 when the Abu Ghraib scandal was exposed. According  to a former senior State Department human rights official quoted in the article, this treatment clearly constituted torture.

Though this deplorable situation seems quite distant from District 2, Congressman Pete Hoekstra, as a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, was involved in oversight of activities at Guantanemo as well as Abu Ghraib.  As reported in the Ludington Daily News, May 7, 2004, Pete Hoekstra clearly stated: "I've been to Guantanamo and seen the treatment of our prisoners. ... We've had practice and experience in dealing with detainees and interrogation for the past couple years. You would think they could take what's been established, pick it up and move it to Afghanistan and Iraq."

Unfortunately, that is in fact what did occur. Abuses at Guantanemo had been moved to Iraq, and have caused the most disgraceful damage to our national reputation imaginable. The 9-11 panel & Senate agree: Congressional intelligence oversight failed; and according to Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, half of the story is still being suppressed -- until after the November election.  (9-11 report-Senate-truthout.org).  This explains Pete Hoekstra's appointment to Chair the House intelligence committee.  He is a staunch party loyalist, and he is very deeply implicated in the total failure of the House intelligence committee to provide even a bare minimum of its oversight responsibility; rather he has proven to be the perfect "yes" man to rubber-stamp and pass through the pre-ordained disastrous Bush foreign policy agenda.

For this service and in deference to his fundraising "prowess" (for which he is under investigation by the FEC for money laundering) Hoekstra is now being rewarded with the House intelligence committee chairmanship. In this capacity he will undoubtedly deliver more of the same; even if the White House is lost to the Democrats, Hoekstra can be counted on to keep a lid on the past failures in which he participated. 

  If Mr. Hoekstra is to be returned to Congress, and particularly now that he has been chosen by Dennis Hastert to chair the Intelligence committee, his reactions to these new revelations of torture should be solicited and made available to the voters of the District. What did he know and when did he know it? These are fair questions that must be answered. Assuming Mr. Hoekstra was unaware of these abuses, what was he doing during his visits to Guantanemo? And how can he be trusted to provide an objective assessment of our activities in this area in the future, if he has failed so badly to recognize and report on arguably the most damaging series of events in our nations's history -- events for which he was directly charged with oversight.