House Intel Chair Devin Nunes's One-Man War on the Pentagon; possibly more Russia stuff?
The powerful Republican is battling the DoD to move a massive intelligence complex to an isolated island in the Azores, at a reported extra cost of $1.2 billion. Why?
Air-traffic controllers waved off the plane carrying Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) and several congressmen from the House Intelligence Committee as it descended toward the single runway at Lajes Field, a sleepy U.S. Air Force base perched along a windswept Azores island 1,000 miles from the European mainland. High winds sweeping in from the sea prevented the plane from landing, and the delegation was hastily diverted to an airstrip on a neighboring island 80 miles away.
After months of wrangling with the Defense Department, Nunes and his fellow lawmakers had come to Lajes last May to urge American officials to reverse a planned downsizing of the base. The lawmakers wanted Pentagon officials to instead move a massive, strategically vital intelligence center planned for the United Kingdom to the isolated mid-Atlantic base. The officials objected, citing a cost increase of $1.2 billion and serious operational and logistical concerns, including the base’s single runway and the area’s inclement weather, which the congressmen had experienced just the day before.
An after-action report from a Defense Department engineer shows that the group from Washington wouldn’t take no for an answer. “A few of the members and staffers were very confrontational,” the report reads. “One quote that was repeated several times was, ‘This is going to happen [relocating the intelligence facility to Lajes]. You better jump on board the train or you are going to get run over by it.’”
The incident was another skirmish in the increasingly nasty war between Nunes and his allies in Congress and a group of top Pentagon officials over the fate of the obscure airbase. As chairman of the powerful Intelligence Committee, Nunes has brought the full weight of his influence to bear on the issue, inserting provisions in four separate defense bills that would stop work on the planned U.K. base and accusing the DoD of “lying” about the intelligence complex’s Lajes price tag. Recently, the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into how the military calculated the estimated cost of basing the project in the Azores.
snip
Pentagon officials’ qualms with Nunes’s plan go beyond its price tag. Some worry that an additional delay in the facility’s construction would make it harder to monitor Russian activity in Europe, and most are loathe to relinquish a close intelligence-sharing relationship with the British. “There are routine meetings that occur on an almost daily basis” between American and British intelligence agents, one official explains.
Lots more suspicious stuff:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421842/devin-nunes-pentagon-fight-lajes-air-force-base
And Nunes is the guy who decides what House Intel does with Russia investigation...
= new reply since forum marked as read
