Was Porter Goss appointment a compromise to get the 9/11 commission mandated panel up and running?

[sabra]

This Newsweek report is from 3 weeks ago...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145140

Who's Watching the Spies?

The civil liberties board goes dark under Bush.
Jul 9, 2008


The White House has rejected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's pick for a newly created U.S. government civil liberties board--a move that may doom efforts to get the panel up and running while President Bush remains in office.

Without any public announcement, the White House recently sent a letter to Capitol Hill stating it would nominate only one of two names recommended by congressional leaders to sit on the five-member civil liberties panel. The candidate whose name it would not forward: Morton Halperin, a veteran and sometimes controversial civil liberties advocate who has a famous role in the history of modern debates over government wiretapping. While serving on the National Security Council during the early days of the Nixon administration, Halperin's phone was secretly wiretapped by the FBI because his then boss, Henry Kissinger, suspected he was leaking to the press.

The White House gave no explanation for why it had vetoed Halperin from serving on the civil liberties panel. But the move prompted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to tell the White House that the Senate, in retaliation, will not move any of President Bush's three candidates for the panel (one of whom, Ronald Rotunda, was once a legal adviser to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld).

"How would we ever get our nominees confirmed if we could only confirm Republicans?" explained Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman, when asked about the majority leader's hardball stand.

...

Although it was first mandated by Congress in Dec. 2004, and reauthorized with newly independent powers nearly a year ago, the civil liberties board exists today in name only. It has no office, no staff and no members. (An earlier incarnation of the board—attacked by critics as a rubber stamp for the White House—went out of business last February.) . "It's disgraceful," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the 9/11 commission, which first recommended that the board be created to protect civil liberties affected by the war on terrorism.

...

All these and more would be prime issues for the civil liberties board to consider—and in some cases, presumably raise red flags about. (The board is charged under the law with the authority to independently investigate the impact such measures might have on civil liberties and to provide regular reports to the Congress.) But some Democrats would just as soon wait, in hopes that an Obama administration will take office and appoint members who they believe will be more sympathetic to the core mission of the board. "If Bush makes his three appointments, then he'll have control of the board long after he leaves office," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat who was chief sponsor of the bill last year that reconstituted the civil liberties board with new expanded and independent powers. "If the goal is to proect civil liberties, you might have a stronger board by waiting."

...

But Pelosi, who remains committed to the civil liberities board, is now looking for another candidate--presumably one that would be just a little less unacceptable to White House sensibilities.

[Parche]

1. Head Of The CIA Investigating How The CIA Was Responsible For 9/11

:shrug: :shrug: :hi: