Pelosi and Black Caucus ignore national security

Josh Manchester:

HOUSE Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi intends to install Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) as chairman of the House Intelligence Com mittee. But Hastings poses an incredible security risk.

He was removed from office as a federal judge in 1989 for taking a $150,000 bribe to render light sentences and other perks to two mobsters. And his latest disclosure forms list $2 million to $7 million in liabilities (mostly for legal fees).

Were Hastings a regular Joe applying for a security clearance of the lowest kind for a job at the CIA or FBI, he'd be rapidly and roundly denied. His history of public corruption, coupled with his precarious financial situation, makes him ripe to be targeted for espionage.

Most complaints about Hastings' possible installation hinge on the Democrats' hypocrisy - after all, they just won Congress by complaining about the GOP's "culture of corruption." Others note that Rep. Jane Harman, now the committee's top Democrat, is more qualified.

Yet the national-security issues are far more important. Those who know Hastings may protest, and loudly. But people with patterns of financial irresponsibility or corruption such as Hastings have proven to be security risks since time immemorial.

Consider the kind of information that would become immediately available to a Chairman Hastings - the most secret of top-secret information. Intelligence Committee members have access to what's called "top-secret special compartmentalized information" (TS-SCI). This stuff is so sensitive that its aspects are divided into four "compartments" so that anyone privy to one compartment will not have access to the other three. The subject matter includes cryptography, satellite intelligence, data on our intel agencies and details of our nuclear arsenal. Even if Hastings has access to only one of these areas, it would be incredibly risky.

It's hard to believe that such sensitive info could be so easily accessed by a man who once sold his office to two mobsters for $150,000. It's harder to believe that a responsible leader of either party would gladly want Hastings to take the reins of the intel committee.

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Chester also raises Pelosi's partisan attacks in the Plame investigation to demonstrate her hypocrisy. The Congressional Black Caucus should also be criticized for pushing this nomination of one of their members in disregard of the security considerations. Are they putting their racial agenda ahead of the national interest? It certainly looks like it. And, Nancy Pelosi is acting as if she is oblivious to the consequences of such an appointment.