House Intelligence Committee U S

On the eve of a House vote on controversial wiretapping legislation last month, the nation's intelligence director, J. Michael McConnell, convened a secret weekend meeting in northern Virginia with members of the House Intelligence Committee. The two-day session was designed to promote a calmer atmosphere for discussing an array of intelligence issues, including the nation's eavesdropping laws. But participants said the event ended with a series of acrimonious exchanges.

An internal investigation that the House Intelligence Committee has refused to make public portrays the panel as embarrassingly entangled in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal. The report, a declassified version of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, describes the committee as a dysfunctional entity that served as a crossroads for almost every major figure in the ongoing criminal probe by the Justice Department.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, chafing at the Justice Department's handling of a probe into missing CIA interrogation tapes, threatened Wednesday to subpoena two top CIA officials to jump-start the panel's own investigation. The department, which is conducting a criminal inquiry with the CIA inspector general into revelations that a CIA official destroyed videotapes of two terrorism suspects being interrogated in 2005, asked the panel last week to defer its inquiry.

The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena Thursday for Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA official who directed that secret interrogation videotapes of two suspected terrorists be destroyed. The panel ordered Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, to appear for a hearing on Jan. 16. Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said Rodriguez "would like to tell his story but his counsel has advised us that a subpoena would be necessary."

The House Intelligence Committee announced plans Thursday to expand its scrutiny of a Bush administration spying program that has intercepted international e-mails and phone calls of U.S. residents in recent years without court warrants.

The House Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to withhold funding from the nation's intelligence director over concerns that his office, which was created to streamline operations in the nation's spy community, is instead becoming bloated and bureaucratic.

Rep. Jane Harman, who has gained national prominence as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is fighting to hold on to the job amid indications she will be rotated off the panel next year. The dispute pits the Venice lawmaker against House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

The House Intelligence Committee warned in a report Wednesday that the terrorist danger facing the United States was "more alarming than the threat that existed prior to Sept. 11, 2001," prompting criticism from Democrats that the Republican-dominated panel was seeking to alarm voters in advance of the midterm elections. The report was approved by the committee on a party-line vote, with Democrats objecting to its tone and contents in strongly worded minority opinions.

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee accused the Bush administration Thursday of suppressing a classified intelligence report that paints a "grim" picture of the situation in Iraq. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) sent a letter to CIA Director Michael V. Hayden requesting the release of the report and charging that the agency was withholding the information out of political considerations, which she said was demoralizing to the agency's workforce.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has suspended a Democratic aide's access to classified materials, citing concerns the staffer might have leaked parts of an intelligence assessment on terrorism to the media. The highly unusual move drew sharp protest from the panel's ranking Democrat, Jane Harman of Venice, who said in a statement Friday, "There is no evidence to suggest that the professional staff member in question did anything wrong."