Jake Tapper reports In 'Signing Statement,' President Obama Affirms Right to Keep Tight the Circle of Congressmen in the Loop "Congress told President Obama in the new Intelligence Bill that if he didn’t describe covert actions to all the members of the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees, he at least needed to give them a ‘general description’ of the activities. But in a signing statement the president issued today, the president said he was interpreting the notion of providing a ‘general description’ to mean that he would notify them that there was something he wasn’t telling them."
Ok, I'm not happy about this for a few reasons. First off, I don't like games with signing statements. Second, is this: "Presidents in general aren’t all that keen about looping in members of what they see as a leak-prone Congress when it comes to the most sensitive operations the US conducts, and President Obama is not different. He has asserted the right to keep the pool of those informed narrow, confining such information to the “Gang of Eight” – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees."
One of the big problems with just telling the 'Gang of Eight' about covert operations was that since the info they received was classified they couldn't tell the rest of their committee members and therefore couldn't bring it up in committee and therefore couldn't do anything about it. The effect was not just that the president was limiting who knew about the actions, he was preventing Congress from performing any oversight on the matter.
This is more Bush crap that Obama is perpetrating and it's wrong.
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