Pelosi to appoint outsider to head intelligence panel
WASHINGTON – House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has decided against naming either Reps. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, or Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., the panel’s No. 2 Democrat, to chair the pivotal committee next year.
The decisions came despite lobbying by conservative Democrats on Harman’s behalf and a full-throttled campaign by Hastings to overcome the stigma of the 1988 impeachment that drove him from his federal judgeship.
The fight over the top spot on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has exposed the kind of factional politics that bedeviled House Democrats before they were swept from control in 1994. Harman, a moderate, pro-defense “Blue Dog” Democrat, had angered liberals for her reluctance to challenge the Bush administration’s use of intelligence.
Hastings, who is black, was strongly backed by the Congressional Black Caucus but ardently opposed by Blue Dogs, who said his removal from the bench disqualified him from such a sensitive post.
Complicating the matter was Pelosi’s relationship with black Democrats. Earlier this year, she enraged the black caucus by removing one of its members, Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., from the Ways and Means Committee after court documents revealed that federal investigators looking into allegations of bribery had found $90,000 in cash neatly bundled in his freezer.
Instead of Harman or Hastings, Pelosi will look to a compromise candidate, probably Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, but possibly Reps. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., a hawkish member of the defense appropriations subcommittee, or Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., a conservative black with Intelligence Committee experience.
Hastings took a shot at conservatives and media voices who have come out strongly against his appointment. “Sorry, haters,” he wrote, “God is not finished with me yet.”
In the end, Pelosi’s pledge to clean up Congress after two years of scandal made Hastings’ appointment impossible, Democrats said.