Pelosi names Intelligence chairman

WASHINGTON – Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday tapped Texas congressman and former Border Patrol agent Silvestre Reyes to be the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, ending what had become a distracting fight among Democrats over who should get the influential post.

Reyes will occupy a key position for Democrats seeking to use their new majority status to challenge the Bush administration on such national security issues as the conduct of the war in Iraq and the capture and interrogation of terrorism suspects abroad.

“One of the frustrations that I have felt has been a propensity for Congress to be a rubber stamp to just about anything the (Bush) administration has proposed,” Reyes said Friday. “I intend to be much more aggressive.”

His appointment comes amid signs of a shake-up on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senate aides said that GOP leaders plan to remove Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., as the top Republican on the panel.

In selecting Reyes – widely viewed as a compromise candidate – Pelosi sought to quiet a controversy over her handling of personnel issues in assembling her leadership team. Pelosi had drawn criticism from Democratic colleagues for deciding to bypass two senior members of the panel – Reps. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and Alcee Hastings, D-Fla. – who had lobbied aggressively for the job.

Harman, currently the senior Democrat on the intelligence committee, was pushed aside in part because of a political feud with Pelosi. Hastings was rejected largely over ethics concerns.