Government At It's Worst - And It Could Kill You!

A Craven Congress Criminalizes CIA

Posted 02/26/2010 07:02 PM ET

National Security: While Americans were distracted by the noisy health care debate, congressional Democrats tried to pass a bill that would have decimated our intelligence capability. We're all lucky they failed.

Thanks to the vigilance of a couple of bloggers and House Republicans — Rep. Peter Hoekstra, in particular — the $50 billion intelligence authorization bill was stripped of a last-minute amendment that would have made criminals of many U.S. intelligence agents.

Specifically, the Democratic amendment sought to impose prison time and huge fines on CIA and other intelligence operatives who treated their captives in a "cruel, inhuman and degrading way."

Sounds very high-minded. But of course, "cruel, inhuman and degrading" are in the eye of the beholder.

Among the transgressions the bill would have outlawed were "exploiting the phobias of the individual," "depriving the individual of necessary food, water, sleep, or medical care," or even "cramped confinement" or "prolonged isolation."

These are so vague as to be meaningless. A lawyered-up terrorist suspect, working through one of Attorney General Eric Holder's lenient civil courts, could have a field day with this new law.

Think about it: Virtually any agent who in the line of duty did anything to anyone — ranging from shaking a suspect to handcuffing someone in an uncomfortable position to even keeping the air conditioner too low during a terrorist's interrogation — could serve hard time for the crime.

And yes, we do mean hard time. The minimum prison sentence under the bill was 15 years. Imagine spending a quarter of your adult life behind bars because you shoved some terrorist dirtbag a bit too hard into a CIA paddy wagon.

The real outrage is that no one even knew this was in the bill. It was slipped in at the last moment by Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott, obviously with the connivance of the Democratic leadership and Intelligence Committee Chairman Sylvester Reyes.

Several bloggers and writers, in particular Andrew McCarthy at the National Review Online and Byron York at the Examiner, kicked up a fuss.

"The bill had no review in the intelligence committee, and the CIA was given no opportunity to examine the legislation or present its views," noted Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter and author of "Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack."

Once alerted, Hoekstra and other Republicans moved fast to kill the provision. That it was removed so quickly by the Democrats with very little fuss indicates that they knew they were trying to pull a fast one on the American people, and got caught.

It says a lot about the state of national security today — but even more about the party that now controls Congress.

Like the way they're ramming socialized medicine down Americans' throat without meaningful input from the opposition party, the Democrats thought they could essentially dismantle a large swath of our intelligence capability in one stealthy move.

Had they succeeded, our intelligence efforts wouldn't just have been hobbled; they'd have been crippled.

Can you imagine anyone — other than the most desk-bound, bureaucratic milquetoast — who would hazard to serve as a spy knowing his or her thanks could be an indefinite prison term?

This raises a lot of other questions for those who wanted this:

• Did they not think it would damage our intel efforts?

• Did they not take into account the exodus of seasoned field agents from the CIA and 16 other spy agencies the U.S. operates?

• Did it not occur to them that trying to pass a major change in our nation's intelligence efforts in the dead of night with no significant input from anyone is inconsistent with democratic rule?

America's Jack Bauers are not criminals. Nor are they torturers. They are people who are highly trained to protect us from terrorists and willingly risk their lives to do so. No one, of course, is immune to criticism. But this goes well beyond that.

What was perhaps most sickening in the bill was its sanctimonious lip-service to "the courageous men and women who serve honorably as intelligence personnel and as members of our nation's Armed Forces" — you know, the very ones they wanted to turn into criminals for doing their jobs.

Like Col. Nathan R. Jessup in the film "A Few Good Men," we'd really rather they just thank those who serve in our clandestine services and went on their way.