http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2761/Tice has not been fighting his uphill battle to testify alone. Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), respectively, chairman and ranking minority member of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, wrote to Hoekstra on March 6, saying that if he did not intend to investigate Tice’s claims, they would do so under their own jurisdiction. “The allegations made by Mr. Tice are very serious. We plan to investigate his claims as thoroughly as possible, but we would appreciate your input by March 10, 2006, before we proceed further,” they wrote. According to a senior staffer on the Committee on Government Reform, Hoekstra didn’t respond, nor did he tell them that he planned to have staffers meet with Tice. The staffer said that the subcommittee learned of the March 17 meeting from Tice himself.
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Tice says that such a determination has been made regarding the programs he wants to testify about. He also says that the NSA maintains secrecy by conducting exclusively internal reviews instead of going to Congress. It is not clear that the executive branch constitutionally has the power to withhold clearance from committee members who wish to hear about special access programs, but the tactic has been largely successful so far.
Shays and Kucinich have worked to reverse the trend. On May 17, the day before Hoekstra wrote a letter to President Bush criticizing the intelligence community’s failure to fulfill its legal duty to keep the House and Senate Intelligence committees apprised of its activities, Reps. Shays and Kucinich sent their own letter to Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the NSA, about Tice’s situation. They cited a House Rule that mandates that their subcommittee “shall review and study on a continuing basis the operation of Government activities at all levels with a view to determining their economy and efficiency.”
Essentially, Shays and Kucinich were telling Alexander that they intended to hear Tice whether or not the NSA granted them official clearance; that their right to hear him was written into their own rules. They gave a May 26 deadline for providing “a more complete legal analysis from NSA on the basis for its objections, if any, to the Subcommittee proceeding in the manner proposed.” According to the senior staffer, the NSA never replied. But Tice says that he has not been asked to testify, nor has he been contacted recently by anyone from the subcommittee. Shays, however, continues to push for legislation that would give greater protection to national security whistleblowers.