Rep. King: Brennan should go after Congress not briefed on security changes

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Homeland
Security Committee, is accusing Deputy National Security Adviser John
Brennan of interfering with Congress’s oversight on key intelligence
matters.

King’s latest frustration came Friday morning when he read news
accounts about the new Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA)
aviation security measures before being briefed on the program from
anyone in the administration. He said the White House instructed TSA
officials not to talk to members of Congress about the new security
steps before they were announced Friday morning and blamed Brennan for
setting up an “iron curtain of secrecy” between the administration and
Congress on important intelligence issues.

{mosads}“This is typical of John Brennan,” King remarked in an interview with
The Hill. “He told the TSA not to brief Congress. The president should
get rid of him. That’s my personal belief. I think he’s really hurting
the administration.”

A TSA official refuted King’s contention that he and other members of
the House Homeland Security panel were not offered a briefing before
the new aviation protocols were announced Friday morning.

“The congressman’s staff was notified prior to press reports that a
change to aviation security was going to be announced, and he was
offered a classified briefing at a time of his convenience to learn
more about the enhanced measures,” the TSA official said in a
statement.

The official added that the administration is pleased King thinks the
aviation security measures are a significant step forward.

When asked about the assertion that he had been offered a briefing,
King stood by his earlier statements. A GOP aide said a White House
official had informed King of a directive not to brief the House
Homeland Security Committee about the refined aviation security
screening procedures before the announcement.

In the earlier interview, King also accused Brennan of being a
“control freak” and of damaging the administration’s credibility with
Congress. He had kinder words for Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano, who he said should be given credit for
implementing a new policy that requires a lot of work and coordination
with the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence.

Officials at TSA briefed Democratic and Republican committee staff
Friday afternoon about the details of the new airport security
protocols after King issued a press release voicing his frustration
about not being briefed. King said he strongly supports the new
measures and views them as “a significant step forward.” His anger
stems from what he views as the administration’s secrecy and
reluctance to keep Congress informed about important security matters.

House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) shares at
least some of King’s concern about the administration’s failure to
coordinate with Congress on the new aviation-screening program.

“While this new policy is a step in the right direction, I hope to
work with the White House on a more coordinated roll-out in the
future,” Thompson said in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday morning announced
improvements to its terror-screening policy that will attempt to focus
on specific threats, not just travelers’ point of origin or
nationality.

The new policy revises security requirements imposed after the
Christmas Day attempted bombing of a passenger jet en route to Detroit
that targeted people from 14 countries known as terrorist hotbeds or
safe havens. It expands the number of foreign travelers scrutinized
for extra screening beyond those whose names appear on the U.S. terror
watch list.

The changes came after a three-month review of intelligence lapses
Obama ordered after the near tragedy on Christmas Day.

King said Brennan’s decision to withhold information about the new
security steps from Congress is part of a pattern of secrecy. A
similar experience occurred on Christmas Day, King said, when Brennan
ordered DHS and TSA to cease communications with Congress regarding
the botched attack on Northwest Flight 253.

“President Obama must take control of his homeland security staff and
lift the iron curtain of secrecy that John Brennan has lowered between
the administration and Congress,” King said in a press release issued
Friday.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the chairman of the
Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, did not
respond to an inquiry.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) spent Friday meeting with Dutch officials
at the Amsterdam airport from which suspected terrorist Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab embarked on Christmas Day. She was there to discuss
international airport security, the final leg of an overseas trip that
included visits at U.S. Central Command regional headquarters in
Qatar and with American allies in Western Europe.

Collins’ spokesman Kevin Kelley said his boss was “informed” of the
new security program and expects to receive a full briefing next week.

Like King and Thompson, Collins fully supports the new protocols,
which she called “a more effective security strategy.”

“Applying a kind of blanket, ‘one-size-fits-all’ scrutiny to
individuals based solely on their country of origin provides only
limited additional security and helps terrorists avoid detection by
using operatives from other countries to carry out their plots,” she
said in a statement. “Intelligence-based security, appropriately
implemented, also will give Americans a more nimble response system
against terrorists and permit more resources to be targeted at
high-risk individuals.”

To King, the new steps are a more common-sense approach that TSA should
have been using since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Anytime we can make more sophisticated use of our intelligence and
more effective use of intercepts it makes the screening process much
more meaningful,” he said. “There is no silver bullet. We need to have
multiple layers in our defense against al-Qaeda, and having a coherent
screening and intelligence system is an important part of that.”

After the administration implemented additional scrutiny and screening
of all travelers from 14 countries of concern in the wake of the
Christmas Day bombing attempt, some civil liberty activists argued
that the new policy set a dangerous precedent by implementing what
could amount to racial profiling in its counterterrorism fight.

King brushed any criticism about racial profiling aside as inaccurate
and naïve.

“This is common sense,” he said. “…Liberals live in their own
delusional world. The fact is we have an enemy who wants to kill us.
Just like when the Ku Klux Klan goes after people, you don’t spent too
much time screening African-Americans, and when the Black Liberation
Army is coming after people, you don’t spend too much time screening
whites.”

“We do not have to have across-the-board policies,” he said. “It’s
just a fact that it is going to focus more on Muslims coming from
certain countries.”

If the current threat assessment shows that al-Qaeda or other
terrorist groups are trying to recruit Western women, King added, the
screening metric would change to reflect that new intelligence.