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Pelosi Wants Clamp Down On Intel Agencies

From the DNC’s house organ, the Washington Post:

Pelosi Looks to Boost Oversight of Intelligence and Ethics

By Jonathan Weisman
Friday, December 15, 2006; Page A08

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that she will create a new panel within the Appropriations Committee to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies and a House task force to examine establishing an outside ethics panel.

The twin moves demonstrated the delicate balance that Pelosi (D-Calif.) is trying to strike to maintain her political power while fulfilling the promises of the Democrats’ successful 2006 campaign. Both decisions fall short of recommendations coming from the bipartisan commission that examined the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and from ethics groups. But they go well beyond what Republicans were willing to do while they controlled Congress and beyond even what some Democrats were anticipating in recent weeks.

"I think it’s a significant step forward on improving oversight and a major step forward on correcting the dysfunction on Capitol Hill," former congressman Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said of the intelligence plan…

The plan "removes the barriers between the House appropriators and authorizers, makes the oversight stronger and makes the American people safer," Pelosi said…

Aides close to Pelosi said that by creating such an investigatory panel, she is all but ensuring she will push for an outside group, possibly of former House members and judges, to examine ethics complaints and watch over ethics committee efforts…