Eight Democrats on the House Intelligence committee, including Chairman Silvestre Reyes of Texas, have signed letters in recent weeks accusing the CIA of lying to or misleading Congress over an unspecified program that agency chief Leon Panetta told them he shut down immediately after learning about it.
For some, the letters are a vindication of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's separate accusation that the CIA lied to her about its waterboarding program. The charges and countercharges will only get hotter in light of indications that then-Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to keep the program hidden from congressional eyes.
But it's not the eight Democrats who signed the two letters, including close friends of Speaker Nancy Pelosi such as Anna G. Eshoo and Mike Thompson of California and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, who are most worth watching in the irresolvable subversion battle between Congress and the nation's spy agency.
Instead, it's the five House Democrats who haven't signed on whose leanings are the bellwether of where this issue is headed.
They are C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, Patrick J. Murphy of Pennsylvania, Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Adam B. Schiff of California and Jim Langevin of Rhode Island.
CQ's Tim Starks and Ed Epstein have led the national coverage, and they reported last week that Reyes told ranking Republican Peter Hoekstra of Michigan in a letter that the committee may open a full-scale investigation into the matter.
Together with the panel's Republicans, the five Democrats who didn't sign constitute a clear, 14-8, majority of the committee.
It's a theme Fox News producer Chad Pergram, a savvy Congresswatcher, touched on in his Monday morning column.
Most of them haven't said much of anything. The two who have, Ruppersberger and Boren, say there's no there there.
"I think it probably will not find that anyone intentionally lied," Ruppersberger told Starks.
Under the 1947 law establishing the CIA, the agency is required to keep Congress "fully and currently informed" of its activities, but there are major exceptions and apparently conflicting legal requirements.
If the CIA did lie to Congress, it's probably a matter for the Justice Department.
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