Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) calls for Obama totake a stronger stand against terrorism after Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for airline bomb plot.

Another Obama Administration controversy brewing? This time, it is about the massacre at Fort Hood. Rep. Pete Hoekstra seems to think so.

Jim sent this in:

Former CIA directors, who served both Republican and Democrat presidents, urged President Barack Obama to end a criminal investigation of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogations” of terror suspects during the war on terrorism. The seven CIA directors made their request in a letter sent Friday to the White House.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced last month that he was appointing an independent counsel to investigate possible incidents of abuse by CIA personnel during interrogations that went beyond guidelines imposed by the Bush administration.

“If criminal investigations closed by career prosecutors during one administration can so easily be 

reopened at the direction of political appointees in the next, declinations of prosecution will be rendered meaningless,” wrote the former directors.

The former directors of Central Intelligence included Michael Hayden, Porter Goss and George Tenet, who served under Bush; John Deutch and James Woolsey, who worked for President Bill Clinton; William Webster, who served under President George H.W. Bush; and James Schlesinger, who ran the agency under President Richard Nixon.

U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, released a statement after the former CIA directors sent a letter to President Obama requesting him to reverse Attorney General’s decision to re-open investigations into CIA interrogations that had been conducted by career Justice Department prosecutors.

“The political witch hunt and endless investigations against the CIA being conducted by partisan ideologues need to stop. As noted by the former CIA directors, ‘if criminal investigations closed by career prosecutors during one administration can so easily be reopened at the direction of political appointees in the next, declinations of prosecution will be rendered meaningless,” said Rep. Hoekstra.

“The Obama Justice Department is wrong to subject the CIA to never-ending second guessing for policies approved and never questioned at the highest levels of the congressional and executive branches. The letter correctly notes the distraction and devastating impact the re-opening of the investigation is having on CIA morale, America’s counterterrorism efforts and our foreign intelligence partnerships,” he stated.

“For those of us who have opposed the heavy-handed attempts of the Obama administration to review and reverse the national security judgments of the previous administration, the bipartisan nature of the letter shows that there are broad national security concerns about the decisions being made by this president,” he said. 

“President Obama should heed his own advice, and that of this bipartisan group of CIA directors, that we need to move forward and look to the future on these issues. The best way to do that is to end the re-investigation of the CIA launched by one of his political appointees into the previous decisions made by non-political, Justice Department career prosecutors.”

“Mr. President, you may disagree with the judgments of the previous administration and Congress, but the men and women of the CIA who have kept our nation safe since 9/11 should not be the ones you ask to pay the price,” stated Congressman Hoekstra.

Jim sent this in:

US Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, issued a biting statement to the National Association of Chiefs of Police after learning that the Department of Justice will continue its investigation of terrorist interrogations and that Attorney General Eric Holder is intent on naming a special prosecutor to investigate CIA officers engaged in counterterrorism.

“At the same time the situation in Afghanistan is getting decidedly worse and the Taliban is advancing, the Obama Justice Department is launching an investigation that risks disrupting CIA counterterrorism initiatives. This is the last thing that should happen when the president is sending more troops into harm’s way, and the nation’s top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, said over the weekend that al-Qaeda still remains a threat to America and our interests abroad,” stated Congressman Hoekstra. 

“Attorney General Holder should know that as he increases the focus on America’s past counterterrorism efforts, he is distracting from the CIA’s current counterterrorism efforts. Having recently been forced to drop cases due to prosecutorial misconduct at DOJ, the attorney general argued that these were rare instances and not part of a broader problem. The same can be said of the CIA, where the agency initiated the investigation, reported cases of misconduct and disciplined the officers involved,” he said.

“President Obama has said repeatedly that he wants to move forward, but his Justice Department seems intractably stuck in reverse. The message from the administration is completely confused, and the men and women at the CIA who we ask to protect our nation have been left in the lurch. The attorney general needs to stop his zealous attempt to make this out to be a systemic problem, when unlike cases such as the 2001 Peru shoot down, the CIA IG did not find evidence that there was a systemic problem. Disgruntled lawyers at DOJ, having lost the debate that America’s counterterrorism efforts should be focused on prevention not prosecution, need to put an end to this bureaucratic turf battle,” Hoekstra stated.

Groups such as Amnesty International, Code Pick and others are applauding Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate cases brought to the Department of Justice against members of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), a guest on The Republican Temple radio program on Tuesday, goes into details how Democrats destroyed the careers of two intelligence officers; he also discusses the “Mirandaizing” of enemy combatants overseas and its effect.

Yours truly and co-host Daria DiGiovanni welcome Michigan Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra on this “Meet The Candidate” edition of The Republican Temple.  We will discuss with Mr. Hoekstra his platform along with other topics of interest to us conservatives.

The broadcast starts at 9:00 PM (Eastern)/ 6:00 PM (Pacific); Daria and I hope to see you there!!  To listen to the live broadcast, click here or click the BLOGTALKRADIO icon, located on the lower-right side of the homepage.