Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, accused the administration of “premature chest-thumping” in leaking a story about a double agent who foiled a deadly airline-bomb plot.
Rogers said Sunday he is conducting a preliminary investigation into the leak, which could lead to a “full-blown committee investigation or we’ll refer it to criminal charge to the FBI.”
“When information like this gets leaked, Bob, it is incredibly damaging to our intelligence community’s ability to take that investigation through all of its natural course,” Rogers told Bob Schieffer on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Any information that is leaked out … is dangerous for us to try to catch the next generation of bombers.”
Rogers said whoever leaked the information and planned a White House press conference to announce it without informing Congress jeopardized the lives of foreign liaisons, threatened national security, and broke the law.
“It clearly raises some serious questions that we’re going to have to ask,” Rogers said, adding the CIA was trying to stop the story from making international headlines.
“Those two disparate positions leads one to believe that someone was at odds about how much they should or should not talk about it,” he said. “People’s lives were at stake during this particular operation.”
When Schieffer asked Rogers whether the administration played straight with the Intelligence Committee, Rogers said, “Unfortunately, no.”
“This is not anything that should be used for a headline,” Rogers said. “Our national security should be exempt from any November at any time in any year.”
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