Separately, the House committee’s chairman, Democrat Silvestre Reyes of Texas, said in a statement tonight that “in rare instances’’ CIA officers “have not adhered to the high standards’’ that the agency sets for “truthfulness in reporting’’ to Congress.
Reyes, who wasn’t among the six lawmakers who signed the letter to Panetta, praised the CIA chief’s “recent efforts to bring issues to the committee’s attention’’ that “had not been previously conveyed’’ to it.
Reyes was blunter in a July 7 letter to the panel's top Republican, saying that the CIA had lied to the committee at least once.
Information Panetta gave the panel June 24 “brought to light significant information on the inadequacy of reporting to the committee,’’ Reyes wrote to Representative Pete Hoekstra of Michigan.
The information provided by Panetta “led me to conclude that this committee has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notification and (in at least once case) was affirmatively lied to,’’ Reyes said in a letter, first reported by Congressional Quarterly.
The disclosures came on the eve of a scheduled House debate on an intelligence spending measure. It would expand the number of lawmakers who must be notified of covert intelligence operations from eight congressional leaders to more than 35 members of House and Senate intelligence panels.
