The Daily Background

Yesterday I wrote the following:

House Intel Committee Chair Pete Hoekstra stays in the news after a Litchblau piece recently appeared in the NYT revealing that he had warned the President that failure to brief Congress on secret intel programs could be illegal. Hoekstra went on Fox and ended up suggesting that there were more secret spying programs that we don’t know about yet which don’t have congressional oversight.

Apparently whistle-blowers convinced him to write the letter to the President back in mid-May.

Astute readers will remember that Russ Tice, a whistle-blower and former NSA employee testified in May before a closed session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with the NSA trying to block his testimony from becoming public or allowing a House committee from reviewing it. Hoekstra’s letter was sent to the President the exact day after Tice’s closed testimony, which Tice had earlier said would shock everyone. It is still unknown what Tice revealed.

Well, was Tice Hoekstra’s source? Nobody’s sure, not even Tice himself.

Might it be a guy named Dave Gaubatz? But then again, maybe not?

Filed under: NSA Wiretaps, Z-TDB Blog