WASHINGTON - The US Senate Intelligence Committee will delay voting to confirm John Brennan as CIA director as the panel’s Democratic chairperson demanded Wednesday that the White House turn over more details about lethal drone strikes on terror suspects.
Committee’s Chairperson Dianne Feinstein, who also sought more information on last September’s attack in Benghazi (Libya) that left the US ambassador there and three other Americans dead, said the vote likely will be pushed off until late February.
In a statement, Feinstein said Senators need to see more classified legal opinions that justify using the unmanned spy planes to kill Al-Qaeda suspects overseas, including American citizens. The Obama administration last week released two of nine classified Justice Department memos outlining the legal reasoning to Feinstein’s committee just hours before Brennan’s confirmation hearing in front of the panel.
Feinstein said the memos are necessary “in order to fully evaluate the executive branch’s legal reasoning, and to broaden access to the opinions to appropriate members of the committee staff.”
The White House has declined to comment.
Feinstein had initially indicated that a vote on Brennan would be held this week. But she said that, under committee rules, members “have the ability to object to a vote on the nomination until after Thursday, so the vote will be delayed.”
Her office said members have not had the 48 hours required under their procedures to review a complete transcript of a closed-door hearing they held with Brennan on Tuesday. Congress is in recess next week and will not return until the week of Feb. 25.
In addition, Feinstein said “Members on both sides of the aisle have asked that certain information be provided to the committee” — a sign of deep divisions with the administration over congressional oversight of intelligence matters.
There is little doubt that Brennan will eventually be confirmed, according to Congressional sources. But the delay adds a hurdle to Obama’s effort to get his new national security team in harness. Administration officials, cited in media reports, voiced consternation about what they clearly saw as the committee’s effort to hold Brennan, currently Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, hostage to the drone issue.
“The thing these guys need to understand on John is that he has been one of the foremost voices in this administration pushing” for the release of more information on targeted killings, one official was quoted as saying.
Brennan has publicly stated that the United States should publicly acknowledge deadly strikes. He has also said he believes that lethal action should be undertaken by the military, rather than the CIA, which has carried out hundreds of drone strikes, most of them in Pakistan but also in Yemen.
Feinstein said the committee had received two Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions related to targeted killings sometime before last week’s hearing. Days before the hearing, an unclassified OLC document was leaked that summarized its justification for the September 2011 drone strike that killed US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. The White House subsequently agreed to allow committee members to view that OLC opinion, written in July 2010, as well as an earlier version from February 2010.
In her statement Wednesday, Feinstein referred to seven additional opinions “that we believe do exist on targeted killings.”
Feinstein and Senator Saxby Chambliss, the committee’s senior Republican, are not the only ones asking for more information. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, and others have said that they cannot make a decision on Brennan until the administration responds to their requests for documents specifically related to the targeted killing of US citizens abroad.
Republican Senator Rand Paul went further, saying he will put a hold on the nomination until Brennan responds to a question posed in the hearing last week about whether he believes “that the president has the power to authorise lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a US citizen on US soil.”
Even if the committee approves Brennan, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has threatened to hold up floor votes on both Brennan and Chuck Hagel, Obama’s defence secretary nominee, unless the White House provides more information about its handling of the Sept 11, 2012, attack on a US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.