Marathon Pundit: Kit Bond continues to hammer White House over Detroit bombing

Friday, February 05, 2010

Kit Bond continues to hammer White House over Detroit bombing

It's too bad Kit Bond is retiring this year. We need more senators like him.

From Politico:

Sparring between Congress and the White House over treatment of the suspect behind the Christmas Day bombing attempt escalated further Thursday, with Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) accusing the administration of releasing sensitive national security information to the press and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs indignantly demanding an apology.

Bond, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, complained that, on Monday, administration officials asked lawmakers to keep the renewed cooperation of suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a secret but that, on Tuesday night, the White House gave reporters a detailed background briefing on how FBI interrogators used the suspect's family to win his trust.

"It is deeply disturbing to me that the Intelligence Committee would be advised of sensitive information and told of the vital imperative to keep such information secret for the sake of national security, only to see this information — less than 24 hours later — broadcast to the world from the White House," Bond wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama. "This distortion of the congressional notification process suggests that other considerations are taking precedence over keeping timely and sensitive information away from our enemies."