Incoming House intelligence chief botches easy intel quiz

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped to head the Intelligence Committee when the Democrats take over in January, failed a quiz of basic questions about al Qaeda and Hezbollah, two of the key terrorist organizations the intelligence community has focused on since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

 

When asked by CQ National Security Editor Jeff Stein whether al Qaeda is one or the other of the two major branches of Islam -- Sunni or Shiite -- Reyes answered "they are probably both," then ventured "Predominantly -- probably Shiite."

 

That is wrong. Al Qaeda was founded by Osama bin Laden as a Sunni organization and views Shiites as heretics.

 

Reyes could also not answer questions put by Stein about Hezbollah, a Shiite group on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations that is based in Southern Lebanon.

 

Stein's column about Reyes' answers was published on CQ's Web site Friday evening.

 

In an interview with CNN, Stein said he was "amazed" by Reyes' lack of what he considers basic information about two of the major terrorists organizations.

 

"If you're the baseball commissioner and you don't know the difference between the Yankees and the Red Sox, you don't know baseball," Stein said. "You're not going to have the respect of the people you work with."

 

While Stein said Reyes is "not a stupid guy," his lack of knowledge said it could hamper Reyes' ability to provide effective oversight of the intelligence community, Stein believes.

 

"If you don't have the basics, how do you effectively question the administration?" he asked. "You don't know who is on first."

 

Stein said Reyes is not the only member of the House Intelligence Committee that he has interviewed that lacked what he considered basic knowledge about terrorist organizations.

 

"It kind of disgusts you, because these guys are supposed to be tending your knitting," Stein said. "Most people are rightfully appalled."

 

Pelosi picked Reyes over fellow Californian Rep. Jane Harman, who had been the Intelligence Committee's ranking member, and Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, who had been impeached as a federal judge after being accused of taking a bribe.

 

Calls from CNN to Reyes' office asking for reaction to Stein's column have not been returned.

Democrats? New Intelligence Chairman Needs a Crash Course on al Qaeda

 

 

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

 

Forty years ago, Sgt. Silvestre Reyes was a helicopter crew chief flying dangerous combat missions in South Vietnam from the top of a soaring rocky outcrop near the sea called Marble Mountain.

 

After the war, it turned out that the communist Viet Cong had tunneled into the hill and built a combat hospital right beneath the skids of Reyes? UH-1 Huey gunship.

 

Now the five-term Texas Democrat, 62, is facing similar unpleasant surprises about the enemy, this time as the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

 

That?s because, like a number of his colleagues and top counterterrorism officials that I?ve interviewed over the past several months, Reyes can?t answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed against us in the Middle East.

 

It begs the question, of course: How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don?t know basics about the battlefield?

 

To his credit, Reyes, a kindly, thoughtful man who also sits on the Armed Service Committee, does see the undertows drawing the region into chaos.

 

For example, he knows that the 1,400- year-old split in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites not only fuels the militias and death squads in Iraq, it drives the competition for supremacy across the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

 

That?s more than two key Republicans on the Intelligence Committee knew when I interviewed them last summer. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and Terry Everett, R-Ala., both back for another term, were flummoxed by such basic questions, as were several top counterterrorism officials at the FBI.

 

I thought it only right now to pose the same questions to a Democrat, especially one who will take charge of the Intelligence panel come January. The former border patrol agent also sits on the Armed Services Committee.

 

Reyes stumbled when I asked him a simple question about al Qaeda at the end of a 40-minute interview in his office last week. Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.

 

We warmed up with a long discussion about intelligence issues and Iraq. And then we veered into terrorism?s major players.

 

To me, it?s like asking about Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: Who?s on what side?

 

The dialogue went like this:

 

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

 

?Al Qaeda, they have both,? Reyes said. ?You?re talking about predominately??

 

?Sure,? I said, not knowing what else to say.

 

?Predominantly ? probably Shiite,? he ventured.

 

He couldn?t have been more wrong.

 

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they?d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

 

That?s because the extremist Sunnis who make up a l Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.

 

Al Qaeda?s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil.

 

It?s been five years since these Muslim extremists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center.

 

Is it too much to ask that our intelligence overseers know who they are?

 

And Hezbollah? I asked him. What are they?

 

?Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah...?

 

He laughed again, shifting in his seat.

 

?Why do you ask me these questions at five o?clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish??

 

?Poquito,? I said?a little.

 

?Poquito?! ? He laughed again.

 

?Go ahead,? I said, talk to me about Sunnis and Shia in Spanish.

 

Reyes: ?Well, I, uh....?

 

I apologized for putting him ?on the spot a little.? But I reminded him that the people who have killed thousands of Americans on U.S. soil and in the Middle East have been front page news for a long time now.

 

It?s been 23 years since a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed over 200 U.S. military personnel in Beirut, mostly Marines.

 

Hezbollah, a creature of Iran, is close to taking over in Lebanon. Reports say they are helping train Iraqi Shiites to kill Sunnis in the spiralling civil war.

 

?Yeah,? Reyes said, rightly observing, ?but . . . it?s not like the Hatfields and the McCoys. It?s a heck of a lot more complex.

 

?And I agree with you ? we ought to expend some effort into understanding them. But speaking only for myself, it?s hard to keep things in perspective and in the categories.?

 

Reyes is not alone.

 

The best argument for needing to understand who?s what in the Middle East is probably the mistaken invasion itself, despite the preponderance of expert opinion that it was a terrible idea ? including that of Bush?s father and his advisers. On the day in 2003 when Iraqi mobs toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Bush was said to be unaware of the possibility that a Sunni-Shia civil war could fill the power vacuum, according to a reliable source with good White House connections.

 

If President Bush and some of his closest associates, not to mention top counterterrorism officials, have demonstrated their own ignorance about who the players are in the Middle East, why should we expect the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee to get it right?

 

Trent Lott, the veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, said only last September that ?It?s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what?s wrong with these people.?

 

?Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion?? wondered Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after a meeting with Bush.

 

?Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

 

?They all look the same to me,? Lott said.

Haunting

 

The administration?s disinterest in the Arab world has rattled down the chain of command.

 

Only six people in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad are fluent in Arabic, according to last week?s report of the Iraq Study Group. Only about two dozen of the embassy?s thousand employees have some familiarity with the language, the report said.

 

The Iraq Study Group was amazed to find that, despite spending $2 billion on Iraq in 2006, more wasn?t being done to try ?to understand the people who fabricate, plant and explode roadside bombs.?

 

Rare is the military unit with an American soldier who can read a captured document or interrogate a prisoner, my own sources tell me.

 

It was that way in Vietnam, too, Reyes says, which ?haunts us.?

 

?If you substitute Arabization for Vietnamization, if you substitute . . . our guys going in and taking over a place then leaving it and the bad guys come back in. . . .?

 

He trails off, despairing.

 

?I could draw many more analogies.?

 

Yet Reyes says he favors sending more troops there.

 

?If it?s going to target the militias and eliminate them, I think that?s a worthwhile investment,? he said.

 

It?s hard to find anybody in Iraq who thinks the U.S. can do that.

 

On ?a temporary basis, I?m willing to ramp them up by twenty or thirty thousand . . . for, I don?t know, two months, four months, six months ? but certainly that would be an exception,? Reyes said.

 

Meanwhile, the killing is going on below decks, too, within Sunni and Shiite groups and factions.

 

Anybody who pays serious attention to Iraq knows that.

 

Reyes says his first hearings come January will focus on how U.S. intelligence can do a better job helping the troops in Iraq.

 

It may be way too late for that.

 

?Stop giving me tests!? Reyes exclaimed, half kidding.

 

?I?m not going to talk to you any more!?

http://public.cq.com/public/20061211_homeland.html

Not surprising, this happens a lot. To me, it's not at all surprising because I kind of know Silvestre and I would say he's at slightly above average intelligence, at best. He's not that sharp. But he's well intentioned and knows how to use smart people around him. Good guy. But I wouldn't have made him head of this committee.

It's not really a big deal that someone doesn't know these simple facts... but anyone who doesn't know even the most basic fundamental facts about our enemies shouldn't be the chairman of any house commitee that has to do with our national security.

Agreed.

I'm with you on this one. The last thing we need is an intel chairman who doesn't know these basic things.

 

I guess they should have gone with Harman after all...

It's like being incharge of the mathematics department at a college, and getting an F in high school algebra :| .

So accord, tell me why you voted for Bush?

So accord, tell me why you voted for Bush?

Because his name wasn't "John Kerry"

It's like being incharge of the mathematics department at a college, and getting an F in high school algebra :| .

 

Well... a certain scientist, well known all over the world, also failed high school math.

It's like being incharge of the mathematics department at a college, and getting an F in high school algebra :| .

 

Well... a certain scientist, well known all over the world, also failed high school math.

Yup. Einstein.

It's like being incharge of the mathematics department at a college, and getting an F in high school algebra :| .

 

Well... a certain scientist, well known all over the world, also failed high school math.

This is not true, it's merely a widespread rumor that has been around for decades, but it's completely false.

 

"Did Einstein really fail math?

First and foremost, let us dispel the most popular, most beloved rumor about Einstein of all. He did not fail math. He got top grades in math and science all of his life. He also didn't fail out of school -- though he did abruptly leave his secondary school when his family moved to Italy during his final year. "

 

http://www.einsteinatoz.com/faq.shtml

even dumb little me knew al qaeda is sunni and hezbollah shiite.

So accord, tell me why you voted for Bush?

Because his name wasn't "John Kerry"

 

So you don't believe in your statement?

 

"anyone who doesn't know even the most basic fundamental facts about our enemies shouldn't be the chairman of any house commitee that has to do with our national security."

 

So now that you've created exceptions, why can't others?

so much malice up in here.

 

someone should get f_m an accord voodoo doll for xmas.

so much malice up in here.

 

someone should get f_m an accord voodoo doll for xmas.

I wouldn't be surprised :lol .

Yay ignorance!

Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

 

?They all look the same to me,? Lott said.

 

:poke

Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

 

?They all look the same to me,? Lott said.

 

:poke

Yeah, sounds like Trent Lott.