Posted on 10/01/2001 7:02:47 PM PDT by TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!
Rep. Gary Condit's position on the House intelligence committee once was a magnet for stinging criticism.
But now that the country is combating terrorism, some wonder whether the committee position might become a political talisman. Because when a newly formed terrorism panel meets Wednesday, Condit will be center stage on the one issue that succeeded in blowing away a summer's worth of attention to his private behavior.
"Obviously, it's a real feather in his cap," Larry Klayman, chairman and general counsel for the group Judicial Watch, conceded Tuesday.
Klayman's group has tried - so far unsuccessfully - to instigate a grand jury investigation of Condit. Along with some lawmakers, including Georgia Republican Bob Barr, Judicial Watch has also sought to kick Condit off of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
House leaders, though, show little if any interest in moving Condit off the 20-member committee despite the dragged-out revelations over his relationship with missing woman Chandra Levy. Condit has said publicly only that he was "very close" to the 24-year-old former intern, but he has not disputed numerous media accounts that he admitted to police that he was sexually involved with her.
Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed more than 6,400 people in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania, the Condit-Levy affair dropped from the media radar. At the same time, Condit gained fresh stature as a member of the intelligence committee's newly formed Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee.
Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the nine-member working group was elevated to a full subcommittee. That gives the panel subpoena power along with much higher visibility than an ad hoc working group.
"We are in a new age," House Speaker Dennis Hastert explained in announcing the new subcommittee. "We have to try to look over that horizon and see what lays out there."
Klayman's group hopes public attention does, in fact, turn again to Condit. Klayman contended Tuesday that Condit is "subject to blackmail" as a member of the generally secretive intelligence committee; he's still waiting to hear on requests that grand juries in San Francisco and San Mateo counties investigate the congressman.
"There's nothing left to blackmail him over, good God," Modesto businesswoman and Condit supporter Barbara Arnold retorted Tuesday. "To me, we need him more than before, because he's on the intelligence committee. I just don't think we can afford to be without him."
The above statement has GOT to get a prize for THE MOST ludicrous,Ignoromous, complacently stupid statement ever.
UNBELIEVABLE!!!! Time to move on don't look at the man behind the curtain.
Typical DEM logic - what the heck, he's a scum and we know it and we don't care if he's compromised. It's so important that he be there because he's been doing such a great job on this committee, in between trysts.
Congress also carries the stain...are they all a bunch of crooks?
I'm afraid so!
What a moron!
Imagine this. Our enemies discover Condit's direct involvement with Chandra's "disappearance". They present him with hard evidence and demand his cooperation or they go to the media with the story. I think this is very plausible and why Condit should not be on any intelligence committees or in Congress at all.
AHHHHHH run screaming into the night.
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