Hoekstra Drawn to the Political Limelight

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The president's plan for military tribunals is just one of the national security issues before Congress right now. Lawmakers are also considering the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program, a seaport security bill and the defense budget. In all these debates, you can find a man emerging as one of the more intriguing members of Congress: Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports on the controversial chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

MARY LOUISE KELLY: This spring, back in May, Pete Hoekstra decided he was fed up. He sat down and wrote a letter to President Bush, four tartly worded pages suggesting the administration may have broken the law by not briefing Congress on some intelligence activities.

Representative PETER HOEKSTRA (Republican, Michigan): I expressed my concern that there were programs that various people within the intelligence community had notified me about and said hey, Pete, you and the Committee have not been briefed on these programs. I gave the code names to the intelligence community, found out that they were real programs.

KELLY: Hoekstra won't elaborate on what programs he was referring to. He says he has now been briefed.

Until recently, Hoekstra had carved out a reputation as a staunch ally of the White House. For example, he defended the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping. But this spring proved something of a turning point. Just days before he penned that letter to President Bush, Hoekstra spoke out against the president's choice to run the CIA: Air Force General Mike Hayden.

Rep. HOEKSTRA: I do believe he's the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time. We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time.

KELLY: Hoekstra speaking on Fox News in May. And Hoekstra also clashed with the president over the man named to the number two job at the CIA - Steve Kappes. The episodes didn't bode well for relations between the new leaders of the CIA and the House committee that oversees them. But Republican Heather Wilson, a close ally of Hoekstra's on the Intelligence Committee says no permanent damage was done.

Representative HEATHER WILSON (Republican, New Mexico): Pete is not shy about saying what he thinks. And our job is that we are a separate branch of government charged with overseeing these agencies. It's not about being buddies; it's about doing a job and being professional about it. And I think Pete Hoekstra does it pretty well.

KELLY: Hoekstra sparked another mini controversy this summer with the disclosure that chemical munitions had been found in Iraq. Hoekstra and Republican Senator Rick Santorum called a press conference in which Santorum trumpeted the find as proof that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after all. Hoekstra was a bit more circumspect.

Rep. HOEKSTRA: This is not a proverbial silver bullet, smoking gun. But what it does dispel is the very simple notion that there was not a single weapon of mass destruction in Iraq...

KELLY: But U.S. intelligence officials played down the find, noting the weapons were degraded and old, dating from before the '91 Gulf War. One former intelligence official calls the episode bizarre and questions whether Hoekstra and Santorum were playing politics with intelligence. Hoekstra denies that, but the charge of politicizing intelligence surfaced again just last month.

The staff of the House Intelligence Committee produced a report on Iran. It concludes that the threat from Iran is growing. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat on the Committee, says he's generally a big fan of Pete Hoekstra. But Ruppersberger says he never saw the Iran report before it was made public and he disagrees with how it was done.

Representative DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER (Democrat, Maryland): I'm surprised. I don't know what the purpose of this report was because any report should be by the members of the Committee, you know, not a staffer.

KELLY: Far harsher was the judgment of The New York Times. The Times' editorial board pronounced the Iran report partly a campaign document that dishes up dire sounding innuendo to scare Americans into allowing Republicans to keep control of Congress.

Rep. HOEKSTRA: Yeah, I mean, I don't know why it's necessary to take shots at it.

KELLY: Peter Hoekstra.

Rep. HOEKSTRA: Whether it's a campaign document or a political document, if you've got problems with it, deal with the substance of the report. Is Iran a threat or not? If The New York Times doesn't believe that Iran is a threat, they should present the information, and we'd be more than willing to take a look at it.

KELLY: The Intelligence Committee is also taking a look at North Korea and at terrorism. Those two reports are due out shortly. That means Peter Hoekstra may soon be back in the headlines, a prospect that doesn't trouble him. Asked point-blank if he has political aspirations beyond the House Intelligence Committee, Hoekstra says he's ruling nothing out. I'm always surprised, he says, what doors open for you if you go out and do a great job.

Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Washington.

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