I read Paul Kiel's piece today on TPMmuckraker about the House Intell committee "losing" the famous NIE report on Iraq for 6 months (or maybe it was 3). No surprise he got a later call amending it to 3 months. And it struck me, then, if I didn't know already, that last week's suspension by Chairman Hoekstra of one of Jane Harman's staffers. Larry Hanauer, was completely unjustified. The proof: the calendar.

For those of us who have worked with these committees and know their staffs, they have, over the years  become slightly unbearable work environments; they have become so political as to become unworkable, and that ain't good in wartime. So, let's look at the calendar. Last week, admitting he had no specific knowledge, Hoekstra claims that after a Democratic staff asked for the NIE on September 20th, a New York Times piece came out on September 23rd of this year. That staffer, however, likely asked for it because the Times was snooping around; at least one congressman admits to asking about it only after the Times called him about it on the same date -- September 20th. The Times admits that it had been sniffing around well before ANY member or staffer knew of the NIE (because of the computer glitch). That seems right and a slam-dunk defense for the poor staffer if the NIE wasn't known to staffers or the members until September. The Times knew about it from other sources. And, it would be perfectly natural for the staffer of the ranking minority leader of the committee, upon learning of the NIE's existence, to actually ask for it.

 So, then, this from Kiel doesn't fit with Hoekstra's story last week: As Ware explained it, the Iraq terror NIE came to the committee in late April, but did not get scanned because of the malfunction. Then, after the equipment was working again in late April, the document -- which contradicted key aspects of Bush administration policy and rhetoric -- sat unnoticed in a "backlog," along with other classified documents awaiting the committee's consideration, until the New York Times revealed its conclusions in late September. Unless someone is speaking out of turn, it appears that it was the Times who was notifying staffers and members of its existence, not the other way around. The Hoekstra folks seem to confirm this today.