Alarming 9/11 claim is found baseless 

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has rejected as untrue one of the most disturbing claims about the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes — a congressman's contention that a team of military analysts identified Mohamed Atta or other hijackers before the attacks — according to a summary of the panel's investigation obtained by The Times.

The conclusion contradicts assertions by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and a few military officers that U.S. national security officials ignored startling intelligence available in early 2001 that might have helped to prevent the attacks.

In particular, Weldon and other officials have repeatedly claimed that the military analysts' effort, known as Able Danger, produced a chart that included a picture of Atta and identified him as being tied to an Al Qaeda cell in Brooklyn, N.Y. Weldon has also said that the chart was shared with White House officials, including Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy national security advisor.

But after a 16-month investigation, the Intelligence Committee has concluded that those assertions are unfounded.

"Able Danger did not identify Mohammed Atta or any other 9/11 hijacker at any time prior to Sept. 11, 2001," the committee determined, according to an eight-page letter sent last week to panel members by the top Republican and Democrat on the committee.

Weldon, the focus of an unrelated Justice Department corruption probe, was defeated last month in his campaign for an 11th term in a suburban Philadelphia district that has a large GOP majority in voter registration. Attempts were unsuccessful Sunday to reach a Weldon spokesman and an attorney representing Weldon in the Justice Department investigation.

The Senate panel began investigating Able Danger in August 2005, after Weldon and people close to the program went public with their claims. At the time, Weldon was the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee.

The recently completed probe also dismissed other assertions that have fueled conspiracy theories surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.

The panel said it found "no evidence" to support claims by military officers connected to Able Danger that Defense Department lawyers prevented the team's analysts from sharing their findings with FBI counter-terrorism officials before the attacks.

Nor was the alleged chart or any information developed by Able Danger improperly destroyed at the direction of Pentagon lawyers, the panel concluded — a charge that had stoked claims of a cover-up.

Though the committee concluded that claims about Able Danger were unfounded, two of the hijackers were known to the U.S. intelligence community before the Sept. 11 attacks. The two had been observed by the CIA attending a meeting with Al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia, but that information was not shared with other agencies in time to locate them after they had entered the United States and moved to San Diego.

Able Danger was the unclassified name given to a program launched in 1999 by the U.S. Special Operations Command as part of an effort to develop military plans targeting the leadership ranks of Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.

Military analysts assigned to the effort did create charts with pictures of Al Qaeda operatives whose identities were known publicly at the time, the committee found. But the committee concluded that none of those charts depicted Atta, and that the claims of Weldon and others may have been caused by confusion.

One of the charts, titled "The Al Qaeda Network: Snapshots of Typical Operational Cells Associated With UBL [Usama bin Laden]," was attached to the letter sent to committee members last week by Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the panel's leaders.

"One of these individuals depicted on the chart arguably looked like Mohammed Atta," the committee concluded. "In addition, the chart contained names of Al Qaeda associates that sound like Atta, as well as numerous variations of the common Arab name Mohammed."

The committee also suggested that officials' memories may have been clouded by the flurry of charts and photographs of Atta that surfaced after the attacks. The panel noted that a defense contractor that produced the chart at the center of the controversy subsequently created a follow-up chart, after the attacks, that did include Atta.

Atta, an Egyptian-born Islamic radical, was the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks and pilot of one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center.

In June 2005, Weldon generated controversy when he declared in a speech on the House floor and in a book released that month that he had met with Hadley at the White House shortly after the attacks and had given the national security official a copy of a chart showing that Atta had been identified by Able Danger.

But the committee concluded that the chart "was not a pre-9/11 chart" and that "at no time did Mr. Hadley ever see a chart with pre-9/11 data bearing Atta's picture or name as described by Congressman Weldon."

The Senate Intelligence Committee noted in its report that its findings were consistent with those of a similar investigation of Able Danger by the Defense Department inspector general's office, released in September.

Weldon has relished the role of calling attention to national security threats he believes are being ignored by others in government. At times he has carried around a replica of a suitcase-size nuclear bomb to highlight terrorist nuclear dangers. He has also accused Iran of hiding Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Weldon's rising legal troubles played a role in his reelection loss last month. It was disclosed last week that a federal grand jury had subpoenaed congressional records from Weldon's office as part of an FBI probe aimed at determining whether he traded his influence to get lobbying business for his daughter Karen and others.

The House seat was won by Democrat Joe Sestak, a retired Navy vice admiral.

When Resolve Turns Reckless

By John F. Kerry

There's something much worse than being accused of "flip-flopping": refusing to flip when it's obvious that your course of action is a flop.

I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way how embracing the world's complexity can be twisted into a crude political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics. But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change course for fear of the political fallout is not only dangerous -- it is immoral.

I'd rather explain a change of position any day than look a parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had to die so that a broken policy could live.

No one should be looking for vindication in what is happening in Iraq today. The lesson here is not that some of us were right about Iraq or that some of us were wrong. The lesson is simply that we need to change course rapidly rather than perversely use mistakes already made and lives already given as an excuse to make more mistakes and lose even more lives.

When young Americans are being killed and maimed, when the Middle East is on the brink of three civil wars, even the most vaunted "steadfastness" morphs pretty quickly into stubbornness, and resolve becomes recklessness. Changing tactics in the face of changing conditions on the ground, developing new strategies because the old ones don't work, is a hell of a lot smarter than the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again with the same tragic results.

Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial died after America's leaders knew that our strategy in that war was not working. Was then-secretary of defense Robert McNamara steadfast as he continued to send American troops to die for a war he knew privately could not be won? History does not remember his resolve -- it remembers his refusal to confront reality.

Clark Clifford, the man who succeeded McNamara in 1968, was handpicked by President Lyndon B. Johnson because he was a renowned hawk. But the new defense secretary reviewed the Vietnam policy and concluded that "we cannot realistically expect to achieve anything more through our military force, and the time has come to begin to disengage." By the time he left office, he had refused to endorse a further military buildup, supported the halt in our bombing, and urged negotiation and gradual disengagement. Was Clifford a flip-flopper of historic proportions, or did he in fact demonstrate the courage of his convictions?

We cannot afford to waste time being told that admitting mistakes, not the mistakes themselves, will provide our enemies with an intolerable propaganda victory. We've already lost years being told that we have no choice but to stay the course of a failed policy.

This isn't a time for stubbornness, nor is it a time for halfway solutions -- or warmed-over "new" solutions that our own experience tells us will only make the problem worse. The Iraq Study Group tells us that "the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating." It joins the chorus of experts in and outside of Baghdad reminding us that there is no military solution to a political crisis. And yet, over the warnings of former secretary of state Colin Powell, Gen. John Abizaid and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington is considering a "troop buildup" option, sending more troops into harm's way to referee a civil war.

We have already tried a trimmed-down version of the McCain plan of indefinitely increasing troop levels. We sent 15,000 more troops to Baghdad last summer, and today the escalating civil war is even worse. You could put 100,000 more troops in tomorrow and you're only going to add to the number of casualties until Iraqis sit down together at a bargaining table and compromise. The barrel of a gun can't answer the question of how you force Iraqi nationalism to trump sectarian loyalty.

The only hope for stability lies in pushing Iraqis to forge a sustainable political agreement on federalism, distributing oil revenues and neutralizing sectarian militias. And that will happen only if we set a deadline to redeploy our troops.

Last May, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad gave the new Iraqi government six months to make the necessary political compromises. But a deadline with no teeth is only lip service. How many times do we have to see that Iraqi politicians respond only to firm, specific deadlines -- a deadline to transfer authority, deadlines to hold two elections and a referendum, and a deadline to form a government -- before we understand that it's time to make it clear that we are leaving and that we will not sacrifice American lives for the sake of squabbling Iraqi politicians?

Another case where steadfastness long ago gave way to stubbornness is our approach to Iraq's neighbors. Last week in Damascus, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and I met with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. We were clear about U.S. expectations for change in his regime's policies, but we found potential for cooperation with Syria in averting a disaster in Iraq -- potential that should be put to the test. Washington can't remain on the sidelines, stubbornly clinging to a belief that talking to our enemies rewards hostile regimes.

Conversation is not capitulation. Until recently, it was widely accepted that good foreign policy demands a willingness to seize opportunities and change policy as the facts change. That's neither flip-flopping nor rudderless diplomacy -- it's strength.

How else could we end up with the famous mantra that "only Nixon could go to China"? For decades, Richard Nixon built his reputation as a China hawk. In 1960, he took John Kennedy to task for being soft on China. He called isolating China a "moral position" that "flatly rejected cowardly expediency." Then, when China broke with the Soviet Union during his presidency, he saw an opportunity to weaken our enemies and make Americans safer. His 1972 visit to China was a major U.S. diplomatic victory in the Cold War.

Ronald Reagan was no shape-shifter, either, but after calling the Soviet Union the "evil empire," he met repeatedly with its leaders. When Reagan saw an opportunity for cooperation with Mikhail Gorbachev, he reached out and tested our enemies' intentions. History remembers that he backed tough words with tough decisions -- and, yes, that he changed course even as he remained true to his principles.

President Bush and all of us who grew up in the shadows of World War II remember Winston Churchill -- his grit, his daring, his resolve. I remember listening to his speeches on a vinyl album in the pre-iPod era. Two years ago I spoke about Iraq at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Churchill had drawn a line between freedom and fear in his "iron curtain" speech. In preparation, I reread some of the many words from various addresses that made him famous. Something in one passage caught my eye. When Churchill urged, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in," he added: "except to convictions of honour and good sense."

This is a time for such convictions.

jk@johnkerry.com

John F. Kerry is a Democratic senator from Massachusetts.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

This World of Ours

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
 
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
 
52 would be female
48 would be male
 
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
 
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
 
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
 
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
 
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
 
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
 
The following is also something to ponder...
 
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
 
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
 
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
 
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 70% of this world.
 
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace . you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
 
If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.
 
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
 
Someone once said:  What goes around comes around.

Work like you don't need the money.
 
Love like you've never been hurt.
 
Dance like nobody's watching.
 
Sing like nobody's listening.
 
Live like it's Heaven on Earth!!

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Where is the evidence?

By Paul Craig Roberts

Readers are asking me to adjudicate the September 11 debate sponsored by “Democracy Now!” between “Loose Change” producers Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, and Popular Mechanics editors James Meigs and David Dunbar, who have just published a Popular Mechanics book, “Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts.”

This is not my role. First of all, I am not an expert on 9/11. Second, I didn’t see the debate. Third, I don’t think it matters who won the debate.

I have read the transcript of the debate, but written words do not convey the same impression as a visual presentation. As many, if not most, people who have been on debate teams will tell you, debates are not always won by who has the best facts and analysis. How one handles oneself, one’s demeanor, how one approaches the audience, and the audience’s predisposition can have more to do with the outcome of a debate than facts.

My opinion of “Loose Change” and Popular Mechanics is independent of who won the debate. The “Loose Change” producers are more to be admired than the Popular Mechanics editors for the simple reason that the former are committed to opening a debate and the latter are committed to closing debate down. Indeed, Popular Mechanics was early on the scene trying to close off debate by defending the government line. Why?

If I had been in the debate, I would have asked Meigs and Dunbar what’s conspiratorial about a thorough hearing and examination of an event that has been used to justify illegal invasions that are war crimes and have destroyed two countries and killed tens of thousands of people.

The Popular Mechanics editors are convinced that any explanation other than the government’s explanation is a conspiracy theory. However, the title of their new book applies equally to their view, as there is no more fantastic conspiracy theory than the view championed by the Popular Mechanics editors. How, for example, can it be possible that on one short morning of September 11, 2001, multiple failures occurred not only in airport security but also in FAA and NORAD procedures? The probability of any one of these failures is low. The probability of all of these failures occurring on one morning is very low indeed. How is it possible that essentially all US security failures of the last 5 or 10 years occurred on one morning? What probability do independent statisticians assign to such an event?

The probability is also extremely low that the only three steel columned buildings believed to have collapsed from fire all failed on the same day from three separate fires.

There are many problems with the 9/11 debate. Many different interests are using 9/11 to advance their agendas. Security interests use fear generated by 9/11 to erode civil liberties and establish the foundations of a police state. Federalist Society members in pursuit of a stronger executive use 9/11 to justify concentrating power in the White House, power that violates the separation of powers in the US Constitution. Anti-immigration groups use 9/11 as evidence for closing US borders and deporting Muslims who currently reside in the US. Foreign policy experts use 9/11 as an example of “blowback” from misguided and ill-considered US foreign policy. Discussion blogs are crowded with people who want to demonstrate that they are too sophisticated to fall for a conspiracy theory or too patriotic to believe that their government could be complicit. On the other side are those who are convinced that the US government has long been the epitome of evil and that 9/11 is just the latest example in a long history of US government false flag operations.

But the main problem with the 9/11 debate is that there has not really been a debate. Instead, we have had a report from a political commission run by a Bush administration insider, Philip Zelikow. In place of a real independent investigation, we have a collection of Washington players reassuring the public by defending the government’s story line.

Studies, such as those referred to by the Popular Mechanics editors, are in fact not forensic studies of evidence but what the editor-in- chief of “Fire Engineering” called “paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals.”

The explanation that the three WTC buildings collapsed as a result of damage and fire is a mere assertion. The assertion is not backed up with scientific calculation to demonstrate that the energy from the airliners, fire, and gravity were sufficient to collapse the buildings. A number of independent authorities believe that there is a very large energy deficit in the official account of the collapse of the buildings. Until this issue is resolved, the official explanation is merely an assertion no matter who believes it.

The Canadian scientist Frank R. Greening has made the only independent scientific attempt of which I am aware to show that a gravity driven collapse of one of the buildings, WTC 1, was sustainable. His paper is published in the Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 3 (September 2006) and is available online. It is a reply to earlier calculations by Gordon Ross, who concluded otherwise, and is answered in the same issue by Ross, who shows that Greening’s work actually demonstrates the existence of an energy deficit.

It is instructive to read this exchange between competent authorities. Few readers will be able to follow the application of scientific principles and the calculations of the required and available energy. However, it will be clear that the issue is a scientific matter that is over the heads of members of a political commission, pundits, and bloggers, and that it is inappropriate for a pundit, who himself is incapable of following such a discussion, to call those participating in it “conspiracy nuts.”

Perhaps Greening is preparing an answer to Ross that will rescue the government’s story from scientists’ skepticism. There are many more skeptics than Ross and Professor Steven Jones. Frank Legge, for example, has shown problems with NIST’s explanation that fire caused the buildings to fail.

Perhaps more scientists will find the independence, time and energy to become involved. But until scientists can come up with an explanation of where the energy came from to account for the total collapse of the buildings and an explanation of how the energy was evenly distributed so as to produce sudden symmetrical collapse, there is no more evidence for the official conspiracy theory than there is for the unofficial conspiracy theories.

Information Clearing House

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

• He recently named Dr. Erik Keroack — a vocal opponent of family planning — to the government post in charge of "¦ family planning. What mission is he trying to accomplish here? Operation Virgin?

• He was actually stunned that Congress had no plans to reappoint John Bolton to the sensitive post of ambassador to the United Nations — an organization Bolton has contempt for. Bush, who personally opposes diplomacy himself, said Congress' failure to endorse Bolton "disrupts our diplomatic work." What's that? Operation Bull in a China Shop?

• His White House lawyers are now arguing before the Supreme Court against taking steps to address global warming. His argument? That the danger is not imminent, so the government has no obligation to address it. Operation Change the Coastline?

I don't know what's wrong with the guy, but none of this suggests he's connecting to reality.

He reminds me of a character in a short story I once read about a CEO who never appears in public. An employee wants to meet him, so he sneaks into the house where he finds the CEO in a playroom, riding a rocking horse. The guy is entirely out of his mind but quite happy in his own simple way.

At least in the story, the CEO had a benevolent, competent staff running the business for him.

There are 771 days left until Jan. 20, 2009. Hang in there, America!

I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego. A recent Marine Corps intelligence report that was leaked said that the war in the al-Anbar province is unwinnable. It said that there was nothing we could do to win the hearts and minds, or the military operations in that area. So I wonder, why are we still there? Democracy is not forced upon people at gunpoint. It's the result of forward thinking individuals who take the initiative and risks to give their fellow countrymen a better way of life.

When I joined I took an oath. In that oath I swore to protect the Constitution of the United States. I didn't swear to build democracies in countries on the other side of the world under the guise of "national security." I didn't join the military to be part of an Orwellian ("1984") war machine that is in an obligatory war against whoever the state deems the enemy to be so that the populace can be controlled and riled up in a pro-nationalistic frenzy to support any new and oppressive law that will be the key to destroying the enemy. Example given – the Patriot Act. So aptly named, and totally against all that the constitution stands for. President Bush used the reactionary nature of our society to bring our country together and to infuse into the national psyche a need to give up their little-used rights in the hope to make our nation a little safer. The same scare tactics he used to win elections. He drones on and on about how America and the world would be a less safe place if we weren't killing Iraqis, and that we'd have to fight the terrorists at home if we weren't abroad. In our modern day emotive society this strategy (or strategery?) works, or had worked, up until last month's elections.

My point in this; to show that America was never nationalistic. If anything they were Statalistic (giving their allegiance to the state of their residence). This is shown in the fact that the founders created states with fully capable and independent governments and not provinces that were just a division of the federal government. These men believed that America was a place where imperialistic values would be non-existent. Where the people trying to make their lives better by working hard, thinking, inventing and using the free market would tie up so much of normal life that imperialistic colonization and the fighting of wars thousands of miles away for interests that are not our own would be avoided. They believed this expansion of power could be left to the European nations, the England, France and Spain of their time. However this recent, and current influx of nationalistic feeling has created an environment where giving up your rights, going to a foreign country to fight a people who did not ask for us to be there, nor did their leader do anything to warrant us being there, and dying would be considered honorable and heroic. I don't believe it anymore. I don't believe it's right for any American to go along with it anymore. Yes I know that we in the military are bound by the UCMJ and somehow don't fall under the Constitution (the very thing we're suppose to be defending) but sooner or later there is a decision that every American soldier, marine, airmen and seamen makes to allow themselves to be sent to a war that is against every fiber this country was founded on. I know that when April rolls around I will be thinking long and hard on that decision. Even though we in the military are just doing as we're told we still have the moral and ethical obligation to choose to do as we're told, or to say, "No, that isn't right." I believe that if more troopers like me and the professional military, the officers and commanders, start standing up and saying that they won't let themselves or their troops go to this illegal war people will start standing up and realizing what the heck is going on over there.

The sad fact of the matter is that we are not fighting terrorists in Iraq. We are fighting the Iraqi people who feel like a conquered and occupied people. Personally I have a hard time believing that if I was an Iraqi that I wouldn't be doing everything in my power to kill and maim as many Americans as possible. I know that the vast majority of Americans would not be happy with the Canadian government, or any other foreign government, liberating us from the clutches of George W. Bush, even though a large number of us would like that, and forcing us to accept their system of government. Would not millions of Americans rise up and fight back? Would you not rise up to protect and defend your house and your neighborhood if someone invaded your country? But we send thousands of troops to a foreign country to do just that. How is it moral to fight a people who are just trying to defend their homes and families? I think next time I go to Iraq perhaps I should wear a bright red coat and carry a Brown Bess instead of my digitalized utilities and M16.

Notice I never once used the word homeland in any of this. I have a secondary point I want to bring up now. Never once was the term homeland ever used to describe the country of America until Mr. Bush began the department of homeland security after the 9/11 attacks. Taking a 20th century history class will teach us that the most notable countries in the last century that referred to their country in this way were Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Hitler used the term fatherland to drum up support, nationalistic support, for his growing war machine. He used the nationalism he created in the minds of the Germans to justify the sacrifice of their livelihood to build the war machine to get back their power from the oppressive restrictions the English and French had put on them at Versailles. This is the same feeling that has been virulently infecting the American psyche in the last hundred years. This is the same feeling that consoles a mother after her son is killed in an attempt to prosecute an aggressor's war 10,000 miles away. It's also known as Patriotism these days, but I say, "No more." No more nationalistic inanity, no more passing it off as patriotism. Patriotism is learning, and educating oneself to understand what their country really stands for.

I heard a lot during the memorial service about how the dead Marine did so much good for others and how his helping others was like a little microcosm of America helping because we have the power to do so. Well if we have the power to help people why aren't we helping in Darfur where hundreds of thousands of people have died in the last 10 years. Saddam was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 143 Shiites who conspired to assassinate him. (I know all you "patriotic" Americans would be calling for the heads of anyone who conspired to assassinate supreme leader Bush). And yet we spend upwards of 1 trillion dollars and nearing 3,000 lives to help these Iraqis when they don't even want us there. Not to mention we don't have the legal justification to be there. I guess we should wait around for the omnipotent W Bush to decide who we should use our superpowerdom to help next. It's about time to throw him and the rest of the fascists out. Moreover it's about time to start educating Americans about their past and history, and letting them know that imperialistic leaders are not what the founders of this great country wanted.

Philip Martin [send him mail] has been a Marine for 2 years. He is in the infantry (a "grunt"), and spent 7 months in the al-Anbar province of Iraq. He went on more than 180 combat patrols in and outside of the city of Fallujah, where he was hit with 2 IEDs (luckily never injured) and was involved in a number of firefights. He is currently stationed in Twentynine Palms, CA, and due to return to Iraq for a second deployment in April 2007. He is 21-years-old.

Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK 

                                                   Copyright 2006  Heather Wokusch

                          CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) named Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) to chair the House intelligence committee yesterday, skipping over the two most senior Democrats on the panel to hand the sensitive post to a Vietnam War veteran and former U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Pelosi signaled weeks ago that she would not elevate the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), to the chairmanship and announced this past week that she would also pass over Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.), who could not overcome the stigma of his 1988 impeachment and 1989 removal from a federal judgeship.

Reyes, a five-term House member from El Paso, is a well-liked Democrat. And now, as a key party spokesman on national defense issues, he becomes perhaps the most visible Latino in Congress.

"Congressman Silvestre Reyes has impeccable national security credentials," Pelosi said. "When tough questions are required, whether they relate to intelligence shortcomings before the 9/11 attacks or the war in Iraq, or to the quality of intelligence on Iran or North Korea, he does not hesitate to ask them."

Reyes signaled that he will use his post to confront the Bush administration on national security and intelligence issues that he said Republicans have shied away from.

"On warrantless tapping, on their policy on detention and interrogation, their policy on secret prisons, all of those have undermined our position in the world," Reyes said in an interview yesterday. "And we have been complicit in Congress by rubber-stamping everything the administration has proposed."

"It's a good, solid appointment," said former congressman Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the bipartisan commission that examined the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But Reyes has been linked to past controversies. The inspector general of the government's General Services Administration looked into the serious failures of a $239 million network of cameras and sensors along the Mexican and Canadian borders, an investigation that focused in part on the contractor's employment of Reyes's daughter Rebecca.

Reyes has been a key backer of the system and its contractor, International Microwave Corp. Shortly after its 1999 contract award, the firm hired Rebecca Reyes to serve as a liaison to what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She ultimately became IMC's vice president for contracts. IMC also hired her brother, Silvestre Reyes Jr., as a technician on the program, known as the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System, or ISIS.

Rep. Reyes said that he never interceded on his daughter's behalf or with U.S. officials to help her company win a contract, and that he backed the firm's search for funding only because he supports the system of border sensors and cameras. And, he said, the investigation was concluded with no charges of improprieties by the company, his daughter or himself.

The choice of a House intelligence chairman has been a difficult one for Democrats. Pelosi's decision to skip over Hastings angered the Congressional Black Caucus, prompting some consideration of Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.). Bishop, an African American, had been bumped from the committee in 2001 to make room for Harman, who returned to the House after an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus launched its own campaign for Reyes, a past caucus chairman. While African Americans will chair four House committees next year, including the powerful Ways and Means and Judiciary committees, Latinos were slated to head only one, the small-business panel.

"We felt we needed more of a presence than that," said Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.). "What the leadership has to understand is, as more of us are integrated into high-profile leadership positions, the more we can help in the long run to solidify this constituency with the party. That can only help the Democratic Party."

After the Vietnam War, Reyes served with the Border Patrol for a quarter of a century, from Texas to Georgia, rising to chief patrol agent in El Paso, where he cut the flow of illegal immigrants by more than half, an achievement that propelled him to the House.

Reyes's task now will be to balance the need for bipartisanship on a sensitive committee with the demands of many Democrats, including Pelosi, to push the Bush administration hard on its program of warrantless wiretapping of terrorism suspects, its network of secret CIA prisons and the scandals left largely unexplored by Republicans, such as the role of intelligence officials in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

"How do you make a committee that's supposed to work in a bipartisan way work that way and keep the support of the caucus?" Roemer asked. "That is a delicate balance."