David Skaggs: “this is a serious matter. It deserves sober debate. The uncontroverted facts underlying all of this are as follows: They…”

“this is a serious matter. It deserves sober debate. The uncontroverted facts underlying all of this are as follows: They involve no U.S. covert action, nor any ``action'' for that matter. The President of the United States sent to our Ambassador in Croatia instructions to take no position about country C's, Croatia's, request for our views about country A's, Iran's, shipment of arms to country B, Bosnia. That is what happened. No instructions. ``Acquiescence'' somehow gets transformed into ``complicity'' which somehow gets transformed into ``duplicity,'' which in the continued rhetorical inflation on the other side gets transformed into ``contempt of Congress.'' That, in turn, gets bootstrapped into the notion that this is ``serious Presidential wrongdoing.'' Give me a break. Republican former Senator Warren Rudman, who looked at details of this as explained by the Intelligence Oversight Board's own investigation, found no illegality or wrongdoing. He said, in effect, this is a question of ``politics;'' namely, the wisdom of the policy. We can look at the question. We should look at it. The majority has every right in the world to hold the administration accountable for that. But let us be a little bit more accurate in the characterization, which has now taken on almost a caricature quality. Let us stipulate that there is a problem that needs looking into. Do we need one committee to do it? Perhaps the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Two?…”