The Ultimate in Oversight
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
The Ultimate in Oversight Four ex-CIA men are running for Congress this year. BY STEPHEN F. HAYES WHEN Mike Battles launched his long-shot bid for a seat in Congress from Rhode Island last summer,...
...Sure, he says, other issues matter...
...His strategy for all of his opponents is the same: stick to the war and the economy...
...But the populace is really focused on terrorism and homeland security...
...But even if they were, there's no guarantee that they would be in a position to immediately affect the intelligence debate, not formally anyway...
...is how to deal politically with the war on terrorism, then these races are ground zero...
...But then a group of Republicans in San Juan County asked him to challenge Rep...
...I have clearances that some members of Congress don't know exist...
...I spend a lot of time talking about education and small business," says Battles, whose parents were both teachers...
...The only reason I'm running is because we're at war and we have a fragile economy...
...You can't have 14 number-one priorities in that context...
...BY STEPHEN F. HAYES WHEN Mike Battles launched his long-shot bid for a seat in Congress from Rhode Island last summer, he was told to scrub his résum...
...This failure, this oversight on oversight, is caused by ignorance...
...That's a different story from Sim-mons's own career...
...Rick Larsen, a first-term incumbent who won in 2000 with just 50 percent of the vote...
...And not in a positive way...
...Gejdenson said he knew nothing of the effort to smear his opponent and quickly fired those responsible...
...Meyer had never even considered a bid for public office...
...Simmons believes Battles's national security experience will be a major asset in his first run for public office...
...Across the country, Mike Battles is pursuing pretty much the same strategy, though he faces the added challenge of dealing with Patrick Kennedy's habit of passing out pork to seemingly anyone who asks...
...Battles is one of four former CIA men running for Congress this year...
...Even after he left the CIA, the boyish-looking Battles sat on the board of a company that provides high-tech intelligence for businesses...
...And everyone told me they thought the Democrats would use that stuff to paint me as a right-wing nut...
...Guys like me don't do that," he says...
...Battles has hired two of Simmons's top advisers and otherwise seems to be copying from his playbook...
...Just to face Larsen, Meyer will first have to beat two Republicans in a late-September primary...
...Although lawmakers have regularly sought out Simmons's thoughts on making U.S...
...Simmons ended up winning by a narrow margin, and that fact had Democrats targeting him as particularly vulnerable...
...But voters in Washington's second district recognize that providing security and safeguarding the economy are government's first two responsibilities...
...Simmons pulled the upset of the 2000 election cycle when he beat veteran Democrat Sam Gejdenson...
...With September 11 still fresh in his mind, he agreed...
...The experts recommended he downplay his service as an Army Ranger and hide his years in the clandestine service...
...Meyer served as a special assistant to CIA director William Casey in the Reagan administration...
...Rob Simmons...
...So when Meyer talks to voters, he focuses almost exclusively on those two issues...
...I know how that place [the CIA] works...
...That confrontation, which Kennedy recently paid an undisclosed amount to settle, was captured on videotape and would make a highly entertaining campaign ad...
...Still, with the massive intelligence reform effort underway, Congress could use more advice from those who know the problems and the institutions from the inside...
...But if we don't deal with these two issues—war and the economy—nothing else matters...
...I ran for state rep five times and my CIA background came up repeatedly," he says...
...No doubt incumbent Patrick Kennedy will still try to paint him as a right-wing nut, but nowadays the bad-boy congressman won't be able to do it by suggesting that a passion for national security is somehow unhealthy...
...Meyer believes current members of Congress aren't asking the right questions about the intelligence failures of September 11...
...It's unlikely that Simmons, Meyer, and Battles will all be in Congress next January...
...He had come to Casey's attention when Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner gave the CIA boss a copy of Meyer's book on economics, The War Against Progress...
...intelligence more effective, he was passed over for a seat on the Intelligence Committee that Porter Goss chairs...
...Two challengers, Mike Battles in Rhode Island and Herb Meyer in Washington, must first win contested primaries before they can try to unseat Democratic incumbents...
...Simmons himself helps out, too, not least by pitching in on the retail politics...
...More recently, when polls showed Simmons was closing the gap on Gejdenson, two of the Democrat's staffers even suggested Simmons was a "war criminal" for some of his CIA activities...
...If the unfamiliar and potentially crucial question of the 2002 election cycle Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...All four are Republicans...
...Battles, who last week won the Rhode Island GOP endorsement for his party's primary, is getting a hand from another former CIA operative, Rep...
...Naturally, then, the Battles campaign is highlighting the very things he was told to purge from his résumé last summer—West Point graduate, Army Ranger, CIA analyst, intelligence expert...
...So Battles is careful to address local issues, too...
...Working on the 7th floor at Langley, Meyer helped develop the theory that the Soviet economy was crumbling from within...
...Few politicians, he complains, have more than a passing knowledge of intelligence issues...
...Rob Simmons is running for reelection in Connecticut...
...By contrast, the highlight of Kennedy's homeland security experience came on March 26, 2000, when he assaulted an airport baggage screener at Los Angeles International Airport...
...But strong fund-raising and a high post-9/11 profile appear to have enhanced his chances for reelection...
...We're at war and we have a fragile economy," says Herb Meyer, who's running in a three-way GOP primary in Washington state...
...People are worried about their jobs and they're worried about their lives...
...While most politicians these days are spouting self-serving platitudes ("I care deeply about this nation") or worthless banalities ("We can never let this happen again"), this quartet talks seriously about intelligence gathering, intera-gency communication, enemy infiltration, and the importance of oversight...
...Sewers and everything...
...Porter Goss, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, postponed his expected retirement to stay on, and first-term Rep...
...At that point, it wasn't hip to have been a Ranger or in the CIA," he says...
...That's fine...
...In late March, the Connecticut lawmaker braved a spring New England snowstorm to speak at a Battles fund-raiser, where he called his new protégé "uniquely qualified" to serve in a time of war...
...People just don't believe that...
Vol. 7 • June 2002 • No. 40
