What a difference a Democratic majority makes

The investigative journalist who reported in the New Yorker that Congress gave George Bush authority and money to engage in covert operations in Iran also says U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada was one of those who raised no objection to the scheme.

Seymour Hersh, who was involved in disclosure or advancing disclosure of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the Abu Ghraib prison stories in Iraq, published the New Yorker article last weekend that claimed Bush laid out his secret operations plan for Iran in a highly classified “presidential finding” that by law must be disclosed to eight Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders. Other members of Congress are not informed. The Bush plan reportedly allocates up to $400 million in covert spending.

In an interview by Amy Goodman on her Democracy Now radio program, Hersh said that when the finding was shown to the eight, “But those eight people, the four Democrats—Reid, [Nancy] Pelosi, [Jay] Rockefeller and [Silvestre] Reyes—did nothing.”

In the New Yorker article, Hersh quoted a Democratic staffer saying that even with a Democratic majority, “it will take another year before we get the intelligence activities under control.”