After five months of formal requests, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has followed through on its threats and has issued the first-ever Congressional subpoena of the Obama administration. The Committee Chairman, Independent Congressman Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, and the ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, wrote a strongly-worded letter to accompany the subpoenas, saying, \u201cIt is impossible for us to avoid the conclusion that the departments [of Defense and Justice] simply do not want to cooperate with our investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Senators\u2019 letter outlines three official requests for documents or witnesses, and two specific warnings that subpoenas might be issued.<\/p>\n
The first communication was in November of 2009 and the latest was on March 23rd of this year. The committee wants military personnel records for the shooting suspect, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan, as well as access to witnesses who had any knowledge of Major Hasan prior to the time he allegedly carried out the November 5th attack in Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 people dead. The committee\u2019s goal is to learn whether the Departments of Defense and Justice had information that could have prevented the attack. More specifically, Senators want to learn what the government knew about communications between Hasan and the Yemeni cleric and suspected terrorists Anwar Al-Aulaki.<\/p>\n
The Department of Defense has said it has nothing to hide, but does not want to release information that will jeopardize the prosecution of Major Nadal. In their letter, Senators Lieberman and Collins, insist \u201cthe matter at issue is not the criminal case.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead,\u201d they write, \u201c we want to know whether the government officials responsible for protecting our homeland against terrorism\u2014foreign or domestic\u2014correctly did their jobs. The administration has yet to explain to us how such questions will in any way affect testimony in a trial\u2026 \u201c<\/p>\n
Some documents have been released, but Senator Collins complained last week that the administration has been \u201cspoon-feeding us selected facts rather than giving us information \u2026 that we need.\u201d<\/p>\n
The subpoenas \u201ccommand\u201d Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to appear before the Committee on Tuesday, April 27th, and to bring with them all the materials the Senators have been seeking. However, if the documents and witness access are provided by next Monday, April 26th, the subpoenas say, \u201ca personal appearance will be unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After five months of formal requests, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has followed through on its threats and has issued the first-ever Congressional subpoena of the Obama administration. The Committee Chairman, Independent Congressman Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, and the ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, wrote a strongly-worded letter to accompany the subpoenas, saying, \u201cIt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6604,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}