I could not help but think the ghost of Joseph Nye Welsh (1890-1960) was in attendance at yesterday’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing. Welsh, as some of you may remember, was chief counsel for the United State Army when he confronted Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy during a hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. On June 9, 1954, Welsh challenged McCarthy to produce the names of the supposed 130 individuals the Senator claimed were communists who had infiltrated the armed services. In the course of the debate, Welsh exposed McCarthy as a demented fraud with the now famous rebuke, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
In anticipation of the Comey testimony, political pundits and members of the resistance have wondered who would be the individual who would stand up for the nation and expose Donald Trump for who he really is and always has been. Would it be someone like Tennessee Senator Howard Baker who cut to the chase during the Watergate hearing by asking, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” Or Barry Goldwater, satisfied enough was enough, went to the White House and informed Nixon he had no choice but to vacate the presidency?
Move Over Bernie
Enter the OTHER independent serving in the U.S. Senate, Angus King of Maine. I must disclose my possible bias as I have a past relationship with the Senator. When he was Governor of Maine, he accepted an invitation I brokered, as the lead contact for the Ewing Kauffman Foundation, to host a radio broadcast about entrepreneurship in Maine. Following that event, Governor King asked the foundation to help him design a policy agenda to “make Maine one of the most entrepreneurial states in America.”
I need to share with you more about the Angus King I had the pleasure to know and admire during the course of that four month long engagement. At our first meeting in the State Capitol, I asked the Governor, “Why now?” King was in the last year of his second term. He would be leaving office the following January. His response. “I know, even if we had started eight years ago, we would not have seen the full impact of this effort during my time in office. I want to be remembered as the person who started the process.”
If the approach he put in motion was successful, he recognized his successors would likely get more credit than he would. He reaffirmed this perception when the team handed him our final draft of the policy report. The cover included the following, “Presented to Governor Angus King, November 2002.” Governor King asked me to change the cover to read, “Presented to Governor-Elect John Baldacci.” His justification. He never intended it to be his plan. It was the Maine plan and he wanted to give the report to the incoming governor “simply as a head start” to accept or reject as Baldacci saw fit. NOTE: I was invited back by Governor Baldacci to speak at the event when he endorsed the report.
Finally, for all you skeptics who laugh when a politician says he or she is leaving “to spend more time with family,” sometimes they mean what they say. Upon leaving office in 2003, the ex-Governor, his wife and two children (Ben & Molly) spent five and a half months touring America in a 40-foot RV. King chronicles the experience in his book Governor’s Travels: How I Left Politics, Learned to Back Up a Bus, and Found America.
Therefore, no one who has spent minimal time with now Senator King was shocked at his performance during Wednesday’s Intelligence Committee hearing. If you are looking for a public servant who tells it like it is, based on a profound love of country and respect for the U.S. Constitution, look no farther than Angus King. The only surprise was the emotion he exhibited when confronting National Intelligence Director Daniel Coates and NSA Director Mike Rogers. He is perhaps the most soft-spoken politician I have ever met.
King’s departure from his usually calm demeanor began during the following exchange about the witnesses’ unwillingness to give a yes or no answer to the question, “Did the president ask you to intervene with James Comey?”
KING: Is there an invocation of executive privilege? If there is, let us know about it. If there isn’t, then let’s answer the question.
ROGERS: Not that I’m aware of.
KING: Then why are you not answering the questions.
ROGERS: I feel that it is inappropriate.
KING: What you feel isn’t relevant, admiral.
ROGERS: I stand by my previous statement.
But when Director Rogers said, “I don’t mean it in a contentious way,” King, “known as one of the Senate’s more genial members (TheHill.com),” testily replied, “Well, I do mean it in a contentious way. I don’t understand why you’re not answering our questions.”
So keep an eye on Senator King today when he questions James Comey. As was the case yesterday, the questions asked by King and his colleagues may be more illuminating than anything Comey says in public.
THE “SILENCE IS DEAFENING” HONORABLE MENTION
The runner-up in the competition for the Welsh medal was, I’m not kidding, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Little Marco, as Comrade Trump called him throughout the 2016 primaries, stepped up to the plate, bigly. While Coates and Rogers felt it was appropriate to testify neither had been “directed” by Trump to intervene with then FBI Director Comey, Rubio did not let them off the hook.
Accepting that the commander-in-chief had not ORDERED them to help dissuade Comey from pursuing the investigation of Michael Flynn, Rubio used published reports of Trump’s ASKING them to do so as a way of exploring whether they were being recruited to abet in a possible obstruction of justice. And he did so in what can only be described as cleverly suggesting he was trying to support Trump’s position.
If what is being said to the media is untrue, then it is unfair to the president of the United States. And if it is, that is something the American people deserve to know, and it is something we as an oversight committee need to know.
In two sentences, Rubio exposed the witnesses’ selective willingness to share what they discussed in the oval office and the likelihood Trump sought their help in quashing the investigation. To the first point, they had readily testified that Trump had not DIRECTED them to contact Comey. So in that case, they felt it was “appropriate” to share information. When queried whether they had been ASKED to intervene, both clammed up. You cannot have it both ways.
Second, neither hesitated to deny they were directed. If they had not been asked to intervene, they could have just as easily given a similar response. The fact they chose to hide behind a questionable “cloak of appropriateness” speaks volumes.
Perhaps Rubio is just trying to position himself with the already nervous Republican establishment, assuming the party wants an alternate standard bearer in 2020. However, a long time ago I learned you never criticize someone for doing the RIGHT thing, even if it’s for the WRONG reasons.
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP