Thread by @LizaGoitein

Yesterday, I tweeted about how House intelligence committee leaders (HPSCI) scuttled a floor vote on Section 702 rather than allow members to enact reforms. That’s bad behavior, even by Congress’s standards. It turns out it was worse than I thought. 1/13

https://twitter.com/LizaGoitein/status/1757903781868564607

In what may seem like unrelated news (bear with me, I will get back to 702!), HPSCI Chairman Mike Turner caused a near-panic this week when he called for a secret session of Congress to share classified information about a “destabilizing foreign military capability”… 2/13

…followed by a cryptic public statement calling on President Biden to declassify information about what Turner called “a serious national security threat.” 3/13

Secret sessions are highly unusual; the House has held only six since 1812. So are public calls by members of HPSCI for the president to declassify critical foreign intelligence. It seemed that something truly apocalyptic might be afoot. 4/13

Turner’s statement essentially forced the administration to disclose enough information to allay public concern. The threat, it turns out, relates to Russia’s attempts to build a space-based antisatellite nuclear weapon. 5/13

The key word is *attempts*—the capability is still under development and has not been deployed. There is, in short, no urgent threat. This point has been emphasized by multiple officials and members of Congress who were aware of the intelligence. 6/13

There is, however, a potential blow to U.S. intelligence-gathering. According to the New York Times, Turner’s statement “infuriated White House officials, who feared the loss of important sources of information on Russia.” 7/13 nytimes.com/2024/02/14/us/…

Officials told reporters, quite diplomatically, that “Mr. Turner was making more of the new intelligence than would ordinarily have been expected.” They speculated that he might be trying to create pressure to pass Ukraine aid legislation. 8/13 nytimes.com/2024/02/14/us/…

But there’s another explanation that squares perfectly with what happened to 702 yesterday. Wouldn’t you know it, Turner is spreading the word that the intelligence about this serious national security threat came from… you guessed it… Section 702! 9/13 washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Now, let’s be clear, he’s not claiming the intelligence came from U.S. person queries, so this news has absolutely no relevance to the reforms that are currently being debated in Congress. It is yet another red herring that HPSCI is throwing out to try to muddy the debate. 10/13

Nonetheless, as an official told the Washington Post, “Turner, a strong proponent of the surveillance authority, appears to want to use the information about the adversary capability to convince skeptical colleagues that 702 is an indispensable intelligence tool.” 11/13

Let’s review. The Chair of HPSCI made a public statement that frightened the American people, may have compromised intelligence sources, and was wholly unnecessary given the absence of any urgent threat, in order to gin up a new (bogus) argument against Section 702 reform. 12/13

As I said in my tweet thread yesterday, “if HPSCI can’t win on an even playing field, it will look for another way.” I truly didn’t imagine, though, that HPSCI leaders would sink to something like this. I stand corrected. 13/13