CIA Probes Whether Lawmaker Jeopardized Intelligence Sources

The CIA is probing whether disclosures by Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.) regarding U.S. help for Iraq before last year’s war have damaged intelligence sources, but the lawmaker countered Friday that he simply hit a raw nerve in the Bush Administration.

“The embarrassment to the Administration is growing, and so is the harassment they are subjecting me to,” Gonzalez said in the latest of a months-long series of speeches on U.S. policy toward Iraq.

“I will not be put off or frightened away by phony claims about the national security,” he said.

In a letter to Gonzalez this week, Adm. William O. Studeman, the agency’s No. 2 official, said the CIA’s Office of Security is reviewing the congressman’s statements on the House floor “to determine the impact of the disclosures of intelligence information on intelligence sources and methods.”

In a statement Friday, the CIA said: “The agency fully respects Chairman Gonzalez’s obligation to conduct oversight and investigations within the jurisdiction of his committee. We hope that he understands the statutory responsibility of the director of central intelligence to protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.”

In an earlier letter, agency Director Robert M. Gates told Gonzalez that in a July 7 floor speech, the lawmaker had revealed information from a highly classified and “particularly sensitive” CIA document that had been shown to a Gonzalez aide.

All executive branch agencies have shut off information to Gonzalez since a May 15 letter from Atty. Gen. William P. Barr that contended he was harming national security by disclosing classified material.

But Gonzalez said Friday that the charges were without merit. The agency is charging that he leaked “materials that I do not and never have possessed, and haven’t seen.”

Much of what he has talked about, Gonzalez maintained, is taken from public sources. Other information came through “the aid and assistance of our friends in the Italian Senate,” which is conducting its own investigation of loans to Iraq through the Atlanta branch of the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, he said.