Congressman Under Fire for CIA Disclosures

House Republican leaders sparked a bitter partisan feud Friday when they called for an ethics investigation of a Democratic lawmaker who they charged had violated an oath of secrecy by publicly revealing a link between the Central Intelligence Agency and the killing of an American in Guatemala.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-Tex.) called for the inquiry into the behavior of Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) as the first step in a Republican effort to dismiss him from the intelligence panel. Combest officially requested the investigation after House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) had charged that Torricelli’s revelation violated the secrecy oath that intelligence committee members take.

Torricelli welcomed the ethics inquiry and argued that maintaining secrecy on the matter would only have served to cover up criminal acts committed by a paid CIA source. “The only people it would have benefited would have been senior CIA officials trying to protect their careers,” Torricelli charged.

“When any American is given information about a murder, he must reveal that information,” he added. “This isn’t a dispute about policy. This is a crime. An American citizen was murdered. The government knew who murdered him. The government paid the person who murdered him and his family for years has sought the truth.”

Torricelli said that he was given the classified information by Clinton Administration officials who were frustrated by their inability to break the code of silence within the intelligence community on the matter--and by their belief that President Clinton was not being properly informed about the extent of CIA involvement in Guatemala.

Torricelli ignited a political firestorm in late March when he sent a letter both to Clinton and the New York Times charging that Guatemalan Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, a paid informant of the CIA, was linked to the 1990 murder of Michael DeVine, a U.S. citizen who ran an inn in rural Guatemala. Alpirez was also tied to the 1992 capture and torture-killing of a Mayan rebel leader, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, who was married to an American, Jennifer Harbury. Harbury, a Harvard-educated attorney, had staged a hunger strike in front of the White House at the end of a harrowing, three-year campaign to find out the truth about the death of her husband. Torricelli said that he believed both she and DeVine’s widow had the right to know the confidential information about the cases.

Torricelli said he knew that his decision had struck a nerve in the intelligence community as soon as his letter reached the White House March 22. Officials from the National Security Council, accompanied by “a carload of CIA officers,” came to his office to try to dissuade him from making the information public. But he told them it was too late because the letter already had been sent to the New York newspaper.

Among the most damaging revelations about U.S. involvement in the controversy have been that the CIA kept Alpirez on its payroll for several months after the agency learned of his role in the DeVine murder. In addition, acting CIA Director William O. Studeman acknowledged in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday that the agency had failed to reveal to Congress information it received about the Alpirez link to the DeVine killing in 1991 and that it did not recognize the “potential significance” of information it received in mid-1994 about the death of Bamaca.

Torricelli charged that the CIA had been covering up its link to the Guatemala scandal and that CIA officials may be guilty of criminal acts. Clinton has suspended U.S. military and intelligence assistance to Guatemala and has ordered a government-wide investigation of U.S. links to the killings.

Both the House and Senate Intelligence panels are conducting their own investigations as well. But the Senate panel seems committed to a more aggressive inquiry. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the committee chairman, has called Torricelli a “hero” for his actions, while other senators on the committee have openly expressed anger that they have either been misled or lied to by the CIA.

Combest, however, charged that Torricelli directly violated his oath and that his actions put in jeopardy congressional investigations of the CIA’s role in the killings, as well as threatening to damage the relationship between the agency and the congressional committees.

Combest said that he and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), first received a briefing from the CIA on the case on Feb. 3. Both, he said, had abided by the secrecy oath.

Torricelli insisted that, after he received information from Administration officials, he avoided briefings through the committee on the matter so that he would not violate his oath. Combest, however, said that the oath extends to any breach of classified information, not just information provided through the committee.

Under congressional rules, the Speaker has the power to dismiss House members of either party from so-called “select” committees like the intelligence panel. But Combest said that Gingrich has agreed not to move to oust Torricelli until after the Ethics Committee completes its investigation.

Combest said that Torricelli will be allowed to attend hearings and committee briefings during the investigation but Republican leaders seem convinced that he will be removed soon.

“What we’ve said is, if he broke his oath of secrecy, he can’t serve on the Intelligence Committee,” Gingrich said. “I believe that’s going to be decided in the near future by the Ethics Committee. I’m willing to wait until they make a decision.”

But the New Jersey Democrat has his party’s leadership on his side. Torricelli said that he did not release the information until he had checked with House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). He said that he hopes to turn the ethics investigation into a test case to determine the extent to which the secrecy oath--which was put into effect for Intelligence Committee members during the last session of Congress--can be used to punish lawmakers for revealing classified information in an effort to uncover criminal acts.

“I did what I thought was right,” Torricelli said. “Under circumstances where the issue is criminal conduct, I believe that oath is in direct conflict with the oath that every member takes to adhere to the Constitution and the laws of the United States.”

Gephardt endorsed Torricelli’s decision to mount a test case, saying that he “is correct in seeking to present his arguments to the ethics panel, which can review his actions without the heated rhetoric surrounding this matter.”