In My Time - Dick Cheney [75]
I regarded my assignment as an honor—though I realized it was not an honor that all members sought. The committee requires a tremendous amount of time, work, and study. Because of the sensitivity of the subject matter, much of the work can’t be delegated to staff members and the material can’t be duplicated or distributed outside the committee’s high-security offices. That means going over to the offices in person and spending hours reading the reports that pour in daily from all over the world and the detailed analyses prepared by the professional staff. Further, the very nature of the committee’s work requires absolute confidentiality and secrecy. There can never be a press conference to claim credit or even a passing mention in a newsletter to constituents with respect to most of what a member on the Intelligence Committee does.
I burrowed into the work, spending many hours in the offices. The committee staff responded to my interest by giving me even more material. I was fascinated by all the information, which was sometimes conflicting, and by the challenge of assimilating and assessing it.
I visited the various intelligence agencies—the CIA headquarters at Langley were just a few miles from our house in Virginia—and many of the private sector companies that produced the equipment that was such an important part of the intelligence business. I went to a National Reconnaissance Office ground station to watch the real-time downloads of feeds from the worldwide network of intelligence satellites.
One night in the Nevada desert, I became one of the first civilians to see the new F-117 stealth fighter. I was flown on a small shuttle plane into a completely blacked-out facility, where a jeep with driver and guide met me and drove me to a hangar—a huge, dark shadow against the desert sky. Inside, in the center of the vast and empty football-field-length interior, was one of the most magnificent—and weirdest—sights I have ever seen: a stealth fighter. Today the sleek, delta-shaped aircraft are familiar through photos and films and video games, but that night in the desert it was still a complete secret, and I was literally in awe.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was small: ten Democrats and six Republicans. The chairman when I went on the committee was Lee Hamilton of Indiana, a Democrat for whom I have a great deal of respect. Bob Stump of Arizona, the ranking Republican, was solid, dependable, and totally reliable. Henry Hyde of Illinois, who succeeded Stump, was a close personal friend, someone I had known and respected for more than a decade.
At one point I became ranking member on the Programs and Budget Authorization Subcommittee, where I was ably assisted by two talented staffers, Marty Faga and Duane Andrews. My position allowed me to survey the entire range of our intelligence activities and operations and to get a practical sense of how things worked—and how they didn’t work. This was knowledge that would turn out to be very useful when I became secretary of defense and later vice president.
During my time on the Intel Committee, we dealt with Soviet adventurism in the Middle East and Latin America, and the regional aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan. On one Intel trip we went to the Khyber Pass in Pakistan and met with several leaders of the Afghan mujahideen. We also met with Pakistani president Zia in Islamabad. At home the committee had to deal with some very serious and very sensitive espionage cases. Edward Lee Howard was a CIA officer who defected to Moscow with the names and covers of many agents all around the world. And the Walker family—retired navy officer John Anthony Walker and his older brother and son and a friend—sold our secret naval codes, thus allowing the Soviet Union to read secret military communications.
There was an intriguing coda to my time on the Intelligence Committee. In May 1987 I received a call from the legendary CIA counterintelligence director James Jesus Angleton. He said that