Once again, MSNBC prominently featured former Obama Administration and Gore campaign official Jeremy Bash as a nonpartisan intelligence analyst with an appearance on Wednesday’s The 11th Hour. Host Brian Williams swooned over Bash as an “institutionalist” while Bash warned that the Trump-Russia story “is a huge crisis” threatening “our Madisonian system of checks and balances.”
Williams turned to Bash at the 11:11 p.m. Eastern mark and invited him to attack the House Intelligence Committee (i.e Devin Nunes): “You're an institutionalist, I think it's fair to say, Jeremy. Did today, in a weird way, further diminish what you're witnessing in your old stomping grounds in the House Intelligence Committee by comparison?”
Bash initially replied that “it was a study of contrast” between the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and hoped the two would come together.
Williams jumped in before too long to follow-up: “But they’re so busy imploding that what if we've seen the best days of the House Intelligence Committee investigation?”
Bash ruled that such a development “would be a shame and it undermine an important oversight function that Congress plays” dating back to when the two Select Committees were formed in the 1970s.
The longtime Leon Panetta aide claimed that “[t]hey were started after the Watergate abuses from the Church and Pike hearings as you’ll recall, Brian, and these are major institutions that really step into the shoes of the American people to watch the secret operations of our government.”
For those millennials (like myself) or readers that may not be familiar with the Church and Pike hearings, American Thinker’s Larrey Anderson offered a primer on how damaging this leftist boondoggle was:
Church created and chaired a new committee dedicated to "investigating" the American intelligence establishment and agencies (in particular the CIA)[v]. A month later, the House of Representatives set up a similar committee[vi].
Between the two "investigations" and subsequent reports of the committees, the top-secret intelligence procedures, operations, and even the names of some active intelligence operatives working for the United States were made public and distributed to all of our enemies -- including the Soviet Union, communist China, North Korea, and communist regimes in Asia, Africa, and South America.
(The Church Committee, for example, conducted more than eight hundred interviews -- mostly with people involved in intelligence-gathering -- and produced more than 110,000 pages of documents. Almost all of the information gathered by both committees ended up in the hands of our adversaries.)
The reports, taken together, literally destroyed America's worldwide intelligence-gathering network. The Pike Committee report was so obviously and outrageously a threat to the intelligence community that even the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives voted against its publication. The report was nevertheless leaked to the media.
Within days of the release of the reports and documents, thousands of people sympathetic to the cause of freedom in communist countries around the world were arrested. Hundreds of people simply disappeared -- most of them were executed.
Moments later, Bash floated the idea that the FBI and other intel agencies could be hiding things from the Trump White House so as not to harm their investigations of those same people:
We've had criminal investigations of the White House. We’ve never had a counterintelligence investigation of the White House and the President’s inner circle. This is really unmapped terrain. To tell the commander in chief about the threats to the country, you might have to expose sources and methods to that President — to that Commander in Chief, which, if you’re the FBI Director, you have to be wondering in the back of your mind, are these people going to compromise those sources and methods?
The disgraced former NBC Nightly News anchor offered more praise, reupping the “institutionalist” label, quipping that he’s “old enough not to think of that as a pejorative.”
“You've worked with some great men and women in the intelligence business, in the defense business, on the congressional side of things. For our viewers watching at home who have come to know you and trust your opinion, how serious is this compared to everything else you’ve seen in your professional life,” a concerned Williams wondered.
Invoking a Founding Father, Bash fretted:
Well, this is a huge crisis. It’s a crisis because it involves a foreign adversary trying to undermine the most precious thing we have, our own democratic election process. It’s also a crisis because our Madisonian system of checks and balances is at stake here. What could be bigger than that?
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams on March 29:
MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
March 29, 2017
11:11 p.m. Eastern
BRIAN WILLIAMS: You're an institutionalist, I think it's fair to say, Jeremy. Did today, in a weird way, further diminish what you're witnessing in your old stomping grounds in the House Intelligence Committee by comparison?
JEREMY BASH: Well, it was a study of contrast and I don't want to say it —
WILLIAMS: That’s the polite way to say it.
BASH: — I don’t want to say it diminished the House but I think it set a high bar that House should try to reach as well. They're co-equal houses of Congress and they should strive to meet that high bar for the American.
WILLIAMS: But they’re so busy imploding that what if we've seen the best days of the House Intelligence Committee investigation?
BASH: Well, that would be a shame and it undermine an important oversight function that Congress plays. Look, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were started in the 1970s. They were started after the Watergate abuses from the Church and Pike hearings as you’ll recall, Brian, and these are major institutions that really step into the shoes of the American people to watch the secret operations of our government. These oversight functions are actually the envy of the world and we go around the world and explain to other intelligence agencies and services hey, this is how you do oversight in a democracy.
(....)
BASH: My understanding is that Yates's testimony would have differed from the official White House accounts. Now we don't know exactly in what way her testimony would have differed from the official White House accounts but we can think about two potentialities. One is what she told to white house on January 26 when she went to the White House Counsel and said hey, you've got a problem on your hands with your National Security Advisor. He’s been lying to the Vice President or to the President. That's point one. The second thing she could have talked about is what she heard in response from the White House. What did Don McGahn say back to her or what did other people in the White House say? Did they say we don't care, we're not interested at all, the President has allowed Mike Flynn to have these conversations or did they say oh, my goodness this is a surprise to us? In either case, 17 days pass and these are the 17 days that I think require emphasis here, Brian.
WILLIAMS: Yeah. Here’s the timeline. We’ll put it up on the screen.
BASH: So from January 26th, which is when Sally Yates went to talk to the White House about Mike Flynn to February 13th, the day that Flynn resigns, he was fired. 17 days elapsed. What was happening during that time? If the President knew that Flynn had misled senior officials in the White House, why did they continue to allow him to have access to very sensitive, very classified information? Why did they allow him to continue to be the National Security Adviser?
(....)
BASH: We've had criminal investigations of the White House. We’ve never had a counterintelligence investigation of the White House and the President’s inner circle. This is really unmapped terrain. To tell the commander in chief about the threats to the country, you might have to expose sources and methods to that President — to that Commander in Chief, which, if you’re the FBI Director, you have to be wondering in the back of your mind, are these people going to compromise those sources and methods?
WILLIAMS: I heard a Democrat today on television make the point rather cavalierly that Nunes is the best friend the Democrats could have and the clear implication was that he's not competent at the job of being Chairman of House Intel. I know you're not from the political side of life, but take on that question.
BASH: I disagree strongly. There has to be a credible investigation from the FBI, from the Republican-led House committee and from the Republican-led Senate committee. This is not an investigation of Democrats. In fact, these investigations must be completely nonpartisan. So I don't think Nunes is the best friend of the Democrats, the Republicans. He;’s the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He's got to take this on in every bit of a professional and nonpartisan way in the way you saw Senator Richard Burr take this on today.
WILLIAMS: I called you an institutionalist earlier and I guess I'm old enough not to think of that as a pejorative
BASH: I’ll take it as a compliment —
WILLIAMS: — and it was meant that way. You've worked with some great men and women in the intelligence business, in the defense business, on the congressional side of things. For our viewers watching at home who have come to know you and trust your opinion, how serious is this compared to everything else you’ve seen in your professional life?
BASH: Well, this is a huge crisis. It’s a crisis because it involves a foreign adversary trying to undermine the most precious thing we have, our own democratic election process. It’s also a crisis because our Madisonian system of checks and balances is at stake here. What could be bigger than that?
