DAYS AWAY FROM THE SAME TRUMPBOTS DEMANDING THE DEPOSITIONS NOT BE MADE PUBLIC:

Working in any SCIF can be a challenging experience. People who work in these facilities take their security protocols very seriously, because they know the sensitivity of the information they are designed to protect. You sit behind a vault door, often in a room with no windows, surrounded by highly sensitive information that you have an obligation to safeguard. You check your electronic devices outside the room; accidentally bringing them in can trigger a reprimand, an investigation or worse -- if the violation is intentional, it could include a loss of clearance or even your job.

The SCIF for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (where I once served as subcommittee staff director) is one of the most sensitive in the nation. There, Congress conducts oversight over the nation's most sensitive intelligence programs, from electronic surveillance to covert action. The Congressional Intelligence Committees have wide-ranging authority and cover a wider range of materials than all but the most senior levels in the intelligence community. Foreign adversaries are desperate to know what happens in this room.

Further, the members of Congress themselves are highly prized intelligence targets for foreign adversaries. They often meet with officials from other governments, travel internationally and communicate with the most senior executive branch officials, including the president. Many of these members also do not come to their jobs with a background in cybersecurity, and are often confused by technology, so their security practices may not be strong. Compromising the smart phone that sits in the pocket of a member of Congress could yield insights into political strategies, foreign policy or even salacious information that could be used to manipulate or coerce that individual.

Foreign adversaries, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, are also particularly interested in the House's investigation into President Donald Trump's alleged attempt to extort an investigation from Ukraine by withholding military aid needed to repel a Russian invasion into their territory. Foreign adversaries surely want to know how House Republicans are reacting to the evidence presented by witnesses, assessing what those witnesses say about how Trump conducts business and what his pressure points are. Taking an easily compromised device into the room to hear the depositions is to cross a perilous line.

 

Currently, House Republicans who are members of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform Committees -- and there are 47 such members in total -- not only are present for the depositions, but also they can question all witnesses. Of the Republican representatives who stormed the impeachment committee hearing room Wednesday, 13 are actually members of one of those committees and had the ability to enter the room unimpeded and participate fully in the deposition.

This was not the case in the impeachment inquiry of President Richard Nixon 45 years ago. In 1974, the impeachment inquiry staff attorneys, not the House members, interviewed the witnesses during the initial investigation.

Much as with today's Republicans, in a public Judiciary Committee hearing on July 25, 1974 -- only days before the committee voted on articles of impeachment -- Rep. Delbert L. Latta, R-Ohio, bemoaned that the nine witnesses testifying in person to the committee in the impeachment inquiry appeared in executive session to which the public and other members of Congress had been excluded. "It was unfortunate during our deliberations that the American people were denied their right to listen to the few witnesses who appeared before this committee by a party line vote, and are now only being invited to sit in on these hearings."

A Republican on the committee, Rep. Joseph J. Marzatti of New Jersey, criticized the Democratic majority for its failure to "provide, from the beginning, for the calling of live witnesses." He criticized the fact that House members, as opposed to staff, did not question witnesses until the eve of the impeachment vote. "We did call witnesses, a total of nine, but at the end of the proceedings."

Today, the public has been promised that it will get transcripts of the depositions, and see and hear witnesses for themselves during the investigatory process.

Last week in a letter to members of Congress, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff wrote that transcripts of the depositions would be made public subject only to redactions for the classified information discussed -- which is the reason the witnesses are testifying in a secure location in which electronic devices are prohibited -- and "[w]e also anticipate that at an appropriate point in the investigation, we will be taking witness testimony in public, so that the full Congress and the American people can hear their testimony firsthand."

In late July 1974, Rep. Carlos Moorhead, R. Calif., complained that the impeachment inquiry staff attorneys did not take sworn depositions, but only interviewed friendly witnesses without a written record. Today, the House committees have subpoenaed a broad range of witnesses and their testimony under oath is being transcribed verbatim.

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