Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has issued a new memo imposing major new restrictions on the methods through which the Pentagon and defense officials are allowed to share information with Congressional offices or committees.
The policy imposes serious limits, telling officials to only give
Congress official summaries instead of actual plans, and sets officials
within the Pentagon who decide whether a Congressional request can be
proven to be legitimate.
This is clearly intended to further limit information sharing at a time
when many in Congress are complaining they’re already not being kept
sufficiently informed. Reps. Adam Smith (D-WA) and Mac Thornberry (R-TX)
warned that the new policy is overstepping the Pentagon’s authority, by
“presuming to determine what warrants legislative oversight.”
The Pentagon tried to spin this as the exact opposite, even though it
clearly establishes several new limits to informing Congress. They
argued that because no official limits existed before Shanahan’s memo,
any specific limits must necessarily provide a real guideline, and would
actually increase transparency in the long run.
No one believes that, of course, but with the Trump Administration
withholding more and more from Congress and the media, it is in keeping
with the general direction of opacity.
Designed to keep anti interventionist conservatives on the trump ” peace train”
And that lonely Congress Critter would be… Can you even name one? That rare species went the way of the dodo bird years ago.
Shanahan has pulled a Boeing Max 8 on Congress.
The military was one of the depts, that is responsible for the misplaced and unaccounted for “stolen” TWENTY ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!
There is not one single person in the senate/congress/white house that is remotely curious about locating and or recouping the STOLEN $21 TRILLION DOLLARS.. but hey lets give them more money that is STOLEN from Americans via income taxes.. what could go wrong.