Pete Hoekstra Cannot Keep a Secret

I’ve previously expressed my happiness that my Congressman will not be running for reelection when his current term ends. Pete Hoekstra is in the news once again, this time for revealing secret information on Twitter. Congressional Quarterly reports:

A congressional trip to Iraq this weekend was supposed to be a secret.

But the cat’s out of the bag now, thanks to a member of the House Intelligence Committee who broke an embargo via Twitter.

A delegation led by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, arrived in Iraq earlier today, and because of Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the entire world — or at least Twitter.com readers—now know they’re there.

“Just landed in Baghdad,” messaged Hoekstra, a former chairman of the Intelligence panel and now the ranking member, who is routinely entrusted to keep some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets.

Before the delegation left Washington, they were advised to keep the trip to themselves for security reasons. A few media outlets, including Congressional Quarterly, learned about it, but agreed not to disclose anything until the delegation had left Iraq.

Nobody expected, though, that a lawmaker with such an extensive national security background would be the first to break the silence. And in such a big way.

Not only did Hoekstra reveal the existence of the lawmakers’ trip, but included details about their itinerary in updates posted every few hours on his Twitter page, until he suddenly stopped, for some reason, on Friday morning.

Think Progress points out an op-ed which Hoekstra wrote in The Los Angeles Times in 2006 on the importance of keeping secrets safe.

But every time classified national security information is leaked, our ability to gather information on those who would do us harm is eroded. … I regret that I see little sign of intolerance for unauthorized disclosures of intelligence to the media from some of my Democratic colleagues today. … We are a nation at war. Unauthorized disclosures of classified information only help terrorists and our enemies – and put American lives at risk.

Rather than worrying so much about whether Obama would have a BlackBerry, they should have been keeping an eye on Pete Hoekstra’s Twitter account.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Brett says:

    Yes, for some reason, Congressman Hoekstra suddenly stopped secret national security details on Twitter.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    On the one hand, I’m sure it was accidental. However it was also soon after Hoekstra had written an editorial regarding preventing security leaks, so he might have been more careful.

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