Southern gentleman maneuvers the mean streets of Capitol Hill

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 12, 1997 | by Michael Rust

Richard Shelby is well-known on Capitol Hill for many reasons: his party switch several years ago, his controversial opposition to Anthony Lake as CIA director and, tragically, the murder of one of his staffers.

When Richard C. Shelby switched parties in the wake of the 1994 election, it was less than a total surprise. The senator from Alabama had established himself as the most conservative Democrat on his side of the Capitol and early on had become persona non grata with his fellow Southerner, Bill Clinton.

Republicans were happy to maintain Shelby's seniority when the Alabaman switched to the GOP. This, in turn, placed Shelby at the helm of the Select Committee on Intelligence when Anthony Lake, Clinton's nominee to head the CIA, came before the committee. When Shelby asked that Lakes FBI file be made available to the committee it drew claims of outrage from Lake, as well as the White House and Senate Democrats. Never mind that the FBI files of past Republican nominees, including John Tower in 1989, had been leaked deliberately from Democratic-controlled committees.

Before this dispute was resolved, Lake withdrew his name from consideration, but not before Shelby -- elected to the Senate in 1986 and best known until then in his home state -- had become the focus of national attention.

Insight: It has been a hectic year for you.

Richard Shelby: Interesting -- interesting because of the controversial nature of the Lake nomination. I believe that we as a rule should try to give the president his nominees in the Cabinet, but this was just not an ordinary position -- director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Insight: People could see trouble coming.

RS: Trouble from the beginning. It was a troubling nomination, but things have a way of working out.

Insight: Why, with all his current problems, would the president send up a nomination like this?

RS: I don't know; I wondered myself. A lot of people in the media from day one were skeptical of the nomination. This doesn't mean that Dr. Lake was not a well-educated, well-informed and nice man. I think probably he was, but I certainly had questions as the process began about Dr. Lake's fitness for this highly sensitive job, and I think I was right.

Insight: Was there any hypocrisy in the administration's objections to your request for Lake's FBI files?

RS: Let's go back and revisit that for just a minute and set the record straight. As I recall, when the summary of the Lake background investigation of the FBI was sent to the Intelligence Committee, it was about three pages and I was surprised -- of course, it said it was a summary. It didn't say much about Mr. Lake and, of course, I had seen other, thicker files.

It was never my intention to look for what some people call raw files -- smears and innuendos, hearsay and stuff like that. I really wasn't interested in that at all. We were interested in a more complete file than what we saw, at least equivalent to what the Judiciary Committee would get on a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States or court of appeals or a federal district court. Because this -- make no mistake about it -- is a very important and sensitive position. Ultimately, Senator [Robert] Kerrey and I got a pretty complete file that was basically all I was asking for from the beginning.

Insight: What's the state of the CIA today?

RS: The CIA has thousands of great people working for it both here and around the world -- people who spend a lifetime in intelligence gathering and interpretation for our country. But it's also under attack internally because of people like [Aldrich] Ames, [Harold] Nicholson and so forth. It has always been attacked outside by a lot of people who are just basically against any intelligence-gathering service. Most of those people are left of center politically, though maybe not all of them.

Having said that, I believe we need a CIA. We probably need it to be configured differently than it is now. Because we're going into the 21st century with a lot of problems, we've got needs for lots of information.

Insight: Is there any chance for a flat tax in this Congress?

RS: I wouldn't know; we just reintroduced it. I think the flat-tax proposal is a tremendous idea. [House Majority Leader] Dick Armey and I are working through the legislative process; Steve Forbes and others are working around the country. Certainly the level of debate on the issue -- people becoming aware and talking about it -- is a lot higher than it was two years ago.

Insight: Is the president trying to co-opt tax reform with his call for targeted tax cuts?

RS: I don't know if he's trying to co-opt it, but Clinton's a good politician.

Insight: When Thomas Barnes, one of your staffers, was killed in the street on Capitol Hill, you called for returning the death penalty to the District of Columbia. What's it like when someone you work with dies in that way?

RS: It's a traumatic thing when someone close to you -- either a young staffer that you've known all his life or someone you've been working with in a small office every day -- is brutally murdered four or five blocks from the Capitol. It's indelibly imprinted on your mind. What happened to Tom Barnes could happen to anyone -- and shouldn't happen.