What Can We Expect from Silvestre Reyes?

Reyes, a Democrat from Texas (he’s the one on the left, next to Curt Weldon), has been picked to lead the House Intelligence Committee.

First, let’s heave a sigh that Nancy Pelosi’s first choice, Alcee Hastings, hit the “WTF!?” wall hard. The choice of Hastings was Pelosi’s second major personnel stumble since her selection as majority leader, before even taking up the post. Before he was elected to Congress, Hastings had been a federal judge. In 1988, he was overwhelmingly impeached by a Democrat-controlled House for taking bribes, and by an equally overwhelming vote, removed from office by a Democrat-controlled Senate. Even Pelosi herself voted to impeach Hastings, and but for the intervention of racial identity politics and her own petty squabble with the highly intelligent and qualified Jane Harman, Hastings would never have been a serious candidate. The fact that he’s even going to be on the committee at all, with access to our nation’s deepest secrets, is disgraceful. An ordinary citizen found to have done much less would never pass a background investigation, much less get a security clearance at any level. Congress ought to set some kind of standard like this for sensitive committee assignments, too.

Another interesting fact: Reyes has a blog, although it looks like he has a staffer keep it for him, it’s fairly dry reading, and it doesn’t have comments.

The Intelligence Committee hasn’t been much of a player in Korea policy under Republican leadership, deferring mainly to the International Relations Commitee. Reyes, however, turns out to have an interest in the subject. In 2003, he accompanied Curt Weldon, a now-defeated Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania and inveterate appeaser of the North Koreans, on a visit to Pyongyang. The sum total is that Reyes’s statements then and since are neither worse nor better than we might expect, and certainly not as bad as Weldon’s.

When the Weldon delegation returned from Pyongyang, it held a press conference. Weldon, who did most of the talking, was positively embarrassing, speaking glowingly of the church service the group attended in Pyongyang. When Donald MacIntyre of Time asked the obvious question — um, didja notice it was a show church? — Weldon stammered and pled ignorance, hiding behind a fact OFK readers already know: Weldon doesn’t speak Korean. If you contrast Weldon’s report to , it was as if they visited two different countries (Wilson’s picture alone makes his visit a must-see, but the fakery in the church was plain to him). Reyes’s comments were pretty bland, and he has relatively little to say:

I want to make two points that I think are very important. The first one speaks to the fact that we’ve been actively, for over a year, working on going to establish a dialogue. And you already heard the reasons and the rationale behind that, which include, in my opinion the foremost issue, which is what is best for the peace and tranquility and the benefit of everyone on the Korean peninsula. That is why we’ve worked so hard for over a year to go into Pyongyang and establish this dialogue.

The second point that I want to make this morning is there’s got to be not just dialogue, but understanding and respect that decisions made for the benefit of the Korean peninsula have to involve all the players, which include, as the Chairman has said, in this case, not just North and South Korea and not just the United States, but also Japan, Russia, China, and perhaps even others. We are here this morning because, having had an opportunity to have breakfast with your President this morning, we feel that it’s important to take this first step in the hopes that we would eliminate the potential for conflict and, certainly, the elimination of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.

This statement from Wilson was more telling of Reyes’s performance:

During our meetings with the North Korean Foreign Minister, with the North Korean Speaker of the Assembly, they tried to blame President Bush for the current deterioration of relations. I’m really proud of Congressman Jeff Miller, Congressman Curt Weldon, the Republicans, who immediately came to the President’s defense. But I’m particularly proud that our three Democratic colleagues each made it very clear that the problems with the current situation, the nuclear crisis, are not and were not made by President George W. Bush. They were due to North Korea violating agreements and treaties, conducting criminal conduct around the world. I’m just honored to have been with the delegation. I look forward to continuing with our efforts to promote dialogue.

The statements of Elliot Engel of New York stands out in particular in this regard:

The Pyongyang regime needs to abide by the agreements that its signs. It needs to stop acting like a petulant child…. And we need to raise all the tough issues that we raised with our talks: the issue of their selling technology to rogue nations; the fact that they have this insane fixation with nuclear policy while their people are starving; the fact that they need to abide by their agreements, and not just sign agreements and violate them; and the fact that it’s not true that the only reason there’s difficulty between the United States and North Korea is because President Bush is talking tough.

Here is Reyes after North Korea’s nuclear test:

“I am extremely concerned that this action jeopardizes the security of the region, and I hope the administration and our allies in the region provide the leadership to convince the North Koreans of the severe consequences of their actions,” said U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas.

Other facts about Reyes: some press reports call him an Iraq war “opponent,” without specifying just where on the Democratic technicolor spectrum of Iraq war “opposition” Reyes falls. He is also a supporter of missile defense.

Pic from here; Reyes is the one on the left.