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Hoekstra: It’s Wrong To Call CIA Liars — Except When I Do It

We told you earlier this afternoon about how Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who has called Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the CIA lied to her “outrageous,” has himself initiated a probe into whether the agency misled lawmakers about a 2001 shooting incident in Peru that caused the death of an American citizen.

And it looks like Hoekstra’s hypocrisy goes even further. Think Progress points out that Hoekstra last night went on Fox News, where he explained to Greta Van Susteren that it’s fine to criticize the CIA’s performance, but not to accuse it of lying:

HOEKSTRA: I think you do go back and you break it into two different issues. One is the performance, how well, they’re doing their job. The second is whether they have misled or lied to Congress, two very, very different issues.

And yet, as Think Progress also notes, Hoekstra said last November in regard to the Peru incident, that the CIA “may have been lying or concealing part of the truth.” And: “We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress.”

Although maybe there’s an amendment to Hoekstra’s rule that provides an exception if Peru is involved?

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