MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's go to a top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee now. That's Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut. He's part of the gang of eight. That's the small group of lawmakers typically briefed on sensitive national security matters, and he's the ranking Democrat on that committee. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. Good morning.
JIM HIMES: Good morning.
MARTIN: So the ceasefire seems to have fallen apart at the moment. The president said this morning that both Israel and Iran violated it. Do you have any sense of what's next?
HIMES: Well, I'm not sure anybody has a sense of what's next. It does seem like in these first couple of days of conflict, we have avoided the, you know, 20 or 30 worst-case scenarios that usually accompany a war in the Middle East. We're not seeing gas prices spike. We're not seeing fatalities or casualties of American troops. I mean, you can just spin out the many, many scenarios which, thank God, we've managed to avoid. But of course, this is a day-to-day thing. At some point, we've got to ask the question of, given the immense gamble that was taken here both by Israel and by the president of the United States - I would point out, without consultation of the United States Congress, as required by law - what was actually achieved?
I have seen absolutely no evidence to back up the vice president's statement that the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated. In fact, I would be very, very surprised if that was, in fact, true. So the question obviously remains, if the Iranian nuclear program was set back in a very small way - which I think, you know, we'll see, we'll see, but that's certainly a possibility - all of this risk and this massive gamble will have been undertaken for a tiny, marginal improvement at best. And if that turns out to be the case, the question of course is, what's next? What do the Israelis do? How do we feel about it?
MARTIN: So who in the U.S. government is trying to get to the bottom of what was actually accomplished in those strikes? And do you have any confidence that whoever is sort of tasked with this will report to you and other members of Congress?
HIMES: Well, the answer to your question is that the, you know, extensive apparatus of the intelligence community - and as you might imagine, that involves everything from satellites to the ability to conduct espionage against the nation of Iran, traditional espionage - I do think that we will have a pretty good sense in the coming days and weeks of what was actually achieved in Iran. And though I want to be careful about talking about anything that could be classified, yes, I do think that that is of such importance, given the gamble that was taken here, that we will get a pretty good estimate of what occurred. In fact, without getting into details, I will tell you that when I was at the Capitol yesterday, we were already beginning to see some very preliminary indications of what may or may not have been achieved.
MARTIN: I want to go back to this question of oversight that you raised. You've said that you learned about the U.S. strikes on Iran through social media. Is there a path toward getting more oversight moving forward?
HIMES: Well, you know, in my many years of experience serving on the Intelligence Committee, I will tell you that this administration has been uniquely bad about responding to the constitutionally mandated jobs of oversight that we do. You know, everything from Signal-gate to the apparent pressure to change the report inside the intelligence community on Tren de Aragua that famously contradicted the president. We've asked all sorts of questions and gotten very, very few answers.
As you point out, my Republican counterpart, Rick Crawford, the chairman of the committee, was informed prior to the raid. But I, the Democrat, was not. And so we're seeing sort of almost disdain from this administration with respect to that oversight. And when the stakes are as high as they are right now - and, you know, we're talking about the possibility of war in the Middle East - that's just not - it's never OK, but particularly when the stakes are this high.
MARTIN: So my question to you is what recourse do you and other Democrats have? You make the argument that this isn't just a custom, that this is required. So then the question becomes, how do you enforce that going forward?
HIMES: Well, you know, there's not a good answer to that question because the Democratic Party, the party in which I am a member, is in the minority. And to date, the Republican majority - which has subpoena power, which has the ability to move bills to the floor, which has the ability to hold administration officials in contempt - has shown precisely zero interest in doing that. Now the dissatisfying but honest answer to your question is that if the Democrats are able to take the majority and therefore, in 18 months, have subpoena power, have all of those tools at our disposal, at that point, I think, you know, we'll have options other than simply making the case to the American people that, you know, shutting down oversight and ignoring the rules is not OK.
MARTIN: OK, before we let you go, you co-introduced a war powers resolution that would remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities against Iran without approval from Congress. We had heard that there were some Republicans who were not pleased with the level of consultation with Congress. Do you have any sense that this might have enough support to go forward?
HIMES: We're certainly going to take a crack at it. And we're hoping against hope that maybe there are a handful of Republicans who will remember that their duty is to the Constitution to which they raised their right hand and took an oath, as opposed to the man that occupies the Oval Office. That wouldn't be a terribly good bet if you were a betting person, but we are going to try to make that case because again, it's always worth standing up for, you know, the prerogatives of the Congress and, frankly, for the Constitution and the law.
MARTIN: That is Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut. He is a Democrat. He's the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and part of the so-called gang of eight. Congressman Himes, thank you so much for talking with us once again.
HIMES: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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