http://public.cq.com/public/20061211_homeland.html
Dec. 8, 2006 - 7:43 p.m.
Democrats' New Intelligence Chairman Needs a Crash Course on al Qaeda
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor
Forty years ago, Sgt. Silvestre Reyes was a helicopter crew chief flying
dangerous combat missions in South Vietnam from the top of a soaring rocky
outcrop near the sea called Marble Mountain.
After the war, it turned out that the communist Viet Cong had tunneled
into the hill and built a combat hospital right beneath the skids of
Reyes' UH-1 Huey gunship.
Now the five-term Texas Democrat, 62, is facing similar unpleasant
surprises about the enemy, this time as the incoming chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee.
That's because, like a number of his colleagues and top counterterrorism
officials that I've interviewed over the past several months, Reyes can't
answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed
against us in the Middle East.
