Congressional Quarterly's Tim Starks:

The public was kept out of a House Intelligence Committee markup Wednesday despite the fact that a portion of the meeting was officially “open.”

Which is interesting because last fall — when Republicans still controlled the House — Democrats complained mightily when a committee markup of surveillance legislation that was supposed to be open was closed and conducted under a “cloak of secrecy,” as they charged at the time.

Fast-forward to Wednesday. Democrats held a closed committee markup at which, coincidentally, another bill addressing surveillance law (HR 3773) was approved.

Both last year’s and Thursday’s markups were held in the Intelligence panel’s special, secure meeting room on the top floor of the Capitol, where all meetings are closed to the public regardless of content.

Kira Maas, a spokeswoman for Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said the meeting was held in the secure room because “there was a strong likelihood that there would be classified discussion.” But she said the committee would soon provide a transcript of the 20 minutes of “open” meeting the public wasn’t allowed to attend.

The panel, however, has yet to provide a transcript of portions of a May markup of the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill (HR 2082) that were also supposed to be “open” but were actually closed because they were held in the panel’s secure room.

Posted by Laura at October 11, 2007 09:39 AM