Frustration is bubbling over in Congress as lawmakers appear to be scrambling to keep up with Israel’s expanding wars in the Middle East.
“That’s what happens way too damn often here,” Sen. Chris Coons told NOTUS last week, venting about another canceled classified meeting.
Coons routinely talks with top officials in the Biden administration; Jake Sullivan, the director of the National Security Council, and Bill Burns, the director of the CIA, are not infrequent contacts.
The problem isn’t necessarily access, Coons said — sometimes it’s the setting.
“It’s like, ‘Oh no, I can’t take that. I’ll be over here.’ Well, I need you to talk to me about X, Y and Z. ‘I can only talk about X, I can’t talk about Y or Z.’ Ok, well, when the hell are we going to get that?”
“I’ve had brief exchanges with the relevant people, but they’re not in a classified setting where it’s more appropriate to ask the hard questions,” Coons said.
But even those routinely accessing a SCIF are finding it hard to keep up with what’s happening in a timely fashion.
Over in the House, Rep. Austin Scott, who sits on both the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, expressed as much.
“It is a rapidly developing situation and it has the potential to escalate at any given time,” Scott said. “But I think sometimes, when we see something and we see the date on it, we’re very frustrated with the fact that they didn’t tell us sooner.”
It’s only been one week since pagers and handheld walkie-talkies exploded all across Lebanon. Since then, Israel has begun an airstrike campaign in Lebanon and has said they are prepared for a ground invasion. The administration has been applying pressure to get to a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and de-escalate the conflict in the Middle East. But the conflict has only grown. And Congress, with oversight power and responsibilities over the U.S.’s involvement, isn’t always keeping up.
Overnight, the United States and its allies pushed for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Lebanon, leaving Gaza, which Israel has continued to strike, out of the proposal. By morning, Israel had rejected the terms.
The United States has continued to support and arm Israel in spite of international concerns that the country has violated international humanitarian law. The Biden administration has yet to conclusively determine if those concerns cross the lines of U.S. law.
A recent report from ProPublica showed that two different arms of the government found “Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza,” an action that should halt aid according to international agreements the U.S. is party to.
Israel is broadening its offensive quickly. The pager attack alone injured thousands of people at their homes and in marketplaces — some of them hospital workers or people with no known ties to Hezbollah.
Barring a handful of critical voices, Congress has by and large supported Israel’s tactics.
Yet lawmakers are also describing a ‘fog of war’ situation that to some feels impossible to pierce through.
“I mean, it’s stroke, counterstroke by the other side,” Sen. Jack Reed said. “The introduction of those pagers was unexpected. That information was not shared with us.”
Reed said he’s had briefings from the intelligence community. But his colleagues who “reach out and call different people” to stay in the loop help him keep up with what’s going on.
“We had an extensive briefing by the intelligence community, and on the Armed Services Committee we certainly have been kept up to date,” Reed said. “It’s a fast-changing situation, and it’s so fast-paced that it’s difficult to stay up to date, even for the professionals.”
The combination of events like the pager attack with the challenges of disseminating intelligence to both chambers of Congress is leaving plenty of lawmakers with incomplete information.
The National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
“I don’t think there’s an effort to conceal information from us,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said of the situation. “But obviously there’s a lot of uncertainty and confusion in the turmoil of armed conflict.”
That dynamic nature has led some members to pull information as often as they can, rather than wait for scheduled briefings from the intelligence community.
Sen. Tim Kaine told NOTUS he’s “not dissatisfied with the information” he’s been getting, but as a member of both the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, he’s been proactively seeking additional information. “Because I’m on those committees, I tend to be proactive and like, ‘Hey, you know what’s going on?’”
Kaine and his staff reach out almost daily to members of both the diplomatic and intelligence communities, and it’s rare the senator isn’t at one of the many briefings on his committee schedule.
Some have deemed this approach necessary.
“There’s always more that you can learn, and I think it’s incumbent upon each member to ensure that they do.” Rep. Jimmy Panetta told NOTUS. “I plan on traveling to the Middle East in October.”
According to Panetta, it’s “going to depend on what committee you’re on, unfortunately,” as to whether members are well informed on the Middle East. His access to classified information as a member of the House Armed Services Committee gives him a chance to at least try and stay up to date.
But he also doesn’t think most of his peers can get what they need from Washington.
“It’s my responsibility to go there, get boots on the ground, and actually understand what’s going on,” he said.
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.