A House committee is calling Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes to testify on his claim that he helped to create an “echo chamber” among foreign policy experts in order to get the Iran nuclear agreement through Congress.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee invited Rhodes to testify next week, on Tuesday, May 17, according to a House aide.
Rhodes was profiled in a New York Times Magazine story on May 5, in which Rhodes said rational conversation with Congress is “impossible.” He said he fed national security experts with lines of argument to help lay the groundwork for passing the deal.
“We created an echo chamber,” he said of those experts. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”
That admission didn’t sit well with reporters or with Republicans in Congress who opposed the deal and were wary of the sanctions relief Iran won under the agreement.
The White House reacted Wednesday evening to Chaffetz’s move by saying Congress had plenty of time and information to consider the Iran deal, but didn’t go so far as to say Rhodes wouldn’t testify.
“The Iran deal was debated and scrutinized for months last year. Republicans had vowed to block it, could not muster the votes to do so, and are now seeking to relitigate that old political fight,” said spokesman Eric Schultz.
“But with all the serious issues stuck in Congress right now — like preparing for Zika’s arrival, helping Puerto Rico through their financial crisis, providing assistance to the people of Flint, or combatting the opioid epidemic — it is a shame that Chairman Chaffetz is choosing to take a page out of Darrell Issa’s playbook to distract from all the work they should be doing,” he added.
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings, Md., agreed that Republicans have no useful reason for calling for Rhodes’ testimony.
“It seems fairly clear what this really is — a partisan rush to attack Ben Rhodes just to chase cheap headlines rather than a substantive review of foreign policy objectives,” he said. “There is absolutely no reason in this case for Republicans to break from normal notice rules and then threaten the White House with subpoenas. Reducing our work to reactionary grandstanding like this makes our Committee look terrible.”
