Rep. Jane Harman who has expressed disappointment at not being given the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee did indeed have a letter promising her that post it has been discovered.

From the Hill

Rep. Jane Harman was promised the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee, according to a letter obtained by The Hill. But that pledge was made by Dick Gephardt, not Nancy Pelosi.

Rep. Jane Harman was promised the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee, according to a letter obtained by The Hill. But that pledge was made by Dick Gephardt, not Nancy Pelosi.

Gephardt wrote in a letter to Harman (D-Calif.) that if she retook her old House seat in the 2000 election and Democrats became the majority party, she could “hold … the chair of the full committee in two years.”

Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday she felt no obligation to honor the commitment the former Democratic leader made.

“No,” the Speaker said after her weekly briefing. “He said, ‘In two years.’ What we’re talking about is eight years later.”

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who signed the letter as the then-chairman of the Democrats’ steering and policy committee, said Harman did have some basis to believe the commitment would be honored after Democrats won control of Congress in 2006.

I know there was a letter … which gave her the belief she would be chairman,” Hoyer said in an interview Thursday with The Hill. “Obviously Ms. Pelosi, who appoints the committee, did not agree with that.

Harman was certainly more qualified than Pelois’s choice of Silvestre Reyes, but even so it wouldn’t have been reasonable for her to expect that Pelosi would honor a pledge made eight years prior by Dick Gephardt.  She should have let this go instead of making a public stink about it.

 

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