. . . six Democratic Members of the committee called on the CIA Director to “correct” his statement in May that the CIA doesn’t lie to Congress. He didn’t. The six are allies of Speaker Pelosi. Her public standing — and poll numbers — have been battered since her run-in with Mr. Panetta and the facts this spring.

To his credit, Mr. Panetta sees the obvious danger to morale at the agency and its ability to perform its essential job, and is standing up for his troops. But the Democratic attack isn’t limited to bad-mouthing America’s intelligence professionals. As dangerous is the intelligence authorization bill before Congress.

House Democrats have set out to hobble the CIA and further hand...

. . . six Democratic Members of the committee called on the CIA Director to “correct” his statement in May that the CIA doesn’t lie to Congress. He didn’t. The six are allies of Speaker Pelosi. Her public standing — and poll numbers — have been battered since her run-in with Mr. Panetta and the facts this spring.

To his credit, Mr. Panetta sees the obvious danger to morale at the agency and its ability to perform its essential job, and is standing up for his troops. But the Democratic attack isn’t limited to bad-mouthing America’s intelligence professionals. As dangerous is the intelligence authorization bill before Congress.

House Democrats have set out to hobble the CIA and further handcuff the executive branch. Republicans, naturally, were frozen out. At Speaker Pelosi’s insistence, gone would be the right of the President to limit disclosure of sensitive information [...]

This authority would pass to Congress. The bill would also expand disclosure requirements for all sorts of intelligence activities.

This is a recipe for more leaks and more compromised CIA operations. Congress claims it needs to better monitor Presidential intelligence decisions. But the real lesson of the last few years is that Congress wants to know about, and often second-guess, intelligence decisions without being responsible for the result. Mrs. Pelosi could have objected to waterboarding but didn’t at the time, becoming a critic only when it became a political uproar. Senator Jay Rockefeller could have resisted warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda but instead wrote a letter and stuck it in a drawer.

The original sin was President Carter’s for conceding so much intelligence supervision to Congress in the 1970s. The Oba...

This is a recipe for more leaks and more compromised CIA operations. Congress claims it needs to better monitor Presidential intelligence decisions. But the real lesson of the last few years is that Congress wants to know about, and often second-guess, intelligence decisions without being responsible for the result. Mrs. Pelosi could have objected to waterboarding but didn’t at the time, becoming a critic only when it became a political uproar. Senator Jay Rockefeller could have resisted warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda but instead wrote a letter and stuck it in a drawer.

The original sin was President Carter’s for conceding so much intelligence supervision to Congress in the 1970s. The Obama White House is right to resist giving away any more, and on Wednesday it threatened to veto the Democratic bill. House Members who are willing to put the politics of protecting their Speaker above national security can’t be trusted with adult decisions on intelligence and war-fighting.

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