Since Kirk has hardly made a secret of his association with the CIA, this whole thing is just his opponent, Lee Goodman, grasping at straws. I take it that Goodman is behind in the polls.
That sounds exactly right. Whether he mentioned the CIA specifically before or not previously, a guy who advertises that he won “Intelligence Officer of the Year” isn’t exactly hiding that he was “working with the people who conduct covert operations.” (Keeping in mind, of course, that CIA does a lot more than “covert operations” – it’s entirely possible that the congressman has never been anywhere near covert ops himself.)
Hrrrmph.
That was a lame use of Kirk’s statement, although he’s a jackass anyway from what I hear.
We just saw F9/11 this weekend, so I suppose I’m bristling at all the relationships in Washington, but that’s probably another thread.
As a former member of the Navy who has worked with Naval Intelligence Officers, my guess is that Kirk is an analyst. working AT the CIA and FOR the Navy. For those of you whose entire knowledge of the CIA is limited to fodder for tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, there is an entire directorate of the CIA devoted to analyzing data. It is called the Directorate of Intelligence. The operational side of the CIA (those horrible and ideologically offensive spies) come from the Directorate of Operations.
As originally envisioned, elected officials were supposed to moonlight… as elected officials. Congress was supposed to be a part time governing body. It was only later that full time politicians started to emerge.
Even today, I would say most elected officials have jobs or businesses outside of the duties of their office. Conflicts of interest don’t only arise when the outside job is in another branch of government. Most deal with seatheart deals for private businesses. For example, running a dry clean business does not prevent you from being elected to congress, but you may get yourself in hot water if you are drafting legislation to relax environmental regs on dry cleaners.
The fact that Kirk is a reservist is not, in and of itself, a conflict of interest. Most congressmen do something to earn money outside of their office. I don’t see how Kirk’s activities are fundamentally different from congressmen who are also real estate developers, chicken farmers, trial lawyers, etc.