Lawmaker calls leaks major U.S. failure

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- The WikiLeaks document release represents "a massive failure" by U.S. intelligence, a House Republican leader said Monday.

Appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said: "I think we have to take a look at our own intel community and recognize that this is a massive failure. This database should never have been created. Hundreds of thousands of people should not have been provided access to it."

Hoekstra said the revelations could be quite damaging.

"Many of these leaks ... talk about the politics of getting to an agreement, whether it is moving Gitmo detainees, whether it is a strategy for confronting terrorism; sometimes politics gets to be pretty ugly," he said. "These releases show the art of getting to an agreement and moving a policy forward. These folks that we now deal with may not have the trust that when they are dealing with the United States what's done in secret will stay in secret."