Paul Ryan: Snowden hunt shows White House is "incompetent"

(CBS News) Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., took on the Obama administration on Tuesday, insisting that the ongoing scandal at the IRS and the seemingly stalled search for NSA leaker Edward Snowden demonstrates weakness within the White House and jeopardizes U.S. credibility abroad.

The NSA leak and the subsequent effort to extradite Edward Snowden to the U.S. "reveals an administration that seems more and more incompetent by the day," Ryan said Tuesday on "CBS This Morning."

The first failure, Ryan said, is "that a 29-year-old contractor with one year at Booz Allen Hamilton can get this kind of security clearance ... can get this kind of access ... and walk out with a thumb drive and give it to the world. How is it that our security clearances are so low that something like this can happen?"

And, he added, "Once we've discovered that this person has stolen our secrets, has leaked them, you'd think we'd do a better job of following up with them in China and these other countries."

Moreover, Ryan said the failure to hold Hong Kong and China to extradition treaties in place and leverage key diplomatic relationships "doesn't speak very well to how we're being viewed in the world."

"We have extradition treaties, we have relationships. ... If we're not able to convinces our allies and other countries ... that doesn't speak very well to our credibility. ... That does not help our image whatsoever," he said.

Turning to an ongoing domestic scandal, Ryan -- who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee -- said the committee will demand answers on the IRS targeting of political groups in a hearing this week with acting IRS chief Danny Werfel. 

"We still don't know who ordered this kind of targeting, why it took so long for them to clean in up," he said. "We don't know about the harassment that occurred after these groups were singled out. ... There are lots of inefficiency questions."

On a call with reporters Monday, Werfel said the IRS did not solely target conservative organizations but that the agency conducted "wide-ranging" screenings, that also involved looking into liberal groups applying for tax exempt status. 

Ryan rejects the notion that more bipartisan targeting lessens the issue at hand and explained, "We know that the IRS did target people based upon their political beliefs. Who cares whether they're right or left? The fact that they're targeting people for harassment based on their political should be cause enough alone for outrage."