By Tim Starks, CQ-Roll Call

Accusations of a Michigan gubernatorial political play surfaced Thursday in an odd place: a House Intelligence subcommittee hearing about Congress’ feud with the executive branch over when lawmakers should receive briefings on spy activities.

Republicans invited as their witness to the hearing Dave Munson, an “average citizen” from Standish, Mich., who opposes moving detainees at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba to a prison in his town.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the full committee’s ranking Republican, said Munson would illustrate how the Obama administration’s refusal to share information with the intelligence panels was part of a broader problem with executive branch transparency.

Democrats said the invitation of Munson didn’t relate to the hearing’s topic — aimed more at the Bush administration’s allegedly improper shielding of intelligence activities from Congress — and that the issue of Guantanamo was outside the committee’s authority. Democrats invited as witnesses two former staffers to the Church Committee, which recommended the creation of congressional intelligence committees.

Toward the end of the hearing, Rep. Anna G. Eshoo , a California Democrat, offered an explanation as to why Republicans were focusing on Guantanamo. “I know we’ve got some candidacy involved in this,” Eshoo said, referring to Hoekstra’s bid for Michigan governor.

Interrupted Hoekstra: “You’re questioning my motives, and that is totally inappropriate.”

Some Michigan Democrats, including Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. Bart Stupak , who represents Standish, have said they are open to housing Gitmo detainees at the Standish prison. Stupak and some other local officials have touted its potential to create jobs in a state that has been hit hard by the economy.

But Hoekstra opposes the move, which he says poses security risks to the region. Munson, the owner of the Summer Trail Inn and the organizer of the Michigan Coalition to Stop Gitmo North, said Thursday that the Obama administration has not shared information about the potential security threats that would accompany housing high-profile terror suspects.

Both parties have accused the executive branch of violating the rules for keeping Congress “fully and currently informed” of intelligence activities set forth in the National Security Act of 1947. Most recently, Democrats have alleged the previous administration should have informed Congress of a [@urlprogram@http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003170113@] reportedly designed to capture or kill al Qaeda leaders in foreign countries, a program they learned about only this summer.

But Hoekstra on Thursday also lobbed his own allegation that by not sharing information about Guantanamo with the intelligence panels, the Obama administration was “trying to shut down congressional oversight and is willing to disregard the requirement to keep the congressional intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ about intelligence matters.” After the hearing, Hoekstra said Obama was violating “the spirit,” if not the letter, of the law.

Democrats, though, said questions about Guantanamo strategy, such as where to place ex-detainees, belonged with the House Armed Service Committee. Hoekstra disputed that, saying the detainees had intelligence value and that the Intelligence Committee had received information about them in the past.