Dems close-Senate playbook in 2003 memo

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

A controversial memo by a Democrat on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that surfaced in 2003 appears to contain the playbook party leaders used yesterday when they made the rare move of closing the chamber.

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The memo, offering ways Democrats could make the greatest gain from controversies over intelligence data used in the run-up to the Iraq war, says "we can pull the trigger on an independent investigation at any time."

Democrats, the document advised, should, "Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority."

Yesterday, Minority Leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of stalling a bipartisan review of pre-war intelligence before forcing the Republican-controlled Senate into the closed session, igniting anger from GOP leaders.

Reid charged his colleagues across the aisle "have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why."

Reid then called for the Senate to move into a closed session, a motion seconded by his assistant minority leader, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

Republicans were unable to block the procedure, according to the rules.

Afterward, speaking to reporters in the hall outside the Senate chamber, Majority Leader Bill Frist shot back, charging the Senate "has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership."

"They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas," he said.

Frist said the Democratic Party leadership did not warn him in advance of the move, which Republicans called a "political stunt."

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"It means from now on, for the next year and half, I can't trust Senator Reid," the Tennessee lawmaker said.

Durbin told reporters the Democratic Senate staff notified Republican staff as the session began.

Frist explained that the closed session meant all electronic devices had to be removed and staff and media could not be in the room.

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., a former majority leader, said Reid's move violated the Senate's tradition of courtesy and consent, but the rules provided no way to stop him.

Since 1929, when the Senate made secret sessions the exception rather than the rule, the body has gone into closed session 53 times, mostly over issues of national security. The last time was Feb. 9-12, 1999, when it deliberated over the impeachment trial of President Clinton.

In his speech before issuing the motion, Reid said that in the wake of the indictment Friday of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the American people and U.S. troops deserved to know details of how the U.S. got into the Iraq war.

Reid said Libby was the highest level official to be indicted in some 130 years, then asked: "Is it any wonder, Mr. President, I am worried about my grandchildren?"

Reid previously spoke of concern about his family's future welfare as he ticked off a list of familiar Democratic complaints about the performance of the Bush administration on issues ranging from the war to the economy.

Democrats believe Libby – who was charged with obstruction of justice, false statements and perjury – was part of a Bush administration effort to retaliate against Ambassador Joseph Wilson for his report purportedly disputing White House claims about Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. But Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has brought no charges directly pertaining to the alleged uncovering of Wilson's wife's identity as a CIA operative. And Friday, he insisted no connections should be made to the war.

This indictment is not about the war," he said. "This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel. ... The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction. And I think anyone who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that."

Nevertheless, Reid told senators the Libby indictment "provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions."

Speaking to reporters, Sen. Charles said the reason for the closed-door session was to ask the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., why, "despite repeated promises," his panel has not complied with Democrats requests to conduct an investigation into problems with pre-war intelligence.

About two hours after the closing, the Senate returned to an open session in which Roberts defiantly insisted his panel is addressing the issue, on schedule, and called the Democrats' move a "political stunt," noting he had a stronger term in mind but "would leave it at that."

Prior to resuming the open session, the senators agreed to appoint a six-member task force with three members from each party, to review the Intelligence Committee's progress on "Phase 2" of its work and report back to their respective caucuses by Nov. 14.

The first phase resulted in a 511-page report submitted last summer that addressed flaws of an Iraq intelligence estimate assembled by the country's top analysts in October 2002.

Roberts said the panel had started the second phase of the review but not completed it. He had intended all along, he said, to continue the work next week.

Defending himself, the Kansas senator referred to the 2003 Democrat staff memo.

The document said the plan is to "pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials."

"We are having some success in that regard," the memo said, citing among other things, controversy over the disputed "16 words" in President Bush's State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Wilson declared in a 2003 New York Times op-ed that his trip revealed the claim that Iraqi officials sought the material in Niger was dubious, but his oral report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence actually corroborated it, according to the bipartisan panel.