Sen. Levin stonewalls on Intelligence Committee scandal

I saw Tony Snow’s interview of Sen. Carl Levin this morning and was appalled. Here he was, being questioned about this extremely serious violation of the protocols of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, of which he is the ranking minority member, and all he did was keep changing the subject to attacking the adminstration’s statements leading up to the war. Well, the adminstration’s statements leading up to the war are already the subject matter being examined by this committee, so that wasn’t the issue here. The issue here was the Democrats’ outrageous partisan sabotaging of the committee’s non-partisan mission. Levin contemptuously acted as though this simply didn’t matter.

Further evidence that what people once thought of as mainstream American liberalism is dead and gone. The Democratic party has become a leftist party that has no standards, no loyalty, no decency, and will stop at nothing.

Meanwhile, the Committee’s Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, appearing on the same program, said that no Democratic member of the committee has disavowed the memo and its stated purpose of “pull[ing] the majority along as far as we can,” and then “pulling the trigger” on them. If you want to understand what leftist hatred is doing to our national institutions, read on:

SNOW: All right. Now, last Tuesday, somebody leaked to Fox News’s Sean Hannity a Democratic staff memo that laid out a strategy for making political hay out of Intelligence Committee investigations of the White House.

Among the key points in the memo: “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.” And, “Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. The best time to do so will probably be next year.”

Senator Roberts, your reaction?

ROBERTS: Well, the one thing you didn’t show was “to pull the trigger,” which I think is an interesting term.

I was stunned by this memo, shocked by this memo. We have a 30- year history in the Intelligence Committee of nonpartisan activity, dating clear back from the Frank Church days. And what this memo has done is really poisoned the well.

Our leader, on Friday, got up, Bill Frist, the majority leader, and asked, “Would somebody please disavow this strategic partisan attack plan?” It’s been a week, and we have had nobody, except a couple Democrat members and Senator Miller from Georgia, publicly state that this should not be done.

This is really, in the words of Bob Kerrey, who is the former vice chairman and a Democrat and from Nebraska and a good friend, said this tears at the comity of this very important committee because of the importance of the committee in regards to our national security. I’m very upset about this. … But somebody has to disavow this memo… or it’s going to be very difficult to put this committee back together again. We are going to finish the inquiry. That’s our primary duty right now, in terms of the credibility and the time on this of intelligence prior to going to Iraq.

But it’s going to be very difficult to put the committee back together again without somebody saying we’re not going to launch this attack plan, this partisan attack plan, and pull the trigger, not only on me, but on the entire committee.

SNOW: Well, Senator Rockefeller said that there’s nothing partisan about this; they’re examining the legal options.

ROBERTS: Legal options? Read the memo. “Pull the trigger”? “Castigate the majority”? “Wait till next year”? It really prejudges the whole inquiry. It says that we’re guilty until proven innocent, in regards to the use of the memo.

We are about 90 percent done, and for this to—and we have worked very hard to get all the documents from State and from the Department of Defense and from the White House, who is now working in a spirit of cooperation.

Now we have this very partisan attack memo laying out there, with some members of the Senate actually embracing it, reveling in it. They are destroying the nonpartisan history of this committee, as described by Senator Kerry.

That really bothers me, not so much because it’s personal—I felt a sense of personal outrage about it—but when you are the chairman of the committee, you have to try to pull together and work together because of the responsibility of the committee and how important it is to national security.

SNOW: Do you believe it is going to be possible to work with the Democrats on the committee to complete the job in a manner you see…

ROBERTS: It’s up to them.

SNOW: … proper?

ROBERTS: It’s up to them. I hope so. It’s up to them.

SNOW: You said last week, “We face mounting intelligence challenges in places like North Korea, Iran and, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan. Members across the aisle should carefully reflect and decide whether their caucus should repudiate this plan and embrace our nation’s security instead of their political self-interest.”…

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 09, 2003 08:37 PM | Send