The
witch hunt for whosoever accessed, read and leaked some of the memos
to the press is nothing but a diversion away from the content
of the memos.
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Democrat
Memogate: The Gang That Cant Shoot Straight
Just when we
thought members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans
and Democrats alike couldnt possibly shame themselves
or the Senate any more, they did. Several times. With no end in
sight.
Shame, as a
public function, is limited by the number of people paying attention,
currently few. Shame also requires susceptibility to such emotion,
not currently evident in the Judiciary Committee. Thats expected
through the initial stonewall phase. Media and public attention
on most government scandals starts haltingly and builds slowly,
as more and more dots are connected, usually by journalists with
the noses of truffle pigs, also currently in short supply.
When last
we informed on this subject, the Judiciary Committee was reeling
from release to the press of an unredacted version of the Pickle
Report (named for the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms, William H. Pickle,
but also aptly descriptive of the mess the Committee has created
and compounds almost daily).
Was the unredacted
report released "accidentally on purpose," as Alexander
Bolton wrote in The Hill, following Republican requests for
an investigation of the unredacted release?
However minor
that may be, investigating every aspect of Memogate except
the central issue of the memos content seems to be the order
of every Judiciary Committee day.
As to the Pickle
Report itself, we can reliably state that it is one of the most
inconclusive ever produced by any government investigation. It gives
new meaning to the term "he said, she said." While it
found precisely the negligent computer security procedures that
Manny Miranda, the former aide to Senators Frist and Hatch who openly
acknowledged reading some of the memos, has alleged, the Report
continues to point a finger at Miranda.
That finger,
however, is pretty shaky. Heres one paragraph from a letter
written by Adam Carter, one of Mr. Mirandas attorneys, to
Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee, about the Report:
"In sum,
we have counted 9 unsupported conclusions of law and findings of
fact; 20 instances of biased statements; 22 instances of false inferences;
15 examples of preferences between interviewees or parties; 14 places
where the facts as stated are simply wrong; 15 statements that are
embarrassingly negligent; 10 examples of internal contradictions;
23 instances representing major omissions; and 14 statements representing
half-truths. And given that the report concludes that over 150 people
could have accessed the Democrats documents published in the
press, the report engages in irresponsible speculation about how
those memos got to the press."
Another of Mr.
Mirandas attorneys, Arthur Mckey, a specialist in computer
security law and former trial attorney for the Department of Justice,
produced a 14-page letter on the issues of law and ethics regarding
Mr. Mirandas actions. (We've reproduced
that letter in full (PDF),
because it represents a useful understanding of computer abuse law
for those interested in such matters.)
Both attorneys
are clearly acting as advocates for their client, Mr. Miranda, who
is at the center of the controversy, both as accused and accuser.
Be that as it may, Mr. Mirandas credibility is considerably
higher than that of any of his accusers, based on the documentary
evidence and findings thus far. By the same token, the legal knowledge
of his attorneys seems infinitely more sophisticated than that of
those who screamed "hacking" without quite knowing what
that means.
We must, however,
understand reality here. After spending a half million dollars of
taxpayer money on the Pickle Report, after coming up with little
but implication and inference, the soundness of Mr. Mirandas
defense means not a whit to those who must make him the scapegoat
to shield their own ineptitude and worse.
The witch hunt
for whosoever accessed, read and leaked some of the memos to the
press is nothing but a diversion away from the content of
the memos. From the few memos that have been made public, from accusations
Mr. Miranda has made regarding still secret memos, and from the
sheer volume of documents that exist, there is reason to believe
that the potential for Senate scandal could dwarf any other. The
Senate the exclusive club that transcends partisan and ideological
differences doesnt want scandal, cant have scandal,
not of this type, because it is institutional and systematic.
Thus it was
that on March 11 a series of Senate Judiciary Committee meetings
took place to decide what to do next. To be as crude about those
deliberations as they deserve, they resembled a day-long swingers
marathon. Alliances were formed, abandoned and then tried again
from different positions, all for the purpose of reaching a compromise
on a letter to Attorney General Ashcroft. No compromise could be
reached, by the very committee entrusted with overseeing the confirmation
proceedings of all judicial nominees to our federal courts.
In the end,
Republicans DeWine, Chambliss and Graham hooked up with Democrats
Durbin, Kennedy and Schumer to write their own letter asking the
Attorney General to appoint a "professional prosecutor."
All other Democrats on the Committee were said to approve, but kept
their names off the letter for "bipartisan balance," indicating
in a small, weird way, the delusional mentality at work here.
Chairman Hatch
and the other Committee Republicans would not join in the request,
as written, believing that no criminal acts were involved in the
accessing and dissemination of the memos. They "deferred"
action to Sergeant-at-Arms Pickle, who on March 17, announced he
would refer his report to the Justice Department for review.
On March 18,
the Center for Individual Freedom wrote its own letter
to Attorney General Ashcroft. It asks simply and reasonably
that any Justice Department investigation include the content of
the memos. The one person known to have read some of the memos has
described them as "incendiary," as evidencing "public
corruption," as revealing "cash for judges." That
is, in any context, including the U.S. Senate, probable cause for
an investigation. Our view is only enhanced by the extraordinary
bipartisan effort to act as if the evidence doesnt exist.
- For background
on Memogate, click
here.
- For other
Center activities surrounding Memogate, click
here.
[Posted
March 18, 2004]
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