Democrat Memogate: The Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight

Just when we thought members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee — Republicans and Democrats alike — couldn’t 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. That’s 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. Here’s one paragraph from a letter written by Adam Carter, one of Mr. Miranda’s 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 Democrat’s documents published in the press, the report engages in irresponsible speculation about how those memos got to the press."

Another of Mr. Miranda’s 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. Miranda’s 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. Miranda’s 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. Miranda’s 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 — doesn’t want scandal, can’t 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 doesn’t exist.

• For background on Memogate, click here.
  
  
• For other Center activities surrounding Memogate, click here.

• Return to Latest News Index
• Return to Confirmation Watch Index