Update on the memo dispute

Ok, I was wrong when I wrote that the Senate Intelligence Committee might be closed down because of Republican "outrage" over the Democrat memo about how they might be able to get a more thorough investigation done. Apparently, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist already has shut it down, and says it won't start attending to business again until the memo's author has been unmasked and the Dems have apologized and disavowed it.

Angry about a leaked Democratic memo, the Republican leadership of the Senate yesterday took the unusual step of canceling all business of the committee investigating prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called on the author of the memo -- which laid out a possible Democratic strategy to extend the investigation to include the White House and executive branch -- to "identify himself or herself . . . disavow this partisan attack in its entirety" and deliver "a personal apology" to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Only if those steps are taken, Frist said, "will it be possible for the committee to resume its work in an effective and bipartisan manner -- a manner deserving of the confidence of other members of the Senate and the executive branch."

Interesting that the administration will resort to tactics of this nature to find out who wrote a memo that proposes the kind of strategy an opposition party should be considering, and which doesn't advocate anything unethical or illegal - yet no one in the administration has yet found an effective tactic to find out who leaked the name of a covert CIA agent in an apparently fit of pique.

Posted by thorswitch at November 8, 2003 11:11 PM | TrackBack