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‘Memogate’ report delayed as new witness steps forward
The Hill ^ | 3-1-04 | Alexander Bolton

Posted on 03/01/2004 6:00:17 PM PST by Indy Pendance

The Senate sergeant at arms’ final report on whether Republican aides hacked into Democratic Judiciary Committee files has been delayed as a former committee aide stepped forward with new information that seems to undercut Democratic claims that a criminal investigation was warranted.

The report was scheduled to be given to Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) yesterday.

Democrats on the judiciary panel have called for a criminal investigation of how Republican aides accessed internal Democratic documents and whether they then circulated them to the media, the Department of Justice and the White House.

But a former aide assigned to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Friday signed a sworn affadavit stating that between October 2001 and September 2002, Republican and Democratic staffers on the Judiciary Committee could easily access each other’s private documents on the committee’s shared computer server.

The aide’s testimony seems to corroborate the defense put forth by Manuel Miranda, who coordinated the GOP strategy on President Bush’s judicial nominees for Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) before being pressured to resign last month.

For weeks, Miranda has asserted that he and another GOP aide embroiled in the controversy over publicized Democratic memos could easily access the documents from the desktop computers and did not break or hack into Democratic files.

The aide, whose affidavit was drafted with the help of Miranda’s legal counsel, served as an unpaid intern with the Judiciary Committee for 11 months, ending in September 2002. During that time, thousands of internal Democratic Judiciary Committee documents were downloaded by GOP staff, and 14 of those documents were later leaked to journalists.

Prior to working for Grassley, the aide was a computer technician at the University of Maryland and helped manage computer security for the school’s technical support administration.

The aide, who spoke to The Hill on the condition of anonymity, said he has not yet spoken with investigators working for Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle.

“In little time, it became apparent to me that security protocols for the use of the Judiciary shared network were inconsistently applied and so far as I was aware, largely unsupervised,” the aide wrote in the affidavit.

“In little time, I became aware that by clicking onto the icon ‘My Network Places’ followed, as I recall, by the icon ‘Network Connections,’ one could, intentionally or unintentionally, enter a panel that contained folders belonging to Judiciary staff, from what I could tell, of both Republicans and Democrats. I made this discovery quite easily while searching for the shared network for constituent letter models.”

The aide went on to state that any member of the Judicary Committee could intentionally or unintentionally open folders containing files that were clearly not password protected.

The aide said that Republican and Democratic files on the Judiciary Committee’s shared drive could be accessed by staff on the committee unless those files were given a password. However, several committee aides had failed to take that step.

“It was sort of like leaving a memo face up on your desk and leaving for the weekend,” said the former Grassley aide.

The aide said he was introduced socially to one of Miranda’s lawyers and soon realized he had personal experience that could benefit Miranda’s defense.

The aide’s affidavit also stated that he informed other Grassley staffers and the U.S. Secret Service of the gaps in computer security but that neither took any actions to protect the vulnerable files.

“Today’s news will regrettably leave some senators with egg on their face,” Miranda said in a statement released yesterday.

Miranda said the affidavit corroborated his assertions that the Democratic documents were available to Republicans because of the negligence of Democratic technology staff, not GOP hacking.

Miranda also called on the Senate to make the entire report public. He learned in a meeting with investigators last week that Republican and Democratic lawmakers wanted to redact significant portions of the report, presumably to protect other staff members.

In recent days, the Sergeant at Arms’ investigation has focused on the Bush administration and whether the White House obtained the internal Democratic documents from GOP aides on the Hill to prepare for the defense of the president’s controversial nominees, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The probe’s latest turn seems to reflect concerns voiced by Senate Democrats over the administration’s level of involvement in what some Democrats now refer to as “Memogate.”

Also yesterday, four Democratic senators — Leahy, Edward Kennedy (Mass.), Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Charles Schumer (N.Y.) — released a letter sent Friday to Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding to know whether the Justice Department was aware that GOP staffers had accessed Democratic files or were privy to information contained in those files.

Democrats sent a similar letter Wednesday to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: collusionmemos; judiciarycommittee; manuelmiranda; memogate
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To: Indy Pendance
"The probe’s latest turn seems to reflect concerns voiced by Senate Democrats over the administration’s level of involvement in what some Democrats now refer to as 'Memogate.'"

Uh... no. *I* coined the term "memo-gate", and it refers to the *substance* of those democrat memos.
21 posted on 03/01/2004 7:01:36 PM PST by jmstein7 (Real Men Don't Need Chunks of Government Metal on Their Chests to be Heroes)
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To: Indy Pendance
Is this what they mean when they say they have an "intern problem"?

Miranda has rights and should be reinstated immediately.
22 posted on 03/01/2004 7:38:53 PM PST by GEC
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To: Indy Pendance
The house and senate could have been operating separate conputers for each party all along. Politics being what it is, why didn't they? I guess the "independant" member would get access to both systems, gratis the RATS, so he could scrounge for the RATS.
23 posted on 03/01/2004 8:09:32 PM PST by Waco
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To: Indy Pendance
INTREP - demoRATS caught in the trap
24 posted on 03/01/2004 9:33:05 PM PST by LiteKeeper
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To: anniegetyourgun
You got that right!

I loved the statement .. "contained folders belonging to Judiciary staff, from what I could tell, of both Republicans and Democrats". Which means that the DEMOCRATS were reading all the repub memos and they have been lying about it all this time, trying to get people to believe that the dems HAD NO ACCESS TO REPUB STUFF.

I hope it hits the fan tomorrow!!
25 posted on 03/01/2004 9:53:25 PM PST by CyberAnt (The 2004 Election is for the SOUL of AMERICA)
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To: Indy Pendance
“In little time, I became aware that by clicking onto the icon ‘My Network Places’ followed, as I recall, by the icon ‘Network Connections,’ one could, intentionally or unintentionally, enter a panel that contained folders belonging to Judiciary staff, from what I could tell, of both Republicans and Democrats. I made this discovery quite easily while searching for the shared network for constituent letter models."

I have an idea for a cute graphic that a Freeper could make out of this...

I am imagining a Microsoft style menu under the Network Places, and it has folder icons in the directory labelled:


26 posted on 03/01/2004 9:58:09 PM PST by WOSG (If we call Republicans the "Grand Old Party" lets call Democrats the Corrupt Radical Activist Party.)
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To: r9etb
That's the thing, r9etb. Dems DID have access to the Repubs memos. There is a Reuters quote I'm looking for now that I noted had Senator Daschle admitting that yes, indeedy, they had access to Republican materials.

A mere blip on the radar screen though, apparently. What do we hear about that statement? Nothing, zip, nada. Crickets.
27 posted on 03/01/2004 10:18:14 PM PST by ConservativeGadfly (FREE THE MIRANDA MEMOS!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: All
Link to the post with the actual statement from Manuel Miranda:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1088855/posts
28 posted on 03/01/2004 10:22:32 PM PST by ConservativeGadfly (FREE THE MIRANDA MEMOS!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: Indy Pendance
What is controversial is not the nominations of the President, it's the tactics of the President's opponents, and their smears of the nominees and conspiracy to capitalize on their own smears. All of which were documented in poorly protected files.
29 posted on 03/01/2004 10:27:24 PM PST by hocndoc (Choice is the # 1 killer in the US)
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To: diotima; Bob J; abner; Interesting Times
PING!
30 posted on 03/01/2004 10:32:53 PM PST by ConservativeGadfly (FREE THE MIRANDA MEMOS!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: WOSG
very good
31 posted on 03/02/2004 7:47:18 AM PST by prognostigaator
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To: ConservativeGadfly
Amazing stuff.
32 posted on 03/02/2004 7:48:52 AM PST by abner (FREE THE MIRANDA MEMOS! http://www.intelmemo.com or http://www.wintersoldier.com)
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To: atomicpossum
Another poster on this topic had a great point: he said why should the Democrats be trusted with national security if they can't even protect their own memos? Of course, it turns out the Republicans may not have been much better!
33 posted on 03/02/2004 7:51:44 AM PST by GraceCoolidge
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To: GraceCoolidge
True, but perhaps the Republicans had nothing to hide in the first place.
34 posted on 03/02/2004 8:05:57 AM PST by KenD
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To: Indy Pendance
Computers are almost NEVER secure.

I'll bet the Senate's firewalls were so porous that even
the intelligence agencies of Red China have no trouble
browsing whatever files they please.

And I'll bet many of those computers have also picked up
a few trojan horses that occasionally 'phone home' with
juicy information.

You can thank Bill Gates for creating an operating system
that is so prone to spying.
35 posted on 03/02/2004 9:59:22 AM PST by Future Useless Eater (Freedom_Loving_Engineer)
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