Posted on 03/19/2004 1:11:22 PM PST by gcruse
There hasn't been much in the mainstream press about a Democrat-written document, "The Treason Memo," aptly named because it appears that Democrats seem willing to sacrifice both bipartisanship and national security in their attempt to use the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) as a political weapon.
This memo is one of the unsolved political mysteries of 2003. Who drew up the plan for Democrats to abuse SSCI as a stealth weapon to undermine and discredit President George W. Bush and the U.S. war effort in Iraq hasn't been released, other than Vice Chairman of the committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), defending his staff and the outrageous document itself, calling it a "private memo that nobody saw expect me and the staff people that wrote it for me."
Senator Rockefeller has rebuffed calls from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) who, after reading the memo, ordered an end to cooperation with Democrats on the Iraq investigation. He also wants the responsible staffers to be exposed.
Senator Zell Miller (D-Ga.) after saying that the information that the memo deals with should never be distorted, compromised or politicized in any shape, form or fashion.
He went further, saying that the process in Washington is so often politicized and polarized that it can't even be put aside when we're at war.
He stated that if what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin and the ones responsible, be they staff or elected or both, should be dealt with quickly and severely, sending a message to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused.
The Republican chairman of the committee, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) sees a danger to the nation through such politics. "If we give in to the temptation to exploit our good offices for political gain, we cannot expect our intelligence professionals to entrust us with our nation's most sensitive information. Also, we could expect that foreign intelligence services will stop cooperating with our intelligence agencies the first time they see their secrets appear in our media."
Former Senator Robert Kerry (D-Neb.) wrote in the New York Post that he and other Democrats see through this political warfare and all are troubled by it. He feels keeping the SSCI and its House counterpart non-partisan "is vital for the nation's security, because much of what is done to collect, process and disseminate intelligence needed by civilian and military leaders is done under conditions of rigorously regulated secrecy."
Kerry is a former vice chairman of the SSCI committee.
The reason not much has been leaked about this memo is that the Democrats are angry it has seen the light of day. They don't want to talk about the memo contents; they only want to accuse someone of stealing the memo from a committee member's computer.
Let's just not discuss its contents, is their position.
The memo's entire contents are fully known and basically, it's dirty politics. The SSCI has always been strictly a bipartisan committee, and this plot has poisoned the working atmosphere of this crucial legislative panel in a time of war.
It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Pat Roberts, into approving probes that, in actuality, would just be fishing expeditions inside the State Department and Pentagon, and its authors hoped to dig up and hype "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials."
The committee would then release information during the course of the "investigation," with Democrats providing their "additional views" that would, among other things, castigate the Republicans for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry. They would "manufacture and denounce" a cover-up where none existed.
They intended to drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo.
Fox News made the plan public on Nov. 6, 2003 and said the Democratic Committee members would launch the plan "when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority." This plan wrecked more than two-and -one-half-decades of unique bi-partisanship on the SSCI, whose job is to oversee the CIA and the rest of the nation's intelligence services.
This all started when the Democrats demanded that the committee staff be split, instead of reporting directly to the chairman, it now is bifurcated, with Republicans reporting to the GOP chairman and Democrats working for the Democratic vice chairman.
The Republicans "caved in" (as usual) and Democratic staff director Christopher Mellon built his own autonomous apparatus. He set about to discredit some of the nation's most important architects of the war on terrorism, being namely Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith and John Bolton.
These three are strong supporters of President Bush's advocacy of "regime change" for rogue states and are considered to be among the most faithful advocates in the administration of the president's policy positions.
Mellon has worked at the Department of Defense (DOD) and civilians there have complained about Mellon, as he tried to keep conservatives out of key Pentagon posts and to undermine (tough) anti-terrorism policies after 9/11. He has worked for the late liberal John Chafee (R-R.I.) and for George Tenet, a Democrat and CIA chief.
He was a former SSCI staffer under Clinton (you might know) when he went to work as a deputy to the assistant secretary of defense for C3I (Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence). There he held a civilian rank equivalent to a three-star general.
This gives a pretty good idea of the possible person behind this plan to highly abuse the SSCI committee.
Asked whether Mellon wrote the plan, Rockfeller's spokeswoman, Windy Morigi, did not attempt to exonerate the staff director, saying, "the Senator has not stated who the author of that memo is and I don't think he intends to."
As it has been said before, Democrats will apparently stop at nothing to smear, cause confusion and create what appears to be false information out of nothing, in order to gain publicity in this presidential race.
Even revealing intelligence is part of their plan. No wonder those in the know feel this "dirty trick" is so close to treason.
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