Democrats Subvert War Intelligence (Remember "The Treason Memo"?)

Insight On The News ^ | J. Michael Waller | Dec. 22, 2003

[Sam Hill]

Investigative Report
Democrats Subvert War Intelligence

Posted Dec. 22, 2003

By J. Michael Waller

Mellon, above, is using his position as Democrat staff chief on the Senate intelligence panel to undermine the leadership of Rumsfeld, Feith and Bolton.

It's one of the unsolved political mysteries of 2003: Exactly who drew up the plan for Democrats to abuse the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) as a stealth weapon to undermine and discredit President George W. Bush and the U.S. war effort in Iraq?

The plot, authored by aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the committee, has poisoned the working atmosphere of a crucial legislative panel in a time of war, Senate sources say. It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, into approving probes that in actuality would be fishing expeditions inside the State Department and Pentagon. The authors hoped to dig up and hype "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials." According to a staff memo, the committee then would release the information during the course of the "investigation," with Democrats providing their "additional views" that would, "among other things, castigate the majority [Republicans] for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry."

In other words, they would manufacture and denounce a cover-up where none existed. The Democrats then would drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo.

The plan, made public by Fox News on Nov. 6, went like this: "Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation at any time - but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be [in 2004]."

Even before the memo was written, Rockefeller's staff already was off on its own, well outside the traditional bipartisan channels. According to the memo, the "FBI Niger investigation" of reports that Saddam Hussein's regime had tried to buy uranium from West Africa "was done solely at the request of the vice chairman."

The plan wrecked more than two-and-a-half decades of unique bipartisanship on the SSCI, whose job is to oversee the CIA and the rest of the nation's intelligence services. In fact the SSCI, according to the Wall Street Journal after the revelation, was "one of the last redoubts of peaceful coexistence in Congress." But that bipartisanship ended last year when Democrats demanded that the committee staff be split. Instead of reporting directly to the chairman, it now was bifurcated, with Republicans answering to the GOP chairman and Democrats working for the Democratic vice chairman. Roberts didn't like the change, warning at the time that the Democrats wanted to divide the committee into "partisan camps." But the Republicans caved and the staff director of the Democrats, Christopher Mellon, built his own autonomous apparatus.

Insight has pieced together how the Democrats' fishing expedition worked. According to insiders, Mellon, a former Clinton administration official, is part of a network of liberal operatives within the Pentagon and CIA who reportedly are seeking to discredit and politically disable some of the nation's most important architects of the war on terrorism and their efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into terrorist hands. Mellon already was a SSCI staffer when the Clinton administration tapped him to work as a deputy to the assistant secretary of defense for C3I (command, control, communications and intelligence), where he was responsible for security and information operations. In the C3I office, where he held a civilian rank equivalent to a three-star general, Mellon worked on intelligence-policy issues, or in the words of a former colleague, Cheryl J. Roby, "things like personnel, training and recruiting for intelligence." The office is under the purview of the undersecretary of defense for policy, a post now held by conservative Douglas J. Feith.

Clinton-era personnel reforms allowed officials of his administration to burrow into vital Pentagon posts as careerists, administration officials say, where they have been maneuvering to keep Bush loyalists out of key positions and/or undermine their authority while pushing their own political agendas that run contrary to those of the president. This network, Insight has discovered, extends to the Pentagon's outer reaches such as the National Defense University and far-flung academic and influential policy think tanks, or "CINC tanks," serving the commanders ("CINCs") of the U.S. military theaters around the world [see "Clinton Undead Haunting Pentagon," June 17, 2002].

Senate and Department of Defense (DoD) colleagues say Mellon has a beef against Feith and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, under whom he served briefly until the new Bush administration made its full transition into office. Intelligence sources say he tried to keep conservatives out of key Pentagon posts and to undermine tough antiterrorism policies after 9/11. Back at the SSCI, Mellon's chief targets for criticism have been Feith and his like-minded State Department colleague, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who holds the nonproliferation portfolio. Both Feith and Bolton 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 his personal policy positions.

DoD civilians loyal to the president have complained for more than two years about Mellon, both while he was at the Pentagon and at his new perch in the Senate. Upon his return to the SSCI, bipartisan staff cooperation broke down almost completely. "The parties aren't talking to one another," according to a committee source. After the memo became public, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) ordered an end to cooperation with the Democrats on the Iraq investigations.

Mellon's public record doesn't indicate any hard-core partisan leanings, showing instead a bipartisanship as a sometime floater on the liberal Republican side. Federal Election Commission records show he donated $1,000 to the George H.W. Bush re-election campaign in 1993 and $1,000 to the Republican National Committee in 1992. In his first tour on the Senate intelligence committee, he served as an appointee of the late liberal Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) when George Tenet, a Democrat who now is director of the CIA, was committee staff director. Mellon then took the C3I post at the Pentagon when William Cohen, the liberal Republican senator from Maine, became secretary of defense for Clinton.

So what might have motivated Mellon to become involved in the memo scandal to politicize the intelligence committee against the current president? Mellon did not return Insight calls for comment.

Asked whether Mellon wrote the plan, Rockefeller's spokeswoman Wendy Morigi did not attempt to exonerate the staff director. "The senator has not stated who the author of that memo is," Morigi said, "and I don't think he intends to." She spoke with Rockefeller and then called Insight again to say Sen. Rockefeller would not comment.

In any case Rockefeller, a strong liberal who had enjoyed a reputation of bipartisanship on committee matters, surprised colleagues when he allowed the Democrats on the committee staff

to use the supersecret body as a political weapon. Sources with firsthand knowledge say that Rockefeller broke the committee's bipartisan custom of requesting information from government agencies over the signatures of the chairman, representing the majority party, and the vice chairman, representing the minority.

"Rockefeller sent out his own request for information - the first time a request to the administration for information was not signed by both the chairman and vice chairman of the committee," according to a source involved with the requests. The source says the requests were worded in ways designed to elicit specific answers of a sensitive nature. When the senior Pentagon and State Department officials answered the requests, Democrats on the intelligence committee "leaked it, though some of it was top secret," the source said without citing examples.

When the targeted officials caught on to the game, Senate Democrats led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), a scrappy SSCI member, denounced them for failure to provide Democrat senators with information about the war. They publicly acted outraged at what they alleged was a certain deception and demanded even more information, telling the press that top Bush officials were forcing the CIA and other intelligence agencies to skew intelligence analysis to fit a preconceived conclusion.

Some Democrats see through this political warfare and are troubled by it. Keeping the SSCI and its House counterpart nonpartisan, wrote former senator Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.) in the New York Post in the midst of the memo controversy, "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." Kerrey is a former vice chairman of the committee.

"Of all the committees, this is the one single committee that should unquestionably be above partisan politics," said an angry Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.). "The information it deals with should never, never be distorted, compromised or politicized in any shape, form or fashion. For it involves the lives of our soldiers and our citizens. Its actions should always be above reproach; its words never politicized."

Rockefeller defended his staff and the outrageous document itself, calling it a "private memo that nobody saw except me and the staff people that wrote it for me." He rebuffed calls from Frist, Miller and others that the staffers responsible be exposed, let alone fired, and instead accused Republicans of stealing the document from his aides' computers. "Mr. Rockefeller refuses to denounce the memo, which he says was unauthorized and written by staffers. If that's the case, at the very least some heads ought to roll," declared the Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Firing Mellon as the staff director for the culprits, the Journal said, would be "a good place to start."

Miller went even further: "I have often said that the process in Washington is so politicized and polarized that it can't even be put aside when we're at war. Never has that been proved more true than the highly partisan and perhaps treasonous memo prepared for the Democrats on the intelligence committee."

The Georgia Democrat measured his words, continuing: "If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible - be they staff or elected or both - should be dealt with quickly and severely, sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused."

Chairman Roberts 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. You can be sure that foreign intelligence services will stop cooperating with our intelligence agencies the first time they see their secrets appear in our media."

Kerrey, once a shining star among Senate Democrats, wrote, "The production of a memo by an employee of a Democratic member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is an example of the destructive side of partisan politics. That it probably emerged as a consequence of an increasingly partisan environment in Washington and may have been provoked by equally destructive Republican acts is neither a comfort nor a defensible rationalization."

Senate Majority Leader Frist called for the culprits to come forward and apologize, angrily announcing he would suspend cooperation on the Iraq investigation. That wasn't enough for Sen. Miller, who demanded, "Heads should roll!"

J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight magazine.

For more, read text of the Democrats' "treason" memo.

[Political Junkie Too]

I wonder if the Democrats simply became complacent about believing that Republicans would never stoop to their own tactics. They convinced themselves that they could undermine national security, leak top secrets, and steal national archives with impunity, while simultaneously accusing Republicans of outing spies and lying about intelligence.

-PJ

[CyberAnt]

"In other words, they would manufacture and denounce a cover-up where none existed. The Democrats then would drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo."

Is it just me .. or does the above paragraph resemble the Wilson/Niger mess ..?? The dems didn't "manufacture ... a coverup" but they did manufacture a "scandal" ..??

[CyberAnt]

But .. Roberts could have stopped the committee split - but he caved to the dems' demands - as uaual. No wonder they're running rings about him.

[Smartass]

That's the article Phil. I had the idea, and gist, but, I didn't get the names right. Let's hope it doesn't fall through the bureaucratic cracks. The DemOrats need a major broadside hit. Three crud es with one rock would be just fine.

[CyberAnt]

Wilson lied from the beginning. SSCI has a memo from Wilson's wife suggesting her husband for the trip - through CIA channels.

And .. I don't believe Valerie originated the idea either .. I believe it was Hillary's plan.

[Smartass]

Phils post:

Saturday, July 23, 2005 1:11 p.m. EDT Report:
Justice Department Probing Durbin, Rockefeller CIA Leak.

The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into whether Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Jay Rockefeller and Ron Wyden leaked details about a secret "black ops" CIA satellite program last December in a move that may have seriously compromised national security, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin said on Saturday.

"The CIA made a request to the Justice Department to investigate and possibly bring criminal charges against these three [senators]," Babbin told WABC Radio host Monica Crowley. "My information is that investigation is ongoing."

[nopardons]

Thanks, I saw it. :-)

[CyberAnt]

And .. Hillary's been trying to imeach Bush since he took office .. payback for the repubs impeaching her scum of a husband.

[Liberty Valance]

Great post.

[Smartass]

 Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Saturday, July 23, 2005 1:11 p.m. EDT

Report: Justice Department Probing Durbin, Rockefeller CIA Leak

The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into whether Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Jay Rockefeller and Ron Wyden leaked details about a secret "black ops" CIA satellite program last December in a move that may have seriously compromised national security, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin said on Saturday.

"The CIA made a request to the Justice Department to investigate and possibly bring criminal charges against these three [senators]," Babbin told WABC Radio host Monica Crowley. "My information is that investigation is ongoing." Rockefeller is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Durbin is the No. 2-ranking Democrat in the Senate.

Media reports on the satellite leak last December indicated that the Bush administration was concerned about public comments by Durbin, Rockefeller and Wyden and that the CIA had requested a Justice Department probe.

"The formal request for a leaks investigation would target people who described sensitive details about a new generation of spy satellites to The Washington Post, which published a page-one story about the espionage program Saturday [Dec. 11, 2004]," a Justice Department official told The Associated Press at the time.

But the same official told the AP that Justice "has not decided whether to investigate."

Former Deputy Undersecretary Babbin's comments on Saturday were the first indication that such a probe was actually launched and is ongoing.

"The fact of the matter is that [Durbin, Rockefeller and Wyden] divulged something that was above and beyond top secret and frankly, they probably blew the strategy and the hundreds of millions of dollars that were being spent to pursue it," Babbin told Crowley.

"The acknowledgement of [the "black ops" program's] existence is not even proper and the acknowledgement of them and the details of them can very well damage national security," Babbin added.

Asked if he thought the three Senate Democrats should have their security clearances revoked for the duration of the leak probe, the former Defense Department official said: "Absolutely and forthwith. I mean, they should have been revoked at the time of the leak."

"There's really not much doubt about the leak having occurred," Babbin told Crowley. "It's in the press records, it's in the Congressional record. We know what they did."

"The only question," he explained, "is how much damage was done by the leak. And that's part of the criminal investigation right now - to do a damage assessment, to figure out how much this is going to cost us strategically and militarily."

Editor's note:
Become a member of NewsMax’s "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave" Club – get the T-shirt – Click Here Now
New Book Exposes Jimmy Carter – Click Here Now!
CIA Translation of Secret Chinese Military Manual – Details Here

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bush Administration
DNC

108-108-108-108-108-104

[nopardons]

Many thanks! :-)

I hope that these three traitors are FROG MARCHED out in public and I wish we still shot traitors in a public square. They deserve to be shot and I'd love to see it!

[CyberAnt]

Is Mellon the scum that's doing all the leaking of stuff. He seems to be really connected within the DOD - he needs to be FIRED!!

[Mo1]

I remember the memo and how it made Roberts look like a complete fool

However, I don't remember this part

According to the memo, the "FBI Niger investigation" of reports that Saddam Hussein's regime had tried to buy uranium from West Africa "was done solely at the request of the vice chairman."

Here are the bookmarks that I have on this

Democrats subvert war intelligence
Has politicization of Senate committee threatened national security? - December 23, 2003

.

They Want to Talk About Memos? FINE! Let's Talk About Memos! (Judicial and SSCI Memo-Gate)

.

Text of the Democrat Memo

.

Sean Hannity has a scoop on dem party corruption (Vanity)

.

Miller on Politicized Intelligence Memo: ‘Heads Should Roll’ (MUST READ)

.

Keyword search on FR

.

FNC - Raw Data: Dem Memo on Iraq Intel
Thursday, November 06, 2003

.

Clinton Appointee Linked to Bombshell Anti-Bush Intel Memo

.

[CyberAnt]

"They want the US to lose so that they may win back power."


You are so correct! These people don't care if the country is ruined .. they don't care if our military are put in danger .. they just want their power. It's more than disgusting .. it's SICK!

[nopardons]

bttt

[CyberAnt]

Well .. somebody's doing a lot of leaking of stuff to the democrats .. because Reid is telling of having access to raw FBI files .. which by law he is not entitled to see.

So .. who's providing them with the intel .. Mellon .. and people Mellon knows within the depts. ..??

[CyberAnt]

"On another issue, the U.S. Dept. of Justice is investigating Rockefeller, Wedyn, and one other senator for leaking intelligence."


Yes, I heard that too. Isn't it having to do with the special aircraft the CIA is using to transport terrorists - and their report even revealed something about where the base is and some of the routes they take.

None of that should have ever been made public.

[CyberAnt]

I guess that article explains why the dems have been in a continuous bellow about yanking Rove's security clearance.

[Howlin]

I forgot to ping you to this.

[danamco]

"I do not believe that this woman originated the idea. The liberals on this committee have not taken Joe Wilson to the woodshed for this supposed lie, that is all I need to know that on this point, Joe Wilson is probably telling the truth."


---Here's the key phrase in the article!??! NOT as "Admiral" Joseph Wilson claims, he was sent to Niger on the request of Dick Cheney:...

"For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman;"

---Also in the Plumegate, it was the "Admiral" himself who first of all blew the cover of his wife. Just see the last one or two lines on his own personal web site as follow:.....

Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV

Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. In that capacity he was responsible for the coordination of U.S. policy to the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, He was one of the principal architecs of President Clinton's historic trip to Africa in March 1998.

Ambassador Wilson was the Political Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces, Europe, 1995-1997. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic and to the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe from 1992 to 1995. From 1998 to 1991, Ambassador Wilson served in Baghdad, Iraq as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy. During ''Desert Shield'' he was the acting Ambassador and was responsible for the negotiations that resulted in the release of several hundred American hostages. He was the last official American to meet with Saddam Hussein before the launching of ''Desert Storm.''

Ambassador Wilson was a member of the U.S. Diplomatic Service from 1976 until 1998. His early assignments included Niamey, Niger, 1976-1978; Lome, Togo, 1978-79; the State Department Brueau of African Affairs, 1979-1981; and Pretoria, South Africa, 1981-1982.

In 1982, he was appointed Deputy Chief of Mission in Bujumbura, Burundi. In 1985-1986, he served in the offices of Senator Albert Gore and the House Majority Whip, Representative Thomas Foley, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Brazzaville, Congo, 1986-88, prior to his assignment to Baghdad.

Ambassador Wilson was raised in California and graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1972. He is a graduate of the Senior Seminar (1972), the most advanced International Affairs training offered by the U.S. Government. He speaks fluent French.

Ambassador Wilson holds the Department of Distinguished Service Award, the Department of State Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards, the University of California, Santa Barbara Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the American Foreign Service Association William R. Rivkin Award. Additionally, he has been decorated as a Commander in the Order of the Equatorial Star by the Government of Gabon and as an Admiral in the El Paso Navy by the El Paso County Commissioners.

He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has two sons and two daughters.