[Mb-civic] GOP Angered by Closed Senate Session - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

GOP Angered by Closed Senate Session
Meeting Reopened After Two Hours

By Charles Babington and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 2, 2005; Page A01

Democrats forced the Senate into a rare closed-door session yesterday, 
infuriating Republicans but extracting from them a promise to speed up 
an inquiry into the Bush administration's handling of intelligence about 
Iraq's weapons in the run-up to the war.

With no warning in the mid-afternoon, the Senate's top Democrat invoked 
the little-used Rule 21, which forced aides to turn off the chamber's 
cameras and close its massive doors after evicting all visitors, 
reporters and most staffers. Plans to bring in electronic-bug-sniffing 
dogs were dropped when it became clear that senators would trade barbs 
but discuss no classified information.

Republicans condemned the Democrats' maneuver, which marked the first 
time in more than 25 years that one party had insisted on a closed 
session without consulting the other party. But within two hours, 
Republicans appointed a bipartisan panel to report on the progress of a 
Senate intelligence committee report on prewar intelligence, which 
Democrats say has been delayed for nearly a year.

"Finally, after months and months and months of begging, cajoling, 
writing letters, we're finally going to be able to have phase two of the 
investigation regarding how the intelligence was used to lead us into 
the intractable war in Iraq," Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) 
told reporters, claiming a rare victory for Democrats in the 
GOP-controlled Congress.

Beneath the political pyrotechnics was an issue that has infuriated 
liberals but flummoxed many of the Democratic lawmakers who voted three 
years ago to approve the war: allegations that administration officials 
exaggerated Iraq's weapons capabilities and terrorism ties and then 
resisted inquiries into the intelligence failures. Friday's indictment 
of top White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on perjury and 
obstruction charges gave Democrats a new opening to demand that more 
light be shed on these issues, including administration efforts to 
discredit a key critic of the prewar claims of Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction.

Democrats were dismayed that President Bush made no apologies after the 
indictment and that his naming of a new Supreme Court nominee Monday 
knocked the Libby story off many front pages. As he stood on the Senate 
floor to demand the closed session -- a motion not subject to a vote 
under the rule -- Reid said Libby's grand jury indictment "asserts this 
administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security 
and are morally repugnant."

The usually unflappable majority leader, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), was 
searching for words to express his outrage to reporters a few minutes 
later. The Senate "has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," he 
said. "They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no 
ideas." Never before had he been "slapped in the face with such an 
affront," he said, adding: "For the next year and a half, I can't trust 
Senator Reid."

Frist seemed much calmer when the closed session ended. He agreed to a 
six-senator bipartisan task force that will report by Nov. 14 on "the 
intelligence committee's progress of the phase two review of the prewar 
intelligence and its schedule for completion."

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said the report was nearing 
completion anyway, but Democrats disputed that. Committee Vice Chairman 
John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) began inquiring about the evidence 
against Iraq one week before U.S. troops invaded in March 2003. His 
interest was sparked by revelations that the Bush administration gave 
forged documents to U.N. weapons inspectors to support allegations that 
Iraq had sought to buy a key ingredient for nuclear weapons from the 
West African nation of Niger.

Roberts resisted a full investigation for three months. But in June 
2003, when it became increasingly apparent that no weapons of mass 
destruction were being found in Iraq, the committee agreed to look into 
the intelligence cited in the administration's case for war. In February 
2004, senators agreed to a second phase that would investigate the Bush 
administration's use of intelligence and examine public statements made 
by key policymakers about the threat posed by Iraq.

In July 2004, the committee issued the first phase of its bipartisan 
report, which found the U.S. intelligence community had assembled a 
deeply flawed and exaggerated assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons 
capabilities. The second phase was to focus on the administration's 
deliberations over the intelligence or how it was used. Sources familiar 
with the committee's work said there has been little examination of 
these topics to date.

The Defense Department's Office of Special Plans stopped cooperating 
with the Senate panel in July of this year. Roberts said key officials 
hired lawyers and stopped talking when Rockefeller suggested laws may 
have been broken. But Democrats dismissed that as an excuse.

Authority to hold secret Senate sessions is provided in Article 1, 
Section 5 of the Constitution, and the Continental Congress met behind 
closed doors. But the practice has ebbed in recent years. The most 
recent closed Senate session was in February 1999 to deliberate 
President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, according to the 
Congressional Research Service, and that was done through a bipartisan 
agreement.

Reid said he was forced to seek the closed session to spur action on the 
investigation. "The only way we've been able to get their attention is 
to spend 3 1/2 hours in a closed session," he said. "It's a slap in the 
face to the American people that this investigation has been stymied."

Rockefeller said Democratic requests for information related to the 
investigation are routinely denied or ignored, and he suggested that the 
Senate Republican leadership was under orders from the Bush 
administration not to cooperate.

"Any time the intelligence committee pursued a line of inquiry that 
brought us close to the role of the White House in all of this in the 
use of intelligence prior to the war, our efforts have been thwarted 
time and time again," Rockefeller said. "The very independence of the 
United States Congress as a separate and coequal branch of the 
government has been called into question."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101037.html?referrer=email
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