Democratic Leader Forces Closed Senate Session To Resurrect Intelligence Probe

WASHINGTON — Democrats plunged the Senate into chaos Tuesday with demands that the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee complete its lengthy investigation into whether the Bush White House manipulated pre-war intelligence to justify the war against Iraq.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., invoked a rarely used rule to force the Senate into closed session to discuss the investigation and the recent perjury indictment and resignation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a senior White House aide who was a key figure in making the case for war against Iraq.

Reid's actions caught the Republican leadership off guard, prompting an unusually angry outburst from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., before a fragile peace was restored with an agreement for a bipartisan task force to look into why the intelligence investigation has taken so long.

"The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," an emotional Frist complained immediately after Reid forced the Senate into closed session. "They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas." The Republican leader called the parliamentary maneuver a "stunt." He said he felt as if he had been "slapped in the face" by Reid.

But after the two hours the senators spent alone on the floor of the Senate discussing Reid's demands, a much calmer Frist scurried past reporters en route to his office with a quick declaration that "we worked things out and we'll stay right on course" on other legislative matters, including confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Still, it was a rare display of flaring tempers in a legislative body that has long boasted of its civility, even if the boast was not always backed by the facts.

"It was an amazing thing to watch," said Lew Gould, an emeritus professor or American history at the University of Texas. "The Senate is a very civil place except when it isn't. But this may have gone well beyond the intelligence matters. It may have been a warning from the Democrats that they are not going to roll over on anything, including Alito's nomination."

In fact, Reid's actions came a day after President Bush announced Alito's nomination without any consultation with the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will review Alito's nomination, said Reid's use of the Senate's rules to trigger a closed session seemed "an unnecessary step" to resolve a dispute in the intelligence committee. "It does not bode well for our ability to get things done in a bipartisan way," he added.

Reid remained extremely combative even after the Senate's closed session, charging anew that the Senate's investigation into the Bush administration's use of pre-war intelligence asserting the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has been "stymied, stopped, obstructions thrown up every step of the way" by the GOP leadership.

"That's the real slap in the face," he added, alluding to Frist's earlier comments. "The Republican Senate does no oversight. None. None. It's all part of a plan. They obstruct, they take orders from the White House, they do nothing without getting orders from the White House."

The White House declined to comment on the highly unusual events in the Senate Tuesday afternoon. Since 1929, the Senate has held only 53 secret sessions under Rule 21, the rule Reid invoked Tuesday. Six of those sessions were held during the impeachment trial of then President Clinton.

Reid's actions reflected the frustrations of Democrats over the lack of progress by the Senate Intelligence Committee in completing the investigation it began in June 2003 into whether the U.S. intelligence community blundered in its pre-war assessments of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's weaponry. The committee ultimately concluded that the pre-war intelligence was flawed.

In February 2004, however, the committee, at the urging of its Democratic vice chairman, Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, unanimously agreed to expand its investigation into the more controversial area of "whether the intelligence was exaggerated or misused" by Bush administration officials.

Although the committee agreed to undertake that task as well, its Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, insisted that the results of that portion of the inquiry be delayed until after the 2004 presidential election, one in which the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam became a heated issue.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who lost that election to Bush, charged Tuesday that the Republican leadership of the Senate "has been complicit in a political cover-up of the decisions that led to war." He added, "Nothing could be more serious or more deserving of full public disclosure."

Reid's actions were deliberately timed to occur on the eve of the anniversary of the 2004 presidential election, a year in which Democrats, including Kerry, have repeatedly requested that Roberts report back to the Senate on the status of his committee's investigation.

After the Senate's closed session ended, Roberts told his colleagues that the Senate Intelligence Committee had been prepared to wrap up its investigation next week, that the Democrats had been so informed and that they nevertheless had resorted to "this stunt" by Reid.

But Rockefeller disputed Roberts' claims, contending that the committee had held only one business meeting on the investigation, suggesting that next week's meetings were a hasty attempt to avoid further criticism and charging that "any line of questioning [in the probe] that has brought us too close to the White House has been thwarted" by the Senate Republican leadership.

"At some point the majority needs to understand that we are willing to bring the Senate to a halt until they will join us in conducting the kind of investigation this situation demands," Rockefeller said. "The American people still want to know – now more than ever – why the United States went to war, whether they were misled, and whether our intelligence was misused."

The temporary truce Tuesday came about as a result of an agreement whereby Frist and Reid each would appoint three senators to a task force to look into the delay in the intelligence investigation and report back to the full Senate on Nov. 14. Reid appointed Rockefeller and Democrat Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Dianne Feinstein of California. Frist did not immediately announce his appointments.

Reid's actions came just four days after Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser, was indicted in a 22-month investigation into the leak of the identity of a CIA official, Valerie Plame, married to a critic of the administration's Iraq policy, former diplomat Joseph Wilson.

According to a National Journal magazine article, Cheney and Libby withheld documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigators, including intelligence data used in drafting the United Nations speech by then Secretary of State Colin Powell explaining the urgency of ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

Reid said Libby's indictment "provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions."

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who brought the charges against Libby, said the indictments had nothing to do with the war in Iraq.