The Other Memo Scandal
By William Rivers
Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Saturday 15 November 2003
The wires were buzzing last week over a memo leaked to Sean
Hannity at the Fox News Network. The memo came from the offices of Democratic
Senator Jay Rockefeller, who is serving as the ranking minority member on the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. This is the committee, chaired by
Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, that has been tasked to investigate
the dazzling lack of mass destruction weapons in Iraq.
The Rockefeller memo outlined a variety of strategies he believed
were needed to counteract the partisan defensiveness of Roberts and the majority
on the Committee. Roberts has declared that all investigations surrounding the
claims made about Iraq's weapons capabilities will be focused only on the CIA
and other intelligence agencies. Rockefeller is adamant that the investigation
should also include questions aimed at the White House, as well as Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld's special Defense Department organization called the Office
of Special Plans.
Roberts is not allowing this aspect of the investigation to take
place, stating that the probe is already "90 to 95" finished. No questions about
the dozens of public statements made by the Bush administration about Iraq's
weapons capabilities have been allowed. No questions about the Office of Special
Plans, which was created out of whole cloth by Rumsfeld for the specific purpose
of re-interpreting CIA and State Department intelligence reports, have been
allowed. No questions about repeated visits to CIA headquarters by Dick Cheney,
who went there to browbeat intelligence analysts for more aggressive
interpretations of the threat posed by Iraq, have been allowed. Roberts has
already made it clear that the CIA is to blame for the fact that there are no
weapons in Iraq, and is blocking Rockefeller and the Democrats from questioning
this dubious premise.
The memo prepared by Rockefeller stated that the Democrats need
to try to steer the inquiry towards these matters. Failing that, the memo said,
Democrats should try to launch a separate, independent investigation into these
matters because the Intelligence Committee chaired by Roberts was being used to
defend the White House from taint. "We have an important role to play," read the
memo, "in revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and
motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral
pre-emptive war."
When this memo fell into the hands of Sean Hannity and Fox, a
concerted attempt was made to turn the existence of the memo into a major
scandal. Hannity railed that this memo would cause several Senators to resign,
that it was proof the Democrats want to turn the investigation into nothing more
than a political witch hunt. Various members of the mainstream press jumped on
this rhetorical bandwagon. The Los Angeles Times, in one example, described the
revelation of the memo in terms to warm Hannity's heart: "The tone of the memo
could be embarrassing to Democrats and provides new ammunition for Republican
complaints that Democrats are seeking to use the inquiry for political
gain."
Roberts demanded that Rockefeller denounce the memo, but
Rockefeller refused to do so. Roberts used this as an excuse to cancel further
Intelligence Committee hearings on the matter, and froze completely the
investigation. For all practical purposes, the Congressional investigation into
the rhetoric surrounding our rush to war in Iraq is over.
Little attention was given to the fact that Rockefeller is
correct, that the White House and Rumsfeld deserve intense scrutiny for their
central role in pushing fictional reports of Iraqi weapons capabilities, and
that avoiding such questions amounts to nothing more than a purely partisan
whitewash. Instead, Rockefeller's memo and legitimate questions from the
Democrats were described as "just politics."
Another memo surfaced recently. The Wednesday 12 November edition
of the Boston Globe carried a story titled, "GOP Will Trumpet Preemption
Doctrine." The story centered around a memo recently prepared by Republican
National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie which was disbursed widely throughout
the party apparatus. In the memo, the newest GOP strategy was outlined, and
talking points were provided. The Globe article states:
The strategy will involve the dismissal of Democrats as the party of
"protests, pessimism and political hate speech," Ed Gillespie, Republican
National Committee chairman, wrote in a recent memo to party officials -- a move
designed to shift attention toward Bush's broader foreign policy objectives
rather than the accounts of bloodshed. Republicans hope to convince voters that
Democrats are too indecisive and faint-hearted -- and perhaps unpatriotic -- to
protect US interests, arguing that inaction during the Clinton years led to the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
This memo received very little media attention. A Google News
search using the words "Gillespie memo" yielded nine articles, many from
online-only publications. A search using the words "Rockefeller memo" yielded
207 articles, most of which are highly critical of the "political nature" of the
document.
The Rockefeller memo described a strategy to get to the bottom of
what happened in the run-up to the war, a strategy that is required because
Senator Roberts and his fellow Republicans are using their majority position to
protect the White House from embarrassing questions. The Gillespie memo accused
the Democrats of using "hate speech," blamed them for the attacks of September
11, and further outlined a political attack strategy that laments the
unpatriotic behavior of the Democrats while painting a joyous picture of what
is, in reality, a spectacularly failed Bush Administration policy in Iraq.
For the record, no mass destruction weapons of any kind have been
found in Iraq, despite months and months of dire promises from the Bush White
House and Don Rumsfeld that the stuff was there, and that it would be given to
Osama bin Laden for use on the American homeland. The CIA, scapegoated for
telling the truth about this for months, has reported that tens of thousands of
Iraqis are swarming into the ranks of those who attack and kill American
soldiers every day. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq, presides over
an utterly failed occupation plan that will soon include harsh crackdowns
against the Iraqi people, something that will surely fuel the already-seething
anger within that populace. A few days ago, American warplanes began bombing
Baghdad again.
The nature of these dueling memos exposes several deadly problems
that face this nation today. One problem is a White House that lied its populace
into an unnecessary war, and used September 11 deliberately to make the American
people afraid. Another problem is a partisan Congress, exemplified by Senator
Roberts, which shields the Bush administration from being called to account for
any of this. Another problem is a mainstream news media whose coverage of these
issues is wildly skewed in favor of the GOP.
The worst problem is the Democratic Party, that loyal opposition
which is all too quick to be embarrassed by revelations that they actually
oppose the Bush administration. Senator Evan Bayh, Democratic Senator from
Indiana and member of the now-defunct Intelligence Committee investigations,
stated publicly that Rockefeller should admit drafting the memo was a mistake.
"I think the tone of the memo was unfortunate," said Bayh.
How about this, Senator Bayh? "What is unfortunate is the fact
that members of this committee who are committed to finding the truth about the
development of the Bush administration's argument for war have to go outside the
normal process, because the normal process has been corrupted by partisan
Republicans who abuse their positions by blocking legitimate areas of inquiry.
We have pages and pages of statements by administration officials that have
turned out to be wildly false. There is plenty of evidence that the American
people have been lied to in a process that has gotten a lot of good people
killed. Why is the White House hiding? Why is Senator Roberts whitewashing this
investigation? We apologize for nothing, and demand that this inquiry be widened
to any and all areas that can bring us answers to these important
questions."
That would be nice to hear. Instead, we hear hangdog apologies
from shamefaced Democrats. We have partisan Republicans shutting down vital
inquiries for purely political reasons. We have a memo from the chairman of the
Republican party calling Democrats unpatriotic and blaming them for September
11, with no notice being given to this vicious political attack whatsoever. We
have a fraudulent war that grinds on and on, killing and maiming our soldiers
every day. Where is the real scandal here?
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William Rivers
Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times and
international best-selling author of three books - "War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press,
and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August
from Context Books.
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