By WES ALLISON, Times Staff Writer
Published November 2, 2005
WASHINGTON - Memo to Democrats who may have been surprised by that blaze of fury in the Senate Tuesday: It's called seizing the political initiative.
Just past 2 p.m., during what could best be described as a laborious debate on the budget, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid took the floor, suddenly and without warning. He then demanded the Senate enter a closed session and discuss the state of a Senate investigation into the intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And to avoid any doubt about the timing of this maneuver, Reid made clear Democrats believe these questions have gained importance in light of the indictment last week of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff, in the CIA leak investigation.
"They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why," Reid, D-Nev., said.
His second in command, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., quickly seconded the motion, and under Senate Rule 21, that was that. No vote needed. The lights were dimmed, the staff and public were ordered from the chamber, the senators straggled to their seats from around the Capitol, and the Republicans began to sputter.
To the cameras stationed outside the chamber, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist abandoned his normal gentility and charged that the Senate had been "hijacked." Reid's action was a personal affront, a slap in the face, a show of disrespect of the worst kind, he said. Reid's unilateral action was virtually unprecedented, in a Senate that runs on comity and cooperation.
Did he mention it was a personal affront?
"It means from now on for the next year and a half, I can't trust Sen. Reid," Frist said, "and that's hard."
Plus, he and other Republicans asserted, the Senate Intelligence Committee was moving forward on an investigation of prewar intelligence - an investigation that has had Democratic cooperation.
But the Democrats who occasionally emerged from the session to stoke the fire by talking to reporters - like Sen. Charles Schumer of New York - were unswayed.
Let the Republicans gripe, they said.
In the march to war, when President Bush sought Congress' blessing for the March 2003 invasion, the administration insisted Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was seeking nuclear weapons.
But those assertions have been found mostly untrue.
The Democrats' charge that the Bush administration misled the American people to war gained a higher profile again last week, when Libby was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and lying to a federal grand jury in the investigation of who at the White House leaked the name of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent to Africa by the CIA to check out claims that Saddam Hussein had sought weapons-grade uranium there. Wilson determined the claims were false, and later went public with his findings.
"Name-calling isn't going to answer the fundamental question of why there hasn't been oversight of the use of this intelligence information," Schumer said after Frist's tirade. "And the fact that this administration hasn't even recognized there's been a mistake ... "
Senators haggled behind closed doors for a bit over two hours, then emerged with a deal: Frist and Reid each will appoint three senators to a task force to review the status of the Intelligence Committee's investigation into prewar intelligence.
A report is due in two weeks.
The Democrats, who are often overwhelmed by the Republicans' superior numbers and the bully pulpit of the presidency, declared a rare victory. Reid, Durbin and Schumer stalked together to a bank of microphones, still glowering in defiance.
"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," Reid said.
With at least 2,026 U.S. service members dead and a running cost of $2-billion a week, "the American people are entitled to know how we got there. That's what this is all about."
Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, was still apoplectic. Yes, the investigation had been stalled, but that was as much a fault of the Democrats as anyone. The sides had been sparring over the scope of the inquiry. But just last night, the Kansas Republican said, he and his committee's senior Democrat, John D. Rockefeller IV, had agreed to resume their work next week (though Rockefeller disputes an agreement was reached).
"We have agreed," Roberts, clearly irritated, said as the closed session opened, "to do what we already agreed to do."
