Terry Everett, November 10, 2003

Last week, it was revealed that Democrat members of the previously bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee are secretly scheming to turn the ongoing war on terror into a political maneuver to attack the Bush Administration. A leaked memo from the Intelligence Committee's minority staff, surely authorized by Ranking Member Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, made clear their intention to put politics over the nation's security.

"We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time, but we can do so only once. The best time to do so will probably be next year." So says the now infamous secret memo from the Democrat staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Clearly, the message it conveys is that these members have only politics in mind while their colleagues on the Intelligence Committee and in Congress are faced with the sobering responsibility of helping win the war on terror.

News of the memo rapidly spread across Washington last week prompting swift rebuke and condemnation from lawmakers of both political parties. Senator Zell Miller, D-GA, was blunt: "If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin." "Heads should roll." House Speaker Dennis Hastert also reacted strongly: "It used to be that when our nation was engaged in war, politics stopped at the water's edge. But it seems that Democratic leaders now want to play politics with our intelligence agencies, as those agencies help fight the war on terror."

Interestingly, Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD, seemed more concerned in how the memo from his own party came to be leaked to the media than in its brazen political affront on those trying to prosecute the war against terrorism.

While the memo was blamed on a staff member, it is easy to see that it was prepared at the request of someone higher up the food chain. If the preparing of the memo and the ideas behind it are appalling, the timing is equally harmful. The White House and State Department had just days before turned over to the Senate Intelligence Committee thousands of pages of highly classified pre-Iraq invasion intelligence. The same staff member who prepared the memo, or, senator who ordered the memo prepared, now has access to this classified material. Since the memo clearly outlines plans to use the highly classified information concerning our country's security for political purposes, it is difficult for me to see how the Administration could possibly trust the committee with additional classified material.

And this is not the first time such an attempt to use classified material for personal political gain has taken place. Senator Bob Graham, D-Fl., a former member of the committee, often made references to joint House-Senate Intelligence classified hearings to enhance his ill-fated presidential pursuit. I attended many of these same hearings and certainly disagree with the Senator's interpretation of the testimony.

Furthermore, while it didn't receive national attention, a document was leaked to The Washington Post from the House Intelligence Committee several weeks ago. The Democrat leader of that committee took great pains to claim that no one had "given" a copy of the document to any reporter. The question as to if parts of the document were "read" to the Post's liberal reporter was never answered.

It is bad enough that liberals are blocking passage of conservative initiatives to bring badly-needed energy and Medicare legislation to the American people, as well as holding up President Bush judicial appointments. Now they appear willing to compromise our national intelligence operations for political advantage.

Congressman Terry Everett, a Republican, represents Alabama's Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.