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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