Thursday, April 8, 2004
Matching truth, secret testimony
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
Senator and surgeon, Tennessee Republican Bill Frist badly botched his recent attempt to eviscerate Richard Clarke's integrity on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Frist made a disingenuous call for declassification of Clarke's past testimony to Congress. Frist insinuated that taking the wraps off that earlier congressional testimony and comparing that with what the former White House anti-terrorism chief told the independent 9/11 commission would show that "Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath."
Telling "two entirely different stories under oath" suggests, of course, perjury, a very serious crime. How convenient for Frist that he could make such a slanderous charge while under the "absolute" privilege of immunity from suit for defamation while on the Senate floor. How doubly convenient that he could make the charge based on secret documents.
So Frist must have found it doubly inconvenient that two of his Senate colleagues challenged Frist's memory, if not his ethics.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said, "To the best of my recollection, there is nothing inconsistent or contradictory in that testimony ..." Then, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he did not recall any contradictions in Clarke's testimony.
One can only hope that Frist is more judicious in wielding his scalpel than with the meat ax he took to Clarke's character. |
