'Leaky Leahy' Revisited
NewsMax.com
Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001 11:28 a.m. EST
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., has once again taken the lead in opposition to Attorney General John Ashcroft, this time doing everything he can to throw a monkey wrench into the Ashcroft Justice Department's plans to fight the war on terrorism.
In a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Leahy said the Bush administration hadn't consulted his committee before announcing its plan, including an option to use secret military tribunals to try terrorists and other tactics - and complained that the announcement failed to "respect the checks and balances that make up our constitutional framework."
Of course, no one present had the nerve to mention one reason why some might be reluctant to consult Leahy about anything secret.
Allow us.
Could it have something to do with the Vermont Democrat's penchant for partisan grandstanding and publicity stunts?
On Sunday he virtually bragged that a suspicious letter addressed to him contained enough anthrax to kill "over 100,000 people." The next day, in a development covered only by NewsMax, Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge revealed that Leahy had no idea what he was talking about.
"I talked to the folks at the FBI today and they haven't opened it," Ridge told radioman Don Imus. "I'm not sure that we've got the scientific evidence that can corroborate that at this point."
But there are other, more troubling aspects to having Sen. Leahy sit in judgment of President Bush's domestic plans for the war on terrorism - such as Leahy's own tortured history when it comes to dealing with secret information about terrorists.
NewsMax first brought these details to the public's attention in January, back when Leahy was raking Ashcroft over the coals during the confirmation process. Now that he's determined to repeat the process in the midst of an ongoing national security emergency, it's worth reviewing a few developments that the media would rather not discuss.
In his home state of Vermont, more than a few of his constituents remember him best as "Leaky Leahy," the one-time vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had to resign the post in disgrace 14 years ago after acknowledging he divulged secret information to a reporter.
"Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, inadvertantly disclosed a top secret communications intercept during a [1985] television interview," reported the San Diego Union-Tribune in a 1987 editorial criticizing Congress' penchant for partisan leaks.
"The intercept, apparently of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's telephone conversations, made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered American citizens," the paper said, adding, "The reports cost the life of at least one Egyptian operative involved in the operation."
In July 1987, the Washington Times reported that Leahy leaked secret information about a 1986 covert operation planned by the Reagan administration to topple Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
"I thought [the operation] was probably the most ridiculous thing I had seen, and also the most irresponsible," the then-leading Intelligence Committee Democrat allegedly said of the secret plan.
Unidentified U.S. intelligence officials told the Times that Leahy, along with Republican panel chairman Sen. Dave Durenberger, communicated a written threat to expose the operation directly to then-CIA Director William Casey.
Weeks later, news of the secret plan turned up in the Washington Post, causing it to be aborted.
Leahy vehemently denied he talked to the press about any of the Reagan administration's covert operations, saying, "I never have, and I'm not going to start now."
But just a year later, as the Senate was preparing to hold hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal, the Vermont senator had to resign his Intelligence Committee post after he was caught leaking secret information to a reporter.
The ranking Intelligence Committee Democrat decided to let an NBC reporter comb through the committee's confidential draft report on the scandal. The network aired a report based on the inside information on Jan. 11, 1987.
After a six-month internal investigation, Leahy "voluntarily" stepped down from his committee post, releasing a statement calling his resignation "a suitable way to express ... anger and regret" over his lapse.
Leahy's anger, he said, was at himself, "for carelessly allowing the press person to examine the unclassified draft and to be alone with it."
The Vermont Democrat's Iran-Contra leak was considered to be one of the most serious breaches of secrecy in the committee's 10-year history.
After Leahy's resignation, the Senate Intelligence Committee decided to restrict access to committee documents to a security-enhanced meeting room.
Somehow the elite media consider none of the above relevant, even as Sen. Leahy once again assumes the role of guardian of America's national interests.
Needless to say, we think the nation needs to be reminded of the Vermont Democrat's tortured relationship with national security issues - before he damages America's war on terrorism even more than he did in the 1980s.
he Republicans have come up with a brilliant charge against Senator Depends - that is, Patrick "Leaky" Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. We call him that because he leaked top secret information in the 80s, and was thrown out of his position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is the kind of man we're dealing with here, and it helps explain why the administration doesn't want to give this guy a lot of details on who's in jail.
Senator Depends has defaulted on his constitutional duty to approve judicial nominees for political, partisan reasons. As far as he's concerned, non-activist judges have no place on the bench, so he's holding up Bush's confirmations so all cases are funneled to a few, overworked Clinton-appointed judges. We need these judges to fight the war on terrorism and to ensure swift trials, but the attitude of Leahy is that we'll be better off dealing with all these problems when they're in power.
Well, the GOP has had a stroke of brilliance worthy of the EIB Network. They're accusing Senator Depends of racial profiling in the judicial nomination process! This works, because Bush's first judge is Hispanic. The liberals played this card a million times with Clinton nominees, claiming disagreements on political beliefs were racism - because it's the liberals, of course, who see nothing but the color of someone's skin.
You have to love this, because, the simple fact of the matter is that you cannot accuse a liberal of being racist. You can't accuse them of being discriminatory in any way. They claim to own the book on being open-minded and tolerant when it comes to that stuff - actually, they don't have to claim it. They consider it a given. So when you accuse them of this, it flips them out!
Ted Kennedy had a cow when the GOP floated this notion - and he certainly has the physiological makeup to literally give birth to a cow. Meanwhile, Kennedy says he's " compromising" the stimulus package. He says. Right words. Where is the compromise? He says it all day long. It's like they say they're cooperating with the president, but you look at what they're doing, and you have to ask yourself how would it be any different if they weren't?ll these Democrats keep saying that they are cooperating with the president. It reminds me of disgraced former Speaker of the House Fort Worth-less Jim Wright, who was forced to resign over a money-grabbing book scheme. Wright once gave the Democrat response to one of Ronaldus Magnus' State of the Union speeches and said, "We - we - we only want to help you. We only want to help the president." That was a big lie and an even bigger mistake, sending old shifty eyed Jim Wright out there after Reagan, the Great Communicator.
Well, in the same vein, Daschle, Kennedy, Leahy and his crowd keep saying that they're cooperating with the president. That's all they want to do. The question is: What would they be doing if they weren't trying to cooperate with him? That's a good way of asking it, especially in the case of opposing these military tribunals, and in the case of opposing the effort to identify terrorists and their associates and get rid of them. It's a war they declared against us!
Let me illustrate this for you with specifics. If they were cooperating, which they say they are, you would have to say that they are moving forward on the stimulus package, right? Well, they're not. If they were cooperating, you'd say that they're moving forward on judicial nominees, right? Well, they're not. If they were cooperating with the president, as they say they are, then we wouldn't be putting off a vote on the energy bill just because they know Bush has the votes to pass it, right?
Instead, they're sitting on the stimulus plan, and they're delaying the confirmation hearings of the judicial nominees, and they're saying "to hell with the energy bill," while they say we're cooperating with the president. Hence the question: "What would they be doing if they were cooperating?" And the answer is, zilch, zero, nada. There's no difference. It's just a bunch of rhetoric, because they see Bush's approval numbers hovering at 90%.
