Thursday, January 22, 2004
Judiciary Committee Republicans in a Pickle?
Congressional authorities began looking into what Democrats yesterday called an apparent computer theft of staff memos critical of President Bush's embattled judicial nominees. Democrats have blocked six judicial candidates.
Democratic Sens. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) and Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) wrote to William H. Pickle, the Senate's sergeant at arms and chief law enforcement officer responsible for the chamber's computer networks, asking for a probe into how confidential memos got into the hands of the news media.
Staff memos published last week by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times said Democrats on the Judiciary Committee conferred with outside groups in opposing the most conservative judicial nominees.
"To have one or two of the Democrats start to scream that somebody stole [the memos] . . . is how they try to get around the criticism," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), adding that the materials may have come from a "conscience-stricken" Democratic staff member.
Republican staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Boston Globe.
From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.
The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a Web site in November.
With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and the Secret Service, his office has interviewed about 120 people and seized more than half a dozen computers -- including four Judiciary servers and one server from the office of the Senate majority leader.
But the scope of both the intrusions and the likely disclosures is now known to have been far more extensive than the November incident, staff members and others familiar with the investigation say.
// posted by Erik @ 1/22/2004 03:50:00 PM
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