It seemed a little odd at first. In November, the Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News’ Sean Hannity suddenly “obtained” an unsent memo from Democrats on the Senate Judciary Committee. The memos proved slightly embarrassing, documenting how and why Dem senators were working with progressive political organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and People for the American Way, to block some of Bush’s most conservative judicial nominees.
Dems couldn’t figure out how these right-wing outlets could have received the memo unless Republicans stole it. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was outraged by the very suggestion.
“To have one or two of the Democrats start to scream that somebody stole [the memo]… is how they try to get around the criticism,” Hatch said. He added that he believed the information may have been leaked to the conservative press by a “conscience-stricken” Democratic staff member.
Well, guess what. A GOP staffer did steal the memo and leaked it to the conservative press. This was not, however, an isolated incident or accident. As the Boston Globe reported today, the incident was part of an ongoing trend of Republican theft that has gone on for a year.
Republican staff members of the US 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 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 website last November.
With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and the US Secret Service, his office has interviewed about 120 people to date and seized more than half a dozen computers — including four Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives.
Like Atrios, I find it hard to even imagine the Republican apoplexy if Democratic staffers had pulled a stunt like this.