There was a flurry of activity on the Hill yesterday, most notably the breakdown in the House over the budget, but there was one vote that warrants attention and shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. The Senate voted overwhelmingly to push the Pentagon to inform lawmakers about “black sites,” the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe and elsewhere.
In an 82 to 9 vote yesterday, the Senate approved an amendment to the defense authorization bill by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to require Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to disclose to Congress the existence of clandestine terrorism detention facilities in foreign countries. The existence of such facilities was disclosed Nov. 2 by The Washington Post, and the Senate vote suggests Republicans are feeling heat from voters on the way Bush is conducting the war on terrorism.
It’s encouraging that the vote was a) clearly one-sided; and b) a slap in the administration’s face, but it raises another tangential question: who are the nine members of the Senate who don’t want to know about clandestine terrorism detention facilities in foreign countries?
The nine who voted against the measure are Sens. Burr (R-N.C.), Chambliss (R-Ga.), DeMint (R-S.C.), Isakson (R-Ga.), Kyl (R-Ariz.), Martinez (R-Fla.), Sessions (R-Ala.), Stevens (R-Alaska), Vitter (R-La.).
It’s hard to understand the position at any level, but I noticed that four of the nine are in their first year in the Senate (Burr, DeMine, Isakson, and Vitter), and two more were elected in 2002 (Chambliss and Martinez). Maybe these six haven’t been in the chamber long enough to take some institutional pride in the notion of administrative disclosure. Usually, senators want more information; these guys are effectively asking for less. (The flaw in this, of course, is that it doesn’t explain why Sens. Kyl, Sessions, and Stevens would make such a choice.)
Regardless, it’s heartening to see the administration suffer another defeat on the issue.