Harry Reid sparks a dramatic Senate standoff

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - On a quiet Indian summer afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid dramatically wrenched the political agenda from the Republican majority Monday by forcing the Senate into secret session.

Reid’s gambit was designed to prod Republicans to agree to speed up “Phase II” of the investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, into how spy data was used or misused in the prelude to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Senate Democrats said Roberts and the Republicans were stalling on the investigation; Republicans disputed that.

The indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s aide Lewis Libby last week offered Democrats a chance to put Iraq intelligence back on the agenda. Reid did so in spectacular fashion.

“The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions,” Reid said before making the motion which sent the Senate into a closed-door session.

Democratic Whip Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told reporters, “tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the last election, Sen. Roberts said he could not initiate Phase II because of the last election, another year has passed, there is no deadline…. The American people are entitled to this information.”

Frist sees 'a political stunt'
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who sounded angrier than at any moment since he arrived in the Senate ten years ago, derided Reid’s move as “a political stunt.”

“Since I’ve been majority leader, I have to say, not with the previous Democratic leader or the current Democratic leader, have I ever been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution,” Frist said.

“For the next year and a half I can’t trust Sen. Reid,” he added.

After Reid sprang his surprise, the atmosphere in the Senate lobby was a cross between a building where a bomb threat had been called in and fog-bound airport waiting lounge where reporters, senators, and staffers milled around not sure what to do next.

Bewilderment, rather than raw anger, was the dominant mood.

Capitol police officers stood by the front door to the chamber to ensure that only senators and approved staffers went on to the floor. The galleries had been cleared.

As far as this reporter could tell from standing in the lobby, there were few senators on the floor.

The great debate on pre-war intelligence may have gotten underway — or perhaps it had not. No one knew, since it was a secret session and senators were deprived of their usual publicity.

In the short term it looked like Reid had outmaneuvered Frist. The standoff was ended when the two leaders agreed to have a group of three senators from each party look into how the Intelligence Committee investigation was proceeding, and to report back to the Senate leaders by Nov. 14.

Once that accord was reached, Roberts took to the floor to dismiss the Democrats’ maneuvering. “We’ve just agreed to do what we already agreed to do – to complete phase II of Intelligence Committee review of prewar intelligence.”

Frist speculated about the Democrats’ motives by saying President Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court “had set the Democrats back on their heels. Part of this may be a reaction just to that.”

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