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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Smashmouth Republican tactics try to change the subject on the eve of the unveiling of the 9/11 commission's report.
Jul 22, 2004 | After having lunch with Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie in the Capitol on Tuesday, Senate Republicans dispatched three of their most partisan warriors on a mission. The field of battle was the "stakeout" area off the Senate floor where print and television reporters gather. The target was former President Clinton's national security advisor, Sandy Berger, who says he absent-mindedly took copies of classified documents from the National Archives last fall as he prepared to testify before the 9/11 commission probing the government's response to the 2001 terrorist attacks.
In comments that were immediately amplified by RNC press releases and conservative columnists, radio talk show hosts and Fox News, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., accused Berger of sneaking the documents out in his underwear. (Berger admits to putting some of his handwritten notes in his pants and suit jacket pockets.) Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., suggested -- without offering any evidence other than his own speculation -- that Berger had stolen information about the Clinton administration's response to a thwarted 1999 al-Qaida attack in order to help Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry score political points against President Bush on port security.
And Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., the third-ranking member of the Senate Republican leadership, said the significance of the Berger matter was that "very serious charges are being made against the president of the United States. What we're finding as we look into those charges [is] that more and more of them are the product of a fraudulent beginning."
Never mind that Santorum appeared to be conflating the Republican talking points on Berger with those against Joseph Wilson IV, the former ambassador to Gabon who claimed last year that Bush had distorted intelligence on Iraq's attempts to buy uranium for nuclear weapons. And never mind that Al Felsenberg, a spokesman for the 9/11 commission, said in an e-mailed response to Salon that Berger's actions had "in no way compromised the thoroughness of our investigation or the quality of our report," which is being released Thursday.
The orchestrated Republican goal, rather, was to cast doubt on anyone who would challenge Bush's own credibility on Iraq and the fight against terrorism, two national security-related areas where the president once seemed strong, but where public confidence in his leadership is now flagging. This was a strategy decided upon before the Tuesday luncheon with the vice president and the party chairman, Santorum told me in an interview in the Capitol Wednesday. "I'm in charge of setting up the stakeouts," the Senate Republican Conference chairman said. "Our intention from the beginning was to speak out about the accuracy and motives of those condemning the president." Cheney, Santorum claimed, "didn't say a word" about Berger in the Tuesday meeting with the senators.
Later on Tuesday, Berger resigned as an informal advisor to the Kerry campaign. And Republicans were nearly giddy with the sense that they had finally found an effective counterattack against Democratic assaults on Bush's judgment and trustworthiness, issues that had been eroding Bush's poll numbers. Asked about comments by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Clinton that the timing of the Berger leak, nine months after the investigation began and just days before the 9/11 commission's final report was released, seemed fishy, Santorum responded with his trademark biting sarcasm. "Of course" there's a partisan conspiracy, he told me as we took an elevator to the Capitol basement to catch the tram to his Senate office. "Sandy Berger removing documents is a coordinated attack on the Democratic Party. We are using psychological warfare to get Sandy Berger to do something that may have been illegal. We are using a secret machine to control his mind," Santorum added, scissoring his hands in the air, wizard-like. Then, adopting a serious and chiding tone, he said: "This is the height of absurdity that you guys [in the news media] would even think of printing this."
