Bungling meant leak letter leaked

By Alexander Bolton

A leak suspected to have come from the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) complicated, confused and nearly derailed a joint effort by Senate and House Republican leaders to seek an investigation of the unauthorized release of classified information.

Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) both eventually signed a letter Tuesday calling for the Senate and House intelligence committees to conduct a joint investigation of how The Washington Post discovered of the existence of CIA-run detention and interrogation facilities in eight foreign countries.

The request for the investigation was intended to give Republicans political momentum on the issue of national security at a time when Democrats have recently scored public-relations victories on national security.

Instead, the premature release of Frist and Hastert’s letter set off a chain of events that drew attention to what some House Republicans call the inability of the Senate to coordinate with them.

The mix-up renewed the criticism often voiced by House Republicans that it can be difficult to coordinate party message with Senate Republicans.

“It’s very hard to get the Senate to partner in the message,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (Ga.), vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and head of the House GOP “Theme Team.” “The Senate is not a cohesive group. Even within the Senate’s [55] majority senators, you can’t get them to coordinate.”

Kingston said the last time there was such a communications mix-up was before the August recess, when Frist announced his support for legislation expanding stem-cell research, something conservatives vigorously oppose, without consulting with the House. That announcement eclipsed the planned Republican message touting the passage of long-stalled energy and transportation legislation.

“I think sometimes the Frist press people get ahead of themselves,” Kingston said.

On Tuesday at 11:36 a.m., the Drudge Report reported that Frist and Hastert would “announce a bicameral investigation into the leak of classified information to The Washington Post regarding the ‘black sites’ where high-value al Qaeda terrorists are being held,” catching Senate and House Republicans off-guard.

The short news report immediately created a clamor among the Capitol Hill press corps for more information about the probe. The media demand prompted the Speaker’s office to release copies of the letter to the press between 12:30 and 1 p.m., before Hastert had a chance to read and approve the demand, said reporters who received copies of the letter. Hastert didn’t sign the letter until about 1:10 p.m.

The leak appeared to pressure Hastert to sign the letter before he or Frist intended to. But then something happened that lawmakers and political observers surmised made Frist hesitant to sign it.

CNN reported earlier in the day that Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) had said a Republican senator may have leaked information about the so-called black sites to the Post. Lott told reporters yesterday that he had been talking about another Post article. He said he was not talking about the article about the detention and interrogation facilities.

GOP aides conjectured privately that Frist’s delay in signing the letter may have been caused by concern over the possibility of endangering a Republican senator by calling for the investigation.

Frist told a gaggle of reporters at around 5 p.m. that he had not signed the letter. He did not sign it until 5:45 p.m. But even after then, it was not certain whether Frist had signed the letter. Frist’s office compounded the confusion by informing some reporters that he had signed the letter but also decided not to release it.

Confusion caused by Frist’s delayed endorsement of the letter was evident during a dialogue Tuesday evening between CNN anchor Lou Dobbs and CNN correspondent Ed Henry.

Dobbs said, “The fact that the majority leader in the U.S. Senate, Senator Bill Frist, has pointed out that he’s not officially signed the agreement with Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, that seems like a pretty clear statement. Would you like to conclude what it means?”

Henry responded, “Well, it’s unclear. Hastert has signed the letter. He signed it several hours ago. That was when we — CNN first reported it, about 1 p.m. this afternoon. Now, why Senator First has not officially signed it, it’s unclear.”

Frist’s communications director, Bob Stevenson, said that it took Frist so long to sign the letter merely because it had been such a busy day in the Senate and that Frist had to work on the Department of Defense authorization bill. Stevenson said that Frist merely didn’t have a chance to sign the letter before the late afternoon.

The lack of confirmation about Frist’s support raised the specter that Hastert would be left alone in calling for the investigation. That would have likely been a source of major irritation for House Republicans since the idea for the investigation originated with Frist office, said a senior Senate GOP aide.

And the cause for the mistiming would likely have been a leak from Frist’s office.

Republican aides said the leak either came from Hastert’s or Frist’s office because they were the only two offices handling the matter.

Scott Palmer, Hastert’s chief of staff, emphatically told The Hill that the Speaker’s office was not the source of the early leak. When pressed, Frist’s office, however, did not offer a similar denial.

Asked about the source of the leak, Stevenson responded: “I know word leaked. I didn’t leak it. I don’t know who did,” leaving open the possibility that someone else in the majority leader’s office did.

A reporter for a major daily publication said he thought it was clear that the leak came from Frist’s office.

Another complication created by the snafu is that it forced lawmakers to answer questions about a letter they were not sure Frist had endorsed.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said yesterday that he still had not seen Frist and Hastert’s letter, and on Tuesday, when news of it broke, he was uncertain about what the leaders were requesting, according to a media report of his initial reaction.

“I had the impression that the letter had not been signed,” Lott said, recalling the scene outside the Senate Republican luncheon Tuesday, when reporters asked Republican senators about the news developments.

“Maybe that’s why Pat didn’t get it,” Lott hypothesized, referring to Roberts. “It’s a little glitch. But it did leave Pat — I’m sure it made it a little awkward.”

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