[Mb-civic] Senate's Closed-Session Move Borne Out of Daschle's Strategy - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Senate's Closed-Session Move Borne Out of Daschle's Strategy

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 3, 2005; Page A06

It took Democrats about five seconds to trigger the parliamentary move 
that forced the Senate into a rare closed session this week, but it was 
more than a year in the planning.

The final decision to employ the tactic, which infuriated Republicans 
and exacerbated partisan animosity, was made in the Democratic leader's 
second-floor Capitol office Monday night, in a small gathering of his 
lieutenants. Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) considered the 
strategy to be so sensitive that only four of his colleagues knew what 
he intended when he entered the Senate chamber at 2:25 p.m. Tuesday, 
party aides said yesterday.

Reid invoked Senate Rule 21, which allows any senator to order all 
non-members from the chamber. The rule's existence was widely known, and 
closed sessions had been held by bipartisan agreement as recently as 
1999, regarding President Bill Clinton's impeachment. But the notion of 
one party springing the rule on the other party without warning was so 
alien that senators could not cite a previous example. Republican 
leaders quickly denounced it as a stunt, an affront, a trust-killing 
slap in the face.

Reid's aides said yesterday that their boss decided on the dramatic, 
attention-grabbing ploy because he was weary of GOP foot-dragging on a 
promised inquiry by the Senate intelligence committee into the Bush 
administration's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq. "We'd had 
enough press conferences and requests, public and private," Reid 
spokesman Jim Manley said. "Now it was time to act."

But Reid did not have to start from scratch. His predecessor, former 
Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), had considered going into 
closed session to discuss intelligence use and to spur the inquiry 
launched in early 2004. But he wanted the cooperation of Majority Leader 
Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

"For the past couple of years, Senator Frist and I had agreed to hold an 
executive session," Daschle said yesterday. But Frist "kept putting it 
off." Daschle said several Democratic senators "threatened to do it over 
his opposition during that time, but it never got to that point."

Daschle's staff researched exactly how Rule 21 might be used, aides 
said, and its findings were at Reid's fingertips when he convened the 
weekly meeting of his leadership team at 6:15 p.m. Monday. Present were 
party Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), conference Secretary Debbie 
Stabenow (Mich.) and campaign committee Chairman Charles E. Schumer 
(N.Y.). In an interview yesterday, Schumer said the group decided on the 
closed session out of frustration over the Bush administration's 
"stonewalling" and their anger over the White House's failure to 
apologize after senior aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted Friday 
on perjury charges connected to claims that prewar intelligence on Iraq 
was manipulated.

"There's nothing more poisonous to a democracy than the refusal to 
listen to facts," Schumer said.

Reid obtained an enthusiastic endorsement of the plan from Sen. John D. 
Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the intelligence committee's top Democrat, 
Manley said. But even though Reid attended a private lunch for all 44 
Democratic senators Tuesday, he did not mention the plan to anyone else 
before springing his surprise on the Senate floor moments later. If word 
had leaked, Manley said, Republicans could have kept the Senate in a 
"quorum call" that would have prevented Reid from speaking.

Frist was indignant. As Senate aides shooed visitors from the galleries 
and shut down C-SPAN's cameras, Frist told reporters that Reid's 
leadership team resorted to a "political stunt" because it had no 
convictions, principles or ideas. "For the next year and a half, I can't 
trust Senator Reid," he said.

When the chamber reopened about two hours later, Frist named a 
bipartisan task force to report on the intelligence committee's progress 
on the long-awaited inquiry into how the administration used prewar 
intelligence. In a floor speech, Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) 
said the closed session was unnecessary because "just yesterday" his 
staff was working with Democratic staffers on plans "to complete our 
work" on the inquiry. Democrats said they saw no evidence of movement.

In an interview yesterday, a still-smoldering Frist said that "by 
sitting down in a civil way with Roberts, Rockefeller, Reid and Frist, 
we would have come exactly to what we did" on Tuesday.

But Democrats were unapologetic, saying their tactic spurred the 
Republicans to action and energized Democratic activists tired of seeing 
their party pushed around.

"My phones have been ringing off the hook" at the Democratic Senatorial 
Campaign Committee, Schumer said. "It has played far better than we had 
thought."

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