Infiltration of files seen as extensive

[William Knowles <wk () c4i org>]

Forwarded by: Tim Keller <tk @ scalefree.net>, 
esteban <esteban @ zapata.org> & Art McGee 
<amcgee @ virtualidentity.org>

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/22/infiltration_of_files_seen_as_extensive/

By Charlie Savage
Globe Staff
1/22/2004

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary
Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring
secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media,
Senate officials told The Globe.

 From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP
committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to
access restricted Democratic communications without a password.
Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking
points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial
nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.

The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already
launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos
showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were
posted to a website last November.

With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and
the US Secret Service, his office has interviewed about 120 people to
date and seized more than half a dozen computers -- including four
Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority
leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives.

But the scope of both the intrusions and the likely disclosures is now
known to have been far more extensive than the November incident,
staffers and others familiar with the investigation say.

The revelation comes as the battle of judicial nominees is reaching a
new level of intensity. Last week, President Bush used his recess
power to appoint Judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals, bypassing a Democratic filibuster that blocked a vote on his
nomination for a year because of concerns over his civil rights
record.

Democrats now claim their private memos formed the basis for a
February 2003 column by conservative pundit Robert Novak that revealed
plans pushed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts,
to filibuster certain judicial nominees. Novak is also at the center
of an investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose
husband contradicted a Bush administration claim about Iraqi nuclear
programs.

Citing "internal Senate sources," Novak's column described closed-door
Democratic meetings about how to handle nominees.

Its details and direct quotes from Democrats -- characterizing former
nominee Miguel Estrada as a "stealth right-wing zealot" and describing
the GOP agenda as an "assembly line" for right-wing nominees -- are
contained in talking points and meeting accounts from the Democratic
files now known to have been compromised.

Novak declined to confirm or deny whether his column was based on
these files.

"They're welcome to think anything they want," he said. "As has been
demonstrated, I don't reveal my sources."

As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came
into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They
said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed
his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to
fix the problem.

Other staffers, however, denied that the Democrats were told anything
about it before November 2003.

The emerging scope of the GOP surveillance of confidential Democratic
files represents a major escalation in partisan warfare over judicial
appointments. The bitter fight traces back to 1987, when Democrats
torpedoed Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court. In the 1990s,
Republicans blocked many of President Clinton's nominees. Since
President Bush took office, those roles have been reversed.

Against that backdrop, both sides have something to gain and lose from
the investigation into the computer files. For Democrats, the scandal
highlights GOP dirty tricks that could result in ethics complaints to
the Senate and the Washington Bar -- or even criminal charges under
computer intrusion laws.

"They had an obligation to tell each of the people whose files they
were intruding upon -- assuming it was an accident -- that that was
going on so those people could protect themselves," said one Senate
staffer. "To keep on getting these files is just beyond the pale."

But for Republicans, the scandal also keeps attention on the memo
contents, which demonstrate the influence of liberal interest groups
in choosing which nominees Democratic senators would filibuster. Other
revelations from the memos include Democrats' race-based
characterization of Estrada as "especially dangerous, because . . . he
is Latino," which they feared would make him difficult to block from a
later promotion to the Supreme Court.

And, at the request of the NAACP, the Democrats delayed any hearings
for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals until after it heard a landmark
affirmative action case -- though a memo noted that staffers "are a
little concerned about the propriety of scheduling hearings based on
the resolution of a particular case."

After the contents of those memos were made public in The Wall Street
Journal editorial pages and The Washington Times, Judiciary Chairman
Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, made a preliminary inquiry and
described himself as "mortified that this improper, unethical and
simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on
my watch."

Hatch also confirmed that "at least one current member of the
Judiciary Committee staff had improperly accessed at least some of the
documents referenced in media reports." He did not name the staffer,
who he said was being placed on leave and who sources said has since
resigned, although he had apparently already announced plans to return
to school later this year.

Officials familiar with the investigation identified that person as a
legislative staff assistant whose name was removed from a list of
Judiciary Committee staff in the most recent update of a Capitol Hill
directory. The staff member's home number has been disconnected and he
could not be reached for comment.

Hatch also said that a "former member of the Judiciary staff may have
been involved." Many news reports have subsequently identified that
person as Manuel Miranda, who formerly worked in the Judiciary
Committee office and now is the chief judicial nominee adviser in the
Senate majority leader's office. His computer hard drive name was
stamped on an e-mail from the National Abortion and Reproductive
Rights Action League that was posted along with the Democratic Senate
staff communications.

Reached at home, Miranda said he is on paternity leave; Frist's office
said he is on leave "pending the results of the investigation" -- he
denied that any of the handwritten comments on the memos were by his
hand and said he did not distribute the memos to the media. He also
argued that the only wrongdoing was on the part of the Democrats --
both for the content of their memos, and for their negligence in
placing them where they could be seen.

"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation
of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right
and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These
documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because
they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed,
they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."

Whether the memos are ultimately deemed to be official business will
be a central issue in any criminal case that could result.
Unauthorized access of such material could be punishable by up to a
year in prison -- or, at the least, sanction under a Senate
non-disclosure rule.

The computer glitch dates to 2001, when Democrats took control of the
Senate after the defection from the GOP of Senator Jim Jeffords,
Independent of Vermont.

A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy,
Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to
access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared
by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict
access only to those with the right password.




-
ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org

To unsubscribe email majordomo () attrition org with 'unsubscribe isn'
in the BODY of the mail.