Calling plans by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee to politicize Iraq war intelligence "personally insulting" and "a slap in the face," Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said late Tuesday that Democrat members of his panel may have compromised the global war on terrorism.
Referring to a memo revealing the Democratic plot obtained Tuesday afternoon by radio host Sean Hannity, Roberts told the Fox News Channel that the document may have "all sorts of repercussions for intelligence agencies all throughout the world and certainly does a disservice in regards to the war against terrorism."
"We're the ones that have the oversight responsibility on the nation's intelligence and how it applies to our national security," the Republican chairman added, suggesting that his Democrat colleagues were playing with fire by taking advantage of their access to classified information for naked partisan political purposes.
The memo shows Democrats on the Intelligence Committee who have been entrusted with guarding some of the nation's most sensitive national security information planning instead to use materials in their possession to attack the Bush White House.
Democrat committee members are urged to "pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials."
In what may turn out to be the most damaging revelation, the document appears to suggest that concerns about "intelligence issues" may have to take a back seat to the effort to expose alleged administration dissembling on the threat posed by Iraq.
"Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq," the memo notes, before adding, "we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral preemptive war."
After the Intelligence Committee exposes what the memo describes as "the administration's dubious motives," the document's as yet unidentified author argues, "Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an Independent Commission.
"We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once."
The document says the best time to press for an independent probe would be next year - a presidential election year.
NewsMax.com was the first and only news outlet to print the full text of the bombshell document, which can be read here.
Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., tried to explain the damaging memo by saying it was a draft copy composed by a committee staffer who had thrown it in the garbage.
Reacting to Rockefeller's alibi, Roberts told Fox's "Hannity & Colmes," "I don't find that very plausible."
Still, as is the custom with Capitol Hill Republicans, the chairman said the GOP would need to temper its outrage over the memo in order to "build a bridge back to a bipartisan compromise so we can go ahead with our work."
Rather than mount a full-fledged investigation that would include the immediate examination of computers used by committee Democrats and their staffs, Roberts told "Hannity & Colmes" that he would be "asking our colleagues across the aisle to completely disavow this report or this attack plan.
"I think we've got to get past this draft memo and get on to the business, again, of doing our oversight responsibility," he explained.
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