The Democrats' Hypocrisy Problem: Now they say the feds weren't tough enough.

National Review Online ^ | May 31, 2002 | Byron York

[xsysmgr]

Who will hold the first public hearings on intelligence and law-enforcement failures leading to September 11 — the joint House/Senate intelligence committee, thought to be the leading inquiry into the terrorist attacks but beset by internal squabbling and staff turmoil, or the Senate Judiciary Committee, previously assumed to be on the sidelines in the Sept. 11 investigation? The answer is the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Intelligence Committee's long-awaited hearings will begin with a secret session on June 4, to be followed by public hearings later in the month. But the Judiciary Committee, headed by chairman Patrick Leahy, will beat them to the punch — and the headlines — with public hearings next Thursday, June 6.

The June 6 hearing, announced late yesterday, is billed simply as an "Oversight Hearing on Counter-Terrorism." But Leahy has recently moved his committee in position to become deeply involved in the Sept. 11 investigation. Last week, he arranged for Kenneth Williams, the FBI agent who wrote the so-called "Phoenix Memo," to address a secret meeting of the committee and selected aides. It is widely believed — although Leahy aides will not confirm — that he is also planning for the committee to meet Coleen Rowley, the FBI counsel in Minneapolis who wrote a devastating indictment of the bureau's handling of the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, better known as the "20th hijacker."

But Leahy will face a dilemma as he investigates the performance of the FBI and the Justice Department. Not long after Sept. 11, Leahy loudly objected to some of the Bush administration's proposals to strengthen law enforcement's ability to fight terrorism. "We don't protect ourselves by bending or even shredding our Constitution," Leahy said last November during debate over the administration's antiterrorism bill. Now, however, Leahy has been paying close attention to analyses that blame the FBI for not going far enough to investigate Moussaoui and other suspected terrorists.

"The Democrats are caught between two arguments," says one GOP Hill aide. "On the one hand, they're trying to criticize the president for not being tough enough on terrorism, and on the other hand, their left wing is trying to criticize him for being too tough." For example, while some Democratic leaders accuse the Bush administration of not moving forcefully in the days before Sept. 11, the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement posted on its website Thursday, said new FBI guidelines announced by Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft demonstrate "the attorney general's seemingly insatiable appetite for new powers that will do little to make us safer but will inevitably make us less free."

In addition, other Democrats, like Rep. John Conyers, the ranking minority on the House Judiciary Committee, have taken a reflexive position against the new FBI guidelines. Reacting in a 1960s context, Conyers said Thursday, "Any government effort to institutionalize the same powers that allowed the FBI to wrongfully spy on the activities of civil rights organizations and disclose information on the private affairs of Martin Luther King Jr. would constitute an embarrassing step backwards for civil liberties in this country."

It is probably not an accident that, so far at least, Leahy has not joined in the criticism. He and other Democrats face what New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof dubbed the "liberal reality check." "There's a whiff of hypocrisy in the air," Kristof wrote in Friday's paper. "One reason aggressive agents were restrained as they tried to go after Zacarias Moussaoui is that liberals like myself — and the news media caldron in which I toil and trouble — have regularly excoriated law enforcement authorities for taking shortcuts and engaging in racial profiling. As long as we're pointing fingers, we should peer into the mirror."

[driftless]

Most Dems and liberals were extremely busy over the past years trying to destroy or cripple our intelligence services. Now they jump on Bush for not stopping 9/11. They should look in the mirror.

[bureaucrud]

I have grown to hate hypocracy vehemently. Anytime someone spews fork-ed tongue comments at me, I inform them of their contradictions, and if they don't acknowledge their breakdown in logic, I call them a hypocrite to their face, turn in disgust, and walk away. I make sure I do it loudly enough in public forums for several others to hear so that I create the greatest amount of embarassment for the slug.

I know it's not Carnegie's best method of How to Win Friends and Influence People, but it is effective to drive home points to the listeners. And it HAS turned a few people around after getting over their embarassing upbraiding.