Sen. Shelby hires attorney in leak probe (former Clinton impeachment lawyer)

AP ^ | Wed, Aug. 11, 2004 | JEFFREY McMURRAY

[Brian Mosely]

WASHINGTON - A Washington attorney who represented President Clinton at his impeachment trial and has a long association with Democrats will defend Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., against ethics charges that he leaked classified information to the media.

Gregory Craig, a partner at Williams & Connolly, will represent Shelby in an expected investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, Craig's office confirmed Wednesday. Craig and Shelby's spokeswoman, Virginia Davis, both declined to comment on the case.

[OldFriend]

Shelby was a democrat before he was a republican.

[cornfedcowboy]

If he did do the leaking-put him behind bars(and I'm a conservative). I'm sick of this crap.

[drjimmy]

Shelby was a democrat before he was a republican.

So was Ronald Reagan. You can't have it both ways, crowing about all the Dems who switch parties but then disowning them when they do something wrong. He's been a Republican for 10 years, and if he did disclose classified information, it doesn't matter which party he belongs to, he should be punished.

[HitmanLV]

Yea, well said. If Shelby screwed up, pay the piper.

[MCRD]

Yea, but if Shelby was a Democrat you'd never have known he was a leaker.

[HitmanLV]

I dunno....could be.

[COEXERJ145]

If I remember correctly, the Justice Dept. has already declined to indite Shelby. The worst he could probably get is censure from the Senate and losing seniority rights.

[PISANO]

I have a significant amount of money that says, the GOP deserts this Senator, the MSM crucifies him and in the end he will be a statistic.

If he leaked classified information he deserves whatever punishment fits the crime.

And.... I will wait with bated breath for something to be done about LEAHY's leak that warned UBL to never use his cell phone again lest a missile be dumped on his as.!

[ArmyBratproud]

Shelby should not have leaked classified info...

At the same time....The Fed. govt. and the NSA should have come clean earlier that they dropped the ball on a translation.

[88keys]

From the article:

At issue are two messages intercepted by the National Security Agency on the eve of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Those messages contained the words "the match begins tomorrow" and "tomorrow is zero day" but they were not translated from Arabic until Sept. 12.

The Justice Department has investigated whether Shelby leaked the classified information to news organizations in 2002.

Last month, the department referred the matter to the ethics committee, signaling criminal charges are unlikely. Shelby, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who was vice chairman at the time of the leak, has said he has never "knowingly compromised classified information."

If this story was "leaked" to the media, the media didn't do a very good job of reporting it! (at least, I never heard/read any of that "zero day" language reported...)

And Shelby was the "vice-chairman" at the time...does that translate "minority"? Who else is on that committee? Not Leahy, by any chance?

I just don't see anything of significance with this, other than an attempt to ruin Shelby's career and credibility. If I'm wrong about that, he should certainly receive his just desserts, but if this is just another "official Senate ethics investigation" instigated by the Democrat half of a 3 + 3 committee, people of integrity should stand by him. Is that too much to ask of either side?

(on second thought...don't answer that last question...LOL! I'm averse to "Senator" types just on general principle... < sigh > !)