Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Roberts Smacks Frist

This is really quite extraordinary.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's testimony before a joint congressional panel on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks did not contradict his later testimony before a presidentially appointed commission.

Roberts's comments to The Hill contradict a stinging condemnation of Clarke by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on the Senate floor after Clarke accused President Bush of failing to take Osama bin Laden seriously before Sept. 11.

...

Bob Stevenson, Frist's spokesman, told The Washington Post that on March 24, while Clarke testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a number of staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee familiar with Clarke's 2002 joint intelligence committee testimony contacted the senator's staff and said "the tone"was "quite different from 2002."

Roberts said Republican staffers on the intelligence panel "will be in trouble" if he finds out they took the initiative to relate Clarke's closed-door testimony to Frist's staff.

Roberts said the appropriate handling of the matter would have been for Senate intelligence staff to brief him and for Roberts to brief Frist directly.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the intelligence panel, said that it would have been inappropriate for Intelligence Committee staffers to contact staff in the leader's office to relate the contents of Clarke's 2002 testimony.

(thanks to pjb)