Investigate the Senate for CIA Leak

RUSH: I want to talk about this latest CIA leak investigation, because something’s going on here, folks, and I don’t like it. As you know, about this time yesterday Senator Frist and Congressman Hastert sent out a letter demanding a bicameral investigation into the latest CIA leak that resulted in a story in the Washington Post last Wednesday about these black sites, these so-called black prisons, these prisons that nobody knows about where we’re housing these Al-Qaeda terrorists — the people that want to blow up Americans and kill them and so forth. Yesterday, the Senate was rocked when Trent Lott said that it possibly is a Republican senator or a Republican Senate staffer who gave out this information to the Washington Post, and Lott then said, “What are you going to do? Do we have to keep investigating things around here? People here talk to people. We can’t! We can’t! We can’t just start investigating this stuff. Where is it…? Where is it…? Where is it going to end?” Now, I’m not going to mention any names, but there are some places out there that are now speculating on who it might have been on the Republican side that leaked the story of these black prisons, these black sites to the Washington Post. Now, I’ll tell you something. We’ve got Scooter Libby indicted, and Scooter Libby faces jail, and we’ve got these clowns in the Senate who are trying to say, “Hey, this is no big deal. We talk to people! This happens. You can’t keep investigating things here.”
As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care who leaked it. I don’t care who talked to the Washington Post. I don’t care if it’s a Republican Senator. I don’t care if it’s a Republican Senate staffer. There is no reason that Congress should not get to the bottom of this, but all of a sudden because it might take out a few senators or a few staffers, “Oh, no, no, no, no! Why, we can’t do that.” That’s why I’m for it! I don’t care who it is. I talked to you not long ago about the problem that Bush has in going to the war with “the army he has” in the Senate. This business that we’ve got Republicans or a Republican or a staffer leaking this stuff to the Washington Post/ There’s a reason why it happened. If it is a Republican — I know Dingy Harry is trying to focus attention on Cheney, because Cheney was there on Tuesday, and they were having some meetings, but Lott says it’s a Senate staffer. Well, we don’t know who it is and that’s why we need an investigation, but I don’t care if it is a Republican or if it’s two Republicans. You know, whoever is doing this is leaving the party for dead by letting the leadership announce this formal investigation and so forth and putting the onus on these people to go find their own people. Well, if that’s the case then we gotta do it — and I’m not trying to be a National Honor Society contestant here or occupy some moral high ground. This is serious stuff. Let’s find out.
Scooter Libby is indicted, yet some senator or some Senate staffer gets away with a far more serious crime? Which is worse, outing the name — which he’s not even been charged with, outing the name — of a not-covert agent that was sitting at a desk, not doing anything, Valerie Plame, or outing the existence of these black sites to the Washington Post, thereby identifying the countries that they’re in? You think it’s tough enough to get countries to join us in the war on terror and be allied with us? What about stories like this which totally blow that up? Now, my guess — I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever leaked this. Obviously whoever leaked it did it for personal gain. Somebody did it for personal gain and I don’t know what the personal gain is. It could be personal gain to forge ties with the media. It could be to advance some agenda or idea that that person has. You know, you may have somebody who’s trying to make a claim on we shouldn’t torture. That’s a big story going on right now: “We shouldn’t torture! We shouldn’t torture!” So somebody leaks a story about we’re torturing, at these black sites, the Washington Post runs with it. Well, by golly, by gosh, find out who it is — and especially if it’s a Republican. Find out who it is, especially if it’s a Republican. It’s time to shake up that club, because there’s not an army in the Senate that the president can count on.

Trent Lott says he’s against this investigation because where do these things stop? Senators talk to each other. They ought to be pushing the button to get to the bottom of this. They ought to be outraged that this happened. They ought to just be fit to be tied that one of their members is talking to the press about something like this. This is a serious, serious breach. I think these people think this is all a big game. I think some of the inside-the-Beltway people — our side, too — think this is all a big game. It’s all about gamesmanship and maneuvering and who can position themselves for what they want to accomplish or acquire in the future. Meanwhile, we have young men and women putting their lives on the line in these sites in the war on terror in Iraq, in Afghanistan, while we’ve got perhaps senators and their staff leaking? Something is out of whack here, folks. It bothers me greatly. You know, I was here late yesterday afternoon doing some things and I was driving home. I didn’t have the TV on, because I was occupied with some other things. I left here about, oh, 6:30, quarter of seven. So I got home. I got satellite radio in the car so I could listen to these TV networks. It was after seven o’clock and I was listening to the Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer, this liberal roundtable they call a newscast every night, and they’re talking all about Harry Reid demanding to get to the bottom of this.
“It was probably Cheney! We’ve got to find out who did this,” so forth and so on, and then they quote Lott saying, “Eeeeh, I think it was a Republican staffer,” and I had not heard that all day, and I just said, “Really?” ? and if it’s not a Republican staffer, it’s a Republican senator, and I want to know who regardless. We have brave young men and women who have volunteered to join the armed forces. They are in these prisons in these countries. They are in theater in Afghanistan and Iraq and around the world, and we’ve got all these little game players in the US Senate, “the most exclusive club in the world,” playing games with all this stuff for whatever personal motivations. There cannot be a national security interest; there can’t be some highbrow national security interest in whoever leaked this leaking it. There’s got to be something more fundamental that’s more personal to whoever leaked it in terms of either settling a score or advancing their own career or doing whatever, and whoever it is, it’s time for this investigation to go forward, and now people trying to stop it and bottle it up. I hope that they stick to this and get to the bottom of it and find out who it is — especially if it’s a Republican. I want to know. I want to know. If it is a Republican or a Republican staffer in the Senate that leaked this story to the Post, I want to know.
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RUSH: “No, no, no, no, no.” People are saying. “Rush, are you…? I can’t believe that you actually standing up for the government supporting secret sites!” I am in favor of winning the war on terror! I am in favor of putting as many of those people on jail. Now, what’s going on in the United States Senate today? What’s going on in the United States Senate is all of these blowhards dragging these lawful oil company execs before the cameras to start making cheap little political points. They don’t have the desire at the same time to investigate whether one of their own members or staffers leaked the highest level security information, code black, covert operations. Black ops are common. They’re all over the place — and yet we’ve got to drag those oil company execs up there. We know why. It’s because that’s easy. (sniveling senator impression) “Oh, yeah! We can bring these guys up and pound them and accuse them of gouging and whatever we want, and we can make them explain to us how it is that they’re gouging and running their business.” Like I’ve always said: if I were the oil company executives, I will call hearings! I would called the US Senate and US Congress to my hearings and I’d put them under oath, say, “What are you doing trying to stop our business from growing? Why all these regulations? What have you got against us? You want to put windfall profits taxes on us? Fine. We’ll stop developing domestic oil. We’ll stop pumping it and we’ll go around the world to get it to get around your tax, which is what they did last time.” Besides that, a windfall profits tax on the oil company? How is it going to benefit you? You think the windfall profits tax is going to lower the price at the pump?
All you’re going to be doing is sitting out there going, “Wow, man! I feel better because the oil companies are having to pay higher taxes.”

The price at the pump is going to stay the same. It’s like my mom. It used to make my mom so mad. She said, “Finish your plate. Eat everything on your plate. There are kids starving in China.”
I heard this a number of years, but one night I had had it. I said, “Okay, mom. You’re telling me if I eat everything on the plate. These starving kids in China are going to rub their bellies and go, ‘Ah, I’m so full’?”
She said, “Don’t be a smart aleck.”
Well, I wasn’t being a smart aleck; I was using precise logic. Whether I ate everything or nothing wouldn’t matter a whit to whether the Chinese were starving or not. You put a windfall profits tax on oil companies it’s not going to matter a whit. If anything, the price is going to go up because as we all know corporations don’t pay taxes — at least not the full boat. But anyway, so, we drag these oil company execs up there just so these guys in the Senate can make some political points, but when it comes to finding out who among them might have leaked details of the black covert operation to the media. These are the nation’s secrets! Somebody up there, according to Trent Lott, some Republican did it, and it’s time to get to the bottom of this. Hey, Dingy Harry? Dingy Harry, why don’t you go invoke Rule 21 on this instead of invoking Rule 21 on your silly fantasy that Bush lied on prewar intelligence? Why don’t you invoke Rule 21 to get to the bottom of who in that Senate — and it may be a Democrat, for all I know. All I know is what Lott has been quoted as saying, but invoke Rule 21 and shut the place down to get to the bottom of this! Find out who it is in that body that’s leaking our nation’s secrets and find out why. Of course, it isn’t going to happen. No way. It will not happen.
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RUSH: We have some audio sound bites on this leak business. Let’s go audio sound bite #4. This is from CNN’s American Morning today, Senator Jay Rockefeller being interviewed by the host there, Miles O’Brien, who says, “Is your concern that there was a leak, or should we be more concerned about the fact the CIA is running a network of these so-called black site prisons?”
BILLIONAIRE SENATOR JAY ROCKEFELLER: That’s — That’s actually a — a — a more than excellent question, because there — there is no question that interrogation carried out properly produces enormous amounts of intelligence which prevent, ummm, incidents from happening, or you learn things which you otherwise would not know, and you can only learn through interrogation. The next question is should you have, so to speak, ghost sites?
RUSH: Well, how do you get one without the other? You see, folks, this is what sends my little red flags up. The question: “Is your concern that there was a leak, or should we be more concerned that the CIA is running these black sites?” Well, I don’t think Rockefeller answered it. He said it’s a good question, no question; interrogation carried out properly produces enormous amounts of intelligence. Next question: “Should you have, so to speak, ghost sites? (scoffs) It doesn’t matter where we have them; the liberals are going to oppose them. They’re going to oppose Club G’itmo. They’re going to oppose Abu Ghraib. They’re going to oppose everything. They’re going to oppose anything other than US court system, with these terrorists being granted rights that only US citizens get under the Constitution. So now we got ghost sites? I guess they oppose that. Let me answer the question for you, Miles. Your question: “Is the concern that there was a leak or should we be more concerned about the fact that the CIA is running an expert?” How can you ask that question? You just stopped the media for six months trying to find out who leaked the name of Valerie Plame. So obviously you people in the press and on the left think that leaking is horrible.
But now all of a sudden, since the leak is about what the CIA is doing — (whispering) maybe what Bush is doing) — why, we’ve got to get to the bottom of these sites? The answer to the question, Miles, is: We’ve got to get to the bottom of the leak. Somebody in the US Senate, according to Trent Lott leaked the nation’s secrets to the Washington Post, and this compromised these sites and is going to make it doubly difficult for us to come up with allied nations to work with us. Democrats are already making that tough enough as it is, and we’ve got young men and women who have volunteered to join the armed forces, putting their lives on the line, and we’ve got somebody back here in the safe confines of the most private club in the world, the most exclusive, the US Senate, having games and playing toys here with all these leaks and so forth. There’s no question to me what’s more important here and that’s this particular leak. So now on the Situation Room, with Wolf Blitzer last night on CNN, he talked to Senator Pat “Leaky” Leahy, Senator Depends. “Do you have any quick reaction to this call for a leak investigation on this Washington Post story detailing these so-called black site prisons in Eastern Europe?”

LEAKY LEAHY: What I worry about with this administration, everybody wants to — on their side wants to jump and say, “Oh, my gosh, plug these leaks!” I would think it would be a lot better to say, “What in heaven’s name are we doing running secret prisons in the former Soviet Union?” I think you want to do an investigation. Sure. Find out who may have leaked this, but more importantly, find out why in heaven’s name are we doing this? Why was the administration allowing this, and how are we going to repair America’s image with the rest of the world? [Clinton “pioneered” the policy: 1 | 2 ]
RUSH: Simple: elect you guys! The rest of the world can just run us over and they’ll love us. You know, this is just amazing. They don’t want to investigate themselves, folks. They’ll be glad to indict Scooter Libby. They’ll be glad to. They get to sit around… It goes back to the same old thing. In the Hurricane Katrina aftermath all these guys had authorized all the spending and all the money to make sure that didn’t happen in New Orleans, what did happen. Now they want to act like spectators: “We’re gonna to conduct an investigation! We’re going to find out what happened! Where gonna find out who didn’t do what. We’re going to!” as though they had nothing to do with it. So now we’ve got a genuine leak and they stopped everything for the past six months to find out who leaked the name of a non-covert “agent.” Now we’ve got another leak. “Weeeeeell, I’m not so concerned about the leak. I’m more concerned about the prison.” Last night on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, you get Kit Bond on there and Durbin and Margaret Warner is the host — and this is unreal here because Durbin denies that he said Americans used torture like the Nazis and Pol Pot. He’s on tape saying it, but when confronted with his own words by Kit Bond, he denies it. What happens is Margaret Warner says to Senator Durbin, “What about Senator Bond’s point though, that if you make it absolutely clear what the rules are — and the Army field manual is I believe a public document — that in fact Al-Qaeda and other terrorists will be completely prepared for those particular procedures, will always be able to train themselves to resist them.” Durbin says, “Well, what’s the alternative, that we will say we’re going to use torture, countenance the use of torture, and then what happens when our soldiers are captured?” And Bond interrupts with this.
BOND: I think we’ve got to be clear. When senators like my colleague from Illinois say we use torture, that is absolutely false. Senator Durbin is the one who most recently compared our troops to the Nazis, “the Soviets and their gulags,” or “the mad regimes of Pol Pot,” and that is the kind of thing that destroys —
DURBIN: That’s not true, Senator Bond, and it’s really unfair.
BOND: Well, here it is.
DURBIN: It’s unfortunate that you’re doing this.
BOND: It’s unfortunate that you’re saying we’re using torture.
DURBIN: I didn’t say that.
BOND: You did.
DURBIN: I — I did not say that.
RUSH: Well, we have the tape. We have the audiotape, ladies and gentlemen. We can go back and listen to what Senator Durbin just denied that he said. June 9th, 2005, a portion of Senator Dick Durbin’s [unverified] remarks on the floor of the US Senate.
DURBIN: If I read this to you and didn’t tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others, that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that’s not the case. This was the action of Americans in treatment of our — their own prisoners.
RUSH: Well, I don’t know what to do about this. We’ve got Senator Durbin’s own words. He was on television last night denying that he said these things, and he said, “It’s not true, senator! It’s not true! It’s unfortunate that you’re doing this,” and Bond says, “It’s unfortunate you’re saying we’re using torture.” So nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, the plot thickens with all of this. Here’s Ed in Wilmington, North Carolina. Ed, nice to have you on the program, sir. Welcome.
CALLER: Rush, 24/7 dittos.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I think you can connect the dots on this leak, and they probably lead right back to John McCain, the media darling who likes to cozy up with all the mainstream media and probably help them gin up some support for this bill that he just got passed regarding the torture that we’re supposedly doing.
RUSH: We gotta be real careful throwing names out here. Lott said it’s a Republican Senate staffer, others have said it’s a senator. But I personally don’t want to mention any names who could be. That’s what the investigation is for. I don’t know that it’s Senator McCain. Nobody knows who it is.
CALLER: I understand that, but —
RUSH: It’s just going a little too far here to start throwing names out like this. I know you’re just responding to what I said because you’re talking about how — I think you’re reacting to my point that somebody might have something personal to gain by doing this like advancing an issue, and you glommed onto torture, a I can totally understand how you’re making a connection. But let’s not mention any names yet. That’s what the investigation is for.
CALLER: And I understand that. But, you know, everybody wants to tiptoe around this stuff, and as you said, the investigation has to go on and has to do with endangering the lives our military — and supposedly, you know, maybe possibly being done by somebody that was in the military.
RUSH: Could be. It could be a number of things. I gather, then, that you’re not upset if this investigation would produce a Republican as the culprit?
CALLER: (Laughing) Wouldn’t hurt me a bit if it was McCain.
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: I think Arizona has done us a big disservice by putting him back in office the number of times he has done. He’s fought this administration in back doorways more times than we can count.
RUSH: I understand your sentiments. I really do. I appreciate the call. But let it be said, the official position of this program is we don’t know who the leaker is. All we know is what Trent Lott alleges, that it was a Republican staffer. Others saying it was a senator. Harry Reid says it was Cheney — and so on this program, all these people are going to be innocent until proven guilty, unlike the way the Democrats acted with Rove and Libby who in their minds are still guilty of what they weren’t charged with anyway.
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