Wow. Richard Lugar is a decent, respectable, “fair and balanced” guy — but I really don’t understand this.
He has weighed in on the question of what materials the State Department should send at Senator Biden’s request and which not to worry about. This is unprecedented in an otherwise collegial Senate committee — one of the view where a spirit of collaboration and mutual respect between both sides still burned strong.
Well, that light of bipartisanship is flickering.
To cut to the chase — until I can write more — Lugar has written a letter today to Condi Rice praising the State Department for complying with various materials and information requests from Senator Biden. He then indicates that given the limited time, State should comply with just four of the nine information requests that the Minority on the Foreign Relations Committee has made.
Here are copies of the Lugar letter and the nine items requested. A check mark is next to those Lugar feels are a priority.
Lugar should not have intervened in this process. He now looks heavy-handed and operating in a manner inconsistent with a fair investigation. I imagine Senate Republicans may have some problem with this intervention as well.
I want to write more about this — but I’m off to get some other important materials that I can only get by hand.
More later.
— Steve Clemons
