Category Archives: Law: Criminal Law

A commentator[*] suggests that, contrary to my suggestion, Mr. Miranda is not a second staffer, but the first staffer in a new job. At first glance this seemed odd to me, since Sen. Hatch announced in late November that the staff member involved had been suspended, and the AP was reporting Sen. Frist's suspending Mr. Miranda as if it were new.

The AP article I linked to is silent on this question, but more research suggests that the “same staffer” theory turns out to be possible, albeit unlikely— although the it's-only-Miranda scenario has its own interesting aspects.

The New York Times suggests there were two staffers, i.e. that that Mr. Miranda had an accomplice:

Manuel C. Miranda, a former Republican Judiciary Committee staff member, whose name appeared as a recipient of one of the Democratic e-mail messages and who has been questioned by Mr. Pickle's investigators, said in an interview Thursday that he knew how the documents were obtained by Republicans. He said that a junior member on the staff of Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had discovered a flaw in the computer system that allowed him to read some of the Democratic computer traffic.

Mr. Miranda, who is now a senior staff aide to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, said that the junior aide was reading the Democratic documents from about May 2002 until the early fall of 2002. The aide, who has since left the Senate, passed some of those memorandums to Mr. Miranda and other Hatch staff members, Mr. Miranda said.

“Those documents that I did read were, in my view, not obtained in any way that was improper, unlawful or unethical,” he said. He described them as “inadvertent disclosures that came to me as a result of some negligence on the part of the Democrats' technology staff.” His only obligation, he said, was to see that the Democrats were told that the computer system had a flaw that allowed Republican aides to read some of their memorandums.

“I knew our people had told their people about it,” Mr. Miranda said. “Once I knew that, I had no further obligation.”

Suppose, however, there was just Mr. Miranda. Then even more interesting questions arise:

• Was he really suspended in November at all?
• If so, when did it end and why?
• And why is he re-suspended now?

Whether there's one staffer or more, it would also be interesting to know:

• Whether Senator Frist hired Mr. Miranda knowing about the Hackergate incident?
• If so, was it as a reward?
• And, whether or not he knew then, does Senator Frist endorse Mr. Miranda's vision of Senate collegiality and comity as set out in the NYT article above?

[*] I deleted the comment which raised this issue because it violated rules one and two of my comments policy—fortunately something I only rarely need to do. Perhaps because there are so few comments….

Yahoo! News – Memo-Leak Probe Expands to Frist's Office:

An aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been put on leave during an investigation into how Republicans gained access to Democratic memos concerning opposition to President Bush (news – web sites)'s judicial nominees.

Manuel Miranda, who works for the Tennessee Republican on judicial nominations, is on leave pending the outcome of the inquiry by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, Frist spokesman Nick Smith said Tuesday. In the matter under investigation, Democratic memos stored on a computer server shared by Judiciary Committee (news – web sites) members ended up in GOP hands.

Miranda told The Knoxville News-Sentinel that investigators were looking at work he performed for the Judiciary Committee before he joined Frist's office. “There was no stealing,” he said. “No systematic surveillance. I never forwarded these memos — period.”

I said previously that this wasn't a one-person show, that it went beyond the single staffer Hatch already suspended.

No way that goodies like this didn't get shared around.

Senate courtliness and comity? Bipartisanship? Nah. Try dirty tricks, dishonor and thieving. And don't think for one minute that some Senators didn't know what was going on. If only Senate Democrats had the guts to take scalps.

Infiltration of files seen as extensive. Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight — and with what tactics.

The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November.

With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and the US Secret Service, his office has interviewed about 120 people to date and seized more than half a dozen computers — including four Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives.

Don't let anyone tell you this is business as usual. Hacking into federal computers is usually a serious crime. Here, however, the criminal law issue is slightly murky.

Whether the memos are ultimately deemed to be official business will be a central issue in any criminal case that could result. Unauthorized access of such material could be punishable by up to a year in prison — or, at the least, sanction under a Senate non-disclosure rule.

The computer glitch dates to 2001, when Democrats took control of the Senate after the defection from the GOP of Senator Jim Jeffords, Independent of Vermont.

A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties — even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password.