Serial GOP leaker leaks again

POSTED BY michael roston, 09 February 2008

President Bush sure is the sort of leader who never deviates from principles once he commits to them. And if those principles involve sending partisan operatives to Iraq to engage in the task of nation-building, regardless of their experience and qualifications, then so be it. President Bush is a principled man, and always on the prowl for other principled men and women to send around the world, consequences be damned.

This week we've seen the case of Manuel Miranda pop up. The former staffer to ex-Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist, who spent his post-Frist years working to get maximally conservative judges confirmed by the US Senate, shipped off to Iraq in 2007 as the head of something called the "Office of Legislative Statecraft." And it seems that he didn't have a very good time working as a consultant to the State Department.

Someone, it appears, leaked a memo written by Miranda to the press. The ten page document excoriates career State Department officials for failing to do a good job of managing reconstruction in Iraq, particularly in the area where Miranda was working - getting Iraq's Parliament to function and pass necessary legislation.

I knew I had heard this guy's name somewhere recently. Here's Jeffrey Toobin in the Dec. 3 edition of the New Yorker:

Early in the George W. Bush Presidency, Miranda came to public notice as a fiercely partisan aide to the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He moved to the staff of Bill Frist, who was Senate Majority Leader at the time, and orchestrated a series of noisy attempts—including an all-night Senate session—to win confirmation for Bush’s judicial nominations. In November, 2003, after internal documents belonging to Democrats on the committee were leaked, the Senate opened an investigation that revealed that Miranda, through a quirk in the computer system, had been reading his adversaries’ e-mails and sharing them with right-leaning news outlets like the Washington Times. Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, called Miranda’s actions “improper, unethical, and simply unacceptable.” Miranda resigned, and a criminal investigation of him was initiated.

These details might seem important to mention when you consider the story that Miranda is spinning up in his memo about bureaucratic incompetence in a nominally nonpartisan organization like the Foreign Service. But it's hardly addressed in the coverage by the press outlets that picked up the tale of Miranda's memo.

The AP, for instance, genty describes Miranda as "a Bush supporter" and as "a lawyer who served as counsel to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist." Bill Gertz at the Washington Times settles for, "a conservative former Senate staff member."

Other outlets who will be read by far fewer people - an ABC News web report, and the New York Sun - make reference to Miranda's 2003 leaking troubles. But even they give him pretty gentle treatment, and inaccurately to boot. Both refer to Miranda leaking a single memo in 2003, when he in fact leaked *15* documents illicitly gotten from Democratic computer files. And worse, they leave out the strong charges issued against Miranda by a senior Republican lawmaker - Orrin Hatch.

But I do have to credit the Sun's Eli Lake who at least puts Miranda's memo in the context it requires - the constant efforts on the part of Bush and his neo-cons to undermine the nonpartisan career bureaucracy at the Department of State:

Conservatives and Bush appointees have been at odds with the State Department bureaucracy since before the Iraq war even began. Back then, the State Department's office for transition in Iraq, headed by Tom Warrick, clashed with the undersecretary of defense, Douglas Feith, over the contours of the Iraqi opposition and whether the body should be led by the Iraqi politician, Ahmad Chalabi.

In 2004, the State Department won a battle inside the administration for control over the money to rebuild Iraq, though the Pentagon still oversees the training of Iraq's security services and military. Many retired foreign service officers have complained in the press of meddling by Bush administration appointees in the first phases of the Iraqi reconstruction.

As you read Miranda's memo, you see the constant criticism of the State Department's inadequate managerial experience and perhaps you'll start to remember that these are the people whose zeal for private contracting brought us 20-somethings running Iraqi reconstruction and security by roid-ragin' Blackwater rent-a-meanies. And Miranda remains mired in conservative political battles, and has spent recent weeks stumping for the candidacy of John McCain for president.

So when you see a conservative activist disparaging the work of committed government employees in what's probably the messiest conflict situation in the world today, it really is important to consider the source.