US to probe taking of computer files

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has assigned a US attorney to investigate Republican Senate Judiciary Committee staff members who infiltrated the computer files of Democratic staff members on the committee from 2001 to 2003, copying thousands of secret strategy memos about judicial nomination fights and passing some on to the media, according to a letter sent to Democratic senators yesterday.

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The decision was made on the eve of today's high-profile judicial nomination hearing for Brett Kavanaugh, a former aide to former independent counsel Kenneth Starr and the former associate White House counsel. In the Bush White House, Kavanaugh oversaw judicial nominations before his own nomination to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have vowed to question Kavanaugh on whether he knew of the incursion into Democratic files.

Yesterday, the Justice Department responded to Democratic calls for a criminal investigation by referring the case to the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. The referral follows a probe by Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle, who found last month that at least two Republican staff members had taken 4,670 internal documents over 18 months.

"This is an important step in getting out the full story of the Republican theft of the Democratic computer files," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. "We hope to get answers to the questions which the initial investigation by the sergeant-at-arms was unable to answer about the scope of this shameful offense."

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on or even confirm that the referral had taken place, but a letter from Assistant Attorney General William Moschella to Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said US Attorney David Kelley would investigate what Moschella described as "access and dissemination of Judiciary Committee files."

At issue will be whether Republican staff members violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984, which makes it criminal to exceed one's authorization to access a government computer.

Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, appeared to set the stage for a fight over cooperation by saying he was looking forward to helping Kelley in any way he could.

"This is a serious matter that deserves and requires careful investigation," Leahy said. "The Senate sergeant-at-arms made a good start with his investigation and report. With the powers available to a federal prosecutor, this matter can now be more thoroughly investigated, so that those who engaged in criminal conduct may be brought to justice."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who has been criticized by some conservative groups for calling the intrusion "improper, unethical, and simply unacceptable," expressed confidence in the probe.

"Senator Hatch has every faith the Department of Justice and the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York will do the right thing here," said Hatch spokesman Adam Ellgren.

The intrusion into Democratic staff computers first became known in November 2003, when the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal published excerpts showing the influence of outside liberal interest groups in selecting which nominees to target. That led to the Pickle investigation. As first reported by The The Boston Globe and later confirmed by the Pickle report, the scope of the intrusion into Democratic computer files via a password glitch on a shared committee server was much larger than a single instance. Two staff members left under a cloud from the incident.

Jason Lundell of Utah, a young committee staff member who copied more than a thousand documents, was said by colleagues to have been planning to leave later in the year anyway.

More attention has been paid to the resignation of Manuel Miranda, who had become the judicial nominee adviser to the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee.

Miranda did not return a call yesterday, but in the past has insisted there was no wrongdoing because the documents were freely available from the staff members' own desktop computers and were neither privileged nor private property.