Senate Judiciary Committee Republican staffers have reportedly hacked into Democrat computers for more than a year, copying documents and passing them on to sympathetic corporate media hands. So says Charlie Savage’s Boston Globe article published this morning. Excerpts from 15 Democrat documents appeared in conservative media outlets — including the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page and the Washington Times — in the period between the springs of 2002 and 2003.
“Democrats now claim their private memos formed the basis for a February 2003 column by conservative pundit Robert Novak that revealed plans pushed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to filibuster certain judicial nominees. Novak is also at the center of an investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose husband contradicted a Bush administration claim about Iraqi nuclear programs.
“Citing ‘internal Senate sources,’ Novak’s column described closed-door Democratic meetings about how to handle nominees.”
The Senate Sergeant-at-Arms has seized more than six computers, including four servers in the Judiciary and a server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee). The issue could trigger ethics complaints to the Senate or the Washington Bar and perhaps even criminal charges under a variety of computer intrusion laws, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).