NY Times Editorial On Diverting Homeland Defense For Texas Politics

This page was a consistent critic of the Clintons' ethics problems, but the former president's defenders should feel free to point out what kind of national outcry we would be hearing from talk show hosts and Congressional Republicans if anyone had tried to misuse the government's antiterrorism machinery this way during the last administration.

The original Republican plan to draw new Congressional districts in outrageously contorted forms in order to capture current Democratic seats was, at the very minimum, political dirty pool. But the idea that Republican honchos felt that they had the right to bring federal security forces into the case pushes the issue to a whole different level, one that smacks of a sense of entitlement and disrespect for normal legal boundaries.

The new Department of Homeland Security was called in on the case as if it were the patronage police and the dissenting Democrats were terrorists. Mr. DeLay's office breathlessly passed along detailed intelligence on the fugitives. More than 1,000 hours were devoted to the two-day search by 54 Texas officers. At least one F.B.I. agent appears to have been involved in the search.

The fact that federal agencies were involved in the partisan squabble is outrageous. Investigators usually assigned to track down terrorists or drug smugglers were sent off to try to find a small plane that had ferried one of the missing Democrats out of Texas. Documents relating to the search were later destroyed — in theory because the search did not involve a crime. Democrats are well within their rights to demand state and federal inquiries.