'Shadow Government' Was Not a Mystery

And now the most interesting two minutes in television, the latest from the wartime grapevine.

Democratic leaders, led by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, are complaining that they were kept in the dark about the so-called "shadow government," which Daschle has now taken to calling the secret government. Daschle says not a single member of Congress was aware of it, but the Cleveland Plain Dealer had the story back in October, when it reported on a "continuity of operations plan" for a possible catastrophic attack. The story spoke of "sequestering as many as 200 employees from different branches of the federal government since 9/11." And US News reported the story on Oct. 29 as well.

One member who might have been expected to notice the Cleveland Plain Dealer report but apparently did not is Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who represents that city. Kucinich has emerged as a foremost critic of the war. In one recent speech, which he called a "prayer for America," Kucinich criticized what he called "the Patriot Games, the Mind Games, the War Games of an unelected president and his unelected vice president." Let us pray, he said, our country will stop this war because, he said, we did not authorize "assassination squads...the repeal of the bill of rights...the revocation of the Constitution."

The failure of a U.S. effort to capture accused Bosnian war criminal Radovan Karadzic last week has set off a full inquiry as to what caused the effort to fail. And one part of that inquiry involves the charge, published over the weekend in newspapers in both Germany and the United Kingdom, that a French army officer tipped off a Serb policeman that the U.S.-led NATO raid to seize Karadzic was about to happen in the town of Foca. And that apparently led to Karadzic being tipped off and escaping. A NATO spokesperson told the BBC that the allegation of a French leak is under investigation. The French have been accused of helping the Serbs several times in the past.