By Dana Milbank
Friday, February 24, 2006

Yesterday's meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee felt like some weird role-reversal dream.

There was Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), attacking Bush administration officials for being soft on terrorism and "outsourcing our national security."

There was Gordon England, President Bush's deputy defense secretary, pleading with Democrats that "it is very important that we strengthen the bonds of friendship and security with our friends and allies around the world."

And there in the front row was the congressional press corps, asking questions of the witnesses and the senators, who sat side by side on the dais. Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), sounding much like the coordinator of a carnival dunking booth, encouraged reporters to "propound a question." One by one, CBS, Fox, Reuters, even the New Haven Register and Pacifica Radio, demanded answers from the senators and the 10 squirming administration men in suits.

It was, Warner admitted, an "unusual" way to run the committee. But these are unusual times. The Bush administration is facing a full-scale bipartisan revolt over its decision to allow a company owned by Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to manage terminals at six U.S. ports. In Iraq, meanwhile, "we see signs that some are interpreting as the brink of civil war," as Warner gingerly put it.

Yesterday, it emerged in the committee hearing that the administration may have skirted the law by not granting a 45-day review of the Dubai ports deal. The law says such a review is mandatory if a sale to a state-owned company "could affect the national security of the United States" -- a standard the administration seemed to acknowledge the deal met because it required special safeguards.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who wrote the 1992 law, demanded to know "why that investigation was not carried out."

Warner asked Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt to "clarify."

"Senator," Kimmitt told Byrd, "we have a difference of opinion on the interpretation of your amendment." The administration, he said, views it "as being discretionary."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), reading the statute to Kimmitt, said the law "requires -- requires -- an investigation."

"We do not see it as mandatory," Kimmitt repeated.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) grew irritated. "If you want the law changed," he told Kimmitt, "come to Congress and change it. But don't ignore it."

"We didn't ignore the law," Kimmitt again maintained. "We might interpret it differently."

Even Warner, though initially defending the administration, grew tired of this explanation. "I must say, as a lawyer myself, reading this, on the face, my colleagues raise a legitimate question," the chairman warned.

The ports controversy undoubtedly has an element of anti-Arab jingoism and political opportunism. But part of the backlash is because lawmakers think the White House has been snubbing Congress and selectively ignoring laws through the secret National Security Agency eavesdropping program, the resistance to Hurricane Katrina probes and Bush's "signing statements" that reinterpret laws.

The resentment was woven through yesterday's session. Levin protested that "we weren't notified at all" about the ports deal, "unless watching CNN and reading the morning paper constitute notification." Warner wondered: "Couldn't someone, sort of, say, you know, 'This looks like something we ought to talk to some of the committee chairmen about'?"

The answer was no. When Warner asked England to describe the "risks and consequences" of postponing the Dubai deal, England slighted Warner by calling him "senator" rather than "chairman," and advised him: "I'm not going to speculate on that."

The administration sent a similar tone out yesterday over the airwaves and from the White House. In a briefing for reporters, White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend echoed Kimmitt's view that "there was no need" for the 45-day review.

Bush aide Karl Rove, in a Fox News interview, said the objections are because "most members are just picking up and reading something in the newspaper, hearing something on talk radio."

But the administration and its allies clearly were not enjoying their time on the defensive. All Republicans on the Senate committee skipped the meeting except for Warner, whose defense of the administration grew progressively more tepid. Several of the officials spent their two hours whispering, passing notes and occasionally smirking at the senators' barbs, while the others labored to describe the Special Relationship with the UAE.

In past election years, Democrats were the ones on the defensive. Bush in 2002 said his opponents were "not interested in the security of the American people." Rove recently declared that "Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world."

Yesterday, Democrats seemed pleased to exact some rough justice. "The fact is, we do live in a post-9/11 world," Clinton said, using her response to one of the reporters' questions to announce legislation banning foreign state-owned companies from U.S. ports. "As a matter of national security in the post-9/11 world, I think we have to take a hard look at this."