Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (the one investigating the Iraqi prewar intelligence and our march to war, which we now see as founded on errors if not outright lies). Apparantly, one of his staff members wrote a memo which “laid out options for handling a report the committee is preparing that will largely focus on weaknesses in intelligence gathering and analysis by the intelligence community.”

The plan, according to this memo, was first to work within the committee, which, as the Post notes, has a strong and unusual history for bipartisanship, in order to explore the allegations and suspicians rampant in D.C. and elsewhere that there was improper or questionable behavior on the part of White House officials.

A second option, the memo continues, is to loudly dissent if the report is too narrow, and “castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry.”

Finally, the memo discusses the possibility of an independent, Democrat-only invesigation, “when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority.”

Put another way, it seems to be a contingincy plan for what they can do to encourage an real investigation, which must include White House actions, particularly in light of their ongoing battle with the CIA. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? I mean, after all, it’s completely reasonable for them to suspect that the Majority might obstruct efforts to investigate one of their own, particularly in the climate we have now; the Democrats — and concerned Republicans — should be planning for other ways to get to the bottom of this.

Well, the memo was never approved or formally circulated, but it’s been leaked somehow. Or, perhaps, nefariously acquired by the opposition; Sen. Rockefeller even suggests such an acquisition would have required trash-sifting or improper computer access.

Now, of course, the GOP is hopping mad at this “politicization” of the intelligence process. So horrifying and awful was this memo to Senante Majority Leader Bill Frist that he cancelled all business of said committee, pending an “apology.” Newt Gingrich said yesterday that he thinks the President should refuse to cooperate with the investigation altogether.

That’s just plain bizarre. You don’t have to take my word, or anyone’s word, for what’s actually in this unsent, unapproved memo; the text is available online (at Fox, no less). It’s no smoking gun, and I think my summary above is fair. The GOP’s response to it is frankly astounding, and suggests some very scary things about what such an investigation might find.

Do you see what’s happening here? Josh Marshall does:

The Republicans are trying to protect the administration from a host of disclosures about shenanigans in the lead up to the war. They’ve seized on this memo (which is a bit embarrassing for the Dems, certainly, but hardly more than that) and are trying to use it to secure even further partisan control over the intelligence oversight process — or, in other words, to prevent any serious inquiry into what happened in the lead-up to the war.

The GOP knows, or at least suspects and fears, that the “proof” for WMDs in Iraq never existed, or was based on manifestly inferior intelligence and analysis that the CIA tried to contain (part of their job is to prevent misleading data from setting policy, which is appropriate; this Administration has been rabid for the raw data, and analysis be damned — partly, I suspect, so that PNAC policies could become flesh). They also know what they did to a sitting president over a blow job, when no weapons of any kind were in the mix, and they fear payback — particularly in an investigation based on something other than being sore losers in ’92 and ’96.

There’s more discussion, if you want it, over at Whiskey Bar, where they see a pattern emerging that’s pretty scary.