WHEN SENATE MINORITY LEADER HARRY Reid abruptly took the Senate into closed session last Tuesday, he sought to portray the move as a desperate, last-ditch attempt to force intransigent Senate Republicans to complete the second phase of an investigation into the use of intelligence before the Iraq war. The procedural move is rare, one of the few things a minority party can do to seize the agenda--and the spotlight--from the Senate's majority.

After he called the Senate into closed session, a red-faced Reid sputtered his way through a press conference. "Finally after months and months and months of begging, cajoling, writing letters we're finally going to be able to have phase two of the investigation regarding how the intelligence was used to lead us into the intractable war in Iraq," he proclaimed, shortly before shouting down a reporter in mid-question.

He was just getting started.

The only way that we've been able to get their attention is to spend three and a half hours in a closed session. We have spoken to all of the Republican leaders asking for this information, letters have been exchanged, conversations had, statements on major news programs, Meet the Press, all kinds of commitments being made, and they simply were not followed through.

It's a slap in the face to the American people that this has been--this investigation has been stymied, stopped, obstructions thrown up every step of the way. That's the real slap in the face. That's the slap in the face. And today, the American people are going to see a little bit of light.

It was not a strong performance. As the session ended, Reid was asked about a statement from Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. Roberts had spoken of the work already completed by the Republican staff on the Intelligence Committee. Reid was dismissive. "They've done nothing, nothing substantive. And that's been the problem. Nothing substantive."

On that last point, as on several others, Reid was wrong. A week before Reid's tirade, Roberts had instructed the majority staff to "drop everything" in order to complete "Phase II" of the report. By May 2005, the majority staff had already completed much of its work--some of it with the assistance of the minority staff--in preparing a review of public statements about the intelligence. But that review never happened for a rather simple reason: politics.

On November 5, 2003, talk radio host Sean Hannity read on air from a memo prepared by the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo described the desire of Democrats to reveal "the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral and pre-emptive war."

To achieve this objective, the memo continued, Intelligence Committee Democrats should "prepare to launch an investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority [Republicans]. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time--but we can only do so once . . . the best time would probably be next year"--that is, during the presidential election.