Democrats threw the Senate into a rare closed session today to protest what they decried as the Republican-led body's inattention to intelligence failures on Iraq and the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
Invoking a rarely-used rule, Democrats temporarily shut down television cameras in the chamber, cleared galleries of tourists and other onlookers, forced removal of staff members and recording devices and stopped work on legislation.
"At its core, this is about accountability - congressional accountability and White House accountability," said Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Republicans were indignant. "The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee said. "Never have I been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution."
Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the indictment last week of Lewis Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, "provides a window into what this is really about: how the administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions."
Libby was indicted on Friday for obstructing justice, perjury and lying after a probe into the public identification of a CIA operative whose diplomat husband was an Iraq-war critic. Republicans could force the Senate back into open session with a majority vote.