Counsel to GOP Senator Wrote Memo On Schiavo
Martinez Aide Who Cited Upside For Party Resigns

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 7, 2005; Page A01

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday
that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to
Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator
said in an interview last night.

Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy
Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it
was immediately accepted, Martinez said.


Martinez, the GOP's Senate point man on the issue, said he earlier had
been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing
the memo. "I never did an investigation, as such," he said. "I just
took it for granted that we wouldn't be that stupid. It was never my
intention to in any way politicize this issue."

Martinez, a freshman who was secretary of housing and urban
development for most of President Bush's first term, said he had not
read the one-page memo. He said he inadvertently passed it to Sen. Tom
Harkin (D-Iowa), who had worked with him on the issue. After that,
officials gave the memo to reporters for ABC News and The Washington
Post.

Harkin said in an interview that Martinez handed him the memo on the
Senate floor, in hopes of gaining his support for the bill giving
federal courts jurisdiction in the Florida case in an effort to
restore the brain-damaged Florida woman's feeding tube. "He said these
were talking points -- something that we're working on here," Harkin
said.

The mystery of the memo's origin had roiled the Capitol, with
Republicans accusing Democrats of concocting the document as a dirty
trick, and Democrats accusing Republicans of trying to duck
responsibility for exploiting the dying days of an incapacitated
woman.

Conservative Web logs have challenged the authenticity of the memo, in
some cases likening it to the discredited documents about Bush's
National Guard service that CBS News reported last fall.

The staff of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, at the
request of a Democrat, spent a week trying to determine the memo's
origin and had come up empty, said an official involved in the
investigation.

The unsigned memo -- which initially misspells Schiavo's first name
and gives the wrong number for the pending bill -- includes eight
talking points in support of the legislation and calls the controversy
"a great political issue."

"This legislation ensures that individuals like Terri Schiavo are
guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted
Bundy," the memo concludes.

It asserts that the case would appeal to the party's core supporters,
saying: "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will
be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue."

The document was provided to ABC News on March 18 and to The Post on
March 19 and was included in news reports about congressional
intervention in the Schiavo case. Bush returned from an Easter
vacation in Texas and signed the bill shortly after 1 a.m. on March
21.

At the time, other Senate Republican aides claimed to be familiar with
the memo but declined to discuss it on the record and gave no
information about its origin.

In a statement issued last night, Martinez said that Harkin asked him
for background information on the bill and that he gave him what he
thought was a routine one-page staff memo on the legislation.
"Unbeknownst to me, instead of my one page on the bill, I had given
him a copy of the now infamous memo that at some point along the way
came into my possession," the statement said.

Harkin said that when he read the part about the politics of the case
he thought that was "rather out of line," but he said he did not
discuss the matter with Martinez. Harkin said he has no complaints
about Martinez.

"I really worked in good faith with Senator Martinez on this issue and
I found him to be a decent, caring person to work with on this, and so
I have a lot of respect for him," he said.

Martinez said Harkin called him about 5 p.m. yesterday and told him
that the memo had come from his office. Martinez said he then called
in his senior staff and said, "Something is wrong here." He said that
Darling later confessed to John Little, Martinez's chief of staff, and
that he said he did not think he had ever printed the memo.

"It was intended to be a working draft," Martinez said. "He doesn't
really know how I got it."

Reached by telephone last night, Darling said it would not be
appropriate for him to discuss the matter at this time.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a member of the Rules and
Administration Committee, wrote to the panel's leaders last week to
ask for an investigation into the "document, its source, and how it
came to be distributed."

"Those who would attempt to influence debate in the United States
Senate should not hide behind anonymous pieces of paper," he said.

A Republican Senate official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because he is not a committee spokesman, said yesterday that an
informal inquiry began almost immediately and is likely to be
concluded within a week.

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said in an interview
Friday that he considered it "ludicrous" to suggest that his party
created the document and said Republicans were using such talk to
divert responsibility.

"I guess the best defense is a good offense -- that's their theory,"
he said.

In interviews at the Capitol yesterday, senators from both sides said
they found the case perplexing, and a sign of the intense partisanship
that permeates the building. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said that
the torrent of accusations reflects the bitterness over the
life-and-death issues in the Schiavo case, which he said were a proxy
on both sides for what provokes "every other ugly political
conversation -- that's abortion."

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said he believed that the memo
originated with the GOP because it is "totally consistent" with how
the Republicans have operated for the past four years. "They just
shouldn't lose their memos," he said.