Sen. Snowe and the posting of "How to Make a Nuclear Bomb"
November 4, 2006
Maine's Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Saturday questioned the extent of Sen. Olympia Snowe's involvement in the posting on the internet of directions on how to make a nuclear bomb, as revealed in a New York Times article Friday.

"We learned yesterday from the New York Times that the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which Sen. Olympia Snowe sits, is responsible for the posting on the internet of "detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs," Hay Bright said in a press conference Saturday afternoon at the Democratic Party campaign headquarters in Bangor.

The New York Times story says the Bush administration ordered the posting under pressure from Congressional Republicans, led by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Congressman Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas. The documents were pulled off the site Friday after the New York Times inquiry.

"As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, did Sen. Snowe know about her committee chair's insistence on this internet posting? If so, did she approve of it? If she did not know, why not? Was the 28-year senior senator from Maine kept out of the loop? Or was she just not paying attention?"

"This serious threat to our nation's security happened on Olympia Snowe's watch, orchestrated by the Senate Intelligence Committee on which she sits," Hay Bright said. "It is just the latest in a long list of bad decisions, made by Sen. Snowe, made with her support, or on her watch."

Pulling out quotes from several recent newspaper editorials criticizing Snowe's performance the past six years - "troubling concessions that are likely to be challenged in court," "a blank check to wage war" "suspension of habeas corpus rights," "weakening the role of Congress," "she also has enabled his [Bush's] agenda in ways that are detrimental to a free people" - Hay Bright added her own, "the issue of nuclear bomb making instructions, put on the internet at the insistence of the Senate Intelligence Committee on which she sits."

"If this is what has happened on Olympia Snowe's watch only in the past six years of the Bush administration, what will the next six years on her watch get us?" Hay Bright asked. "Can we afford to find out?"

U.S. Senators are elected to serve a six-year term. The election to determine who Maine will send to the U.S. Senate for the next six years happens this Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006.

Click here for the complete text of Hay Bright's press conference remarks.