Aide who lifted documents now teaches Iraqis democracy
WASHINGTON - It was a surprise to find an old face on Capitol Hill on Wednesday - former Senate GOP leadership aide Manuel Miranda - but an even bigger surprise was learning his new job: giving legislative advice to fledgling democrats in Baghdad.
Miranda’s official title is director of the Office of Legislative Statecraft at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. There, he’s giving instruction on democratic principles to Iraqi lawyers and lawmakers, some of whom he escorted around the Capitol complex Wednesday.
Miranda honed his own legislative statecraft earlier this decade at the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he led an 18-month effort to pilfer documents from the Democratic staff.
Miranda, who moved on to work as judicial-nominations counsel for then-Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., in 2003, was forced from his job in early 2004 after an internal Senate investigation determined he and a junior aide had swiped 4,670 documents, memos and e-mails.
Miranda subsequently acknowledged doing so. He said that because the committee had no internal password protection at the time, no laws were broken when he looked through and printed out other aides’ electronic files.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., laughed upon learning of Miranda’s current job.
“He’s back,” Durbin said. “Tell him to stay away from my computer.”
Durbin was among a bipartisan group of senators who recommended federal authorities investigate Miranda. But prosecutors dropped the case after interviewing many committee and leadership staff members.
The State Department hired him a year ago to teach Iraqis legal principles.