The American Spectator

p> HARKIN AND HARRY br> Late last week a staffer for Sen. Mel Martinez admitted to being the author of the infamous Terri Schiavo “talking points memo.” Senator Martinez also reported late last week that he handed a copy of the memo to Sen. Tom Harkin . Martinez says that Harkin was the only person to whom he gave a copy of the memo. That memo, which gained a great deal of attention after a Senate source handed the document over to both the Washington Post and ABC News, was initially thought to be a Democratic dirty trick. /p>

The Prowler reported two weeks ago that Senate Republican leadership staffers had traced the memo to the opposition research office of Democratic Senate leaders Harry Reid, where they believed Democratic staffers had taken a set of talking points posted on the website of the Traditional Values Coalition and created the memo from those talking points. It appeared that the TVC had shaped those talking points from a March 8 press release from the office of Sen. Martinez.

Now, it appears the Martinez staffer used the March 8 press release (which remains posted on the Senator’s website), as the basis for the talking points memo that Martinez handed off to Senator Harkin. Martinez claims he did so unaware of the political strategy in the memo, and because he’d been working with Harkin on saving Schiavo.

Harkin has been silent about his role in the “talking points memo” controversy, though a staffer in his Washington office late Friday denied that his boss could have been the source for the Washington Post and ABC News. “He hasn’t said anything, but he wasn’t working against Senator Martinez on this one. I can’t believe he would leak the memo, particularly at the stage of the debate when he got the memo, which would have been before the floor vote.”

He may not have leaked the memo, but he at least went to Sen. Harry Reid about it. According to a Reid leadership source, Harkin gave Reid a heads-up about the memo, telling him about the language, as well as the ham-handed language about how the Schiavo controversy could be a political boon to Republicans. It isn’t clear that Harkin gave Reid a copy.

“Reid knew about the memo. He talked about its existence with staff,” says the Democratic leadership staffer. “I don’t know that he had a copy on March 18th, when this thing started erupting, but Reid was consulted about it.”