Democrats Won’t Join Senate Panel Inquiry on Justice Dept.

Democrats will not serve on a Senate task force looking into the Justice Department’s handling of investigations into the Texas cult siege, campaign financing and alleged Chinese spying, a key Senate Democrat said Friday.

“We’re not going to take part in a partisan, special ad hoc committee,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I can’t imagine us putting Democrats on it.”

He said the creation of a special task force under the umbrella of the Judiciary Committee was “unprecedented.”

“I think the reason we’ve never done it before is because we know it won’t work,” Leahy said.

The task force, headed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), will have a broad mandate to look into lingering questions about whether the department bungled aspects of the investigations.

Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott announced the formation of the task force Thursday, although Specter said he had sent investigators from his staff to look into evidence from the Branch Davidian confrontation earlier this month.

The new Branch Davidian investigation was prompted by the FBI’s recent admission, after six years of denials, that its agents fired potentially flammable tear gas canisters at a concrete bunker hours before the compound went up in flames in 1993, killing cult leader David Koresh and about 80 of his followers.