The senator had been watching a powerful documentary series - "The X Files" on cable TV and had become alarmed at the low priority given by the FBI to the investigation of serious threats to the peace and security of our planet earth.
However, he had become truly disturbed when his grandson, Richard Head (IV) came home on vacation from JUBILATION T CORNPONE Military Academy at Boondocks, Alabama, Seems that during a lecture on "Why General Grant was a Closet Faggot" an inattentive student had opened his science book for the first time and scrawled a moustache on a photo of the face on Mars. He was stunned at the outcome, as were his classmates after the lecture when he showed them that the face then bore a remarkable resemblance to that of the late and unlamented Soviet dictator Joe Stalin.
The Senator took instant alarm, as he now knew why Mars had been known as the Red Planet all those years, and that Percival Lowell had to be a commie sympathiser for passing off all those military roads on Mars as mere canals.
The only question in the Senator's mind was whether the first spy mission to Mars should carry army personnel or marines. When he first broached the matter on an informal manner to senior NASA representatives, they were keen to accept funding, but reluctant to commit themselves to being prepared to construct a space probe capable of transporting a full army or marine division, plus tanks and nukes. He is considering whether this is indicative of disloyalty, or merely because of budgetary considerations.
He has written to the President pointing out that the Martians, if there are any, could well give weapons of mass destruction, if they have any, to terrorists on earth, if they know any. The President is concerned, and has set up a Senate inquiry.