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Battle Brewing Over Congressional Investigations
As Congress probes the Bush administration’s failure to find
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, battle lines are forming over
how far the investigations should go. The Republican chairs of both
the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence are eager
to limit political damage to the White House and have limited their
inquiries to examining how the intelligence community carried out
its work.
Democrats insist the panels need to look beyond the quality of information
that was supplied to President George W. Bush. They also want the
investigations to look at whether Bush or his aides intentionally
exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities
in order to bolster their case for war. “I think the central
question here is, frankly: Was there a predetermination to go to
war on the part of the administration….Or was there faulty
intelligence,” Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), vice chairman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an appearance Oct. 26
on Meet the Press.
Republicans dispute the idea that Bush intentionally misled the
American people. Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)
told USA Today and the Washington Post that his inquiry
found no evidence that the White House pressured intelligence officials.
Roberts’ assessment was bolstered to some extent by remarks
from Carl W. Ford Jr., the State Department’s newly retired
intelligence chief. The intelligence community “has to bear
the major responsibility for WMD information in Iraq and other intelligence
failures,” Ford said in remarks published in the Oct. 29 Los
Angeles Times. “We badly underperformed for a number of years,”
he
added, “and the information we were giving the policy community
was off the mark.”
But at a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Oct.
24, Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the Armed Services
Committee, said the intelligence committee’s inquiry is “missing
half” the issue. Levin is conducting his own inquiry, and Rockefeller
has said he will launch an additional committee review to look at
the administration’s use of intelligence if the majority refuses
to do so.
Both Senate Democrats and Republicans grouse about the administration’s
willingness to cooperate with the investigations. On Oct. 29, Roberts
and Rockefeller sent a sharply-worded letter to CIA Director George
Tenet after he demanded that top CIA officials be given the opportunity
to respond to the panel’s preliminary findings. The letter
called for the agency to provide the panel with needed information
and schedule any interviews within two days. “The committee
has been patient,” the senators wrote, “but we need immediate
access to this information.”
The battle over the congressional investigations follows news that
the Iraq Survey Group has so far failed to find actual weapons in
Iraq. The head weapons inspector of that group, David Kay, received
a mixed response from Congress when he briefed the House and Senate
intelligence committees Oct. 2 on his “interim progress”
report. Neither party could be said to be overjoyed, however, particularly
after Kay told lawmakers that he needed another six to nine months
and more than half-a-billion dollars to complete what many see as
a fruitless investigation. The Bush administration is seeking an
additional $600 million for Kay to continue his search, part of
an $87 billion fiscal 2004 supplemental spending bill to pay for
reconstruction costs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To be sure, there were some Republicans who saw bright spots in
the report. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, took an entirely different spin
from his colleagues. “Basically, I think the news is extremely
good,” he stated, contending that Kay’s report actually
reaffirms the administration’s decision to go to war. —With
Roxane Assaf
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