House Limits Pre-War Intelligence Investigation
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By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003; 3:57 PM
washingtonpost.com
The Republican-controlled House today defeated two amendments by Democrats to broaden congressional investigations into the Bush administration's handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and connections with the al Qaeda terrorist network.
Members postponed until later today or Friday a final vote on the bill authorizing more than $37 billion to finance U.S. intelligence operations next year.
The House defeated, by a vote of 239 to 185, an amendment by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) to require the comptroller general to look into the sharing of U.S. intelligence with U.N. weapons inspectors before the war. Jackson Lee said questions about whether the Bush administration shared all its relevant intelligence about weapons sites with the U.N. inspections teams needed to be answered because President Bush had said "inspections had failed" and that Iraq's weapons "posed such a dire, imminent threat to the United States that we had no choice but to go to war."
For months, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, has claimed that the CIA did not turn over to U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix the complete list of its high-value target sites. CIA Director George J. Tenet has said the agency did share the information.
Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which is investigating the pre-war intelligence, invited Jackson Lee and all other House members to review the 19 volumes supplied by the CIA that contain the classified major analyses and backup documents on Iraq's weapons and connections with al Qaeda.
Goss said that "how much information we shared with the U.N. is a fair question and the answer is we shared a remarkable amount, more than they could handle." He added that if Jackson Lee "wants to know how much intelligence has been shared with the U.N., I guarantee we can find out" in the documents."
Following an occasionally biting debate Wednesday night, the House today also defeated, by a 347 to 76 vote, an amendment by Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) that would have authorized the CIA inspector general to audit telephone and electronic communications between the CIA and Vice President Cheney's office relating to weapons of mass destruction.
Kucinich, a candidate for president, said his amendment seeks to "probe what role the vice president played in causing the CIA to disseminate unreliable, raw, previously undisseminated, untrue information about Iraq's alleged threat to the United States." He referred to a June 5 Washington Post story which reported Cheney and a high-ranking aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the previous year to question analysts about their findings. Some analysts said they felt pressured by the visits to make their assessments conform with administration policy; others said they did not.
Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), a member of the House intelligence panel, called it a "cheap shot" amendment and linked it to Kucinich's campaign for the Democratic nomination. He said it was an attempt to "besmirch the record of this administration, to besmirch the good name of the vice president."
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel, said the amendment raised the question of whether the administration politicized intelligence, but did so in a too narrow and potentially unproductive way. She opposed the proposal. "I believe that we can get to the issue of politicization of intelligence in a different manner, one that is bipartisan and one that falls within the thorough and comprehensive investigation of this committee," she said.
During the debate Wednesday night, Harman said she hoped that U.S. forces would find proscribed weapons in Iraq, but added that the most likely scenario is that ousted president Saddam Hussein "buried or dispersed the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and that some may now be in the hands of terrorist groups outside of Iraq or counterinsurgents in Iraq who continue to harm and kill U.S. and British troops."
With most intelligence officials believing Hussein is still alive, Harman's view raises the prospect, mentioned in a CIA letter to Congress on Oct. 7, that the most likely time he would give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists for use against the United States would be if he felt it was "his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."
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