Senate Intelligence Leaders in Flap on Iraq Probe
Tue November 4, 2003 11:07 PM ET
By Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A festering dispute between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee over its investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq erupted on Tuesday after a memo surfaced that discussed a Democratic strategy to call for an independent commission to look at how the White House used the information to justify going to war.
The memo drafted by the panel's Democratic staff and reported by Fox News suggested launching an independent inquiry when cooperation with the majority Republicans was exhausted and that the best timing for such action would be next year.
That timing would coincide with the presidential election year, although the memo did not mention that. Some Democrats running for president have criticized the White House for possibly exaggerating the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to gather support for the war.
The memo provided a rare glimpse at the behind-the-scenes tug-of-war in a committee that conducts most of its business behind closed doors and usually puts on a bipartisan face.
Republicans want to keep the probe focused on the accuracy of assessments by the intelligence agencies on Iraq leading up to the war, while Democrats want to broaden the inquiry to include how the Republican White House used the information.
The memo was "very troubling to me," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said. "I'm pretty despondent right now, it's sort of like a personal slap in the face after you have worked over time to come up with what we think is going to be a very good report on how to improve our intelligence capabilities," he told Reuters.
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Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the committee, said in a statement the draft staff memo was likely leaked to the press after being taken from a waste basket or through unauthorized computer access and had not been approved or shared with members of the committee.
"Having said that, the memo clearly reflects staff frustration with the conduct of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and the difficulties of obtaining information from the administration," Rockefeller said.
Roberts and Rockefeller last week jointly sent letters to the White House, CIA, Pentagon and State Department demanding that documents be delivered and interviews with officials be scheduled by a noon deadline last Friday.
The White House, noting that the panel had no jurisdiction over it, said it would cooperate, but committee sources said it had not yet made available the documents.
"I have said publicly for months that the committee must review not only the accuracy of prewar intelligence on WMD but also the use or misuse of that intelligence by senior policy makers in the administration," Rockefeller said. "The American people deserve a full accounting of why we sent our sons and daughters into war," he said.
Calling for an investigation into how the White House used the intelligence on Iraq was "very premature" because the additional information to come had yet to be reviewed, Roberts said.
The memo as reported by Fox News discussed a plan to "pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials."
"We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once," the memo said. "The best time to do so will probably be next year."
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