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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Sladek who wrote (671)	2/7/2004 10:44:54 AM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Controversial judge to head US WMD probe By Edward Alden in Washington Published: February 6, 2004 President George W. Bush on Friday named a controversial former appeals court judge as co-chairman of the commission to investigate the pre-war US intelligence on Iraq, and gave the group until March 31 2005 to report its findings. In a brief White House address, Mr Bush said the nine-member commission would be headed by Laurence Silberman, a senior Republican-appointed judge on the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, who has featured in several of the most politically-charged legal decisions of the past 15 years. His co-chair will be Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator and governor from Virginia. Advertisement Mr Bush, who decided to create the commission after former weapons inspector David Kay said it was likely no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, acknowledged yesterday that US claims about a weapons stockpile had not been confirmed. "We are determined to figure out why," he said. In addition to Iraq, the commission will also examine US intelligence on Iran, North Korea, Libya and Afghanistan. The president said he was determined "to make sure that American intelligence is as accurate as possible for every challenge in the future". George Tenet, CIA director, acknowledged on Thursday that the agency had exaggerated the scope of Iraq's weapons programmes but defended the integrity of the agency against charges that the intelligence findings were politically tainted. But the appointment of Mr Silberman will probably re-open old partisan wounds in Washington and may raise questions about the independence of the commission. In 1998, the judge issued a scathing opinion in an appeals court ruling that allowed special prosecutor Kenneth Starr to gain testimony of secret service agents as part of his investigation into whether Democratic president Bill Clinton had lied about his relationship with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. He was also in the majority of a three-judge panel that in 1991 overturned the conviction on obstruction charges of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, the key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal. Intriguingly, Mr Bush also named Patricia Wald, the Democrat-appointed dissenting judge in that opinion, to sit on the intelligence panel. The commission will include Senator John McCain, a Republican with a reputation for fierce independence, and Lloyd Cutler, a fixture in the Washington establishment who was White House counsel to Mr Clinton and President Jimmy Carter. The other members are Bill Studeman, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Rick Levin, president of Yale University. Two members are still to be named. By setting the commission's deadline well past the November presidential elections, the White House hopes to minimise the controversy over why its pre-war claims have not been borne out. nytimes.com