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| Home Front: Politix |
| Behind closed doors |
| 2005-11-06 |
| WHEN SENATE MINORITY LEADER HARRY Reid abruptly took the Senate into closed session last Tuesday, he sought to portray the move as a desperate, last-ditch attempt to force intransigent Senate Republicans to complete the second phase of an investigation into the use of intelligence before the Iraq war. The procedural move is rare, one of the few things a minority party can do to seize the agenda--and the spotlight--from the Senate's majority. After he called the Senate into closed session, a red-faced Reid sputtered his way through a press conference. "Finally after months and months and months of begging, cajoling, writing letters we're finally going to be able to have phase two of the investigation regarding how the intelligence was used to lead us into the intractable war in Iraq," he proclaimed, shortly before shouting down a reporter in mid-question. He was just getting started. The only way that we've been able to get their attention is to spend three and a half hours in a closed session. We have spoken to all of the Republican leaders asking for this information, letters have been exchanged, conversations had, statements on major news programs, Meet the Press, all kinds of commitments being made, and they simply were not followed through. It's a slap in the face to the American people that this has been--this investigation has been stymied, stopped, obstructions thrown up every step of the way. That's the real slap in the face. That's the slap in the face. And today, the American people are going to see a little bit of light. It was not a strong performance. As the session ended, Reid was asked about a statement from Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. Roberts had spoken of the work already completed by the Republican staff on the Intelligence Committee. Reid was dismissive. "They've done nothing, nothing substantive. And that's been the problem. Nothing substantive." On that last point, as on several others, Reid was wrong. A week before Reid's tirade, Roberts had instructed the majority staff to "drop everything" in order to complete "Phase II" of the report. By May 2005, the majority staff had already completed much of its work--some of it with the assistance of the minority staff--in preparing a review of public statements about the intelligence. But that review never happened for a rather simple reason: politics. On November 5, 2003, talk radio host Sean Hannity read on air from a memo prepared by the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo described the desire of Democrats to reveal "the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral and pre-emptive war." To achieve this objective, the memo continued, Intelligence Committee Democrats should "prepare to launch an investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority [Republicans]. 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 best time would probably be next year"--that is, during the presidential election. These plans were thwarted, in no small part by the public attention given this internal Democratic strategy memo. In July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee released Phase I of its investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq. Although the report was unanimous--it was signed by all members of the committee, Republican and Democrat--its 511 pages undermined the two main allegations of Bush administration critics: (1) that the Bush administration's case for war was at odds with the reporting policymakers were provided by the intelligence community; and (2) that the Bush administration pressured intelligence analysts to reach their deeply flawed conclusions. But several Senate Democrats--led by Intelligence Committee members Carl Levin, Richard Durbin, and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller--were undeterred. Despite signing on to the findings of the exhaustive report, they pressed for a second report analyzing how the Bush administration had misused intelligence. In so doing, the Democrats trumpeted the presumed results of the investigation even as they pressed for its conclusion. Their interest in using the forthcoming report as a political tool was laid bare when Senator Carl Levin released his own "study" of prewar claims on October 21, 2004--two weeks before the presidential election. Levin had grown increasingly frustrated that Phase II of the Senate report would not be completed in time for the election. So he decided to go public with his "findings." If the timing of the report's release suggests Levin's motivations were political, its contents remove any doubt. The 45-page study is riddled with inaccuracies. Quotations are taken out of context. Bush administration claims are misrepresented. Even names and dates are wrong. In one section, the Levin report describes the testimony of former CIA director George Tenet. The testimony in question came on March 19, 2002, in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. (The Levin report places it before the Senate Intelligence Committee in "February 2002," a minor but revealing error.) The Levin report quotes Tenet this way: "[I]t would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of state sponsorship [of al Qaeda], whether Iranian or Iraqi and we'll see where the evidence takes us." Note the editorial insertion: "[of al Qaeda]." The intent is to demonstrate that Tenet stopped short of claiming that Iraq had been a state sponsor of al Qaeda, leaving the impression that this contrasted with statements made by the Bush administration. Set aside the fact that Levin was disputing a claim the Bush administration never made--that Iraq was a "state sponsor" of al Qaeda, a relationship that would have implied Iraqi command and control of Osama bin Laden's Islamic Army. Tenet's actual words were quite different from those Levin's report put in his mouth. What Tenet refused to dismiss was Iraqi or Iranian state sponsorship of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Here is the quotation in context: Levin: And relative to Iraq, a couple other questions: Do we--do you have any evidence that Saddam Hussein or his agents played a role in the September 11th terrorist attacks or that he has links to al Qaeda? Tenet: Well, as I note in my statement, there is no doubt that there have been contacts and linkages to the al Qaeda organization. As to where we are in September 11th, the jury's out. And as I said carefully in my statement, it would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of state sponsorship, whether Iranian or Iraqi, and we'll see where the evidence takes us. But I want you to think about al Qaeda as a front company that mixes and matches its capabilities. The distinctions between Sunni and Shia that have traditionally divided terrorist groups are not distinctions you should make anymore, because there is a common interest against the United States and its allies in this region, and they will seek capability wherever they can get it. Consider. Carl Levin's "report" misquotes Tenet, then mischaracterizes his comments to demonstrate that the Bush administration's claim of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was not supported by the judgments of intelligence professionals. Except in his response to Levin, Tenet was categorical. "There is no doubt that there have been contacts and linkages to the al Qaeda organization" with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Levin today speaks of the "nonexistent relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda. Who is distorting intelligence? After the election, Democrats continued to push for the completion of Phase II of the Intelligence Committee's report. They have done very little to disguise their motives, insisting at every turn that the Bush administration "fictionalized" its case for war. But the Republicans on the committee, led by chairman Roberts from Kansas, wanted to broaden the inquiry to cover the public statements made by members of Congress, including, potentially, the same Senate Democrats pushing hardest for the Phase II inquiry. Democrats, for reasons that will soon be clear, protested. Their objections grew more vehement when Roberts described how he intended to conduct the inquiry. Roberts and his Republican staff collected public statements--about 500 in total--made by Bush administration policymakers, members of Congress, and former Clinton administration officials. The Democratic staff came up with the list of Bush administration statements; the Republicans gathered the rest. All of the statements were entered on a spreadsheet that put each public statement side-by-side with the underlying intelligence reporting that came closest to supporting it. Senators on the committee were then invited to evaluate the public statements to determine whether they were supported by the intelligence provided to policymakers. But for Democrats eager to demonstrate administration distortions, there was one catch: The statements were to be evaluated without attribution. That is, the claims would be assessed without any knowledge of who made them. Although the plan seemed like a reasonable way to take politics out of the evaluation process, the Democrats balked. For good reason. Consider the statements below. They are provided without attribution. 1. There has been some debate over how "imminent" a threat Iraq poses. I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. 2. The fact that Zarqawi certainly is related to the death of the U.S. aid officer and that he is very close to bin Laden puts at rest, in fairly dramatic terms, that there is at least a substantial connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. 3. There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. 4. In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. 5. I want to be real clear about the connection with terrorists. I've seen a lot of evidence on this. There are extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. 6. The terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam's arsenal, and there is every reason to believe that Saddam would turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of September 11 had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them. 7. The question is not whether we will disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction but how. All of these statements are those of Senate Democrats. The first three were made by Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The fourth, by Hillary Clinton. The fifth, by Joe Lieberman. The sixth, by John Edwards. The seventh, by Ted Kennedy. And the list could go on. The Phase II report will likely be released by the end of November. In his own press conference last Tuesday, Senator Levin did the White House a favor by signaling that Democrats will focus on the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's support for terror, particularly the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. "There's a lot of evidence that the administration went way beyond the intelligence that was provided to them," said Levin. "We know that the intelligence was way off, it was false in many, many ways. But the administration went way beyond the intelligence, particularly as it relates to any relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." Levin hasn't always felt this way. "We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq," he said on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on June 16, 2003. But that comment came at a time when Levin was still claiming that the Bush administration had pressured intelligence analysts to shape their assessments, something three authoritative reports have since debunked. It is hard to imagine a more serious charge than the one Senate Democrats are now making: The Bush administration took the country to war in Iraq on the basis of lies. The White House seems to hope that by refusing to engage seriously in this debate, it can somehow make the issue go away. It can't. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 ...the best time would probably be next year"--that is, during the presidential election. Actually, next year is the Congressional election, no? The Dims certainly couldn't hold their fire until 2008! |
| Posted by: Bobby 2005-11-06 14:00 |
| #1 The Bush Administration is correct not to engage in this debate. It's a political question that will be debated by others in the summer of 2008 and resolved for a while in November 2008 by the American people, after which all Democrats will recognize they are a minority party and wish for the good old days of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. |
| Posted by: Gleang Ebbavique7487 2005-11-06 10:45 |