Bush to Name Iraq Intelligence Commission

Democrats say they’re worried an inquiry into intelligence failures planned by President Bush won’t be truly independent. Some Republicans worry the inquiry – at least the fifth now underway – will distract the CIA from key tasks.

With discontent growing on both sides, the White House was leaning toward announcing the commission and its members Wednesday when Bush is expected to give a speech on terrorism at Library of Congress, a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Bush said Monday he wants an independent panel to uncover “all the facts” on prewar intelligence in Iraq and also “look at our war against proliferation and weapons of mass destruction” in a broader context.

In one week, Bush has gone from dismissing the need for a review to discussing what form such a panel should take.

Secretary of State Colin Powell told The Washington Post in an interview published Tuesday that he does not know whether he would have recommended an invasion of Iraq had he been told there was no evidence of stockpiles of banned weapons there.

“I don’t know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world,” he said.

He said the “absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get.”

However, Powell said history will judge that going to war with Iraq “was the right thing to do.”

A GOP Senate aide said the White House is moving toward taking an “unapologetic” look at U.S. intelligence, focusing on the best structure for the intelligence community, rather than on just the flawed Iraq intelligence. Although no timetable is set, the review would most likely be completed well after the November election – in 2005.

Still, the movement toward announcing a panel has only fueled the debate on Capitol Hill.

On Monday, presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said the commission won’t get the White House “off the hook.”

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other senior Democrats wrote Bush, saying “a commission appointed and controlled by the White House will not have the independence or credibility necessary to investigate these issues.”

Senate Republicans responded with statements noting the eight-month inquiry of the Senate Intelligence Committee already is well underway.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he expects the report to answer many questions being asked. However, “if the president has decided to seek advice from such a panel, I will support it,” Roberts said.

The calls for a commission have been sounding since the CIA’s top Iraq weapons inspector, David Kay, resigned last month and began stating that he doesn’t believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the main justification for the Iraq invasion.

Among many reasons for the mistaken intelligence estimates, Kay has blamed a lack of human intelligence inside Iraq and inadequate funds for U.S. intelligence agencies.

On Monday, Kay briefed Bush over lunch at the White House, offering the president “his impressions and what he’s learned,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The forthcoming White House investigation comes on top of inquiries by the House and Senate intelligence panels, an internal CIA review, a CIA-commissioned report from retired agency officials and an Army review.

Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also considering a probe of British intelligence estimates on Iraq.

The Senate intelligence report, which will go to committee members Thursday, agrees with many of Kay’s findings, sources familiar with the report say. One congressional source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Monday that the intelligence committee has already done much of the work an independent commission would do.

House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla., said the CIA has been responding to questions from his oversight committee and the process is working. He said he hopes the president’s commission comes at the issue from a different perch, looking at the overall architecture of the intelligence community.

While Goss said he encourages review and oversight, he said he does worry that “pulling people from the front lines” to answer questions of investigators takes manpower.

“My feeling is this is not a subject that is going unattended,” he said of the intelligence failures.

Some Democrats agree on the need to balance appropriate reviews with staying focused on the threats ahead – “a difficult tension,” said California Rep. Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“The point of lessons learned is not to write a Ph.D. thesis, it is to invent better trade craft and practices to protect the present and the future,” Harman said.

The White House hasn’t publicly mentioned possible commission members, but lawmakers and intelligence experts have suggested Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser for Bush’s father, and former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.

Scowcroft led a classified review of intelligence in 2001 and heads Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; Rudman co-chaired a task force on terrorist threats. Scowcroft was traveling and unavailable for comment; Rudman declined to comment when asked about the commission.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., last week also floated the names of former House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash., former Secretary of State and Treasury George Shultz and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, among others.