Senator Pat Roberts (R - KS) Helps to Fix the Intel

By Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane

Note: Both Roberts and Graham were part of the 8 members of Congress who retained their high level clearances. 

Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley is leading the White House effort to sift through the intelligence with the help of the CIA, and is trying to determine what can be released without damaging the agency's ability to gather similar information, according to several intelligence officials. . . . 

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said he believed the administration's new case would be compelling but circumstantial -- "the transportation of 'X,' delivered to a shed where 'Y' is thought to be happening."

Roberts refused to say where Khalid was or how he is being questioned (but indicated he is way in the loop) . . . But Roberts lost all credibility when he claimed that Saddam is working with Al Qaeda and then brought up that abandoned "camp" in North Iraq (which is, Roberts somehow forgot to mention, OUT of Saddam's control -- for all intents and purposes, Saddam only controls about a third of "his" turf). Roberts claimed the camp has been identified as a terrorist training area and is a "poison center." 

One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.” 

The I.A.E.A. had first sought the documents last fall, shortly after the British government released its dossier. After months of pleading by the I.A.E.A., the United States turned them over to Jacques Baute, who is the director of the agency’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office. 

It took Baute’s team only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake

He urged the F.B.I. to ascertain the source of the documents, the skill-level of the forgery, the motives of those responsible, and “why the intelligence community did not recognize the documents were fabricated.” A Rockefeller aide told me that the F.B.I. had promised to look into it. 

That request came at the same time that members of the Senate intelligence panel asked the inspectors general of the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department to investigate the matter. The House and Senate intelligence committees are looking into the episode as well. 

Several prominent Republicans, even as they voice support for the military action against Iraq, say hearings are warranted. Over the weekend, Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN, "We're going to look at this situation." 

But on Tuesday, Warner sounded a more cautious note, saying that he has scheduled no hearings . . . Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also stressed that no hearings have been scheduled. . . . "I think that it's very appropriate for the Congress to have hearings on the whole issue," said Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, noting that some lawmakers have charged that intelligence information was manipulated to suit the administration's agenda. " . . . 

On Capitol Hill, the Senate Intelligence Committee is to review classified background documents related to the administration's pre-war statements about WMD in Iraq. Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of that committee, has not, however, scheduled a hearing about the matter, even though some lawmakers, mostly Democrats, are calling for such a move. Roberts said he wants to give the weapons hunt in Iraq more time. 

Roberts, on the other hand--a folksy jokester who has been named "funniest senator" by Washingtonian magazine--is a loyal defender of the White House. As questions have multiplied about the intelligence on Iraq, Roberts has seemed less interested in looking for errors and abuses than in political damage control. In early June, Warner--who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee--told the Los Angeles Times that he would support joint open hearings on the issue with Roberts; Roberts, he assured, "had been receptive to the idea." But, shortly after a Senate GOP meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney the following day, Roberts said such talk was "premature." Since then, Roberts has been busy lashing out at the president's critics.

"Some of the attacks have been simply politics and for political gain," he said at a June 11 press conference. "I will not allow the committee to be politicized or to be used as an unwitting tool for any political strategist." ...

Still, some hope that, if the media's revelations get bad enough, even Roberts will be shamed into action. "While [Roberts] has a tendency to be partisan, he also has a fiercely independent streak," says Dan Glickman, a former Kansas congressman who knows Roberts well. "By and large, Pat tries to do the right thing. I don't think he would lay down and play dead just to protect the president if he thought the president was wrong." So far, though, the Intelligence Committee chairman is showing no signs of life, and Rockefeller is doing nothing to resuscitate him. 

The move comes amid questions about whether the Bush administration manipulated intelligence data to bolster its case for war. 

Sen. Pat Robert, R-Kansas, made it clear that he has seen no evidence that any intelligence data was slanted or politicized, but he said the allegations from anonymous officials saying they were under pressure to "skew their analysis" were serious and "must be cleared up." 

"If any officials believe... that they have been pressured to alter their assessment, they have an obligation -- and I encourage them -- to contact the committee," Roberts said at a press conference attended by other Republican members of the Senate committee and his House counterpart. No Democrats attended the news conference. . . . 

At the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said the administration would cooperate with Congress. 

"The administration welcomes the review," Fleischer said. "It's important. We always work together with Congress on dealing with the threat of Iraqi possession of WMD and we will continue to work with Congress on the facts that led previous administrations, Democrats, Republicans alike, to know that he had WMD."

Key Democrats called the GOP plan "entirely inadequate" and accused the administration of "hyping" intelligence data, as the debate over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - which until now has focused on the White House, CIA, and State Department - found full voice in Congress. 

At a news conference that appeared aimed at quelling mounting Democratic criticism, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the committee continues to review intelligence documents on weapons and plans to focus on them in closed-door hearings starting next week. 

"We are going to complete a very thorough review of all the documentation" supplied by intelligence agencies, he said. "It seems sensible to do that kind of homework before you talk about a formal investigation of this or that or the other thing." 

Roberts said some of the criticism of intelligence operations was politically inspired. "I will not allow the committee to be politicized or to be used as an unwitting tool for any political strategist," he said. 

SEN. CARL LEVIN: "He has no objects to releasing the number. That's the only question. It's not a question of confidence in Blix. If you're using Hans Blix as the relationship as the excuse not to release your own number in the CIA, Hans Blix says he doesn't have any objections." 

SEN. PAT ROBERTS: "In terms of criticism it's like a mosquito bite, so I urged him to put on some American insecticide. "

Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia Democrat and ranking committee member, dismissed the comments as political while appearing on "Fox News Sunday." 

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. . . .

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted. 

A former senior CIA official said yesterday that Tenet's statement was drafted within the agency and was shown only to Hadley on July 10 to get White House input. Only a few minor changes were accepted before it was released on July 11, this former official said. He took issue with a New York Times report last week that said Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had a role in Tenet's statement.

“Senator Rockefeller and I are committed to continue our close examination of all of the issues surrounding the Niger documents. 

“So far, I am very disturbed by what appears to be extremely sloppy handling of the issue from the outset by the CIA. 

“What now concerns me most, however, is what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the President. 

In an unusual on the record briefing Tuesday, Mr. Hadley took the blame for a statement, discredited by the Central Intelligence Agency, in President Bush's State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa. The President had used the statement, in part, to make the case for going to war in Iraq. 

Mr. Hadley acknowledged he had received warnings from the C-I-A about the veracity of the statement. 

Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says he has already made the request for testimony from the White House aide involved. 

"We have made an inquiry with the National Security Council, with [National Security Adviser Condoleeza] Rice and asked to meet with Mr. Hadley and any other person that might be of particular interest to us," Mr. Roberts said Wednesday on C-SPAN television. "So we will be in the business of taking a hard look at that." 

On Tuesday, Deputy National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, told reporters about two CIA memos and a phone call from CIA Director George Tenet that should have prevented a reference to alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa from appearing in the president's State of the Union Address. Senator Robert's request for testimony from White House aides comes as the intelligence committee in the House of Representatives prepares to hold its first public hearing on Thursday. 

Note: Porter Goss was the chairman of the House Intel Committee and one of the 8 members of Congress to retain clearance.

The letter constitutes a significant criticism of the U.S. intelligence community from a source that does not take such matters lightly. The committee, like all congressional panels, is controlled by Republicans, and its chairman, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), is a former CIA agent and a longtime supporter of Tenet and the intelligence agencies. Goss and the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), signed the letter. Neither was available for comment yesterday. The full committee has not voted on the letter's conclusions. 

The CIA, through spokesman Bill Harlow, disputed the conclusions and accused the panel of not conducting "a detailed inquiry on this study." "The notion that our community does not challenge standing judgments is absurd." ( . . . ) "To attempt to make such a determination so quickly and without all the facts is premature and wrong," Harlow said. "Iraq was an intractable and difficult subject. The tradecraft of intelligence rarely has the luxury of having black-and-white facts. The judgments reached, and the tradecraft used, were honest and professional -- based on many years of effort and experience." 
 

NBC News' Andrea Mitchell reported Friday night that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether White House officials blew Plame's cover in retaliation against Wilson. Revealing the identities of covert officials is a violation of two laws, the National Agents' Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act. 

Ashcroft, an appointee of U.S. President George W. Bush, told a news conference in Washington yesterday: "The Department of Justice received from the Central Intelligence Agency a request for a criminal investigation concerning a possible violation of federal law regarding an alleged unauthorized disclosure of classified information. After a prompt review of this request, the criminal division of the Department of Justice, with the assistance of the FBI as the lead investigative agency, opened a full investigation." 

It is rare for the Justice Department to conduct a full criminal probe into an alleged leak of classified information. 

    Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

    During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger.

The lack of substantive findings so far brought immediate negative reactions from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress - and also seemed certain to raise new questions among allies overseas about the Bush administration's justification for going to war. 

"I'm not pleased by what I heard today, but we should be willing to adopt a wait and see attitude - and that's the only alternative we really have," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. . . . 

Separately, CIA Director George J. Tenet, in a letter to the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee obtained by The Associated Press, rejected congressional criticism that the prewar intelligence findings were flawed. 

Tenet's statement came in response to a blistering letter from Reps. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Jane Harman, D-Calif., the heads of the House intelligence committee. That letter, dated Sept. 25, cited "significant deficiencies with respect to the collection activities concerning Iraq's WMD and ties to al-Qaida prior to the commencement of hostilities there." 

The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. . . . 

Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence. . . . 

Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership." . . . 

The whole point of the intelligence system in place, according to Thielmann, was “to prevent raw intelligence from getting to people who would be misled.” Bolton, however, wanted his aides to receive and assign intelligence analyses and assessments using the raw data. In essence, the under-secretary would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support. “He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get C.I.A. information directly,” Thielmann said. . . . 

As the campaign against Iraq intensified, a former aide to Cheney told me, the Vice-President’s office, run by his chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, became increasingly secretive when it came to intelligence about Iraq’s W.M.D.s. As with Wolfowitz and Bolton, there was a reluctance to let the military and civilian analysts on the staff vet intelligence. 

The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing a report evaluating why U.S. intelligence about the threat that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed to U.S. interests exaggerated the severity of the threat. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the panel's chairman, was quoted Friday as saying the White House was served badly by the CIA, which provided "sloppy" prewar intelligence. 

Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller, D-W.Va., responded Friday by saying that Roberts was trying to "lay all of this out on the intelligence community and never get to any other branches of government; in particular the White House and associated high and visible government agencies." . . . 

A senior administration official, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, said Roberts' CIA comments were issued with Cheney's encouragement. The official said Cheney is trying to shift the blame for the lack of progress in Iraq, which is becoming an issue in next year's presidential and congressional elections, from the White House to the CIA. The Roberts aide denied that encouraged Roberts to criticize the CIA. 

The committee staff was surprised by the amount of circumstantial evidence and single-source or disputed information used to write key intelligence documents — in particular the Oct. 2002 National Intelligence Estimate —summarizing Iraq’s capabilities and intentions, according to Republican and Democratic sources. . . . 

Asked about the upcoming report, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the committee, said “the executive was ill-served by the intelligence community.” The intelligence was sometimes “sloppy” and inconclusive, he said. “That’s a concern I have with the total report” on Iraq. 

“I worry about the credibility of the intelligence community,” said Roberts, who added that he is concerned about demoralizing the intelligence agencies when intensive counterterrorism operations are going on overseas. Still, he insisted, “If there’s stuff on the fan, we have to get the fan cleaned.” 

Despite the progress it has made since June in poring over 19 volumes of classified material, the committee is deeply divided over investigating how the Bush administration used intelligence in its public statements about Iraq. 

Sen. John “Jay” Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) said yesterday he had secured a promise from Roberts to ask one executive agency, the Defense Department and, in particular, its Office of Special Plans, for information about the intelligence it collected or analyzed on Iraq. 

The office has been accused by some congressional Democrats and administration critics of gathering unreliable intelligence on Iraq that bolstered the administration’s case for war. Those allegations have not been substantiated, and the director of the office, William Luti, has denied them. 

At stake is whether the U.S. public, Congress and allies abroad were misled into backing U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to wage war on Iraq, as Democratic presidential contenders contend. 

The opening salvos were fired this week when an early draft of a Senate Intelligence Committee report was leaked to The Washington Post. That draft, apparently prepared by staff under the control of the Republican chairman, fingers the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and other security authorities, faulting them for overstating both the threat of weapons of mass destruction and Baghdad's links with terrorism.. . . 

In the wake of the leaked draft, which lays the blame squarely on intelligence agencies and in effect exonerates the President, Mr. Rockefeller, the committee's vice-chairman, denounced any rush to judgment. "I'm not going to characterize it as a whitewash," he said. "I'm going to characterize it as a very incomplete matter." 

Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, who chairs the intelligence committee, has said he wants the report completed quickly and clearly expects it to blame the CIA and other intelligence agencies. 

"The executive was ill served by the intelligence community," he said yesterday, characterizing their work as sloppy and inconclusive. 

Getting the report out quickly, and long before the presidential finger-pointing begins in earnest, appeals to Republicans. So does absolving the White House of blame. 

"It's my belief that what he [Mr. Roberts] wants to do is to lay all of this out on the intelligence community and never get to any other branches of government," Mr. Rockefeller said yesterday. 

The Senate Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said he believes committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., wants to place all responsibility for problems on the intelligence agencies "and never get to any other branches of government, in particular the White House'' and related agencies. 

Roberts was traveling in Kansas and his spokeswoman did not immediately return calls seeking comment. 

The dispute renewed an unusual public rift on a committee that traditionally has sought to maintain a nonpartisan appearance. The two senators have clashed before over the scope and structure of the Iraq intelligence inquiry. 

Roberts told reporters this week that the inquiry is about 95 percent done and a draft report could be circulated among panel members shortly. But Rockefeller said the investigation "is far from completed.'' 

"We have not gotten into the use of intelligence,'' he told reporters. "We are going to do that one way or another, I guarantee you, because that's absolutely fundamental to this whole thing.'' . . . 

Both the House and Senate Intelligence committees have been investigating. Last month, the leaders of the House committee wrote to Tenet criticizing "significant deficiencies'' in intelligence collection in Iraq. Tenet has rejected the criticism. 

Note: Daschle is 1 of 8 members of Congress to retain his security clearance.

The remarks from the panelists were sharp and passionate. They each decried the leak, criticized Bush's lackadaisical response to it, and blasted the Bush allies who have downplayed the significance of the leak and politicized the issue by attacking Joseph Wilson. The three men demolished much of the spin that has been coming from Republican circles. "Anyone who would care to try to portray this action as merely negligent, as opposed to deliberate, should also be prepared to explain how anyone so completely inept as to divulge this information by accident ever became a ‘senior official' in any organization, let alone an organization running the country," Marcinkowski remarked in his prepared statement. "What sickens me," said Johnson, "is the partisan nature that the White House has allowed [the leak controversy] to take on." Johnson noted that he had written his remarks with two other CIA veterans who had trained with Valerie Wilson--Michael Grimaldi and Brent Cavan--and that he and his co-authors were Republicans who had voted for Bush and contributed money to his presidential campaign. 

Cannistraro told the senators he had heard from current CIA officials that before the war there was "a pattern of pressure" from the Bush White House aimed at pressing the CIA to produce intelligence that backed the case for invading Iraq. He pointed to visits to CIA headquarters made by Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis Libby, who met with "desk-level" analysts. The analysts, Cannistraro said, maintained there was no intelligence to support the allegation that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium in Africa, and Cheney responded by telling them they were not looking hard enough. "This is the first time in 27 years I have ever heard of a vice president sitting down with desk analysts and…pushing them to find support for something he believes," Cannistraro said. "That is pressure." 

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. 
 

(See also Information Clearing House for more on the leak of this document, Cheney's support of it, and McGovern's and Cannistraro's outrage.) 

In a letter to CIA Director George Tenet, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts and Democrat Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "We can be neither complete nor thoughtful, however, without the information we have requested from various elements of the intelligence community." . . . 

Their letter singled out information requested in July on the intelligence suggesting Iraq had sought uranium from the African country of Niger. That claim, now considered discredited, was part of President Bush's State of the Union address. 
 

Roberts, R-Kan., and top Democrat Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia wrote the letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and national security adviser Condoleeza Rice complaining that their agencies were moving too slow.

A similar letter was sent Wednesday to CIA Director George Tenet.

"We must take whatever steps are necessary to assure our nation that U.S. intelligence is accurate and unbiased,'' Thursday's letters said. "The credibility of the government with its people and the nation with the world is at stake.''

A White House spokesman said the administration was "surprised by the substance and tone of the letter.'' The White House has been assisting the committee in its review of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, he said.

Part of the dispute with the White House appears to center on requests for highly classified intelligence reports — known as the president's daily brief — that summarize the most critical international developments and new intelligence, and is delivered to the president each morning.

The standoff with the White House is certain to add to the tension between the committee and the administration over the inquiry, and fuel criticism from Democrats that the administration is trying to escape accountability for its pre-war claims about Baghdad's alleged illicit weapons programs. . . .

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued remarks indicating he thinks the White House does not fully understand the stakes of the investigation. But he stopped short of threatening to issue subpoenas.

The committee is asking for copies of the Bush's daily intelligence briefings in the days leading up to the war.

A typical White House stonewall consists of public pledges of cordial cooperation with investigators, followed by private resistance, delay, excuses, partial compliance or self-righteous assertion of constitutional prerogatives.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, while reminding reporters that Congress does not have jurisdiction over the presidency, still insists "we're willing to be helpful. We're working very cooperatively with them (the committee)."

If that's true, then why doesn't the White House hand over the documents being sought by the Senate committee?

Amazingly, the answer is more or less, ‘Yes, this is possible.’ Technically, though, it’s not a parallel process — just a committee activity organized by interested Senators. Any five members can call a committee meeting even if the Chair doesn’t want them to (Rule 1.5).

The memo, provided late Tuesday by a source on the Committee and reported by Fox News' Sean Hannity, discusses the timing of a possible investigation into pre-war Iraq intelligence in such a way that it could bring maximum embarrassment to President Bush in his re-election campaign.

Among other things, the memo recommends that Democrats "prepare to launch an investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the [Senate] majority. 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."

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.

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.

Referring to a memo revealing the Democratic plot obtained Tuesday afternoon by radio host Sean Hannity, Roberts told the Fox News Channel that the document may have "all sorts of repercussions for intelligence agencies all throughout the world and certainly does a disservice in regards to the war against terrorism."

In an editorial Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

"[Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-WV,] refuses to denounce the memo, which he says was unauthorized and written by staffers. If that's the case, at the very least, some heads ought to roll. A good place to start would be minority staffer Christopher Mellon, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton administration."  . . .

The Journal recommended that, until those responsible for the Democrats' decision to politicize intelligence are fired, the Intelligence Committee should be "shut down, cleaned out and reconstituted later, preferably after the next election."

On Wednesday Democratic Sen. Zell Miller said attempts by committee Democrats to undermine an American president at a time of war were "perhaps treasonous."

"If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin," Miller charged, in a statement released by his office.

"The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has been harmed by a blatant partisan attack," the Tennessee Republican said in a floor speech yesterday, concluding that the memo had rendered the committee "incapable of meeting its responsibilities to the United States Senate and to the American people."

"Those responsible for this memo appear to be more focused on winning the White House than they are on winning the war against terror," Frist complained before adding, "There will be no more pulling along and no more useful collaboration on partisan schemes."

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts echoed Frist's decision to shut his committee down, saying, "Unless and until this reprehensible attack plan and strategy to derail the committee's important work is properly addressed, I am afraid that it will be impossible to return to business as usual in the committee.

Roberts is not allowing this aspect of the investigation to take place, stating that the probe is already "90 to 95 %" finished. No questions about the dozens of public statements made by the Bush administration about Iraq's weapons capabilities have been allowed. No questions about the Office of Special Plans, which was created out of whole cloth by Rumsfeld for the specific purpose of re-interpreting CIA and State Department intelligence reports, have been allowed. No questions about repeated visits to CIA headquarters by Dick Cheney, who went there to browbeat intelligence analysts for more aggressive interpretations of the threat posed by Iraq, have been allowed. Roberts has already made it clear that the CIA is to blame for the fact that there are no weapons in Iraq, and is blocking Rockefeller and the Democrats from questioning this dubious premise.

The memo prepared by Rockefeller stated that the Democrats need to try to steer the inquiry towards these matters. Failing that, the memo said, Democrats should try to launch a separate, independent investigation into these matters because the Intelligence Committee chaired by Roberts was being used to defend the White House from taint. "We have an important role to play," read the memo, "in revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral pre-emptive war."

When this memo fell into the hands of Sean Hannity and Fox, a concerted attempt was made to turn the existence of the memo into a major scandal. Hannity railed that this memo would cause several Senators to resign, that it was proof the Democrats want to turn the investigation into nothing more than a political witch hunt. Various members of the mainstream press jumped on this rhetorical bandwagon. The Los Angeles Times, in one example, described the revelation of the memo in terms to warm Hannity's heart: "The tone of the memo could be embarrassing to Democrats and provides new ammunition for Republican complaints that Democrats are seeking to use the inquiry for political gain."

Roberts demanded that Rockefeller denounce the memo, but Rockefeller refused to do so. Roberts used this as an excuse to cancel further Intelligence Committee hearings on the matter, and froze completely the investigation. For all practical purposes, the Congressional investigation into the rhetoric surrounding our rush to war in Iraq is over.

The Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, was startled. He informed his staff that Rockefeller had told him that he personally ordered aides to give him "options" -- an order that produced the now infamous memo. To the plainspoken ex-Marine from Dodge City, trust had been breached. His committee will remain dormant, conducting no hearings, until some Democrat on the committee -- preferably Rockefeller -- disavows the memo's contents. That is not about to happen. . . .

The partisan tone among the committee's Democrats has been sounded by Levin and his lieutenant, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois. Levin set the line on Fox News Sunday Nov. 9: "Did the administration, knowing what they knew, with daily briefings, exaggerate the intelligence (about Iraq)? The chairman of this committee and the Republicans refuse to look at the administration's use of exaggeration of intelligence."

The point Levin wants to pursue is that intelligence professionals were pressured by Bush officials to distort their findings. The committee's non-partisan staff has come up with no such information and has had no such complaints made from whistle-blowers in the intelligence community. Democratic demands to leap over the staff produced the memorandum which has laid waste the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"I think we will have, hopefully, some public hearings by February," announced Pat Roberts, chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" program. "We will get those questions out."

The apparent change of heart came after the CIA acknowledged late last month that it "lacked specific information" about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction when it compiled a 2002 intelligence estimate that served to justify the invasion.

Congressional Republicans also found themselves under renewed pressure last week after Bush, when asked in a television interview to clarify whether he had hard facts about Iraqi weapons or just feared Baghdad may acquire them, replied: "So what's the difference?"

The plot, authored by aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the committee, has poisoned the working atmosphere of a crucial legislative panel in a time of war, Senate sources say. It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, into approving probes that in actuality would be fishing expeditions inside the State Department and Pentagon. . . .

In other words, they would manufacture and denounce a cover-up where none existed. The Democrats then would drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo. . . .

Insight has pieced together how the Democrats' fishing expedition worked. According to insiders, Mellon, a former Clinton administration official, is part of a network of liberal operatives within the Pentagon and CIA who reportedly are seeking to discredit and politically disable some of the nation's most important architects of the war on terrorism and their efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into terrorist hands. . . .

Clinton-era personnel reforms allowed officials of his administration to burrow into vital Pentagon posts as careerists, administration officials say, where they have been maneuvering to keep Bush loyalists out of key positions and/or undermine their authority while pushing their own political agendas that run contrary to those of the president. This network, Insight has discovered, extends to the Pentagon's outer reaches such as the National Defense University and far-flung academic and influential policy think tanks, or "CINC tanks," serving the commanders of the U.S. military theaters around the world.

Senate and Department of Defense (DoD) colleagues say Mellon has a beef against Feith and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, under whom he served briefly until the new Bush administration made its full transition into office. Intelligence sources say he tried to keep conservatives out of key Pentagon posts and to undermine tough antiterrorism policies after 9-11. Back at the SSCI, Mellon's chief targets for criticism have been Feith and his like-minded State Department colleague, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who holds the nonproliferation portfolio. Both Feith and Bolton are strong supporters of President Bush's advocacy of "regime change" for rogue states and are considered to be among the most faithful advocates in the administration of his personal policy positions.

The first development is that effective today, the attorney general has recused himself and his office staff from further involvement in this matter. By that act, I automatically become the acting attorney general for purposes of this case with authority to determine how the case is investigated, and if warranted by the evidence, prosecuted.

The attorney general, in an abundance of caution, believed that his recusal was appropriate based on the totality of the circumstances and the facts and evidence developed at this stage of the investigation. I agree with that judgment. And I also agree that he made it at the appropriate time, the appropriate point in this investigation.

The second development is that prior to his recusal, the attorney general and I agreed that it was appropriate to appoint a special counsel [read: special prosecutor] from outside our normal chain of command to oversee this investigation.

By his recusal, of course, the attorney general left to me the decision about how to choose a counsel, who that person should be and what that person's mandate should be. In anticipation of this development, I have given a great deal of thought to this in recent days and have decided that, effective immediately, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, will serve as special counsel in charge of this matter. I chose Mr. Fitzgerald, my friend and former colleague, based on his sterling reputation for integrity and impartiality. He is an absolutely apolitical career prosecutor. He is a man with extensive experience in national security and intelligence matters, extensive experience conducting sensitive investigations, and in particular, experience in conducting investigations of alleged government misconduct.

''I don't think they exist,'' David Kay said Sunday. ''The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist - we've got to deal with that difference and understand why.'' . . .

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was surprised Kay ''did not find some semblance of WMD'' in Iraq. Roberts said a report on Iraq intelligence, to be delivered to his panel Wednesday, should help clarify the CIA's prewar performance.

''It appears now that that intelligence - there's a lot of questions about it,'' Roberts said on CNN's ''Late Edition.''

The evolving position followed sharp public words from the CIA's former chief weapons inspector, David A. Kay, comments that have suddenly intensified the debate in Washington over who was responsible for the shaping of prewar intelligence that President Bush used to justify toppling Saddam Hussein. . . .

On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders used Kay's statements to argue for a more aggressive investigation by the GOP-controlled Congress into the shaping of pre-war intelligence. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., complained that the Republican leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee was seeking to limit the scope of that panel's inquiry, even as Kay was now revealing the extent of the problem. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The committee's chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told Kay Wednesday, ``I personally take some umbrage at people who for one reason or another think we need to have an outside investigation before our inquiry is even complete.''

That inquiry is nearing completion. But the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said Kay's testimony showed a need to expand the review. Rockefeller said the inquiry should examine whether the administration manipulated intelligence.

The committees, working separately for the past seven months, have determined that the CIA relied too heavily on circumstantial, outdated intelligence and became overly dependent on satellite and spy-plane imagery and communications intercepts. . . .

The statements reignited a fiercely partisan debate about the performance of the CIA, and over whether the Bush administration twisted the intelligence, as some Democrats contend, as it built a case for war. Administration officials said Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that posed a grave threat to the United States.

That deep partisan split has also riven the two intelligence committees, and members and staff members fear party-line battling will make it impossible for Congress to provide a cogent analysis of the issues and answers to the public. . . .

Roberts said he intends to put a 300-page draft report before the members on Thursday, give them one week to digest it, and then begin the process of finalizing and getting portions declassified for public hearings at the end of March.

The shift by the White House, which had previously maintained that any such inquiry should wait until a more exhaustive weapons search has been complete, came after pressure from lawmakers in both parties and from the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. . . .

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said today that convening a blue-ribbon panel is important because "we're in danger now of seeing the politicization of the whole intelligence issue."

Roberts and other congressional officials said they believe any independent panel should not begin its work at least until after the Senate report has been issued. "We are going to answer a lot of questions," he said. . . .

But Goss and Roberts said they believe partisan politics would make it impossible for the new commission to get any real work done before the elections. "Not this year," Goss said. "You couldn't get the members together, or even the rules set up. This is not easy because nobody trusts anybody." . . .

A spokeswoman for Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said the senator would support the creation of an independent commission only if the committee, which is controlled by Republicans, does not agree this week to expand the scope of its own inquiry into the possible misuse of intelligence by administration officials. There is virtually no chance that expansion will happen, members of the committee said recently.

Bush's decision to go to an outside commission comes amid assertions that America's credibility is being undermined by uncertainty over flawed intelligence used as a basis for invading Iraq.

He initially reacted coolly to setting up such a body, then decided during the weekend to go forward. By establishing the commission himself, Bush will have greater control over its membership and mandate.

A senior White House official discussing the situation on grounds of anonymity said the body would be patterned after the Warren Commission, which conducted a 10-month investigation that concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy

In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed. . . .

Administration supporters say Bush, Vice President Cheney and others were simply extrapolating from the comprehensive intelligence provided by Tenet's intelligence community. Critics say Bush and his Cabinet had already decided to go to war, regardless of what the intelligence efforts found.

The move puts claims made by President Bush and other senior officials in his administration squarely in the sights of the committee's investigation, and could add to the White House's political troubles as it tries to keep questions about the war from becoming a drag on Bush's reelection campaign. . . . 

The change in scope was announced in a statement issued by Rockefeller and the chairman of the panel, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). The statement outlined a new course for an investigation that is already several months along, and has involved interviews with dozens of U.S. intelligence officials and reviews of thousands of pages of classified documents.

New areas of inquiry will include "whether any influence was brought to bear on anyone to shape their analysis to support policy objectives," the statement said. Sources involved in the investigation said they had turned up no evidence so far that there was such pressure, or that analysts shaded their assessments to please the White House. . . .

But the most significant shift for the committee is its determination to now examine "whether public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq" by administration figures were "substantiated by intelligence information." The statement said the committee would examine public comments and claims made not only by the current administration but by officials in the Clinton administration. . . .

The expansion marks a surprising shift in direction for the committee. Roberts and other Republicans had resisted the idea of scrutinizing the administration's public statements or interactions with intelligence analysts on the grounds that it was inherently political and beyond the jurisdiction of a congressional intelligence panel. Recent developments put new pressure on Republicans to give ground to Democrats.

The common thread here is that the Bush administration took unlikely worst-case scenarios and inflated them drastically to justify an immediate invasion without international support. The Senate committee will need to find out not just why the intelligence was so wrong, but also the extent to which the administration misused it to stampede the nation.

The bipartisan vote on the Republican-led panel sets a three-week deadline for a voluntary handover by the administration, after which the committee would employ unspecified "further action," which could only mean a subpoena, the officials said. . . .

The panel requested the information as part of its inquiry into the administration's prewar intelligence about Iraq, including the disputed intelligence about Iraq's illicit weapons and ties to terrorism, the officials said.

The White House has said publicly that it is complying with the panel's requests. But Congressional officials say the administration is continuing to withhold important information, including copies of the president's detailed daily written intelligence digest.

Both Mr. Tenet and President Bush said the resignation was for personal reasons. But current and former intelligence officials noted that Mr. Tenet was anticipating heavy criticism from three reports expected to assail the agency either over its failure to detect the Sept. 11, 2001, terror plot or the assessments that Iraq possessed unconventional weapons before the American invasion last year.

Most damaging among them is a Senate Intelligence Committee report, due this month, which is expected to single out errors made by the agency in its prewar judgments.

Some Republican senators, including Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, signaled to the administration in the past two weeks that the report's conclusions would be so critical that it would raise questions about who should be held accountable, an official said. Another official said the highly critical nature of the report was widely known at the White House.

To suggestions that the redaction request could be interpreted as an effort to provide political cover for Cheney, a CIA official responds that "the purpose of declassification review is to protect intelligence sources, methods and other classified matters which, if disclosed, could be helpful to adversaries, like weapons proliferators and terrorists. It is not to stifle criticism." Leaders of the Senate panel don't see it the same way. "The Committee is extremely disappointed by the CIA’s excessive redactions to the report," Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller, and West Virginia Democrat, said in a statement last week, without mentioning any specific CIA-proposed edits. . . .

Meanwhile, an intelligence heavyweight last week entered the fray with a new reform proposal that is already gathering high-level attention. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss — a former CIA clandestine services officer and leading contender for CIA director if President Bush is re-elected — quietly introduced a bill that would significantly expand the CIA director's executive and management authority over the whole intelligence community, a Goss spokesman confirmed to TIME. While the Director of Central Intelligence has responsibility for all intelligence gathering, more than 80 percent of the spy budget is outside the CIA's control, much of it in the Pentagon's spy satellite programs. A Goss aide said the bill would give the CIA director authority over 70 percent of the intelligence budget.

Roberts based his conclusion in part on a memo Plame sent to her boss describing Wilson's "good relations'' with Niger officials. The committee report also disclosed that a CIA reports officer had told the staff that Wilson's wife had "offered up [Wilson's] name."

Wilson said yesterday on CNN that the reports officer's statement "was taken out of context" and in a letter to the Senate committee he had asked that the reports officer be re-interviewed. As for his wife's note to her boss about his Niger contacts, Wilson said that "he was told that somebody in that chain of command asked Valerie to do my list of curriculum vitae."

On how his trip to Niger was initiated, Wilson said, the committee "got that particular point wrong."

Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, described himself as "disappointed" by Goss's nomination.

In a written statement, Rockefeller stated we "need someone who is objective and independent" to lead the CIA. Rockefeller believes "we should not be nominating any politician to this job," one of the senator's staff members told CNN.

''When George Tenet announced his retirement I made it clear that I thought his replacement should be someone of unquestioned capability and independence who could restore the credibility of America's intelligence community'', said Senator Jay Rockefeller, the ranking opposition Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which must now hold confirmation hearings on the Goss nomination.

''I said then and I still believe that the selection of a politician -- any politician, from any party -- is a mistake'', Rockefeller added, noting that the nominee ''will need to answer tough questions about his record and his position on reform, including questions on the independence of the leader of the intelligence community''.

Others were more blunt. Stansfield Turner, the CIA director under former President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) described the nomination as the ''worst in the history of the post'', while Mel Goodman, a former top CIA analyst, currently at the Centre for International Policy (CIP), said the Florida congressman ''has all the wrong credentials'', including a nine-year stint in the 1960s as a covert CIA operative in Latin America and Europe.

Still others described Goss as a ''cat's paw'' for Vice President Dick Cheney, whose office, according to a number of retired intelligence officials, played a key role in corrupting the intelligence process in the run-up to Washington's attack on Iraq in March 2003.

They fear his closeness to the White House will mean the CIA directorship will become fully politicised. 

Roberts unexpectedly announced the proposal Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” . . .

Roberts would put the CIA’s three main directorates — Operations, which runs intelligence collection and covert actions; Intelligence, which analyzes intelligence reports; and Science and Technology — into three new, separate and renamed agencies, each reporting to a separate assistant national intelligence director. It also would remove three of the largest intelligence agencies from the Pentagon.

Although the measure would essentially dismantle the CIA, Roberts said in a paper he released: “We are not abolishing the CIA. We are reordering and renaming its three major elements.”

"Senator Roberts did not afford me or any Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee an opportunity to work with him in drafting the proposal," Rockefeller said in a statement released Sunday. "Senator Roberts' proposal departs significantly from the 9/11 commission's blueprint for reform."

Roberts said Monday that Democrats on his committee had been provided the language of his bill last Friday. He added that he spoke with both Sens. Rockefeller and Levin prior to his appearance on the Sunday morning news show where he announced his idea, and described the conversations as "meaningful dialogue" about the plan and his intention to outline it on Sunday.

The personnel shufflings haven't yet spread to the analytical shop. But signs are starting to point to a broad shake-up, charged by political motivations. And it's in this context that Goss' actions take on a darker tint.

Today's New York Times, in a story headlined "New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies," reports on a leaked memo that Goss circulated on Monday within the CIA "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road," as the new director put it. The pertinent passage is this: "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."

This directive reinforces a general uneasiness about Goss, who after all auditioned for his current job by doing political hackwork for the president.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, is insisting that any review be conducted only as part of the committee's standard oversight role, not a broader inquiry, an aide to Mr. Roberts said.

By contrast, the proposal by the Democratic vice chairman, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, outlined by his staff for the first time on Tuesday, calls for "an investigation into all matters that have any tendency to reveal the full facts about the detention, interrogation and rendition authority and practices" used by government agencies for intelligence purposes.

Mr. Rockefeller said in a recent interview that he believed that the committee should begin an inquiry even before the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general completes at least a half-dozen reviews now under way.

The C.I.A. has said it will provide its reports to the committee, but in Congressional testimony last month, Porter J. Goss, the intelligence chief, said he did not know when the reviews would be completed.

A congressional aide said intelligence committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) does not believe such an investigation is warranted. "Our position is this will continue to be a topic of ongoing oversight," the aide said. "We do not yet see the necessity for an investigation. We continue to look into this."

"I haven't asked him what day he's going to finish all these cases," Goss replied.

"Or a month?" shot back Levin.

 "As soon as they are through," Goss answered. ". . . I know there is still a bunch of other cases."

In recent weeks, the ranking Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence panels have asked their Republican chairmen to investigate the CIA's detention and interrogations. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) has declined the request from Sen. John Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

"Our collection agencies are often unable to gather intelligence on the very things we care the most about," the commission wrote.

At the top of its list of 74 recommendations, the commission urges President Bush to make sure John Negroponte, the new Director of National Intelligence, has the authority and backing to make much needed reforms in the U.S. intelligence community, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller.

The panel also said the FBI must be reformed to make maximum use of its intelligence capabilities by combining the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office.  . . .

Roberts says: “I don’t think there should be any doubt that we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence. I think that it would be a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further. We should now turn our full attention to the future and ensuring that the new Director of National Intelligence has all of the authority he will need to do his job and address the problems highlighted by the Commission and the Congressional Intelligence Committees over the years.

The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence could hold hearings on the use of espionage cover soon after the U.S. Congress returns from its August recess, said Roberts spokeswoman Sarah Little.

Little said the Senate committee would also review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame case for nearly two years.