[Mb-civic] Senate stunt juiced up intelligence probe - Thomas Oliphant - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Senate stunt juiced up intelligence probe

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist  |  November 3, 2005

WASHINGTON
AS RECENTLY as a week ago, the chances that there would be a successful 
Senate investigation of the most significant intelligence failure in 
American history since Pearl Harbor were essentially zero.

Today, it's not as if the situation has completely turned around (far 
from it), but you could get odds.

And as recently as a week ago, the supervision being given the Senate 
Intelligence Committee's alleged work on the ''intelligence" information 
and its misuse before and immediately following the invasion of Iraq was 
essentially zero.

Today, there are six senators on that committee, three from each party, 
charged with determining the status of the latest phase of the probe and 
reporting back to their colleagues by Nov. 14.

Sometimes political stunts work, and the one Senate Democrats pulled 
this week worked spectacularly. Simply by invoking a rule with roots 
back to the Revolution, they managed to put some gas in what was a 
nearly empty tank. What President Bush and Vice President Cheney should 
fear is a dogged look at how intelligence information that was not 
entirely definitive about Iraq's unconventional weapons efforts came to 
be portrayed as such in the months preceding the war it was misused to 
help launch.

For some, it may have seemed weird to observe Senate Republicans howling 
like hyenas this week over what was misleadingly described as a maneuver 
that closed the Senate's doors to the public for a couple of hours.

That is only technically accurate. What really happened was that the 
Democratic leadership, acting like leaders for a change, used procedure 
to force a secret, senators-only discussion of the intelligence issue. 
When the minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, made his move (no debate 
or vote allowed), the assumption behind it was that this was the only 
way to force the discussion.

Had Reid complained, or had a chorus of Democrats complained about the 
probe, there would have been nothing but sound-bite bromides on all 
sides, and no one would have paid the slightest attention. But by 
reminding the majority leader, Bill Frist, that he does not control 
every aspect of the Senate's procedures and by surprising and 
embarrassing him in front of his colleagues, the Democrats got the 
attention they deserved.

Frist's hilariously righteous explosion -- along with the tantrums of 
others like the endangered Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and the 
embattled Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas -- were 
entertaining but not truly newsworthy.

What really counted was what happened while the doors were closed. For 
all the yelling and screaming, there was an agreement to push the 
Intelligence Committee and to have a status report soon. This stunt 
worked wonders.

For those not condemned to follow such things, Pat Roberts reluctantly 
agreed more than two years ago to investigate intelligence failure -- 
after invading troops had failed to find the biological and chemical 
weapons caches so many analysts expected and also failed to find any 
evidence of a resumed nuclear weapons project.

Just for the record, the probing began in response to a push by the 
panel's ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who wanted 
facts about the suggestion that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger in 
1999. The FBI is still investigating the origin of forged documents that 
first surfaced via Italy, but there is evidence that the Bush team 
passed them along to the United Nations as it was making its ''case" for 
war.

Early in last year's presidential campaign, Roberts was able to divide 
the investigation into two parts -- first an examination of the 
intelligence, and then of its use by senior administration officials. 
The second phase was conveniently put off until after the election.

But it has not gone forward very quickly since then. The real problem is 
White House and Pentagon stonewalling as virtually everyone involved in 
the fiasco lawyers up. Roberts exposed himself to criticism by not 
pushing harder and faster against this stone wall.

Obviously the indictment of I. Lewis Libby in the CIA leak case is part 
of what got the Democrats to do something their critics often flog them 
for not doing -- standing up and fighting back. There are no guarantees, 
but in halting the Senate for part of an afternoon they did more than 
hit a Republican nerve.

My own sense is that what happened with intelligence information is not 
something top administration officials want to talk about in public. And 
for good reason.

Politics may pollute everything around here, but sometimes it serves a 
larger purpose. It sure did this week.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/03/senate_stunt_juiced_up_intelligence_probe/
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