The Missing Intelligence Report(Phase II Senate Report..Pat Roberts)

The Missing Intelligence Report

One thing we know from the Fitzgerald investigation: the campaign to discredit Joe Wilson by saying he had only gotten the trip to Niger as a boondoggle from his wife, a CIA officer, was part of a larger, concerted effort by officials from the White House and the Vice President's office to construct an alternative narrative of who was to blame for the Iraq WMD intelligence fiasco. Not the White House, but the CIA. Rove and Libby weren't just telling reporters, 'Cheney doesn't know anything about Wilson's trip.' No. They created a fuller, alternative narrative: 'Cheney didn't know anything about Wilson's trip to Niger, because Wilson only got the trip as a boondoggle from his wife who works on unconventional weapons at the CIA.' It may seem like an almost random side note that has cost them considerable trouble. But it wasn't random at all. As we know from recent reports surrounding the Fitzgerald investigation, the Vice President's office was leading an all-out propaganda war -- every bit as choreographed as the pre-war propaganda campaign by the same officials -- to blame the CIA for the fact that there weren't any WMD to be found in Iraq after all, and the chief stated reason for the war was collapsing. And it enlisted not just leaks to reporters about Valerie Plame to conduct that war against the CIA. It also enlisted key Republican officials in Congress, to buck up its narrative, and literally divert attention from the role of the White House and executive branch offices in citing truly dubious Iraq intelligence - some, including the Niger yellowcake claims, not supported by the intelligence community at all. And Congress so far has gone along.

So who did the Vice President's office reach to for assistance in its campaign to blame all of Iraq on the CIA? Apparently, Pat Roberts, the chair of the Senate Select Intelligence committee, the committee that had promised to investigate how the US government got Iraq intelligence so wrong. Off and on the past couple months, I have been talking to staff on the committee, Republicans and Democrats, trying to figure out what's really happened with the promised Phase II SSCI report, that was supposed to examine US government officials' use of the intelligence. (The Phase I report, you'll remember, catalogued the intelligence community's role in the Iraq intel mistakes). Was Phase II totally dead and buried? Did it ever find anything before it was buried? Or was it still limping along, with an inkling of hope of ever seeing the light of day? Here's my piece on the missing report.

Earlier this week, as the piece was already at the printer, I was calling someone up for a quick question, and we got to talking about the latest Fitzgerald news from over the weekend. And I was told something that really stands out: that Roberts has literally been coordinating with Senate majority leader Frist and Cheney's office very closely on many aspects of the Senate Intelligence committee's supposed investigation of the intelligence, and in particular, working closely with Cheney's office on crafting the language defining the terms for the as-yet unfinished Phase II report. It hardly is surprising that Cheney took a big interest in what the Senate Select Intelligence committee might turn up in its investigation. But think about it. Here's the Congressional committee constitutionally mandated to provide oversight of all intelligence activities happening by the US government. And yet, here we have the Intelligence committee head coordinating to some degree with the Vice President's office, who we now know to be deeply involved in some of the most dubious of pre-war intelligence pronouncements, tasking, unconventional intel channels, and cherry picking, and at the forefront of a post-war campaign to slime Wilson and his CIA officer wife. When Congress is in cahoots with the administration in stifling oversight, who can investigate the investigators? Unfortunately, it's not in Fitzgerald's mandate.

Anyhow, this is all an introduction to tell you to check out my short piece on the matter.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002885.html

here is the other article....

The Report they Forgot

In February 2004, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) announced that it had unanimously agreed to expand its investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence from focus on intelligence community blunders and into the more controversial area of “whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, struck the agreement with Chairman Pat Roberts -- provided, Roberts insisted, that the probe into policy-makers’ activities wait until after the presidential election.

It’s now more than a year later, and Rockefeller is still waiting -- the Phase II report has yet to appear. What happened? And why isn’t Rockefeller making more of a fuss?

Republican committee staffers don’t deny that Roberts lacks enthusiasm for Phase II. But they insist that he hasn’t acted to kill the investigation, and that the last interviews needed to complete it are being wrapped up. Ultimately, they say, it will be up to the committee’s members to vote on whether or not to release a report.

“The investigation is ongoing,” one committee staffer says. “It is sort of in the ending stage. Every once in awhile, a little campaign gets going that it’s being buried or covered up. That doesn’t reflect reality. is not ambiguous. He thinks it’s a monumental waste of our time, but we’re doing it.”

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10446