One of the most telling moments of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference on Friday concerned the larger context - or lack thereof - for the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

"This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified."

Fitzgerald, of course, is right. Establishing the truth about the path to war in Iraq is not his job, but that of Congress or the White House. Sadly, when it comes to finding definitive answers regarding the Bush administration's uses of pre-war intelligence, neither Republican-controlled institution seems too concerned about the truth.

First, a little background. In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, the absence of weapons of mass destruction there called into question President Bush's pre-war specter of a "gathering threat" (3/6/03) and "the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud" (10/7/02). By October 2003, the interim report of the Iraq Survey Group came up empty (findings confirmed by the final Duelfer Report a year later).

In response, President Bush and his Republican allies in the Senate took great pains to provide the illusion of fact-finding, while ensuring that no outcome detrimental to the President could come to pass before Election Day 2004, if ever.

Let's start in Congress. On June 20, 2003, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence began its work. Led by Republican Chairman Pat Roberts (KS) and Democratic Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller (WV), the SSCI promised a two-phase report on the march to war in Iraq. Phase 1 would examine the failings of the American intelligence community. Phase 2 would investigate the uses of pre-war intelligence and whether the administration had manipulated it to create a causus belli. Conveniently for the Bush White House, the potentially damaging Phase 2 inquiry would not come until after the election.

Not surprisingly, the SSCI Phase 1 Report released in July 2004 sought to lay the blame for faulty intelligence at the feet of the CIA. Chairman Roberts concluded that "what the President and the Congress used to send the country to war was information that was...flawed" and "most of the key judgments in the October 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraq's WMD programs were either overstated or were not supported by the raw intelligence reporting." But Roberts also presumed the conclusion of the as-yet-uncompleted Phase 2 report, "the committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure."

During the very same press conference, Vice Chairman Rockefeller in response expressed his frustration and alarm over Roberts' statements:

"And I have to say, that there is a real frustration over what is not in this report, and I don't think was mentioned in Chairman Roberts' statement, and that is about the -- after the analysts and the intelligence community produced an intelligence product, how is it then shaped or used or misused by the policy-makers?… So again there's genuine frustration -- and Chairman Roberts and I have discussed this many times -- that virtually everything that has to do with the administration has been relegated to phase two. My hope is that we will get this done as soon as possible."

Rockefeller had good reason to worry. As it turns out, Senator Roberts simply had no intention of ever pursuing the Phase 2 inquiry into the Bush's administration's use - or misuse - of pre-war intelligence. On July 9, 2004, Roberts told reporters, "We will proceed with (that work in) phase two. It is a priority. I made my commitment and it will get done." But on March 10, 2005, a straight-faced Roberts changed his tune:

"It got to be a problem in regard to a subjective point of view. If you ask any member of the administration, 'Why did you make that declarative statement?' ... basically, the bottom line is, they believed the intelligence and the intelligence was wrong. In addition, we were in an even-numbered year and you know what that means. So, we sort of came to a crossroads and that [Phase 2] is basically on the back burner."

Roberts' stonewalling for the Bush administration didn't end there. Upon the release of the Silberman-Robb Commission Report, Roberts on March 31, 2005 concluded, "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." Satisfied that the pretense of an investigation was provided while the Bush administration was still protected, Roberts added, "To go though that exercise, it seems to me, in a post-election environment--we didn't see how we could do that and achieve any possible progress. I think everybody pretty well gets it."

As for the Silberman-Robb Commission, it was designed to avoid the very issues Senator Roberts has so steadfastly refuse to investigate. As with the 9/11 Commission, President Bush initially opposed the formation of an independent panel to investigate Iraq WMD intelligence. And just as with the 9/11 Commission, Bush flip-flopped, caving to public pressure for an inquiry. But Bush's panel, led by Judge Laurence Silberman (the same judge who overturned Oliver North's felony conviction), would not include the subject of intelligence manipulation within its charter. The report concluded that the CIA had been "dead wrong" about Iraq WMD. But as Silberman himself noted:

"Well, on the [that] point, we duck. That is not part of our charter. We did not express any views on policymakers' use of intelligence -- whether Congress or the president. It wasn't part of our charter and indeed most of us didn't want to get into that issue because it's basically a political question and everybody knows -- you can look at the newspaper and see what people said and make your own judgment."

All of which brings us back to Patrick Fitzgerald. Another telling moment in his October 28th press conference touched on the motivations for Scooter Libby's lies and the outing of Valerie Plame:

"This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth."

Fitzgerald is right once again - we do need to know the truth. But President Bush and the Republicans in Congress, as Jack Nicholson would say, can't handle the truth.

—Perrspective 6:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) |