<a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040213.html">President Bush's New Iraq Commission Won't Be Investigating the Key WMD Issue:
How the Executive Order Fatally Limits Their Agenda</a>
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Feb. 13, 2004
George W. Bush has been nothing short of a magician when it comes to making unpleasant matters confronting his presidency disappear. And on February 6, Bush once again did a bit of conjuring.
That day, he announced that he was creating an "independent commission, chaired by Governor and former [Virginia] Senator Chuck Robb, and Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction." In doing so, Bush sought to head off what potentially could be an aggressive Congressional inquiry, or a Congressionally created independent commission, on the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) justification for the Iraq war.
Such an inquiry would doubtless focus on a set of questions that is bound to make Bush very uncomfortable: the central issue of whether Bush, and his Vice President Dick Cheney, accurately represented the pre-Iraq war intelligence (or lack thereof) when claiming that Saddam had WMD and that Iraqi had ties with al Qeada.
Bush's magic appears to have worked again. His commission is a sham, and simply ignores the very reason he was pressured to create it. Yet it seems no one is complaining -- or at least, no one who could force the commencement of an legitimate investigation.
Reacting to David Kay's Testimony: "We Got It Wrong"
Bush established this commission to quiet the public reaction to Congressional testimony by his weapons inspector David Kay. Kay reported his failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and flatly asserted that we got it wrong, and there were no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq. He also made clear that he does not think they will be found even given more time to search. Kay also recommended to Congress that an independent investigation be undertaken of this intelligence failure.
To get public attention off of Kay's report (and resignation), Bush has used his political skills to try to silence his former weapons inspector, and to preempt Kay's knowledge and suggestions by making it yesterday's news.
First, Bush invited Kay to the White House for lunch. Meanwhile, his aides advised the news media that the president was considering what he had earlier rejected -- an investigation of the intelligence failure. Using the "wow" of a private lunch with the president appears to have been unsuccessful in wooing Kay, however. The Los Angeles Times spoke with Kay after his lunch with the president. Kay told the Times that he and the president did not get into a discussion about the investigation. And when the Times asked Kay what he thought was an appropriate way to investigate these problems, it reported that "Kay said that his 'model' for the inquiry would be the special commission named by President Reagan to investigate the January 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger shortly after it was launched."
The Times further noted that White House aides were suggesting that the intelligence probe would be patterned, instead, after the Warren Commission (the panel created by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy).
The Country Deserves an Investigation, Not a Cover-up
Neither of these suggestion is what is truly needed here. Indeed, both the Challenger and Warren inquiries are excellent models not for how to conduct an investigation, rather for how to conduct a cover-up.
The Warren Commission's work and findings were so shrouded in secrecy that they have haunted history while creating a cottage industry of JFK assassination conspiracy theories.
The Challenger inquiry was so flawed, that following the recent Columbia disaster, NASA's administrator went out of his way to not repeat those mistakes. ''It is a hard, hard legacy of the lessons learned from the post-Challenger experience. We've learned a lot from that,'' Mr. O'Keefe was reported by the New York Times as saying, "mindful that the cover-up in the Challenger investigation ended many careers and soiled the agency's reputation."
In the end, however, Bush modeled his inquiry on a precedent with which Dick Cheney was most familiar. But first, a look at what he actually has initiated.
The Bush Commission's Stated Agenda Has Little, If Anything, to Do with the Missing WMDs
With a few strokes of his pen, Bush had an Executive Order that he can now use to remove the issue of his administration's distorting Saddam's pre-war WMD intelligence from the 2004 campaign. "The commission is studying the matter," they will say, when asked about the missing WMD in Iraq, and Saddam's ties to al Qeada.
Everyone understands that Bush has removed the issue from the 2004 campaign by not requiring his commission to report until March 31, 2005 -- long after the election. But in fact, he has done much more than this to assure that this commission causes him no political problems. One need only look at the president's statement announcing the commission to understand that Bush is not playing it straight.
For example, he succinctly stated the inquiry's purpose (when reading his prepared statement) as follows: "The commission I have appointed today will examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and related 21st century threats and issue specific recommendations to ensure our capabilities are strong. The commission will compare what the Iraq Survey Group learns with the information we had prior to our Operation Iraqi Freedom. It will review our intelligence on weapons programs in countries such as North Korea and Iran. It will examine our intelligence on the threats posed by Libya and Afghanistan before recent changes in those countries."
What does any of that have to do with whether or not the Bush administration misused, falsely reported, or concocted intelligence to take the nation to war? Nothing.
...
Bush's WMD Commission Is Reminiscent Of The Rockefeller Commission
Bush's Executive Order's with its limited scope invites a comparison not to the Warren Commission or Challenger inquiry, rather with the Rockefeller Commission. This advisory panel, named after the Vice President Nelson Rockefeller who chaired it, was very familiar to the current Vice President, which suggests Cheney's hidden hand in this inquiry.
In December 1974, during the Ford presidency, a four-column headline-grabbing story by Seymour Hersh appeared in the New York Times. The headline was as follows: "Huge CIA Operation Reported In U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents In Nixon Years." Hersh laid out a "massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation" by the CIA, which by its charter was restricted to foreign intelligence gathering.
Dick Cheney was well aware of the story. At the time, he was deputy chief of staff under Donald Rumsfeld at Gerald Ford's White House (and traveling with the President during the holiday). Cheney can't have forgotten the lessons that were garnered from President Ford's response, given his role in crafting it.
The story broke after Sy Hersh picked up a few trinkets from the CIA's later infamous "family jewels." In 1973, as Watergate was falling apart, CIA Director James Schlesinger had sent a memorandum throughout the agency requesting information about past "questionable activities." The responses were summarized in a seven-hundred page document that became known as the CIA's family jewels. More accurately, it was a time bomb.
President Ford's initial response to the Hersh story was to do nothing. But in Washington, Ford's CIA Director, William Colby, later wrote, Hersh's story "triggered a firestorm." Colby told Ford it was likely to get worse, for amongst the "jewels" were detailed reports of the assassination plots against foreign leaders (Castro in Cuba, Lumumba in the Congo, and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic).
Ford's staff recommended that the way to deal this information buried and away from Congress was for Ford to initiate his own investigation, and preempt the issue. In 1967, Lyndon Johnson had similarly used a commission to head off a Congressional investigation of the CIA. (Later, Ronald Reagan would, again quite similarly, use the Tower Commission to stall the Congress from looking into the Iran-Contra matter.)
Indeed, this stalling tactic, in fact, is as old as the Republic. George Washington used a presidential commission to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion.
...
etc.
How the Executive Order Fatally Limits Their Agenda</a>
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Feb. 13, 2004
George W. Bush has been nothing short of a magician when it comes to making unpleasant matters confronting his presidency disappear. And on February 6, Bush once again did a bit of conjuring.
That day, he announced that he was creating an "independent commission, chaired by Governor and former [Virginia] Senator Chuck Robb, and Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction." In doing so, Bush sought to head off what potentially could be an aggressive Congressional inquiry, or a Congressionally created independent commission, on the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) justification for the Iraq war.
Such an inquiry would doubtless focus on a set of questions that is bound to make Bush very uncomfortable: the central issue of whether Bush, and his Vice President Dick Cheney, accurately represented the pre-Iraq war intelligence (or lack thereof) when claiming that Saddam had WMD and that Iraqi had ties with al Qeada.
Bush's magic appears to have worked again. His commission is a sham, and simply ignores the very reason he was pressured to create it. Yet it seems no one is complaining -- or at least, no one who could force the commencement of an legitimate investigation.
Reacting to David Kay's Testimony: "We Got It Wrong"
Bush established this commission to quiet the public reaction to Congressional testimony by his weapons inspector David Kay. Kay reported his failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and flatly asserted that we got it wrong, and there were no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq. He also made clear that he does not think they will be found even given more time to search. Kay also recommended to Congress that an independent investigation be undertaken of this intelligence failure.
To get public attention off of Kay's report (and resignation), Bush has used his political skills to try to silence his former weapons inspector, and to preempt Kay's knowledge and suggestions by making it yesterday's news.
First, Bush invited Kay to the White House for lunch. Meanwhile, his aides advised the news media that the president was considering what he had earlier rejected -- an investigation of the intelligence failure. Using the "wow" of a private lunch with the president appears to have been unsuccessful in wooing Kay, however. The Los Angeles Times spoke with Kay after his lunch with the president. Kay told the Times that he and the president did not get into a discussion about the investigation. And when the Times asked Kay what he thought was an appropriate way to investigate these problems, it reported that "Kay said that his 'model' for the inquiry would be the special commission named by President Reagan to investigate the January 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger shortly after it was launched."
The Times further noted that White House aides were suggesting that the intelligence probe would be patterned, instead, after the Warren Commission (the panel created by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy).
The Country Deserves an Investigation, Not a Cover-up
Neither of these suggestion is what is truly needed here. Indeed, both the Challenger and Warren inquiries are excellent models not for how to conduct an investigation, rather for how to conduct a cover-up.
The Warren Commission's work and findings were so shrouded in secrecy that they have haunted history while creating a cottage industry of JFK assassination conspiracy theories.
The Challenger inquiry was so flawed, that following the recent Columbia disaster, NASA's administrator went out of his way to not repeat those mistakes. ''It is a hard, hard legacy of the lessons learned from the post-Challenger experience. We've learned a lot from that,'' Mr. O'Keefe was reported by the New York Times as saying, "mindful that the cover-up in the Challenger investigation ended many careers and soiled the agency's reputation."
In the end, however, Bush modeled his inquiry on a precedent with which Dick Cheney was most familiar. But first, a look at what he actually has initiated.
The Bush Commission's Stated Agenda Has Little, If Anything, to Do with the Missing WMDs
With a few strokes of his pen, Bush had an Executive Order that he can now use to remove the issue of his administration's distorting Saddam's pre-war WMD intelligence from the 2004 campaign. "The commission is studying the matter," they will say, when asked about the missing WMD in Iraq, and Saddam's ties to al Qeada.
Everyone understands that Bush has removed the issue from the 2004 campaign by not requiring his commission to report until March 31, 2005 -- long after the election. But in fact, he has done much more than this to assure that this commission causes him no political problems. One need only look at the president's statement announcing the commission to understand that Bush is not playing it straight.
For example, he succinctly stated the inquiry's purpose (when reading his prepared statement) as follows: "The commission I have appointed today will examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and related 21st century threats and issue specific recommendations to ensure our capabilities are strong. The commission will compare what the Iraq Survey Group learns with the information we had prior to our Operation Iraqi Freedom. It will review our intelligence on weapons programs in countries such as North Korea and Iran. It will examine our intelligence on the threats posed by Libya and Afghanistan before recent changes in those countries."
What does any of that have to do with whether or not the Bush administration misused, falsely reported, or concocted intelligence to take the nation to war? Nothing.
...
Bush's WMD Commission Is Reminiscent Of The Rockefeller Commission
Bush's Executive Order's with its limited scope invites a comparison not to the Warren Commission or Challenger inquiry, rather with the Rockefeller Commission. This advisory panel, named after the Vice President Nelson Rockefeller who chaired it, was very familiar to the current Vice President, which suggests Cheney's hidden hand in this inquiry.
In December 1974, during the Ford presidency, a four-column headline-grabbing story by Seymour Hersh appeared in the New York Times. The headline was as follows: "Huge CIA Operation Reported In U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents In Nixon Years." Hersh laid out a "massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation" by the CIA, which by its charter was restricted to foreign intelligence gathering.
Dick Cheney was well aware of the story. At the time, he was deputy chief of staff under Donald Rumsfeld at Gerald Ford's White House (and traveling with the President during the holiday). Cheney can't have forgotten the lessons that were garnered from President Ford's response, given his role in crafting it.
The story broke after Sy Hersh picked up a few trinkets from the CIA's later infamous "family jewels." In 1973, as Watergate was falling apart, CIA Director James Schlesinger had sent a memorandum throughout the agency requesting information about past "questionable activities." The responses were summarized in a seven-hundred page document that became known as the CIA's family jewels. More accurately, it was a time bomb.
President Ford's initial response to the Hersh story was to do nothing. But in Washington, Ford's CIA Director, William Colby, later wrote, Hersh's story "triggered a firestorm." Colby told Ford it was likely to get worse, for amongst the "jewels" were detailed reports of the assassination plots against foreign leaders (Castro in Cuba, Lumumba in the Congo, and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic).
Ford's staff recommended that the way to deal this information buried and away from Congress was for Ford to initiate his own investigation, and preempt the issue. In 1967, Lyndon Johnson had similarly used a commission to head off a Congressional investigation of the CIA. (Later, Ronald Reagan would, again quite similarly, use the Tower Commission to stall the Congress from looking into the Iran-Contra matter.)
Indeed, this stalling tactic, in fact, is as old as the Republic. George Washington used a presidential commission to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion.
...
etc.
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