Senate asks Pentagon to probe Feith role on Iraq
By David Morgan
Tue Nov 8, 9:39 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051109/pl_nm/iraq_usa_feith_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's inspector general has been
asked to investigate the prewar intelligence role of a planning office
headed by former U.S. defense policy chief Douglas Feith, a main
architect of the Iraq war, officials said on Tuesday.
The request was made by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in
a letter sent in August.
It said the Defense Department should determine whether Feith and his
Office of Special Plans wielded excessive influence over intelligence
that claimed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The threat of such weapons, which have never been found in Iraq, was
cited as a main justification for President George W. Bush's
decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003.
A Defense Department spokesman said it had not yet decided whether to
undertake the investigation.
Democrats have put pressure on the Republicans who control Congress to
speed up an investigation of whether the Bush administration twisted
or misused intelligence in the run-up to the war, which was strongly
supported by several top Pentagon officials including Feith.
Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record) of Kansas, Republican
chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, asked the Pentagon's
inspector general to look into the activities of Feith's office after
officials stopped cooperating with a Senate probe of prewar
intelligence on Iraq.
Republicans blame the slackening in Pentagon cooperation on public
suggestions by Democrats that Feith's office could be guilty of
illegal activities.
"This is in response to problems we had getting them to testify. To
get a good look at the situation, (the committee) asked the IG to look
into it," Roberts spokeswoman Sarah Ross Little said.
However, Democrats on the committee including the vice chairman, Sen.
John Rockefeller (news, bio, voting record) of West Virginia, opposed
Roberts' action and warned the move could delay the Senate
investigation of Feith's office by up to a year.
SCATHING REPORT
The Senate committee, which produced a scathing report on U.S. prewar
intelligence in July 2004, is due to examine the Office of Special
Plans as part of a second-phase probe into how Bush administration
officials used intelligence on Iraq while making their case for war.
"In no way does the vice chairman believe the IG's investigation
should be a substitute for the committee's work. The committee agreed
to look at this and it needs to fulfill
its commitment," said Rockefeller spokeswoman Wendy Morigi.
She said Rockefeller was not aware of Roberts' request to the
inspector general until after the letter had been sent.
Feith was not available for comment.
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the inspector
general's office had not decided whether to proceed with the Senate's
request.
"My understanding is that they have a request from (Capitol) Hill to
look at this, but that the IG's office is still evaluating that
request," Whitman said in an e-mail responding to queries from
Reuters.
Critics including Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of
Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Armed Services
and a leading member of the intelligence panel, have accused Feith of
using the Office of Special Plans to manipulate information to support
the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Some lawmakers also believe Feith bypassed the CIA to provide
uncorroborated intelligence directly to the White House, including
information from Ahmad Chalabi, the discredited Iraqi politician and
former exile leader who is visiting Washington this week.
Feith, who left the Pentagon earlier this year, has also been blamed
for overseeing what is widely considered to have been inadequate
postwar planning in Iraq, which is now gripped by a bloody insurgency.
This article linked from: http://www.antiwar.com/
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