The commission appointed by President George W. Bush to look into WMD-related "intelligence
failures" can be considered "independent" only if the word now means "subordinated and
allied." The members lack the expertise required to uncover what really went wrong, and their
limited mandate sidesteps the central question: Did the administration hype intelligence
reports to march the United States into war?

Co-chairmen are Laurence Silberman, a retired appeals court judge appointed to the bench by
Ronald Reagan, and Charles Robb, the moderate former governor and senator from Virginia.
Other members are: John McCain, who called for the commission1s formation but advocated
that it report back after November; Lloyd Cutler, legal counsel for two Democratic
administrations; Richard Levin, president of Yale University, alma mater of the Bush clan;
Patricia Wald, former chief judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals; and Adm. William Studeman,
former deputy director of Central Intelligence and the only appointee with a solid knowledge of intelligence matters.

The cosmetic appearance of bipartianship doesn't mask the politicking at the commission1s
root.

Silberman has proved himself a valued ideological right-wing operative. After serving as deputy attorney general in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he represented the Reagan-Bush
presidential campaign team in 1980 as its unofficial ambassador to Iran, secretly meeting with
representatives of Ayatollah Khomeini.

As a reward for his service, Reagan appointed him to the Court of Appeals for Washington
D.C., the most powerful circuit court in the country. In this capacity, he is best known for
voting in 1990 to overturn the convictions of Lt. Col. Oliver North and Adm. John Poindexter,
convicted of felonies relating to the Iran-contra scandal.

Silberman's intervention played a key role in sabotaging the investigation of special
prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who later described the GOP majority on the U.S. Appeals Court
as "a powerful band of Republican appointees [who] waited like the strategic reserves of an
embattled army, - a force cloaked in the black robes of those dedicated to defining and
preserving the rule of law."

In addition to reversing the Iran-Contra convictions, Silberman tried overturning the
independent counsel statute, a decision nullified by the Supreme Court on an 8-1 vote. A
decade later, the judge helped right-wing activists pursuing allegations of sexual misconduct
by President Bill Clinton and was a strong defender of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
When Clinton attempted to prevent Secret Service agents from being forced to testify before
Starr's grand jury in 1998, Silberman wrote in a legal opinion, "Can it be said that the
president of the United States has declared war on the United States?"

Even the seating of McCain, widely regarded as an outspoken maverick Republican, does little
to establish the credibility of the panel. Although McCain was an early advocate of a
presidential commission "to prevent the United States from ever being misinformed again," he
declined to support Senate bill 1946, introduced last November to establish a congressionally
mandated independent commission. He also allayed Bush administration concerns that the
commission would influence the November elections by stating that it will take the panel more
than a year to complete its work.

McCain is one of the most virulent hawks on Capitol Hill and has not deviated from the
neo-conservative line regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Leading up to the war, McCain parroted administration claims on WMDs. On the eve of the U.S. invasion in March
"00", Fox News' Bill O'Reilly asked McCain, "If you were president, what would you have
done differently in the run-up to this war?" The senator answered, "Nothing."

McCain also suggested that the commission1s findings already are written when he told
reporters: "The president of the United States, I believe, did not manipulate any kind of
information for political gain or otherwise."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan emphasized that commission members'
"independence will be spelled out in the executive order that the president will sign." But the
executive order Bush signed on February 6 provided that the panel is "subject to the authority of the President."

 
Nat Parry is a writer and activist based in Arlington, Virginia.

The committee to investigate failures of U.S. intelligence about Iraq's weapon capability is not due to report back until March 2005. The timing prevents damning disclosures to impact the November election and allows what is known about the administration1s manipulations to slide ever deeper down the memory hole. To stem that slide, here1s a brief recap:

1996

The CIA stops funneling millions of dollars to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an Iraqi dissident group led by Ahmad Chalabi, because it regards the INC's intelligence as unreliable. "The INC has a track record of manipulating information because it has an agenda," an ex-Middle East CIA station chief would tell the New Yorker's
Seymour Hersh. "It's a political unit - not an intelligence agency."
 

September 2001

Days after 9/11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith set up an independent intelligence committee called the Office of Special Plans (OSP). News reports indicate that OSP was created to find the missing evidence that would prove what Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz already believed: Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qaeda and had amassed chemical, biological and had even nuclear weapons. OSP analysts rely on discredited intelligence gathered by the INC.
 

2002

Cheney, his chief-of-staff Lewis Libby and Pentagon "consultant" Newt Gingrich make repeated trips to Langley to advocate a more "forward-leaning" interpretation
of the Iraqi threat. Cheney has close ties to the OSP, whose operations
are overseen by William Luti, an ex-aide to Cheney.
 

February-March 2002

The vice president1s office asks the CIA to confirm a document
showing that Niger sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq.
The CIA sends former ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission.
Upon his return, Wilson briefs CIA officers that the sale never took place.
 

August 2002

Reports that intelligence from the OSP was channeled to Cheney
to be used in speeches appear to be substantiated by
Cheney's remarks at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention:
"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
 

October 2002

Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley receives two memos
and a phone call from CIA Director George Tenet warning him to delete
references to yellowcake uranium in Bush's October 7 address.
 

December 2002

The State Department publishes a fact sheet that references the yellowcake sale.
 

January 2003

Bush remarks in his State of the Union address, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
 

February 2003

Preparing for his U.N. address, Powell removes dozens of pages of
unsubstantiated evidence provided by OSP.
A frustrated Powell yells, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."
 

March 2003

The United States attacks Iraq.
 

July 2003

During a Defense Appropriations session, Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.) asks committee members to examine the OSP: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside the normal intelligence apparatus - [which] was in some instances not even shared with the established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the National Security Council and the President without having been vetted with anyone other than [Secretary of Defense] political appointees."

After publicly apologizing for Bush1s false remarks in his State of the Union address, Tenet reportedly tells three senators on the Intelligence Committee that CIA intelligence was rewritten by the OSP. These senators also claim that OSP members urged the president to use the uranium claim in his speech.

A week after Tenet1s apology, Hadley takes the blame for the uranium lie
in Bush1s State of the Union, claiming he "forgot" about Tenet1s two
October memos and phone call.
 

September 2003

House Democrats abandon their efforts to investigate the
Bush administration1s faulty intelligence gathering.
 

January 2004

A week after resigning from his position as chief weapons inspector in Iraq,
David Kay tells a Senate committee U.S. intelligence was "almost all wrong"
about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, but doesn't see
evidence that political pressure was to blame.
 

February 2004

Bush handpicks a committee to uncover the reasons behind intelligence failures, but limits its mandate to only "examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction," and to compare pre-war intelligence estimates with post-war findings. Examining the roles of Cheney, the INC and the OSP are not included in the committee's charge.

---