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Senate asks Pentagon to probe Feith role on Iraq
By David Morgan
11/09/05 -- WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (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 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 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 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.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
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