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Durbin kept silent on prewar
knowledge
By Sean Lengell
04/28/07 "Washington
Times' -- -- The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he
knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war
but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member
of the intelligence committee.
"The information we had in the intelligence committee was not
the same information being given to the American people. I
couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois
Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about
the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002.
"I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about
it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to
secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say the statement
made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to
classified information that is being given to this Congress."
Mr. Durbin's comments come after years of inquiries and debate
about prewar intelligence, and as congressional leaders clash
over Democrats' calls to pull out of Iraq.
The White House responded by saying Congress had access to the
same intelligence and voted overwhelmingly to go to war. "We all
understand today that there were intelligence failures, but
there was no effort to mislead either members of Congress or the
American people," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.
Mr. Durbin yesterday said there was no "ethical" way to notify
the public of specific misleading information being touted by
the Bush administration because it would have required revealing
top-secret information being provided to the intelligence
committee.
He cited the White House's claim that Iraq was trying to acquire
aluminum tubes needed for a nuclear weapons program -- details
of which have since been declassified -- as an example of bad
intelligence, saying that there was an ongoing debate within the
administration as it was being used in public.
Mr. Durbin, whose floor comments were part of the debate before
yesterday's passage of an emergency war-funding bill, said he
and half the Democrats on the intelligence committee voted
against the war over concerns of the White House's "very flimsy
case, but it was given to the American people as a proven fact."
Congress authorized the 2003 use of armed force against Iraq by
votes of 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate. Five of
nine Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
voted for the measure as did all eight Republicans.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office circulated an
e-mail Wednesday highlighting Mr. Durbin's comments, but his
office didn't respond to requests yesterday to elaborate on the
e-mail.
The e-mail said Mr. Durbin's comments were inconsistent with the
words of other Democrats on the committee, including Sens. John
D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Carl Levin of Michigan.
Those two Democrats said publicly before the war that Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein was intent on pursuing nuclear weapons.
Mr. Rockefeller voted for the war, but Mr. Levin did not.
A congressional official familiar with the information about
Iraq that was provided to the intelligence committee in 2002
said it did not differ from what the administration was saying
publicly about the need to go to war in Iraq.
"If [Mr. Durbin] thinks the president of the United States is
lying to the American public about the war, he's wrong," the
official said.
The official added that if Mr. Durbin felt so strongly that the
administration was misleading the public, "he should've done
something about it."
But a spokesman for Mr. Durbin said the senator did publicly
voice general, nonspecific concerns about the administration's
promotion of the need for military intervention in Iraq prior to
the war.
He added Mr. Durbin could have faced criminal charges if he had
publicly revealed specific intelligence details before the Iraq
war.
"For a senator on the [intelligence] committee, it's a pretty
bright line that they can't cross," Durbin spokesman Joe
Shoemaker said, adding that his boss has repeated the same
concerns he voiced on the Senate floor Wednesday "maybe seven or
eight times" in recent years.
"The other side is just throwing mud and seeing if it'll stick."
Mr. Shoemaker said.
Mr. Durbin drew rebukes from Republicans in June 2005 when he
compared the U.S. military's treatment of a suspected al Qaeda
terrorist at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay with the regimes
of dictators Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, whose
regimes each killed millions of their own people.
© 2007 The Washington Times, LLC.
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