Roberts' Warning

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 8/7/2006

Intelligence: The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee wants us to see unvarnished prewar intelligence that led us into Iraq. That may spell embarrassment for U.S. spy agencies.

In his new book on al-Qaida and 9-11, "The Looming Tower," The New Yorker's Lawrence Wright writes of "a bizarre trend in the U.S. government to hide information from the people who most needed it."

Wright points out that "until the second Clinton administration, information derived from intelligence operations, especially if it might involve a crime, was freely given to criminal investigators. In fact, it was essential."

But after the Clinton Justice Department in 1995 promulgated a new policy to regulate the exchange of information between intelligence agents and criminal prosecutors, the FBI was allowed to turn the new guidelines "into a straitjacket for its own investigators," and the CIA "eagerly institutionalized the barrier that separated it from" the FBI.

These fundamental flaws may have prevented the U.S. government from having any chance at foiling the Sept. 11 plot. Similar deficiencies and bunglings may come to light if Kansas Republican Pat Roberts gets his way and his Senate Intelligence Committee's phase two reports on prewar Iraqi intelligence are declassified with minimal redaction.

"From our work, the American public will gain greater insight into — and an understanding of — the postwar findings about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the Hussein regime's links to terrorism and — most important — how those findings compare with the assessments that were made leading up to war," Roberts says.

"I want the information to be transparent so that individual citizens can read and judge for themselves — without the filter of the media, or the pundits, or those who are predisposed in their views based on politics."
Roberts added some uncharacteristically stern words for the White House. "I want to issue a very serious warning here: As chairman, I have been disappointed by this administration's unwillingness to declassify material contained in these reports, material which I believe better informs the public, but that does not — I repeat, does not — jeopardize intelligence operations, sources and methods. I will not tolerate a report which is overly redacted."

Our instinctive reflex is to trust this commander in chief to go all out to keep information out of the hands of terrorists. And we believe this president has been responsible in exercising his prerogatives.

But Roberts, a stalwart supporter of U.S. war strategy, is well-acquainted with this prewar intelligence. He obviously believes that releasing it to the public will bolster the case for going to war in Iraq — not make the Bush administration look irresponsible. We find his views compelling.

After all, each senator on the Intelligence Committee will be providing his own written comments as part of the reports. And as Roberts points out, if too much information in the reports is kept from the public, it could raise "questions about the facts or how members of the Senate Intelligence Committee came to their conclusions."

Liberal Democrats should not be permitted to twist the facts on Iraq in this year's election campaigns.

Last month, documents released through Project Harmony indicated Iraq may have shipped mass-murder weapons to Syria on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and that Saddam Hussein was hiding chemical weapon facilities in 1999 — long after the Gulf War.

More information about Iraq under Saddam can only harden the American public's determination to do all it takes to win the global war on terror.