PLAYING POLITICS WITH INTELLIGENCE
Courtesy Henry Hanks, Stephen Hayes shreds Senator Carl Levin's attacks on the Bush administration:
No one in the Congress has had more to say about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection than Levin. And no one has been as misleading.Here is Levin, in an appearance on CNN on July 8, 2003: "There is some evidence that there was an exaggeration by the intelligence community about that relationship," he alleged. "We need them to be credible. That means no exaggeration. That means they have to give the unvarnished facts to the policymakers."
That claim--the intelligence community exaggerated the Iraq-al Qaeda connection--were a dilation of comments Levin had made in a June 16, 2003, interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. "We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq." [emphasis added]
By February 2004, Levin was saying precisely the opposite.
"The intel didn't say that there is a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq," he told John Gibson of Fox News. "That was not the intel. That's what this administration exaggerated to produce. And so there are many instances where the administration went beyond the intelligence . . .
I'm saying that the administration's statements were exaggerations of what was given to them by the analysts and the intelligence community."
There's more, much more, and it's devastating. Sen. Levin has changed his story and is attempting to use outright falsehoods to trick the American people into believing that Bush lied us into war.
Why would he do that?
Well, for some reason my memory banks tickled when I read this, and for some reason I thought back to last fall. At that time, the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of the intel leading up to the Iraq war was just getting underway. Chairman Pat Roberts led the effort, which was to be a bipartisan look at how and why the US intel agencies all believed that Iraq possessed WMDs. I maintain that they believed Iraq possessed them because it did; those weapons have since disappeared, and we need to find out why. But leaving that aside, the Committee's investigation was meant to be a serious look into a very serious national security question, namely, the question of whether our intel agencies are worthless or not.
The Democrats on that Committee had other ideas, as lined out in a memo drafted for Committee members from their side of the aisle. That memo, which leaked in early November 2003, said the following:
"We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows: "1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard."For example, in addition to the President's State of the Union speech, the chairman [Sen. Pat Roberts] has agreed to look at the activities of the office of the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department.
"The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and cosigns our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. [We can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.]
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"2) Assiduously prepare Democratic 'additional views' to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it.
"In that regard we may have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims. We will contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry.
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"The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an Independent Commission [i.e., the Corzine Amendment.]
"3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once.---
"The best time to do so will probably be next year, either:
"A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report, thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public. Additional views on the interim report (1). The announcement of our independent investigation (2). And (3) additional views on the final investigation. Or:
"B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue, we would attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the use of intelligence."
In other words, they planned from the outset to play games with the Committee's data, with its reports and with its members from the GOP. The Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats planned all along to find any weaknesses at all in the final analysis and turn them into smears of the administration and its case for war. It's all right there. Their public words about cooperation and bipartisanship were just a veneer to mask their partisan intention to politicize whatever the Committee ultimately found.
Sen. Levin, as a Democrat on that Committee, was undoubtedly on the distribution list for that memo. He has been marching to its tune ever since. In the story linked above, Stephen Hayes has caught Levin in at least one outright lie. He will be telling more lies in the months to come, and will probably try and build things to a crescendo by October. Look for a call for some kind of follow-up investigation on the Committee's report, which was released this week, as we near the election.
Senator Rockefeller (D-WVa)is already laying the groundwork.
Remember, you heard it here first.