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Pentagon agrees to probe Feith's role in Iraq
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-18 10:50
The Pentagon's inspector general has agreed to review the prewar intelligence
activities of former U.S. defense undersecretary Douglas Feith, a main architect
of the Iraq war, congressional officials said on Thursday.
News of the Defense Department probe comes at a time of bitter political
debate over whether President George W. Bush misled the American people with
prewar intelligence. The increasingly bitter dispute has pitted the president
and his top advisers against lawmakers including some from Bush's own Republican
Party.
Democrats have accused Feith of manipulating information from sources
including discredited Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi to suggest links between
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, which masterminded the
September 11, 2001, attacks.
Douglas Feith speaks during a news conference
at the American center in Islamabad, February 3, 2005.
[Reuters/file] | Bush and other top administration officials cited alleged ties between Iraq
and al Qaeda as a justification for military action. But the September 11
commission later reported that no collaborative relationship existed between the
two.
The inspector general's office informed the Senate on October 19 that it
would undertake a review after receiving separate requests from the Republican
chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the ranking Democrat
on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, officials said.
Congressional officials expect the review to look at whether Feith and his
staff bypassed the CIA by giving the White House uncorroborated intelligence
that sought to make a case for war in the months leading up to the 2003 Iraq
invasion.
Feith, who was the Pentagon's policy chief until he left the Defense
Department for the private sector earlier this year, was not immediately
available for comment.
Officials said the Pentagon's inspector general told the Senate its review
would begin sometime in November. One official estimated the probe could take at
least six months.
"We're going to try to expedite it as much as possible," said Republican Sen.
Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Senate intelligence panel chairman who asked the
inspector general on September 9 for a review of Feith's Office of Special
Plans.
"The IG knows we are very eager to get this done but he wants to get it done
right," he told Reuters.
Roberts said his request had been incorporated with a later one from
Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, who asked acting Defense Department
Inspector General Tom Gimble in a September 22 letter for a broad probe
encompassing all elements of Feith's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
for Policy.
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said in an e-mail on Thursday that
the inspector general's office was still discussing the requests with committee
staff.
Defense officials have defended Feith, saying no credible evidence of
wrongdoing by him or his staff has ever been discovered. They also say
Democratic lawmakers never responded to a Pentagon challenge to produce
incriminating evidence.
A copy of Levin's letter to Gimble, which was obtained by Reuters, asks the
inspector general to consider 10 questions including whether Feith's office
undercut the intelligence community by providing the White House with its own
analysis that went beyond the scope of the underlying intelligence.
Levin also wants the inspector general to look into whether Feith misled
Congress in January 2004 by providing oversight committees with reports dealing
with the credibility of prewar intelligence on Iraq.
Roberts' office declined to provide a copy of his written request to the
inspector general.
A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll this week said 63 percent of Americans oppose
Bush's handling of the Iraq war, and 52 percent say troops should be pulled out
now or within 12 months.
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