The Raw Story | Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq: "Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq
Larisa Alexandrovna
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued an order to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and his cabinet members that severely curtailed intelligence oversight by restricting classified information to just eight members of Congress.
'The only Members of Congress whom you or your expressly designated officers may brief regarding classified or sensitive law enforcement information,' he writes, 'are the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate.'
The order is aimed at protecting 'military security' and 'sensitive law enforcement.'
But what was said to be an effort to protect the United States became a tool by which the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.
Timeline: How Roberts helped fix pre-war intelligence
Coupled with limited access to intelligence documents, RAW STORY has found that Roberts and a handful of other strategically-placed Washington players stymied all questions into pre-war intelligence on Iraq and post-invasion cover-ups, including the outing of a CIA covert agent, by using targeted leaks and artfully deflecting blame from the White House."
Unfortunately, this list of eight would include Democratic minority leaders Daschle and Gephardt, followed by Pelosi, and ranking Democrats Jay Rockefeller, and Nancy Pelosi followed by Jane Harmon.
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