By David Swanson and Jonathan Schwarz, 2/2/07
The last time Congress was controlled by the party in opposition to
the White House, we all learned more than we cared to know about the
uses of cigars. This time the need for investigations is much more
serious. The Democrats are talking fast and furious about doing them,
but they’re not talking about doing the right ones — and a month into
their tenure, they’ve barely discovered where the bathrooms are.
As humorist Bob Harris enjoys saying about the Bush administration,
“It’s like a new Watergate every day with these people.” Congress could
probably spend three decades profitably examining the last six years of
the Bush administration. Unfortunately, they’ll have to do severe
triage to select the areas of malfeasance where investigations will
most benefit the country.
A recent ABC/Washington Post poll showed that the public (despite
very little help from ABC News or the Washington Post) has it right. A
majority picked the “should” option in response to both of these
questions:
“Do you think Congress should or should not hold hearings on how the
Bush administration handled pre-war intelligence, war planning, and
related issues in the war in Iraq?”
“Do you think Congress should or should not hold hearings on how the
Bush administration has handled surveillance, treatment of prisoners
and related issues in the U.S. campaign against terrorism?”
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Congress is gearing up to investigate
whether Halliburton might have cheated on its contracts a little.
Hello?
Of course we need to investigate the war profiteers. But our top
priority has to be the fraud that launched the war to begin with. Most
readers of this article know it was fraud, but a third of the country
still doesn’t and won’t until it’s on their televisions for several
days in a row. And unless there is accountability for it, the next
president may feel free to lie us into a war of his or her choosing. In
fact, unless there is enough exposure and accountability, the current
war may never end.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller has pledged to
finish a long-stalled investigation focused on the 2002-03 campaign for
the invasion. However, it’s unclear how deeply he’ll dig, or what he’ll
do if the Bush administration simply refuses to cooperate.
In the House, the office of Intelligence Committee Chair Silvestre
Reyes says he doesn’t plan to investigate the misuse of intelligence on
Iraq. In fact, staffers in his and other House offices say a decision
was made by the party leadership and/or committee chairs not to “look
backwards.” (Some members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus we
spoke to this week were unaware of this, assumed Reyes would do the
investigation, and said they would file Resolutions of Inquiry if he
does not.)
The Democrats also appear hesitant to use their subpoena power in
the investigations they do plan. Some offices have told us they hope to
uncover the truth without having to use subpoenas and that they see
this as desirable. Others have said that subpoenas are frowned on
because of the need for comity.
When we heard this, we thought the staffer to whom we were talking
had said “comedy” — and in fact that might have been more appropriate.
During the Clinton administration, of course, comity and collegiality
were nowhere to be found, and Republican subpoenas rolled up
Pennsylvania Avenue piled on flatbed trucks. (The House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee alone issued over a thousand.)
Hopefully this Democratic reluctance is feigned for PR purposes, and
they understand that there’s no possible way they’ll get the necessary
information out of the Bush administration by asking nicely. In any
case, they may have motivations beyond a wish to keep things friendly.
If they issue subpoenas and the administration refuses to comply on the
grounds of executive privilege, they’ll have to file a lawsuit or back
down. And if they file a lawsuit, there’s no guarantee they’ll win,
particularly given the increasing conservative nature of the judiciary.
This would be the worst of both worlds: They wouldn’t get the
information, and they would have established a precedent condoning
executive secrecy.
But if this is their view, then they may be surrendering before the
fight begins. Congress can win any battle with the executive branch as
long as it has an informed public opinion behind it. And that’s where
we come in — progressives need to teach politicians that they’ll be
rewarded for doing the right thing and conducting these investigations.
War Lies
Incredibly enough, four years after it happened there has been no
genuine investigation of the farrago of propaganda used to sell the
Iraq war.
Republicans have done their best to confuse the issue, claiming that
it has, in fact, been investigated and the Bush administration has been
exonerated. Nope. Indeed, until today the issue has been almost
completely stonewalled. Here’s how it’s worked:
At first, the Bush administration tried to prevent any investigation
at all. When no WMD turned up in Iraq by summer 2003 that became
politically impossible. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
(SSCI) — chaired by Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas — then
promised they’d look into it. But the terms of the investigation were
limited to the quality of intelligence produced by the CIA and the rest
of the Intelligence Community. Crucially, there was to be no
examination of the main issue: whether the Bush administration had
presented the intelligence honestly to Congress and the public.
Then, in early 2004, David Kay (who ran the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group
sent in search of Saddam’s stores of WMD) resigned, telling Congress
that “we were almost all wrong” about Iraq’s supposed arsenal. This
forced Roberts to accept a “Phase II” to the committee’s investigation.
It was slated to examine many subjects; most important, “whether public
statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq by U.S. Government
officials made between the Gulf War period and the commencement of
Operation Iraqi Freedom were substantiated by intelligence
information.”
At the same time, Bush was forced to appoint what came to be known
as the “WMD Commission.” However, as the commission later stated, the
President “did not authorize us to investigate how policymakers used
the intelligence they received from the Intelligence Community on
Iraq’s weapons programs.”
In June 2004, four months before the Presidential election, the SSCI
released its Phase I report. It laid blame for the whole debacle at the
feet of the intelligence agencies, insisting that they hadn’t been
pressured by the administration. When the WMD Commission report came
out in March 2005, Roberts said he intended to drop Phase II because
“we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence” — and, in any
case, further investigation was useless “in a post-election
environment.”
Resistance from some Democrats forced Roberts to backtrack and
officially recommit himself to Phase II. But to date, despite the
release last year of reports on several of the less contentious aspects
of the Phase II study, the stonewall has held: There has been nothing
at all on how the Bush administration made its case for war. (According
to a recent interview with Sen. Jay Rockefeller [D-WV], the pressure on
Roberts came directly from Dick Cheney.)
The question today is: What do Democrats intend to do about this now
that they control both houses of Congress? It’s unclear whether the
Democratic leadership has a thought-out strategy. Rockefeller has vowed
the Intelligence Committee, which he now chairs, will finish the Phase
II investigation by this summer. He’s also indicated a willingness to
use his subpoena power if necessary.
Nevertheless, the administration will strongly resist a serious
inquiry — and D.C. media mandarins will sneer at any such attempt by
the Democrats. The Washington Post columnist David Broder has already
learnedly explained, based on no evidence whatsoever, that “the
public’s moved past” the pre-war lies. Others, like Gloria Borger of
U.S. News & World Report and CBS, have barely been able to stifle
their yawns at the idea of an actual investigation. The worst outcome
would be a limp completion of the Phase II report, after which the
subject would be declared closed once and for all. The best outcome
would be a serious, coordinated investigation by the House and Senate
of the whole stinking mess.
If the Democrats take the second path, there are literally hundreds of basic questions Congress has never asked. For instance:
* What was the Bush administration’s thinking on Iraq before 9/11?
In 2004, investigative reporter Russ Baker spoke to Bush family
friend and author Marty Herskowitz. Based on lengthy conversations he
had taped with Bush for a planned ghosted biography, he claimed
then-Governor Bush “was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999.”
According to Herskowitz, the perspective of people around Bush was that
wars were useful politically and that presidents should: “Start a small
war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go
ahead and invade.” It certainly would be something to see Herskowitz
testify on this under oath in front of a congressional committee.
Then there’s Paul O’Neill’s account of National Security Council
(NSC) meetings when he was Treasury Secretary. According to O’Neill,
Bush’s first National Security Council meeting on January 30, 2001
focused on Iraq — and, at this meeting, CIA Director George Tenet said
the Agency’s intelligence was so poor “we’d be going in there blind.”
At a February 1, 2001 meeting, participants were given a document
entitled “Political-Military Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.” Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld said: “[W]hat we really want to think about is
going after Saddam…Imagine what the region would look like without
Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with U.S. interests.”
According to O’Neill, Tenet told the President on May 16, 2001,
“[I]t was still only speculation whether Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction or was starting any weapons-building programs.” Videotapes
and/or detailed transcripts of these NSC meetings certainly exist, and
there’s no reason Americans shouldn’t see them (except, of course, for
the certain constitutional crisis the administration would provoke to
prevent that from happening).
Moreover, all this jibes with what senior policymakers were saying
at the time. On February 24, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell
stated publicly: “Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant
capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to
project conventional power against his neighbors.” And on July 29, 2001
Condoleezza Rice told CNN: “…Let’s remember that [Saddam’s] country
is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his
country. We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces
have not been rebuilt.” What intelligence were these statements based
on?
* Was the intelligence community pressured?
According to the SSCI Phase I report and the WMD Commission, the CIA
and other agencies came to their conclusions of their own remarkably
free will. To create this narrative, however, the reports had to
overlook some glaring contradictions.
For instance, two books — James Bamford’s A Pretext for War and
Lindsay Moran’s Blowing My Cover — describe what seems to be the same
incident in which an anonymous CIA source claims administration
pressure on the Agency “was blatant.” The source reported that his or
her boss told a group of fifty analysts that “if Bush wants to go to
war, it’s your job to give him a reason to do so.” Neither Bamford, nor
Moran was contacted for the previous investigations.
Meanwhile, an anonymous former CIA agent has filed a lawsuit against
the Agency, claiming he’d been punished for providing unwelcome
intelligence on Iraq. Or at least it appears to be Iraq — much of the
complaint has been redacted. The complaint states that the plaintiff
“served as primary collection point for Near Eastern WMD programs.”
According to New York Times reporting on the suit, the agent says he
was told by an informant in 2001 that Iraq had abandoned its
nuclear-weapons program years before. After complaining that this (and
other information) was ignored, he was made the subject of a
counterintelligence investigation. Nothing about this appears in the
Phase I or WMD Commission report.
* Did the administration plan to create a false pretext for war?
According to Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Bush
authorized a covert CIA program for Iraq in February 2002. Among other
things, it included a scheme to “stage a phony incident that could be
used to start a war. A small group of Iraqi exiles would be flown into
Iraq by helicopter to seize an isolated military base near the Saudi
border. They then would take to the airwaves and announce a coup was
under way. If Saddam responded by flying troops south, his aircraft
would be shot down by U.S. fighter planes patrolling the no-fly zones
established by UN edict after the first Persian Gulf War. A clash of
this sort could be used to initiate a full-scale war.” Needless to say,
Congress has never investigated this.
Likewise, we know from a leaked British memo that Bush was talking
about other possible pretexts in early 2003. In the memo’s language,
Bush told Blair, “The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance
aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours… If
Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of U.N. resolutions
requiring Iraq’s cooperation with the ongoing weapons inspections.
And this barely scratches the surface. Why did the Bush
administration lie about Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel, who
told the U.S. in 1995 that Iraq had no remaining banned weapons or
programs? Why did Secretary of State Colin Powell fabricate parts of
intercepted statements by Iraqis in his UN presentation that proved so
crucial to the coming invasion? Why did Powell blatantly ignore what he
was being told by the State Department’s intelligence staff? What
happened to the CIA’s secret pre-war interviews with thirty Iraqi WMD
scientists, all of whom claimed Iraq was clean of weapons of mass
destruction or programs to produce them? All this and much more would
be examined by any serious investigation. Here are a few of the
documents that might be subpoenaed:
* the complete October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq;
* the records of National Security Council meetings on Jan. 30, Feb. 1, and March 16, 2001;
* the records of Cheney’s spring 2001 meetings with top oil executives for his Energy Task Force;
* the CIA’s Senior Executive Memorandum of January 12, 2002 on Hussein Kamel;
* the records of Bush’s late July 2002 budget discussions on Iraq with Legislative Affairs Assistant Nicholas Calio;
* the records of the July 20, 2002, U.S.-U.K. intelligence
conference at CIA headquarters, the basis for the Downing Street Memo
statement that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the
policy”;
* the October 2002, one-page NIE summary that (according to
journalist Murray Waas) told the White House of doubts that the
infamous aluminum tubes were, in fact, part of an Iraqi nuclear weapons
program;
* the January 2003 National Intelligence Council memo that (as
reported by the Washington Post) declared the purported
Niger-Iraq-yellowcake connection was “baseless and should be laid to
rest”;
* the records of CIA plans to create a pretext for war: DB/Anabasis, authorized by Bush on February 16, 2002;
* the U.S. records of the January 31, 2003 Bush-Blair meeting at the White House;
* the British records of early 2003 conversations between British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Colin Powell, described by Philippe
Sands in his book Lawless World, plus any records from the U.S. side;
* the complaint filed by a CIA agent in Doe v. Goss claiming he’d been punished for providing unwelcome intelligence;
* the records of the White House Iraq Group, established in August 2002 to market the future invasion to the American public;
* the August 2004 memo showing Bush may have proposed bombing al Jazeera.
The committees to focus on to get this done are the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees (chaired by Rep. Silvestre Reyes [TX] and Sen.
Rockefeller [WV], respectively); House and Senate Armed Services (Rep.
Ike Skelton [MO] and Carl Levin [MI]); and House Oversight and
Government Reform (Henry Waxman [CA]).
War Corruption
When it comes to investigating fraud and corruption during the war,
the obvious place to start is with the numerous no-bid contracts
awarded to politically-connected corporations like Halliburton and
Bechtel. Henry Waxman’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee will
be launching hearings on this next week. Three less obvious but equally
important areas to investigate are:
1. Where did the money come from to begin secret preparations for the invasion of Iraq?
Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack contains a largely overlooked
bombshell: In the summer of 2002, Bush took money appropriated by
Congress for Afghanistan and other programs and — with no
Congressional notification — used it to upgrade Kuwaiti airfields and
create a new “distribution capability” of pipelines so the invasion
force would have fuel available while sitting close to the Iraqi
border. This was a blatant violation of Article I, Section 9 of the
Constitution (“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in
Consequence of Appropriations made by Law”). It was certainly an
impeachable offense (if anyone cares). According to Woodward, the
amount was $700 million; the Congressional Research Service (CRS) later
corrected that figure, raising it to $2.5 billion. CRS, however,
ruefully noted that it “could not obtain details on this spending.”
2. Who decided to build permanent military bases in Iraq? When did
they make that decision? What was their thinking behind doing so? And
how is it that they are still being built despite the fact that
Congress prohibited further spending on them?
In October 2006, both houses of Congress passed a bill with an
amendment forbidding the use of funds to continue building permanent
bases in Iraq. However, according to the most recent reporting (in the
American Prospect), the Army continues to construct four huge super
bases in different regions of Iraq, with “absolutely no public
scrutiny.” Since the administration hasn’t told them otherwise, the
Pentagon plans to occupy the bases indefinitely and is building an
extensive communication system to link them to each other as well as to
bases in Qatar and Afghanistan. When were these bases first approved?
Why are they still being built illegally?
3. Is the Bush Administration trying to privatize Iraq’s oil for the benefit of U.S. and British corporations?
The Mideast oil industry, including Iraq’s, underwent a wave of
nationalizations in the 1970s. But behind the scenes the Bush
administration has been shepherding towards passage a new law that
appears to return Iraq’s oil to its pre-1972 status, when it was
essentially controlled by companies such as Shell, Mobil, Standard Oil,
and British Petroleum.
With that law expected to go before the Iraqi parliament in March,
Congress urgently needs to investigate questions such as: How have the
Bush administration and U.S. corporations influenced the restructuring
of Iraq’s oil industry? To what degree has the influence worked
directly to the benefit of U.S. corporations? What are the likely
outcomes of the draft law for the Iraqi economy and economic
development?
The committees to focus on for investigations of war corruption are
House Oversight and Government Reform (chaired by Rep. Waxman); House
and Senate Appropriations (Rep. David Obey [WI] and Sen. Robert Byrd
[WV]); House and Senate Armed Services (Rep. Skelton and Sen. Levin);
and House and Senate Judiciary (Rep. Conyers [MI] and Sen. Patrick
Leahy [VT]).
War Crimes
Beyond the lies and manipulations that took us to war, and the
corruption that has dominated the war, there is a third broad area that
needs to be investigated — but much of which won’t be without serious
public pressure on Congress. This is the area of war crimes: the
targeting of civilians, hospitals, ambulances, and journalists; the use
of illegal weapons; the detentions, extraordinary renditions, abuse,
torture, ghost prisoners, the setting up of a global network of secret
CIA prisons, and murder.
Investigations into extraordinary rendition and torture — in Iraq
and elsewhere — will likely be led by Patrick Leahy, chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy has already indicated he’s willing to
do what’s necessary to investigate these issues, including subpoenaing
administration records. In particular Leahy plans to procure a 2002
memo written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which
is believed to list approved interrogation techniques. It’s unclear
what Leahy will do if the administration simply refuses his committee’s
subpoenas.
It’s even less clear who, if anyone, will push for investigations
into war crimes committed in Iraq. The Bush administration has been
concerned since 9/11 that administration officials might be at risk of
prosecution under the 1996 U.S. War Crimes Act–which enumerated
sentences including the death penalty for U.S. officials who violate
the Geneva Conventions. An early 2002 memo by then-White House Counsel
Alberto Gonzales therefore recommended that Bush take steps to preempt
any possible prosecution by declaring that members of al-Qaeda and the
Taliban were not covered by the Geneva Conventions. The memo also urged
Bush to hold open similar “options for future conflicts” in the “war on
terrorism.” And Bush has done so: His administration stated in 2004
that non-Iraqis captured in Iraq were not covered by the Geneva
Conventions. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has given the CIA
permission to secretly move Iraqi citizens out of the country for
interrogation — in what a former senior military attorney has called
“conduct that the international community clearly considers in
violation of” the Geneva Conventions.
These actions should be investigated by the Judiciary Committees of
Congress as part of their examination of rendition and torture.
Meanwhile, other possible war crimes — such as the Haditha massacre,
the siege of Fallujah, support of Shiite death squads, and the use of
depleted uranium could plausibly be investigated by many committees
(including Armed Forces, International Relations, and Veterans
Affairs), so that if one committee declines to examine what occurred,
others may be persuaded to do so.
The committees we need to focus on for getting war-crime
investigations underway are House and Senate Judiciary (chaired by Rep.
Conyers and Sen. Leahy), House Armed Services (Rep. Skelton and Sen.
Levin), House Veterans Affairs (Rep. Bob Filner [CA]), House
International Relations (Rep. Tom Lantos [CA]) and Senate Foreign
Relations (Sen. Joe Biden [Del]).
All these investigations are badly needed, not just for the sake of
accountability but because the truth will end the war. Bush can
continue his crusade only because most of the grim reality of Iraq
remains in the shadows. Dragging it out into the sunlight is up to us.
***
David Swanson is the Washington Director of Democrats.com and of
ImpeachPAC.org. He is co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org
coalition, creator of MeetWithCindy.org, and a board member of
Progressive Democrats of America, and of the Backbone Campaign. He was
the organizer in 2006 of Camp Democracy. He serves on the steering
committee of the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice and on a
working group of United for Peace and Justice. He has worked as a
newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs
including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential
campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications
Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN,
the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is a
member of and has served on the Executive Council of the Washington
Baltimore Newspaper Guild. He obtained a Master’s degree in philosophy
from the University of Virginia in 1997. His website is www.davidswanson.org.
Jonathan Schwarz was a media consultant for the 2004 Kucinich presidential campaign. His website is A Tiny Revolution.
Copyright 2007 David Swanson and Jonathan Schwarz