http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/16551967.htm

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Senator: Cheney stalled inquiry

January 26, 2007
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY
McClatchy Newspapers

McCLATCHY-TRIBUNE/CHUCK KENNEDY
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., speaks to reporters Thursday. He said Vice President Dick Cheney exerted pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to delay an investigation into the use of flawed intelligence on Iraq.WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday.

In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans' international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants.

In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the investigation of the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

"It was just constant," Rockefeller said of Cheney's alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.

Republicans "just had to go along with the administration," he said.

In an e-mail response to Rockefeller's comments, Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea McBride, said: "The vice president believes Senator Roberts was a good chairman of the Intelligence Committee."

Roberts' chief of staff, Jackie Cottrell, blamed the Democrats for the investigation remaining incomplete more than two years after it began.

"Senator Rockefeller's allegations are patently untrue," she said in an e-mail. "The delays came from the Democrats' insistence that they expand the scope of the inquiry to make it a more political document going into the 2006 elections. Chairman Roberts did everything he could to accommodate their requests for further information without allowing them to distort the facts."

Bill Duhnke, Roberts' staff director, said: "I'm not aware of any effort by the vice president, his staff or anyone in the administration to influence the speed at which the committee did its work."

Rockefeller's comments were among the most forceful he's made about why the committee failed to complete the inquiry under Roberts.

Roberts was chairman of the intelligence committee from January 2003 until the Democrats took over Congress this month.

The panel released a report in July 2004 that lambasted the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for erroneously concluding that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was concealing biological, chemical and nuclear warfare programs. It then began examining how senior Bush administration officials used faulty intelligence to justify the March 2003 invasion.

Roberts promised to quickly complete what became known as the Phase II investigation. After more than two years, however, the panel published only two of five Phase II reports amid serious rifts between Republican and Democratic members and their staffs.

Rockefeller recalled that in November 2005, the then-minority Democrats employed a rarely used parliamentary procedure to force the Senate into a closed session to pressure Roberts to complete Phase II.

The most potentially controversial of the three Phase II reports being worked on will compare what Bush and his top lieutenants said publicly about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorists with what was contained in top-secret intelligence reports.

In the two reports released in September, the panel said the administration's claims of ties between Saddam and al Qaeda were false and found that administration officials distributed exaggerated and bogus claims provided by an Iraqi exile group with close ties to some senior administration officials.

Rockefeller said it was important to complete the Phase II inquiry.

Rockefeller also said that he and the senior Republican member of the committee, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., have put the frictions behind them.

:mad:

Since it doesn't appear that anything's going to happen while they're in office, I hope, at least, that once they're gone, the truth all comes out and the world will see this administration for the lying, crooked, misleading bastards that they are.

I'm waiting to see how Libby's trial goes. His Defence Attorney is now saying it was Cheney who masterminded the whole thing and forced Libby to talk to reporters.

Could be interesting.

:?: