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May 29, 2002 10:05 a.m. Bush in Peril Like it or not, the president will face many September 11 investigations.

of course want the Congress to take a look at what took place prior to September the 11th," President Bush told reporters in Germany last week. "But since it deals with such sensitive information, in my judgment, it's best for the ongoing war against terror that the investigation be done in the intelligence committee." With that statement, Bush shut the door on White House approval for an independent commission to investigate intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

But it's not as simple as that. The question of whether the Sept. 11 investigation will be conducted by the intelligence committee or by an independent commission is a false choice. There are other investigations on the way, completely separate from the intelligence panel or any as-yet-unformed commission. And those probes, in the Democratic-controlled Senate, could prove far more troublesome for the White House than the intelligence committee investigation that the president prefers.

One has, in fact, already started. The Senate Judiciary Committee, under chairman Patrick Leahy, has begun a de facto investigation of the FBI's pre-Sept. 11 activities. Last week Leahy had FBI agent Ken Williams, the author of the so-called "Phoenix Memo," speak to the committee in a meeting limited to senators and staff with top-secret security clearances. Now, Leahy is assessing FBI official Coleen Rowley's devastating indictment of the bureau's mishandling of the Zacarias Moussaoui case, the so-called "20th hijacker" who was detained in Minneapolis the month before the terrorist attacks.

The Judiciary Committtee has traditionally had oversight authority over the FBI and the Justice Department as a whole. Does anyone believe Leahy will not hold hearings at which Rowley will tell her story? Hearings at which new information will emerge about the FBI's mistakes, misjudgments, and perhaps worse? "The administration has been lobbying hard in the vain and ridiculous attempt to keep this in the intelligence committee," says one Senate aide. "It ain't gonna happen. It's in the total discretion of the chairman, and there is nothing — nothing — that is going to stand between Leahy and this investigation."

And it's not just Leahy. Committee Republicans Arlen Specter and Charles Grassley are also on board. And there will be others; even those conservative Republicans most alienated by Leahy's partisan treatment of the president's judicial nominees will not be inclined to fight Leahy on this one. The FBI's role in events leading to Sept. 11 is a perfectly legitimate topic of investigation, and it's likely that Republican senators will support the principle that the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has a right to look into such matters. After all, those GOP senators want to recapture the chair in November, and they have no interest in diminishing its powers.

The probe could be quite troublesome for the White House. Republicans remember that Leahy once had to resign from the Senate Intelligence Committee for leaking secret information. Now Leahy is in charge, and GOP insiders expect secrets to find their way into the newspapers. The White House should, too. And if the committee comes across any evidence that FBI officials or anyone else tried to cover up their conduct related to Sept. 11, it is entirely possible that there will be calls for a special prosecutor to investigate.

And there is no reason why the investigation has to stop with the Judiciary Committee. At this moment, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee chairman Joseph Lieberman is one of those formally calling for a commission investigation, but if that does not happen, it is not difficult to imagine Lieberman's committee staking out some part of the pre-Sept. 11 investigation. Did other government agencies turn a blind eye to signs of terrorist activity? Are whistleblowers like Rowley receiving adequate job protection? Lieberman, who has not hesitated to take an adversarial relationship with the White House over Enron, might well hold hearings on those or other issues.

Publicly at least, the White House seems unconcerned with the ominous developments on Capitol Hill. Administration aides still seem to think the investigation can be contained within the joint House/Senate intelligence committees. "The intelligence committees have the jurisdiction over the gathering of intelligence, not just by the CIA, but by the FBI," says an administration official. "To start another one would not be very prudent." Says another administration aide: "The president said that in a time of war, there ought to be one investigation."

Yes, the president said that. But that doesn't mean it will happen.