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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.
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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.
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