The Report They Forgot--Pat Roberts' Phase II intelligence report?

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The Report They Forgot
From our November issue: The Fitzgerald probe reminds us: Whatever happened to Pat Roberts' Phase II intelligence report?

By Laura Rozen
Web Exclusive: 10.19.05



In February 2004, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) announced that it had unanimously agreed to expand its investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence from focus on CIA blunders and into the more controversial area of “whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, struck the agreement with Chairman Pat Roberts -- provided, Roberts insisted, that the probe into policy-makers’ activities wait until after the presidential election.

It’s now more than a year later, and Rockefeller is still waiting -- the Phase II report has yet to appear. What happened? And why isn’t Rockefeller making more of a fuss?

Republican committee staffers don’t deny that Roberts lacks enthusiasm for Phase II. But they insist that he hasn’t acted to kill the investigation, and that the last interviews needed to complete it are being wrapped up. Ultimately, they say, it will be up to the committee’s members to vote on whether or not to release a report.

“The investigation is ongoing,” one committee staffer says. “It is sort of in the ending stage. Every once in awhile, a little campaign gets going that it’s being buried or covered up. That doesn’t reflect reality. is not ambiguous. He thinks it’s a monumental waste of our time, but we’re doing it.”

Democratic staffers confirm that after a long stall, the investigation is again limping forward. “I'm cautiously optimistic that we're actually -- finally -- going to wrap it up,” Wendy Morigi, spokeswoman for Rockefeller, e-mailed the Prospect. “Frankly, I think they’ve felt significant public pressure to finish it ... . Now the trick is going to be to make sure that we have a public report that is an honest, fair, and accurate picture of what happened. And that is where we're likely to find another struggle.”

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