Summary: A New York Times article on partisanship in the Senate Intelligence Committee investigations ignored the conduct of committee chair Pat Roberts in impeding investigations or blocking them outright.
A March 12 article by New York Times staff writer Scott Shane attributed to a 'partisan standoff' both the Senate Intelligence Committee's delay in completing the second phase of its investigation of prewar intelligence on Iraq and its failure to probe the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects. But in attributing the committee's failures to partisanship, Shane ignored the conduct of committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KA) in apparently impeding both of these investigations or blocking them outright."
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But Shane overlooked Roberts's apparent responsibility in both cases. Roberts has apparently delayed -- repeatedly -- the second phase of the committee's investigation into the administration's use of prewar intelligence, deeming it unnecessary. The committee's Phase I investigation, completed in April 2004, concerned the intelligence community's failure to provide accurate intelligence on the Iraqi threat. During the course of the initial investigation, Democrats on the committee reached an agreement with their Republican counterparts to conduct a second phase examining the administration's use of prewar intelligence.
Roberts initially called Phase II a "priority" and claimed that it would be completed sometime after the 2004 presidential election. But, in March 2005, he disclosed that it had been put "on the back-burner" and, on March 31, 2005, released a statement describing the investigation as "a monumental waste of time." In a June 22, 2005, letter, Senate Democrats urged the committee to "accelerate to completion the work of the so-called 'Phase II' effort to assess how policy makers used the intelligence they received." But in a July 20, 2005, response, Roberts disputed the fact that the committee had "agree[d] to examine the vague notion" of how policymakers used intelligence.
During the following months, Roberts failed to report any subsequent progress on Phase II, despite repeated inquiries from Democratic committee members. In response, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (NV) forced the Senate into a rare closed-door session on November 1, 2005, and demanded a pledge from Roberts that the investigation would be completed.
Roberts immediately denied that he had stalled the investigation. "It isn't like it's been delayed," he said on the Senate floor that day. "As a matter of fact, it's been ongoing. As a matter of fact, we have been doing our work on Phase II." He again pledged to finish the investigation, despite continuing to dismiss the probe as unnecessary and irrelevant. On November 14, 2005, three Democratic members of the committee reported to Reid and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) that Roberts refused to exact "additional interviews and documents" needed to fully answer the "critical questions surrounding the use of intelligence in the months leading up to the war." ....
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