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Congressional oversight makes a valiant effort at a comeback. Sen. Carl Levin, a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee [SASC] and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [SSCI] releases a report on the role of the office of the Pentagon's number three official Douglas Feith in alleged extracurricular intelligence analysis and advocacy. Here's the IHT/NYT's Douglas Jehl's take. And here are some highlights from Levin's report:
...B. INFLUENCING THE IC’S REPORT ON “IRAQI SUPPORT FOR TERRORISM”
In addition to developing their own alternative intelligence analysis, Under Secretary Feith’s office was also attempting to convince the [intelligence community] IC to incorporate into a major finished report some of the raw intelligence reports the Feith office believed had been undervalued or ignored by the IC, and to change how the intelligence was characterized . . .
Feith’s staff also pressed dubious information, including criticizing the draft IC report for omitting reference to the “key issue of Atta.” . . .
Documents provided to the SASC indicate that Feith’s staff requested, both verbally and in written form, at least 32 changes to the draft, including inserting raw intelligence reports that had previously been omitted, deleting others, and altering the characterization of certain issues and raw reporting . . .
C. PRESENTING AN “ALTERNATIVE” VIEW DIRECTLY TO POLICYMAKERS
Feith’s staff went beyond interacting with the IC in an attempt to change an IC-issued product. They were also taking their view of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship directly to senior officials in the Executive branch . . .Under Secretary Feith’s second charge . . . was that the IC undervalued the importance that both Iraq and al Qaeda would place on concealing a relationship, and therefore that the absence of evidence of such a relationship did not necessarily mean that such a relationship did not exist. Taken to its logical extreme, this argument implies that absence of evidence may in fact be evidence itself – that the fact that no evidence can be found is an indication that evidence exists but is being hidden. But, in fact, the IC’s reluctance to assert an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was based on the information it possessed, not on hypotheticals, and the IC acknowledged lack of evidence as a factor limiting the strength of their conclusions. . . The reasonableness of the IC’s approach has subsequently been endorsed by the SSCI [and] the 9/11 Commission . . .
Score one or two for the battered and beleaguered but still fighting Reality-Based Community.
Update: Also most noteworthy: how unwilling Feith's office has been to comply with the Senate Armed Services committee's request for documents. Here's what Levin's committee has requested but so far not received from Mr. Feith:
• Two binders of documents being reviewed for a determination of executive privilege
• An unspecified number of documents containing CIA originator-controlled (ORCON) material, already reviewed by the CIA for release, and now being reviewed for a determination of executive privilege
• Documents relating to Feith office staff reviews of or contributions to other agencies’ documents
• Communications from Feith office staff to other agencies and offices related to the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda
• Documents related to information from defectors, including those provided or assisted by the Iraqi National Congress
• Documents or records relating to detainee debriefings cited by Feith as important in helping his office develop its perspective on Iraq-al Qaeda links
More later. But one thing worth pursuing in Levin's report are the "source inflations" Feith is involved in pushing - suggesting third hand foreign sources the US intelligence community has never interviewed are "from a very well-placed source" and the like. Why would Feith do that? And what does that say about his motivations and that of his analysts?
Correction: Levin serves on both the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Select Intelligence committee. He wrote this letter from his position as a a member of the SASC. My error, corrected above. But it raises a point: under whose Congressional oversight jurisdiction should the intelligence related activities of Feith's Pentagon office fall? It seems to exist in an oversight loophole (particularly, as Matt notes, with the Republicans not stepping up the plate on this, to their great shame).