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White House Agrees to Cooperate With Senate Intelligence Inquiry
The White House and the U.S. Defense Department have agreed to provide the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with documents and access to personnel related to U.S. prewar intelligence on Iraq, committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 30). “Every document we want will be made available,” Roberts said on CNN’s Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer. Roberts said a senior White House official had informed his staff Friday that “in a spirit of cooperation … the White House will provide us with the documents and interviews that we want” (Shogren/Chen, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3). The materials committee Democrats have requested includes speech drafts and documentation for claims made in speeches by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, including Bush’s State of the Union address, said congressional sources. The White House and committee Republicans, however, have interpreted the request more narrowly, according to the Washington Post. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the top Democrat on the committee, said Roberts informed him about the White House’s promised cooperation as they appeared on CNN. Roberts said that he had not told Rockefeller beforehand because he had not had “a chance to call you over the weekend.” Rockefeller yesterday appeared to doubt the White House’s pledge of greater cooperation with the committee’s inquiry, the Post reported. “I want to see the documentation … before I’m satisfied,” he said. “I want to know that we really have it in hand,” Rockefeller added (Mike Allen, Washington Post, Nov. 3). A White House spokesman, however, has refused to confirm Roberts’s claim that the White House has agreed to fully cooperate with the inquiry, according to the Los Angeles Times. “We have had productive conversations about ways we can work with and assist the committee,” said deputy press secretary Trent Duffy. “While the committee’s jurisdiction does not cover the White House, we want to be helpful, and we will continue to talk to and work with the committee in a spirit of cooperation,” Duffy said (Shogren/Chen, Los Angeles Times).
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