Secrecy News -- 07/16/03 (Cloaks)
Aftergood, Steven
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2003, Issue No. 60
July 16, 2003
** SENATORS ASK RELEASE OF WEN HO LEE REPORT
** IRAQI URANIUM CONTROVERSY GROWS
** CONGRESSIONAL 9/11 REPORT IS ON THE WAY
** WHITE HOUSE SEEKS TO SAVE TIA
** BINGAMAN ON ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTIONS
SENATORS ASK RELEASE OF WEN HO LEE REPORT
The Justice Department has refused to comply with a congressional
request for a copy of a recently completed report on the FBI's
handling of the Wen Ho Lee case, prompting a challenge from three
Senators.
"Your staff has said that we cannot review the report," complained
three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter to
Attorney General Ashcroft last week, asking him to release the
document.
"The Senate Judiciary Committee has exercised close oversight over the
Wen Ho Lee case, including holding three hearings while you were still
a member of the committee," wrote Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA),
Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA).
"Members of the committee would like to continue our oversight role
over the Wen Ho Lee case by examining the [Justice Department Office
of Professional Responsibility] report."
An FAS Freedom of Information Act request for the new report was also
recently denied, and the denial has been appealed. It is, in fact,
likely that the report contains properly classified information,
privacy information, and law enforcement information that would
preclude the report's full release to the public.
But withholding it from Congress is another matter. The Senators noted
that in the past, similar investigative reports from had been provided
to the Judiciary Committee.
Congressional oversight of the Justice Department has increasingly been
diverted into a struggle for access for information. To the extent
that routine requests for information consume the time and attention
of senior Senators, as in this case, fewer resources are available for
actual oversight.
A copy of the July 8 letter from Senators Feinstein, Leahy and Grassley
is posted here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2003/07/whl070803.html
IRAQI URANIUM CONTROVERSY GROWS
The President's State of the Union remark concerning an alleged Iraqi
attempt to acquire uranium in Africa "appears to be but one of a
number of several questionable statements and exaggerations by the
Intelligence Community and Administration officials that were issued
in the buildup to the war," said Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) yesterday.
In a floor statement, he itemized the growing list of problematic
assertions involving intelligence on Iraq.
Part of the problem arises from the careless use of language, which may
in turn reflect a deeper confusion. While dramatic linguistic
missteps are most common in the pronouncements of President Bush
("We've found the weapons of mass destruction," he said egregiously on
May 30), they are not limited to the President.
For example, Senator Levin noted, "Last Sunday, Ms. Rice said 'we have
never said that we thought he [Saddam] had nuclear weapons.' But Vice
President Cheney said on March 16 'we believe he [Saddam] has, in
fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons'."
Senator Levin called for a "thorough, open and bipartisan inquiry" on
pre-war intelligence regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and
its use by policymakers. See his July 15 statement here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/levin071503.html
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who has been way out in front on the Africa
uranium story, wrote a long letter to the House Intelligence Committee
outlining his view of the "four categories of unanswered questions"
that the story presents. His July 15 letter, and previous
correspondence, may be found here:
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_admin/admin_nuclear_evidence.htm
The Director of Central Intelligence has responded in writing to the
House Intelligence Committee's May 22 request for information on how
pre-war intelligence on Iraqi WMD was developed, said ranking member
Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) at a news conference yesterday.
"We are presently working to have that letter declassified," she said.
Based on her own review of the materials provided to the Intelligence
Committee to date, she said delicately, "the intelligence case for war
relied more than it should have on circumstantial indicators of Iraq's
WMD programs, rather than on solid facts."
At the same time, "the Administration consistently omitted the caveats
and qualifiers that the intelligence community generally attached to
its assessments of Iraq's WMD programs and ties to terrorism."
"The emerging evidence in Iraq does point to WMD programs," Rep. Harman
said, "but does not point to the existence of large stockpiles of
chemical or biological weapons."
The House Intelligence Committee will hold a public hearing on July 24
"in connection with its continuing review of pre-war intelligence on
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism."
Several members of the Committee went on a fact-finding mission to Iraq
last week and reported on their findings in a July 15 release. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/hpsci071503.pdf
CONGRESSIONAL 9/11 REPORT IS ON THE WAY
House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) said
yesterday that the long-promised declassification of the congressional
joint inquiry report on September 11 has finally been completed and
the report is now "at the printers."
"I would say that we won virtually all of the battles we wanted to win
in terms of getting information to the public," Rep. Goss said. "Now,
we didn't win it all in exactly the form we wanted it, but the
material, the subject matter, is pretty much out there."
"The one case that was the most difficult, it turns out in hindsight,
maybe the administration was right, we should have been more prudent.
But I will quickly say neither the administration nor we knew that at
the time. They were guessing that it could be a problem if we
released it, and as it turned out they were right because of events
that none of us knew were going to happen," he said without further
explanation.
"My hope is that Senator Graham and I are going to be able to have a
press conference and get [the report] out as soon as it is back, and
we hope that will be in a week or so," Rep. Goss said on July 15.
WHITE HOUSE SEEKS TO SAVE TIA
The Senate is proposing, and the White House is resisting, a provision
to eliminate any funding for research and development on DARPA's
controversial Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program.
The provision appears in the pending 2004 Defense Appropriations Act.
See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2003/defapp-tia-sen.html
In a July 14 statement, the White House "urge[d] the Senate to remove
the provision that prohibits any research and development for the
Terrorism Information Awareness Program. This provision would deny an
important potential tool in the war on terrorism." See:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/legislative/sap/108-1/s1382sap-s.pdf
BINGAMAN ON ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTIONS
Longstanding American legal principles of due process are being
unnecessarily compromised by the Administration's conduct of the war
on terrorism, said Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) in a July 14 floor
statement.
"The core element of due process law is the requirement that if
individuals are taken into custody by the Government, then within some
reasonable time, they will be advised of the crimes of which they are
accused. They will be charged with those crimes and they will be
prosecuted.... Today we are witnessing the abandonment by this current
administration of our historic commitment to this most basic legal
protection."
See Senator Bingaman's remarks on "Administrative Detentions and Right
to Due Process" here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/s071403.html
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: safte...@fas.org
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