WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has moved toward completing its long-awaited investigation of the Bush administration's prewar assertions about Iraq, with three of five sections nearly finished, the committee's chairman said Tuesday.
Seeking to quell controversy over the pace of the inquiry, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) for the first time provided details and a partial timeline for completing the investigation, which has been underway for more than two years.
He acknowledged that drafts of the two most controversial sections were the ones that were not finished, and he provided no time frame for completing them.
The first of the two most controversial sections is an analysis of whether administration officials had adequate intelligence to back up their prewar public statements. The second is an evaluation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, a defunct intelligence unit that challenged the CIA's conclusions.
The first stage of the Iraq investigation -- a review of prewar intelligence -- was released in July 2004, and found that nearly all of the conclusions of the CIA and other intelligence agencies were "either overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting."
The more controversial second phase of the investigation was delayed until after the 2004 presidential election. However, little progress has been reported since then. Democrats have accused Roberts of whitewashing the inquiry, and orchestrated a shutdown of the Senate in November to protest the lack of progress. Republicans have accused Democrats of grandstanding for partisan gain.
Roberts said Tuesday that the Democrats' complaints were unfounded, adding that progress now was dependent on how fast committee members completed their individual reviews of the three drafts, due in early April.
"If people are serious about finishing Phase II, they don't need to shut down the Senate or hold press conferences decrying the process; they just need to come do the work," Roberts said.
Roberts did not, however, provide a date for public release of the completed sections, saying they would have to be vetted by intelligence agencies.
The three sections nearing completion, he said, include a comparison of prewar and postwar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs; the intelligence community's use of information from the Iraqi National Congress, the group headed by onetime Pentagon ally Ahmad Chalabi; and the nature of prewar intelligence assessments about postwar Iraq.
