WASHINGTON — President Bush has agreed to support an independent inquiry into the intelligence he used to claim before the U.S. attack on Iraq that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, congressional sources said Saturday.
The shift by the White House, which had previously maintained that any such inquiry should wait until a more exhaustive weapons search has been completed, came after pressure from lawmakers in both parties and from the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.
David Kay, who resigned his post nine days ago, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq’s weapons programs. He said it was unlikely that stockpiles would still be found in Iraq.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said Saturday that convening a blue-ribbon panel is important, because "we’re in danger now of seeing the politicization of the whole intelligence issue."
The panel, Roberts said, would have to be bipartisan and include only recognized experts whose recommendations could "leapfrog" over the current debate and quickly tackle the issue of how to fix intelligence deficiencies.
"It would be helpful not only politically, but also for the nation," Roberts said.
There was no official confirmation from the White House on Saturday, but sources in the government said Bush’s announcement was imminent. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney has begun to call lawmakers on intelligence committees who have encouraged the administration to proceed with an inquiry.
Democrats have asserted that Bush exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war, a theory that was boosted by recent allegations from former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that Bush had contemplated Hussein’s ouster long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Politically, the decision to back an independent probe contains substantial risks for Bush. It means the White House will have to surrender some control over the timing of the investigation, raising the possibility that such a panel could release information about intelligence failures before the Nov. 2 elections.
But the pressure on Bush to accept an independent inquiry became intense after Kay on Wednesday said it was "important to acknowledge failure" and that his own view was that "it is going to take an outside inquiry, both to do it and to give yourself and the American people the confidence that you have done it."
Bush’s shift in position represents an effort to get out in front of a potentially dangerous issue that threatens to cloud his re-election bid. An independent commission would not necessarily absolve Bush politically, congressional officials said, but it could quiet the current furor and delay calls for top-level resignations at the CIA and elsewhere until after the elections, diluting the potency of the issue for Democrats.
By joining the effort to create the commission rather than allowing Congress to develop its own framework, Bush will probably have more leverage to keep the focus on the CIA and other intelligence agencies rather than on the White House, congressional officials said.
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