Latest panel forgoes subpoena

WASHINGTON — The presidential commission investigating the intelligence agencies’ mistaken pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction will not seek subpoena power, a spokesman says.

Meanwhile, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says he and other members are concerned that agency leaders have failed to hold anyone accountable for three years of blunders.

The inquiry commission’s chairmen — former Sen. Chuck Robb, D-Va., and Republican Laurence Silberman, a retired federal appeals court judge — have decided they do not need subpoena power to require people to testify or provide information, said spokesman Larry McQuillan.

"At this point, they are satisfied that they can get all the cooperation they need," McQuillan said. "Both men have been assured personally by President Bush that every federal department and agency will cooperate."

McQuillan declined to comment on whether the decision could later be reversed. "I don’t want to go into hypotheticals," he said.

Bush formed the commission in February — formally named the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction — in response to mounting criticism involving the flawed prewar intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs, whose existence was a leading argument for war.

As part of its mandate, the commission will also look at how well the intelligence agencies are able to evaluate the threat of weapons of mass destruction from foreign governments, terrorist groups or private networks distributing the weapons or materials. The commission is expected to report to Bush by March 31 of next year.

Bush has been criticized by some lawmakers and Sept. 11, 2001, victims’ families over his insistence on limiting the subpoena power of another commission investigating the al-Qaida attack.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said he would defer to Silberman and Robb’s judgment, though as co-chairman of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, he found subpoena power valuable: "Not because you used it frequently," he said, but because "people understood if they didn’t come voluntarily, they could be forced to come."

"We got a lot of cooperation, too, at the beginning," he added.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of nine weapons commission members, has said he thinks the panel should have subpoena power. "It gives a certain credibility to a commission," he said in an ABC interview.

At least one senior lawmaker considered friendly to the CIA — and the more than a dozen other agencies that comprise the intelligence community — has been publicly critical.

In a speech at Kansas State University on Monday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said members of Congress were troubled because no one in the agencies has been held accountable for intelligence failures over the past three years, starting with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Almost two years since the publication of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that declared Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was reconstituting his nuclear program, no one has been disciplined or fired," he said. "Are we asking too much?"

Roberts also referred to CIA Director George Tenet’s reported assurances to Bush that the existence of Hussein’s weapons programs was a "slam-dunk case."

"Rarely is any intelligence case a ‘slam dunk,’ " Roberts said.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on Roberts’ remarks and said the agency is going to cooperate fully with the commission.