Foley Rejects White House Bid to Control Access to Iraq Data

Stepping up the confrontation between Congress and the White House over U.S.-Iraq policy, Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) has rejected an Administration attempt to avoid providing the House Banking Committee with classified documents on its prewar relations with Iraq.

In a letter released Wednesday, Foley rebuffed a proposal that he control access to classified material subpoenaed by the Banking Committee. He said the Administration would have to work out a means of turning over the material to the banking panel.

Foley’s response marked the House Democratic leadership’s first public support for Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.), whose scathing attacks on the Administration’s prewar Iraq policy have angered Administration officials and have drawn rebukes from Republicans.

Last month, the Banking Committee subpoenaed classified documents from the CIA, National Security Agency and departments of Defense, Justice and Commerce as part of its ongoing investigation into U.S.-Iraq policy.

On behalf of the Administration, the Justice Department sought to keep the material from the committee, saying Gonzalez has previously damaged national security by disclosing classified material in public statements. The department took the unprecedented step of providing the records to the House Intelligence Committee and trying to make Foley responsible for them.

But in a letter to Atty. Gen. William P. Barr dated Sept. 2, Foley said that he has no authority to control access to the documents and that providing them to the intelligence panel was inappropriate.

“I therefore suggest that the Administration discuss with the Banking Committee the manner in which it will comply with these subpoenas,” Foley wrote to Barr.

The Intelligence Committee returned the classified material to the Justice Department after Foley’s letter, a congressional source said.

A Justice Department spokesman said the Administration has offered to allow Gonzalez and other committee members to see the material. But he said copies are being withheld from the committee because of the department’s responsibility to avoid leaks of classified material.

The Administration has refused to provide Banking Committee staff members with access to classified material since May 15. Gonzalez charged that the attempt to duck the subpoenas was another example of the Administration’s cover-up of its dealings with Iraq.

“The attorney general is protecting something, but it sure isn’t national security,” Gonzalez said Wednesday. “He is protecting the Administration’s hide.”

Gonzalez and other Democratic chairmen are gearing up for more hearings on Iraq later this month or early in October. Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.) plans a hearing on whether the Administration has withheld documents from his House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, and investigations are being conducted by the Senate and House agriculture committees.