Bush Will Name Panel to Probe Intelligence

President Bush will name a nine-member bipartisan commission this week to investigate U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities, a senior administration official said Sunday.

The decision to appoint a commission, completed over the weekend, comes amid increasing calls for an independent investigation of the quality of the information Bush cited last year as the rationale for launching the war that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

But the inquiry will cover much more territory than Iraq, the official said, noting that the president “recognizes the important role that intelligence plays” in monitoring “outlaw regimes” that practice “deception, denial and concealment,” particularly when it comes to unconventional weapons.

By creating a panel whose inquiry, the official said, is expected to run past election day, Bush may be immunizing himself -- politically speaking -- against criticism over faulty intelligence and against allegations from some Democrats that the administration exaggerated Iraq’s weapons capabilities to build public support for the war.

As recently as last week, Bush and his top aides were contending that any inquiry into prewar intelligence would have to await the results of the ongoing, but so far fruitless, search in Iraq for biological, chemical and other unconventional weapons.

As it turned out, even as the White House was advancing that position publicly, top aides -- at Bush’s direction -- began laying the groundwork for a blue-ribbon panel, according to the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“What [Bush] wants to do is have a broad, bipartisan and independent look ... a broad assessment of our intelligence-gathering capabilities, particularly with regard to weapons of mass destruction and counter-proliferation efforts,” the official said.

The commission will include experts from outside government as well as members of Congress, sources said Sunday. The panelists will include “very distinguished statesmen and -women” who have served the country either as “users” of classified information or gatherers of intelligence, said another administration official who also requested anonymity.

One possible member of the panel is retired Army Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security advisor for President Bush’s father, the senior administration official said. Scowcroft publicly criticized the administration’s decision-making as it prepared for the invasion of Iraq.

The official acknowledged the political pitfalls inherent in such an investigation, particularly since the presidential campaign is underway. But he said the White House would strive to keep partisan politics from intruding into the inquiry.

The members of the “independent, thorough and bipartisan” panel will be given “all the access they need to get the job done,” the official said.

Since May 1, when Bush announced the end to “major combat operations” in Iraq, the president and his administration have been the subject of growing questions over the inability of weapons investigators to turn up any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons -- the White House’s initial and most important rationale for using deadly force to effect a “regime change” in Baghdad last spring.

Demands for an investigation escalated late last month after David Kay resigned as the chief U.S. weapons inspector. In interviews and before Congress, Kay said he doubted that Hussein possessed illicit weapons when U.S. forces attacked.

“We were almost all wrong” about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.

Kay said Sunday that he would welcome an independent investigation.

“I think it is very important, not only for the nation. It’s important for our credibility as a global power in our relations with allies as we move forward,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I suspect there are fundamental flaws in the way we collect and analyze intelligence. I think it’s important to know that an honest effort is underway to find the causes.”

Stuart Rothenberg, an independent political analyst, noted that the language used by the senior administration official suggested that the commission might be asked to assess intelligence capabilities over several administrations, not just Bush’s.

“This seems like an effort for the president to appear as concerned about faulty intelligence as the Democrats are, as the Congress is, as everybody else is,” he said Sunday. “If he didn’t do this, and continued to resist, it’d look as though he was covering things up, that he was trying to protect himself.”

By creating a commission, Rothenberg said, the president “puts himself on the side of everybody else. Instead of it being the Democrats and the Congress against George W. Bush, it becomes everybody trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. And the president can say, ‘The intelligence was faulty and we all need better information.’ ”

Several lawmakers endorsed the idea, including former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who told “Fox News Sunday” that he normally was not a fan of “government by commission.”

And Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.) told CNN’s “Late Edition”: “I don’t think there’s any way around it. We obviously have very serious gaps in our intelligence capabilities.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) agreed on the need for an investigation. “America’s credibility’s at stake. This isn’t about politics anymore,” he said on the same program.

On Saturday night, as speculation grew that Bush would appoint a commission, Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he would not be surprised by such a move, which he characterized as a cynical attempt to remove the issue from the presidential campaign.

On Sunday, a Rockefeller spokeswoman said the senator would oppose Bush’s intention of naming all the panel’s members.

“It has to be a nonpartisan, nonpolitical commission,” said Wendy Morigi. “The senator doesn’t see how they could possibly meet that criteria if they want to appoint their own panel.”

Rockefeller told “Fox News Sunday” that the investigation should focus not only on the prewar intelligence, but also on the decision-making processes that followed.

At the White House, the senior administration official declined to say when Bush would formally announce creation of the panel. As recently as Friday, the president told reporters simply: “I too want to know the facts. I want to be able to compare what the Iraqi Survey Group has found with what we thought prior to going into Iraq.”

The White House currently is at loggerheads with a commission that Congress created to study possible intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The panel wants access to certain classified information that it says the White House refuses to provide and now is seeking an extension of its deadline, which could delay its final report until this summer or even shortly before election day.

Times staff writers Greg Miller and David Savage contributed to this report.