A Big-Picture Investigation

The script goes something like this: The White House opposes the creation of an investigative commission. Eventually it buckles to congressional and public demands but tries to control the panel’s work.

That’s how the Bush administration has treated the independent 9/11 commission. Such history begs for scrutiny of the White House’s reluctant proposal for a new panel to judge the intelligence that was used as justification for waging war on Iraq.

“I want to know all the facts,” President Bush said Monday. To back that assertion, he must give the commission real powers to examine not only U.S. spy agencies but the context in which they gathered and provided information.

Intelligence is, in part, a political craft. The commission will have to investigate, among other things, whether the CIA became too dependent on dubious Iraqi defectors eager to take power in Iraq.

Intelligence is full of gray areas of information that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Satellite photographs that were prominent in the arguments for war are good examples. Recall the photos that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell brandished in front of the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, describing them as chem-war decontamination vehicles. It now appears they were ordinary commercial trucks.

No matter how often officials like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claim they never depicted an imminent threat, the message was clear. The president made his case for war in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, with these words: “ ... we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Since the war began, inspectors have concluded that Iraq had no productive nuclear weapons program.

In choosing members of the new commission, Bush should recall the experience of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, named by the White House to head its 9/11 commission but pushed out under pressure from critics who cited his obsession with secrecy in the Nixon White House and his current roster of business clients, including the Chinese government.

Credible candidates for the intelligence panel include Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to former President George H.W. Bush and an opponent of the Iraq war. As far back as 1998, Scowcroft said of U.S. policy, “One of the things we need to learn to do better -- not just in Iraq -- is to blend diplomacy and force.” Foreign policy heavyweights on the order of former Republican Sen. Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire and President Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, are other names in the ring.

To rescue U.S. credibility around the world, Bush will have to allow -- and assist -- a thorough study not just of intelligence gathering but of how the White House used the information. Was it sifted and colored to push a preordained goal of war? That is as important a question as how the agencies themselves stumbled.