Half-Baked Probe Won’t Do

Presidential commissions can play a key role in analyzing White House scandals. The 1986-87 Tower Commission investigated the Iran-Contra affair and concluded that by “failing to insist upon accountability,” President Reagan permitted dishonest staff members to try to sell arms to Iran to gain release of U.S. hostages and illegally fund Nicaraguan rebels. “It was a mistake,” Reagan said in taking responsibility in 1987. The Bush administration’s failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq does not enter that category of deliberate wrongdoing, but its consequence -- war with Iraq -- is larger. The matter requires a similar panel that can conduct a comprehensive probe of the intelligence services and National Security Council.

President Bush said Sunday to NBC’s Tim Russert, in a wide-ranging interview, that he “expected to find the weapons” on the basis of “intelligence that our analysts thought was valid.” However, when asked whether he would testify before his own commission, as Reagan did, Bush said he would not. He also deflected blame for the Iraq war onto Congress, which he said “looked at exactly what I looked at” before approving the resolution allowing the U.S. to go to war.

The panel will have nine members. The seven named Friday by the White House are generally lackluster Washington insiders. In addition, Bush gave the panel the very narrow task of identifying intelligence errors, rather than a broad mandate to look at the administration’s handling of intelligence.

The panel’s members lack intelligence experience, apart from Adm. William Studeman, former deputy director of the CIA. Patricia Wald, a former federal judge, and Richard Levin, the president of Yale University, may bring an outsider’s perspective, but the panel lacks a collective knowledge of the inner workings of federal bureaucracies and their penchant for safe, predictable analyses. Lloyd Cutler, a former White House counsel to presidents Carter and Clinton, may at age 87 lack energy to follow a breakneck schedule or conduct persistent bulldog questioning. Former Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.) has a pedestrian political record, including a near-loss to Iran-Contra defendant Oliver North in 1994. Oddly, Robb is tied to Judge Laurence H. Silberman, his co-chairman of the commission, through North. A staunch conservative, Silberman participated in a 2-1 decision reversing the conviction of North; Wald’s was the dissenting vote.

The most distinguished panelist, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has said the panel must inspect not just intelligence but also how politicians used it and whether the White House exerted undue pressure on the CIA. But without the unlikely backing of Silberman, he can’t force the issue.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated at Davos, Switzerland, last month that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a warning for the U.S. not to follow the “laws of the jungle” and said it must meet higher standards for military action. A limited probe of the type envisioned by Bush, carried out by a less-than-best panel of experts, will do nothing to make other nations trust U.S. intentions the next time around.