News Intelligence Analysis
[Editor's Note: The Yurica Report placed underline emphasis in this article that did not appear in the original for purposes of directing the reader's attention to certain passages on the Medicare Bill.]
Read Original Article Here: The Hill.com
Dem complaints pay off with
nine probes
New tactics yield run of
high-profile investigations
By Alexander Bolton
At least nine high-profile investigations have been triggered
in the wake of a flood of Democratic demands targeting the heretofore
scandal-free Bush administration and the Republican-controlled
Congress.
They range from an inquiry on the cost of the new Medicare
law to multiple probes on the alleged failure of intelligence
in monitoring Iraq’s weapons programs.
In response to the new scrutiny, many Republicans claim the rush
to investigate at the Democrats’ behest is politically inspired.
Nevertheless, some political observers believe the cumulative
effect of these probes is damaging Bush’s re-election chances.
There are two ongoing probes related to Medicare, which Bush made his top domestic legislative priority last year.
First, Health and Human Services Inspector General Dara Corrigan is looking into whether Bush administration officials committed wrongdoing by withholding from Congress key data about the cost of the Medicare bill.
Second, the General Accounting Office (GAO) is investigating the legality of White House video news releases touting Medicare’s new prescription-drug benefit.
On the former front, the projected cost of the bill has grown from $395 billion to $521 billion since Congress passed it.
Yesterday, Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) alerted U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft of two federal criminal statues they say Bush administration officials broke during congressional consideration of the Medicare bill.
“It’s political,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of the investigations and the frequent Democratic demands. “There’s no question the folks on the other side are trying to embarrass us and win the election.”
One of the more active Democrats has been Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.
Waxman’s former chief of staff, Phil Schiliro, took over as policy director for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) this year.
In the sensitive national security arena, the House and Senate intelligence committees, along with an independent commission chaired by former Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.) and Judge Laurence Silberman, are investigating the accuracy of prewar Iraqi intelligence.
Last month, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to expand the investigation of prewar intelligence to include scrutiny of how policymakers used that data to justify the year-ago invasion. However, some Democrats remain dissatisfied with the scope of the Senate intelligence probe, saying it is only a fraction of the scope they seek.
These three investigations of prewar intelligence on Iraq coincide with four other inquiries that the executive branch is conducting on possible intelligence failures prior to the U.S. invasion. They are being conducted by the CIA Iraq Survey Group, a CIA internal review team, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a U.S. Army investigative team.
Republicans who suspect that Democrats are pushing for greater scrutiny of U.S. intelligence operations for political reasons point to an internal Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee memo leaked last year. That document laid out for Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) a strategy for using the panel’s investigation to inflict maximum political damage on Bush.
In addition, after steady demands from angry Democrats for a special prosecutor, Ashcroft gave in and named U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgibbon to investigate who told columnist Robert Novak, among other journalists, that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA officer.
FBI agents have targeted a number of top White House officials in the probe, rattling what up to this point had been a relatively scandal-free administration.
“My sense is that there are a lot of investigations out there,” said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It’s a lot of things coming to fruition at the same time.”
Noting some of these investigations are highly visible, Light added: “They are going to drip onto the Bush campaign throughout the coming six, eight months and they do have a cumulative effect in terms of eroding public confidence.”
Congress recently extended by 60 days the reporting deadline for a special commission investigating intelligence failures prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Bush initially opposed creating the commission, and his aides have clashed with the panel over access to sensitive national security information.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) pushed for the creation of the Sept. 11 panel, said it met a legitimate need. But he acknowledged that it is possible to over-investigate issues.
“There’s always a danger of overkill on these things, particularly because you’re going to have an Intelligence Committee report, you’re going to have a 9-11 report, and you’re going to have another intelligence report,” he said.
On Capitol Hill, the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee voted last week to undertake a formal probe of bribery allegations connected to the narrow passage of the Medicare bill in November. The ethics committee made public its efforts to investigate the bribery charges after House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) sent a letter to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) insisting the panel take action.
The Justice Department is also looking into the bribery allegations, which Democrats routinely highlighted in the weeks following the Medicare vote.
Earlier this month, as a result of Democratic pressure, six members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Justice requesting that a prosecutor consider a criminal investigation into how GOP aides obtained internal Democratic documents from a computer and whether they then leaked the documents.
While many of the demands for investigations have failed to produce action, many observers believe their sheer volume has been politically effective.
For example, Waxman has demanded details of how Halliburton, a company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, won no-bid contracts to provide a variety of services in occupied Iraq. He has also asked the GAO to investigate the meetings of a Cheney-led task force on energy policy, an issue that is scheduled to be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Waxman has also asked the Justice Department to investigate
“repeated discussions” Bush’s top political adviser,
Karl Rove, had with the executives of companies in which he had
substantial investments.
© 2004 The Hill
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