Worldandnation: Doubts surround inquiry into Sept. 11

WASHINGTON -- On Feb. 14, leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees unveiled an ambitious plan to conduct a joint inquiry into the intelligence failures surrounding Sept. 11.

The whole notion was to find out what went wrong, and to keep it from happening again.

As co-chairmen of the joint inquiry, the mission largely fell to Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, and to Sanibel Republican Rep. Porter J. Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Three months later, critics wonder whether the congressional committee can do the job. High-profile staff missteps, internal political strife and what committee members say is White House stonewalling have pushed congressional hearings, tentatively scheduled for late April, to late June.

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, there is growing pressure for an alternative examination of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, top congressional Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle repeated calls for an independent commission, saying it would be better suited than Congress for an inquiry.

The idea is resolutely opposed by President Bush and House Republican leaders, who have the power to keep the proposal from coming to a vote and who view it as a political ploy by ambitious Democrats. "We must not allow the president to be undermined by those who want his job," said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that the joint inquiry would be able to conduct a more thorough review than an independent panel because the committee would be able to handle classified information, a luxury perhaps not available to others.

An independent commission, Pelosi said, "in no way replaces the work of this joint inquiry, which has a privileged place in the inquiry because of the secret nature of the work that we do."

Because of their positions, Graham and Goss have come under increasing scrutiny. Like President Bush, they have come under fire -- from House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, in particular -- about how much they knew about al-Qaida intentions to carry out the hijackings on Sept. 11, and whether they should have sounded an alarm.

Intelligence observers asked other questions, as well. Is Graham tough enough to challenge the Bush administration? Can Goss, a former CIA man, be trusted to do a thorough investigation of the agency. Will the White House cooperate with investigators?

The answer to the last question, so far, is not entirely, at least according to Graham and other members of the intelligence committees.

The FBI, in particular, has been reluctant to share documents that could be used as part of a criminal inquiry, Graham says, and the CIA has created "an atmosphere of intimidation" for potential witnesses.

"We've been having some difficulty getting the level of access to information and to witnesses that we had been led to believe before we started this," Graham said in a recent interview. He said the foot dragging had slowed the investigation.

Graham said he would be willing to use the committee's subpoena powers to get answers and even take his case to the president.

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee -- and a vocal critic of the CIA -- says he would be willing to scrap the investigation unless the level of cooperation improves.

"Nobody is interested in doing anything but a thorough, exhaustive, rigorous inquiry of our failures and successes, and what we need in our intelligence community in the future," Shelby said.

On Tuesday, Graham, Goss, Shelby and Pelosi met with Attorney General John Ashcroft to voice concerns about the level of cooperation from the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI.

Afterward, the leadership of the intelligence committees declared the meeting a success. "This has been a very valuable hour invested in smoothing the path for the future of our investigation," Graham said.

Shelby agreed but went further.

"We've had a good meeting today, but the proof of cooperation will come as the investigation unfolds, and I'm sure we will have other impediments in the road," Shelby said. "We don't know what those impediments are going to be, but we're going to dig under every rock that we can find . . . to do this job and the administration, I believe, knows that."

Goss took up for Ashcroft, noting that "prosecution of criminal terrorists is something that is a very important part of putting the terrorists out of business." He added, "We want to make absolutely sure that we in no way cause him problems."

Nonetheless, Goss said, "We have our mission . . . to deliver to the American people the best possible information and the best possible recommendations for solutions to the weaknesses in our intelligence and law enforcement system."

The White House insists that the executive branch has been nothing but cooperative with committee investigators.

From the beginning, the congressional committee has faced obstacles.

Not only is its mission daunting, maneuvering a politically charged investigation through a secretive world not seen since Pearl Harbor, but just getting off the ground has been difficult.

At first, for example, the committee had trouble assembling a staff. A few weeks ago, after only two months on the job, L. Britt Snider, the panel's staff director, was forced to resign as a result of a security lapse. All the while, committee members have argued about whether the goal should be to assign blame, or to strictly identify failures and make recommendations. Graham and Goss are said to be pushing for merely making recommendations.

Which prompts the former Arizona senator, Dennis DeConcini, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to wonder whether Graham and Goss have it in them to conduct a thorough review. "They're good guys," he said. "I'm not sure they're as mean as we were."

The committee's tight schedule, meanwhile, has raised concerns about whether it will be able to uncover the truth. Some people actually think the inquiry is moving too fast.

"I'm fearful the outcome will be superficial," said Loch Johnson, who served on the Church Committee, which examined CIA abuses in the 1970s. The work of the Church Committee played a big role in the creation of the intelligence committees.

"This is serious business," Johnson said. "The country's ability to thwart future attacks may ride on the work of this committee."

-- Information from the New York Times was used in this report.

Doubts surround inquiry into Sept. 11

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