President to Create Commission on Prewar U.S. Intelligence

The president’s decision comes after increased criticism from both Democrats and Republicans to respond to what the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee has called “egregious” errors that overstated Iraq’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, as well as Saddam Hussein’s progress toward developing nuclear bombs.

Last week, former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told Congress that U.S. prewar weapons intelligence assessments on Iraq, which led to the American invasion, were “almost all wrong.”

“I want to know all the facts,” Mr. Bush said in a brief exchange with reporters Monday.

Mr. Bush said he wanted to look at the U.S. intelligence on the spread of deadly weapons “in a broader context.”

“And so I’m putting together an independent, bipartisan commission to, to analyze where we stand, what we can do better,” he said.

Senior administration officials told The Washington Post on Sunday that the panel would also look into failures to detect al-Qaida plans to attack the United States, weapons programs in Libya and Iran, and nuclear testing in Pakistan and India.

The British government said Monday it also plans to launch an official inquiry into the intelligence Prime Minister Tony Blair used to justify joining the United States in going to war in Iraq.

Blair is expected to make the announcement Tuesday morning before a parliamentary committee, according to wire reports. The announcement would come days after a judicial probe cleared the government of distorting the facts to build a case for war.

Officials said President Bush is compiling a list of who would serve on the U.S. commission, expected to have about nine members. Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said Sunday that they were talking to “very distinguished statesmen and women, who have served their country and who have been users of intelligence, or served in a gathering capacity.”

The draft of the executive order states that the commission will compare intelligence about Iraq with what was found on the ground there.

Democrats responded that the investigation should also include how that information was used, including whether Bush administration officials filtered intelligence to build a national and international consensus on the need to take military action.

“It has to have that included,” Sen. John Rockefeller, W.Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on Fox News. “And that is still not settled.”

The president’s decision, which reverses his earlier opposition to a probe, follows attacks by Democratic presidential contenders, including the front-runner, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

Kerry has said Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell chose intelligence that supported their case against Saddam Hussein, “misleading” Congress during the debate over whether to authorize military action against Iraq.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said that a months-long investigation by his panel found no evidence that the Bush administration put pressure on intelligence analysts to exaggerate the dangers posed by Iraq, but did find flaws in the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency and its counterparts.

The Senate panel is expected to distribute a draft report to members of Congress on Thursday.

Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and former intelligence officer, said, “Unless we’re prepared for another intelligence failure, we need to get about the business of improving our intelligence service.”

However, he added that the any new intelligence inquiry should look forward, rather than dwell on any past mistakes.

“The intelligence community will never bat 1,000; it can’t get there,” Goss said. “We’ve been watching too many James Bond movies to think it always comes out all right in the end. It doesn’t.”

Congressional officials said the vice president had been in contact with leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee from both parties to discuss a possible blueprint for a broad, independent review of the state of American intelligence agencies.