SEN. ROBERTS: Our inquiry. Yes, I did. Now—and by the way, there are five pieces to that, and by the way, it would be—we have 13 people working on it, and three will be ready next month. And it’s something to say that phase two is now completed, and then have a lot of criticism of it, by the same people who keep moving the goal post and adding in more information.

We are now going to, on that one particular piece that would refer to this gentleman, 40,000--even more than that—intelligence papers to match up what people said, and they looked at the intelligence and say, “Does that make sense?” So phase two will be completed, and rest assure there’s nobody in Washington that wants that completed more than I do.

Story continues below ↓

Now we interviewed over 250 analysts during the WMD—the WMD inquiry, including this gentleman. Not one, except him now, post after all this is done, said that they were pressured in any way. And that was backed up by the WMD commission. Now, there was some comment about repeated questioning, but most analysts will say there better be some repeated questioning, but there was no—no political pressure, no manipulation. We asked over 250 analysts about that.

Now, the intelligence was wrong. We had a world-wide intelligence failure. That’s why the Congress stepped up and passed the intelligence reform bill, that’s why the WMD commission recommended 95 changes, and the administration has made 94. But this gentleman was interviewed, and when he was interviewed that kind of rhetoric was not in the interview.

MR. RUSSERT: He says that the essence of the intelligence was Iraq was not going—worth going to war over.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Right. You said should the committees be doing aggressive oversight? And the answer is absolutely yes. Pat is doing it on the post—or the prewar intelligence, Jane and I, we do a lot of things together. We don’t agree on everything, but there—you know, we agreed on a number of the priorities for the committee this year. We—we have a lot of blood, sweat and tears put into the intelligence reform bill. We want to make sure that the intelligence reform is creating the kind of intelligence community that we want created: agile, thorough, global. We both have concerns that it’s not moving fast enough.

REP. HARMAN: Yes.

REP. HOEKSTRA: I have talked—or my staff contacted Mr. Pillar on Friday. Interesting allegations. I’ve asked to meet with him. I’m not sure we’re going to open an investigation on one new story. We’re going to talk with Pat and see the information that he’s got. But if this guy’s coming out now—the question is where was he before we went to war?

MR. RUSSERT: We only have 15 seconds.

REP. HARMAN: He was trying to get everyone’s attention. Intelligence was ignored. Yes everyone agreed there was WMD in Iraq, but the—the—the weight of the recommendation was Saddam was contained and he wasn’t going to use it. And that’s the part that the administration never let us hear about.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you regret your vote for the war?

REP. HARMAN: I—I regret that our intelligence wasn’t considered in full, and that those of us on the intelligence committees didn’t have access to a fuller picture. I think that that would have staved off the actual military action had we understood it.

MR. RUSSERT: To be continued.

Hoekstra, Harman, Daschle, and Roberts: Thank you. We’ll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: A reminder, you can now watch the entire hour of MEET THE PRESS whenever and wherever you want. Our MEET THE PRESS Webcast posted each Sunday at 1 p.m. Eastern on our Web site, mtp.msnbc.com.

That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week at a special time in some areas because of NBC Sports’ Olympic coverage. Check your Web—our Web site next week for airtimes in your local market. Because, if it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.

< Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Discuss Story On Newsvine
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh
Email
Instant Message
Print