By Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush's choice to co-chair his commission to investigate intelligence failures prior to the Iraq War is a long-time, right wing political activist closely tied to the neo-conservative network that led the pro-war propaganda campaign.

Federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman, who will share the chairmanship with former Virginia Democratic Senator Charles Robb, also has some history in covert operations.

In 1980, when he served as part of former Republican president Ronald Reagan's senior campaign staff, he played a key role in setting up secret contacts between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Islamic government in Tehran, in what became known as the "October Surprise" controversy.

(Former president George HW Bush, the current president's father, was Reagan's vice-president for two terms, 1981-89).

Rewarded with his appeals court judgeship several years later, Silberman helped advise right-wing activists during the 1990s on strategies for pursuing allegations of sexual misconduct by then-Democratic president Bill Clinton, according to various accounts.

Besides Silberman and Robb, a conservative Democrat who also has strong ties to neo-conservatives through the Democratic Leadership Council, Bush chose five other commission members and indicated that two more have yet to be named.

The five include Arizona Republican Senator John McCain; former White House counsel for Clinton and former president Jimmy Carter, Lloyd Cutler; Yale University President Richard Levin; former deputy Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, Admiral William Studeman and retired appeals court judge Pat Wald.

In announcing the panel, Bush rejected appeals by the opposition Democrats in Congress that they be given a role in deciding its membership in order to enhance its credibility.

He also appeared to limit the commission's mandate to study only the mistakes made by the intelligence community in assessing Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.

Bush said the commission will submits its report by Mar. 31, 2005, well after the presidential elections in November.

"Last week, our former chief weapons inspector, David Kay ... stated that some pre-war intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed", Bush said. "We are determined to find out why".

Democrats said the mandate was too limited. "The president is not allowing (the commission) to look into the growing number of questions millions of Americans are asking about the administration's statements and actions before the Iraq war", said Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle. "That investigation still needs to be done.?

Democrats have charged that political pressure from leading administration figures, notably Vice President Dick Cheney, contributed to the intelligence failures, as did officials' public exaggerations of the intelligence community's assessments in order to persuade the public to support the war.

Democrats and other analysts had also wanted the commission to take up the administration's pre-war charges that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein worked closely with the al-Qaeda terrorist group.

"The independent commission ... should seize upon its mandate to investigate 'related 21st century threats' and the biggest failure in the justification for the Iraq war: unproven allegations of links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein," said Charles Pena, a foreign-policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that has strongly opposed the Iraq war, despite its generally Republican orientation.

Yet, Bush's appointments surprised several observers by their ideological diversity and reputations for independence.

"Overall, this is a much more professional, much more balanced group than I expected", said Mel Goodman, a former top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, who has frequently charged the administration with distorting and exaggerating the intelligence on Iraq.

"It looks like the pragmatists in the White House must have said, 'it's important that we get good names, so we're not attacked'," added Goodman, who teaches at the National War College. He said much will now depend on who is appointed as the panel's staff director.

While a Republican who has often taken neo-conservative positions, McCain, who opposed Bush in the 2000 Republican primary elections and has frequently clashed with him on key issues, is considered fiercely independent.

During his tenure at the CIA, Studeman was well respected among analysts. In contrast to a number of other senior officials, "Studeman was an honest man", said Goodman, whose public charges that former CIA chief Robert Gates had slanted assessments of Soviet power and intentions in the late 1980s created a sensation in Washington.

Cutler, a top adviser to both Carter and Clinton, has enjoyed a strong reputation for independence and thoughtfulness over several decades, while Wald, who was appointed to the bench by Carter, is considered a strong-willed liberal Democrat, who after retirement served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

The appointment of both Silberman and Wald to the commission is seen as particularly curious, because they are known not to get along. In his controversial book, 'Blinded by the Right', former right-wing journalist David Brock said Silberman gave "false information" to him about Wald whom, according to Brock, "(Silberman) hated with a passion".

Brock depicts Silberman as a major, if discreet, figure in the right-wing network that harassed Bill and Hillary Clinton for various alleged scandals during the 1990s. Brock, who describes Silberman as his "mentor", has since admitted that many of his attacks on Democrats were based on little or no evidence.

"A consummate Washington insider for more than two decades", Brock wrote, "Larry would often preface his advice to me with the wry demurrer that judges shouldn't get involved in politics -- 'that would be improper', he'd say -- and then go ahead anyway?.

?He was a behind-the-scenes adviser to the conservative editors of the 'Wall Street Journal' editorial page, and he delighted his conservative audiences with his acid critiques of the liberal press,? added Brock.

Silberman has also reportedly been known as aggressive and sometimes abusive, even in his written opinions. He once accused Clinton of "declaring war on the United States" by permitting his aides to attack Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in the Whitewater case, while, during an argument with another appeals court judge, he is reported to have said, "if you were 10 years younger, I'd be tempted to punch you in the nose".

But it is his role in the 1980 election that is perhaps most intriguing about Silberman's appointment.

He is alleged to have set up and participated in a mysterious meeting in Washington on Oct. 2, 1980 -- one month before the election -- with Reagan's top foreign policy adviser, then-Marine Lieutenant Colonel Robert McFarlane (Reagan's national security adviser during the Iran-Contra scandal), and at least one Iranian arms dealer.

It was the culmination of a series of secret meetings -- never reported to the U.S. government -- between Reagan campaign officials and Iranians who purported to represent the government of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The precise purpose of those meetings has never been resolved, but one school of thought, propounded most effectively in the early 1980s by Carter's top National Security Council adviser on Iran, was that the Republican campaign was trying to ensure that Tehran would not make a deal with Carter to release U.S. Embassy hostages who were being held in Iran until after the November elections.

In return, Iran would be covertly supplied with U.S.-made weapons via Israeli middlemen, according to the theory.

Reagan officials, including Silberman, have vehemently denied this version of events.

Nonetheless, it appears that Silberman was a key conduit to Iran during the early 1980s.

According to one source, after he received his judicial appointment, Silberman passed along his Iranian contacts to Michael Ledeen, a close associate of Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), who played a key role with McFarlane in the transfer of U.S. weapons to Tehran in the deal that gave rise to the Iran-Contra scandal.

Several years later, Silberman cast the deciding vote on a three-judge panel in a decision that resulted in dismissing the criminal convictions of Admiral John Poindexter and Lt Col Oliver North for lying to Congress in connection with the scandal.

Copyright 2004 IPS - Inter Press Service

From Inter Press Service:
http://www.commondreams.org/
headlines04/0206-10.htm

The Pragmatists' Primary
Desperately seeking electability.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT

Democrats are cute when they're being pragmatic. They furrow their brows and try to think like Republicans. Or as they imagine Republicans must think. They turn off their hearts and listen for signals from their brains. No swooning is allowed this presidential primary season. "I only care about one thing," they all say. "Which of these guys can beat Bush?" Secretly, they believe none of them can, which makes the amateur pragmatism especially poignant.

Nevertheless, Democrats persevere. They ricochet from candidate to candidate, hoping to smell a winner. In effect, they give their proxy to the other party. "If I was a Republican," they ask themselves, "which of these Democratic candidates would I be most likely to vote for?" And by the time this is all over, most of the serious contenders will have been crowned the practical choice for at least a moment. First it was Lieberman the Centrist. "I'm actually for Dennis Kucinich," a Democrat might say, "because I like his position on nationalizing all the churches. But I'm supporting Joe Lieberman. His views on nearly everything are repellent to me, and I think that's a good sign."

Then the General entered the race. And I don't mean General Anesthesia. A man in uniform, Democrats thought. People like that sort of thing, don't they? And yet he's a Democrat. Or at least he plays one on TV. True, on most issues he has either no known position or two contradictory positions. But he says he can requisition those missing parts. And he's a General. Talk about pragmatic! But when the General traded in his uniform for a fuzzy sweater, he suddenly looked less General-like than Al Sharpton.

Some Democrats cheated and looked into their hearts, where they found Howard Dean. But he was so appealing that he scared them. This is no moment to vote for a guy just because he inspires you, they thought. If he inspires me, there must be something wrong with him. So, Democrats looked around and rediscovered John Kerry. He'd been there all along, inspiring almost no one. You're not going to find John Kerry inspiring unless you're married to him or he literally saved your life. Obviously neither of those is a strategy that can be rolled out on a national level. But he's got the résumé. And gosh, he sure looks like a president (an "animatronic Lincoln," as my Slate colleague Mickey Kaus uncharitably described him).

So, it's a deal? Probably, but just to be completely businesslike, Democrats are taking the opportunity to check out John Edwards. He certainly is good-looking, though maybe not in a presidential way. He lacks the uniform, but he has a Southern accent, which is almost as good if you're trying to seduce those non-liberals. Aspiring pragmatists also have noted recent press reports that Edwards has a stunning ability to sway an audience. I'm not looking to be swayed myself, our Democrat thinks. No need to sway me this year; my views don't matter, even to me. But swaying the heathenry would be good.

And Edwards is a first-term senator who never held office before. Thus he offers almost no experience, which is just the right amount. No political experience at all makes you look silly running for president, as Wesley Clark is discovering. But experience is also a disadvantage in American politics. All politicians, including incumbent presidents, campaign against Washington insiders and the political establishment. But it's a bit more convincing if you're a relative newcomer. Also, experience means a record of past votes and speeches. This limits your ability to invent yourself for the needs of today. As Kerry is discovering, even the most uninteresting two decades in the Senate can provide rich material simultaneously for Bush operatives trying to convince voters that you are a dangerous liberal and for primary opponents trying to convince voters that you are not one.

As each candidate takes his turn in the pragmatists' spotlight, he gets beaten up a bit, irritates supporters of the other candidates, and gives the Bush troops a chance for some early target practice.

If political pragmatism is defined as thinking like a Republican, it's no surprise that Republicans do it better. Four years ago, in a roughly analogous situation, it was decided that the Republican candidate for president should be the less impressive of the two political sons of the man who had most recently lost them the White House. A far from obvious choice. Decided by whom? If you're going to be pragmatic, that's just the kind of question you don't ask. It was decided, OK? On the issues that divided their party, his views were hard to fathom and stayed that way. He was rich in valuable inexperience. And so, with one voice, millions of Republicans shouted a mighty, "Well, I'm glad that's settled."

The process the Democrats are putting themselves through resembles John Maynard Keynes' famous description of the stock market. The game isn't to figure out which stocks are most likely to do well, but to figure out which stocks other investors think are most likely to do well. And these other investors are thinking of other investors and so on. Keynes thought this helped to explain the volatility of stock price. Your judgment about other people's judgment, let alone other people's judgment about other people's judgment, is inherently less certain and more subject to breezes of false or true insight and information than your judgment about your own judgment.

Something similar may be going on in the Democratic primaries. But the analogy breaks down, because only the Democrats are intent on figuring out what other people want. Republicans know what they want.

***************

Get Me Rewrite!

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 6, 2004

Right now America is going through an Orwellian moment. On both the foreign policy and the fiscal fronts, the Bush administration is trying to rewrite history, to explain away its current embarrassments.

Let's start with the case of the missing W.M.D. Do you remember when the C.I.A. was reviled by hawks because its analysts were reluctant to present a sufficiently alarming picture of the Iraqi threat? Your memories are no longer operative. On or about last Saturday, history was revised: see, it's the C.I.A.'s fault that the threat was overstated. Given its warnings, the administration had no choice but to invade.

A tip from Joshua Marshall, of www.talkingpointsmemo.com, led me to a stark reminder of how different the story line used to be. Last year Laurie Mylroie published a book titled "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the C.I.A. and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror." Ms. Mylroie's book came with an encomium from Richard Perle; she's known to be close to Paul Wolfowitz and to Dick Cheney's chief of staff. According to the jacket copy, "Mylroie describes how the C.I.A. and the State Department have systematically discredited critical intelligence about Saddam's regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction."

Currently serving intelligence officials may deny that they faced any pressure — after what happened to Valerie Plame, what would you do in their place? — but former officials tell a different story. The latest revelation is from Britain. Brian Jones, who was the Ministry of Defense's top W.M.D. analyst when Tony Blair assembled his case for war, says that the crucial dossier used to make that case didn't reflect the views of the professionals: "The expert intelligence experts of the D.I.S. [Defense Intelligence Staff] were overruled." All the experts agreed that the dossier's claims should have been "carefully caveated"; they weren't.

And don't forget the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created specifically to offer a more alarming picture of the Iraq threat than the intelligence professionals were willing to provide.

Can all these awkward facts be whited out of the historical record? Probably. Almost surely, President Bush's handpicked "independent" commission won't investigate the Office of Special Plans. Like Lord Hutton in Britain — who chose to disregard Mr. Jones's testimony — it will brush aside evidence that intelligence professionals were pressured. It will focus only on intelligence mistakes, not on the fact that the experts, while wrong, weren't nearly wrong enough to satisfy their political masters. (Among those mentioned as possible members of the commission is James Woolsey, who wrote one of the blurbs for Ms. Mylroie's book.)

And if top political figures have their way, there will be further rewriting to come. You may remember that Saddam gave in to U.N. demands that he allow inspectors to roam Iraq, looking for banned weapons. But your memories may soon be invalid. Recently Mr. Bush said that war had been justified because Saddam "did not let us in." And this claim was repeated by Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Why on earth didn't [Saddam] let the inspectors in and avoid the war?"

Now let's turn to the administration's other big embarrassment, the budget deficit.

The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of
2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.

The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.

I'd like to think that the administration's crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won't let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough?


E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com