GOP Slams Dems' WMD Memo

Republican Sen. Pat Roberts said Democrats have undermined the inquiry he is leading into Iraq prewar intelligence by drafting a memo aimed at discrediting the Senate Intelligence Committee's work.

The Kansan is chairman of the committee. The memo was written by Democratic committee staff and was not finalized or circulated among members of the committee, said the panel's senior Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

Rockefeller acknowledged the document after news reports quoted excerpts from it. The memo spells out steps to make the committee's inquiry irrelevant by setting up an independent commission, and in the process attempt to "castigate" majority Republicans. It suggested "pulling the trigger" on the plan "probably next year."

Roberts said the memo stunned him: "It's like a personal slap in the face. I'm very frustrated by it."

"We cannot politicize the committee," he said. "No member of the intelligence community wants to come up and testify before a committee that is whipsawed by politics. In addition, once this becomes public, or more public, every intelligence agency in the world will take note of it.

"And quite frankly, I think this will give some comfort to terrorists," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday evening. "We have to put back together some semblance of a bipartisan committee."

Roberts and Rockefeller have been overseeing an often rocky review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that the White House used to justify the war on Iraq. No weapons have been found. Critics have accused the administration of slanting intelligence to justify the war.

The two men met Tuesday after Roberts learned of the memo. In a statement he issued afterward, Rockefeller dismissed the memo as "likely taken from a waste basket or through unauthorized computer access."

He added: "The draft memo was not approved, nor was it shared with any member of the Senate Intelligence Committee or anyone else.

"Having said that, the memo clearly reflects staff frustration with the conduct of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and the difficulties of obtaining information from the administration," Rockefeller said.

He said that exploring or asserting the rights of the committee's Democratic minority doesn't politicize the process.

"The American people deserve a full accounting of why we sent our sons and daughters into war," Rockefeller said.

Democrats and Republicans alike have complained the White House, the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department have been slow to respond to requests for interviews and documents.

The White House missed a Friday deadline for complying, and while Roberts announced over the weekend the White House agreed to cooperate, he subsequently backed away and said he spoke too hastily.

Roberts called on committee Democrats to repudiate the strategy outlined in the memo.

"It's a purely partisan document that appears to be a road map for how the Democrats intend to politicize what should be a bipartisan, objective review of pre-war intelligence," he said. "Instead, we should be focusing on how to make our country safer and how to improve our intelligence capabilities."

Some Democrats have accused Republicans of a double standard for resisting formal investigations of whether intelligence was misused, but supporting lengthy probes of President Clinton's personal misconduct.

Roberts even alluded to the Clinton scandals when brushing off calls for a formal probe of charges that White House officials illegally leaked the name of a CIA agent.

"If somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I will have an investigation," Roberts said, referring to a dress belonging to Monica Lewinsky that was part of that investigation.

Meanwhile, U.S. analysts are poring over a massive stash of Iraqi intelligence files that hint at war crimes, terrorist attacks, a network of paid foreign agents and efforts to develop illegal missiles with foreign help, according to published reports.

Officials are comparing the huge trove of documents to the "Stasi files" on East Germany's secret police. CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports the files, which were captured in April, are only now being fully translated and analyzed.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the files may also help flesh out the extent of Saddam's weapons ambitions.

An official says the documents and evidence from U.S. interrogations suggest Iraq received technical assistance from two teams of Yugoslav missile experts and another foreign country that sources would not name.

The help, provided from 2001 to as late as this year, was allegedly aimed at extending the range of Iraq's missile, which was restricted under Security Council resolutions.

The documents also point to negotiations with North Korea to buy long-range missiles, the official says. Iraq made a $10 million down payment in 2002 but Pyongyang said it could not deliver the weapons, according to the Journal.

There is still no evidence, however, that Iraq possessed the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons or active biological, chemical or nuclear programs that the Bush administration alleged before the war.