Speaking of the White House being excessively secretive with materials, the New York Times had a good report today about an intelligence briefing Bush doesn’t want us to see.
In light of all the blame directed at the CIA over faulty (read: wrong) intelligence about Iraq, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) thought it’d be interesting to see the one-page summary the agency prepared for Bush about the Iraqi threat, which encapsulated the information contained in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. The White House, however, is acting kind of shy.
The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency have refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee a one-page summary of prewar intelligence in Iraq prepared for President Bush that contains few of the qualifiers and none of the dissents spelled out in longer intelligence reviews, according to Congressional officials.
Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly what intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush about Iraq’s illicit weapons.
[…]
“In determining what the president was told about the contents of the N.I.E. dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, qualifiers and all, there is nothing clearer than this single page,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in a 10-page “additional view” that was published as an addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Friday.
If the president received a briefing with omitted qualifiers and exaggerated threat assessments, this summary would presumably offer some insight into the breakdown in the process. Yet, Bush doesn’t feel like sharing.
The administration and the C.I.A. say the White House is protected by executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the Democrats’ argument that the summary was significant.
So, is the White House right about the document being protected by executive privilege? It doesn’t sound like it.
In his written statement, Senator Durbin said the C.I.A. had told the intelligence committee that 80 copies of the one-page summary had been distributed to the White House, a fact he called an indication that the document had not been prepared exclusively for the president. He said the summary “contains no intelligence beyond that contained” in the broader intelligence estimate, which was provided to members of Congress and to the committee, “and does not set forth policy advice that should be considered privileged.”
I guess the list of important documents hidden from public view due to the White House’s obsession with secrecy just got a little longer.
I wonder when Karl Rove will learn that refusing to release certain materials only makes us want to see them more and creates the impression that Bush has something to hide.