House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been going back and forth in an increasingly interesting feud for several weeks now. Today, it got a little more interesting.
The exchanges have been about whether Rice will show up for a hearing about the administration’s pre-war intelligence failures, specifically the president’s discredited claim about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger. Waxman is poised to subpoena Rice; Rice has vowed to ignore the subpoena.
Today, Rice’s lack of cooperation extended to her aides, including one in particular who might have interesting information for Waxman.
Waxman said that when his staff sought to meet with Simon Dodge, a nuclear weapons analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, a State Department official called and objected. According to Waxman, the official “informed Committee staff that you [Rice] were prohibiting Mr. Dodge from meeting with Committee investigators. This official claimed that allowing Mr. Dodge to speak with Committee staff would be ‘inappropriate’ because the Committee voted to issue a subpoena to compel your attendance at a hearing on your knowledge of the fabricated evidence.”
And who is Simon Dodge? I’m glad you asked.
Nico explained a bit about the analyst’s background.
Three months before President Bush uttered his infamous 16 words, claiming there was evidence that Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear weapon, a State Department analyst named Simon Dodge had determined that the evidence for the claim was likely fraudulent.
Dodge emailed his assessment to fellow intelligence analysts in October 2002, and then again in January 2003 (two weeks before Bush’s State of the Union), saying the documents supposedly from Niger were “probably a hoax” and “clearly a forgery.”
According to Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), the State Department is now refusing to let Dodge speak to Waxman’s staff, despite the fact that Dodge has indicated he is “willing to cooperate fully” with the investigation.
As a rule, when top administration officials act like they have something to hide, it’s because they have something to hide.
For what it’s worth, Waxman is playing it cool, giving Rice the benefit of the doubt, or at least pretending to, in a patronizing kind of way.
[A] member of your legislative office informed Committee staff that you were prohibiting Mr. Dodge from meeting with Committee investigators. This official claimed that allowing Mr. Dodge to speak with Committee staff would be “inappropriate” because the Committee voted to issue a subpoena to compel your attendance at a hearing on your knowledge of the fabricated evidence.
I assume that your legislative staff was acting without your authorization in this matter. It would be a matter of great concern – as well as an obvious conflict of interest – if you had directed your staff to impede a congressional investigation into matter that may implicate your conduct as National Security Advisor.
Rice wouldn’t do that, would she?
Waxman wants to know whether Rice or any other senior officials “were aware of, or should have been aware of, Mr. Dodge’s assessment.” I can’t imagine why the administration wouldn’t want to cooperate with this inquiry; can you?
The reality is, Rice shouldn’t have much choice — Congress has oversight authority over the State Department. If Waxman’s committee is investigating Rice, she’s not in a position to tell her aides not to cooperate with the probe.