{"id":3997,"date":"2005-04-19T09:30:01","date_gmt":"2005-04-19T13:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3997.html"},"modified":"2005-04-19T09:30:01","modified_gmt":"2005-04-19T13:30:01","slug":"white-house-resisted-cooperation-with-its-own-wmd-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/white-house-resisted-cooperation-with-its-own-wmd-commission\/","title":{"rendered":"White House resisted cooperation with its own WMD commission"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the Bush White House hand-picked<\/a> the members of the commission investigating pre-war intelligence failures, one might assume the panel’s members wouldn’t have any trouble getting the information they needed. After all, the commission was practically an extension of the Bush team, had a limited mandate that sidestepped Bush’s mistakes altogether, had no subpoena power, and was led by “an extreme partisan<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

But as it turns out, the commission did face resistance — and got cooperation only when it used threats<\/a> as a ploy.<\/p>\n

Members of the presidential commission that examined U.S. intelligence failures told White House officials that they would resign en masse if President Bush did not ensure the nation’s spy agencies cooperated with their inquiry — and had to repeat the threat more than once.<\/p>\n

Laurence H. Silberman, the federal judge who was co-chairman of the inquiry, said he told officials, “If we did not get support from the White House at any time we ran into any difficulties, I and others would resign.”<\/p>\n

“I did occasionally have to remind the White House of the commitment I had made to resign … [to] focus their attention,” Judge Silberman said at a Washington breakfast organized by the American Bar Association last week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Bush resisted cooperation with the independent 9\/11 Commission, that was expected. The president didn’t even want that panel to exist, so it hardly came as a surprise when the White House did its best to hinder the commission’s work. But apparently the Bush gang’s penchant for secrecy and concealment is so strong, they even resist helping the commission they created and that pinned the blame away from the White House.<\/p>\n

Put it this way: when Laurence Silberman<\/a> has to threaten resignation to get the help he needs from his friends at the White House, you know there’s a problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the Bush White House hand-picked the members of the commission investigating pre-war intelligence failures, one might assume the panel’s members wouldn’t have any trouble getting the information they needed. After all, the commission was practically an extension of the Bush team, had a limited mandate that sidestepped Bush’s mistakes altogether, had no subpoena power, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}