1 Boring Old Man

Intelligence panel’s ‘Phase Two’ to be completed next year: Rockefeller

The three unreleased sections of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s controversial “Phase Two” report on the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence are headed for circulation next year, incoming Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told The Hill late last week.

“One does not want to spend all one’s time looking back, but the history of all this evolution of the war has to be brought to full accountability,” Rockefeller said in a Friday interview.

Democrats have repeatedly protested the lack of progress on the Phase Two investigation, which was split by outgoing Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) to allow some portions to become public before the midterm elections. Democrats pulled the Senate into a rare closed session in November 2005 to revive the inquiry, which began in 2003 with Phase One’s look at the intelligence community and was later expanded.

Rockefeller said much of the work is done on one of the three remaining elements of Phase Two, though he declined to reveal which section was close to completion. Still yet to receive a committee vote are sections dealing with prewar intelligence on the war’s aftermath, whether existing intelligence backed up U.S. officials’ public comments on Iraq, and the role of a Pentagon office headed by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.