Read All About It

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/611mwyeu.asp?pg=1 ^ | Stephen F. Hayes

[mal]

AT HIS CONFIRMATION HEARING FOR the new post of director of national intelligence, John Negroponte pledged to keep open lines of communication with Congress. He also explained that his experience as the first U.S. ambassador to Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would help him meet the director's responsibility to--in the president's words--"make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information they need to make the right decisions."

Testifying in April 2005, Negroponte said:

I saw firsthand the savage depredations of terrorists and insurgents who oppose the birth of a new democracy. These are violent, determined adversaries who cannot be thwarted, captured or killed without close coordination between all of our intelligence assets--military and civilian, technical and human. Consider that perspective and that pledge to Congress as you contemplate the government's inability to make meaningful use of the vast majority of the documents, computer hard drives, and other remnants of the Baathist regime acquired by U.S. forces in Iraq.

More than two months ago, for instance, Rep. Pete Hoekstra requested 40 mostly unclassified documents from postwar Iraq. In a separate request on November 18, 2005, Hoekstra and Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts wrote to Negroponte seeking the public release of "tens of thousands of boxes of documents captured since the 1991 Desert Storm operation." Two weeks ago, Negroponte told Hoekstra that he was spending a significant amount of his time in consideration of this request.

[RTINSC]

"Hire a few thousand native-speakers of Arabic to read and categorize them, with careful cross-checking and U.S. supervision. How about hiring a few thousand Iraqis?"

Yeah, right. Instead of "tens of thousands of boxes" of unread docs, we'll end up with hundreds..

[Carling]

Other captured documents detail training that the Iraqi regime provided to thousands of Islamic terrorists in the years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Rosters of trainees, I am told, include names, birthdates, countries of origin, guerrilla warfare skills, and dates of training. In some cases, the terrorist trainees posed for group photographs with their classmates, according to officials who have seen them.

At minimum, this information needs to be vetted immediately and then made available to the public. There is NO excuse for this information not being in the public arena.