Free Republic

Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Wednesday that he was forced to limit the activities of the Senate Intelligence Committee because he no longer believes Democrat members who sanctioned the partisan misuse of committee resources can be trusted with foreign intelligence secrets. Noting that committee Democrats have yet to identify the author of a controversial memo urging that intelligence data be used as a political weapon against President Bush, Frist told radio host Sean Hannity, "If those people are still in the room handling intelligence given to us by other nations so that they can undermine our Commander-in-Chief, that...

PRNewswire--In the November 17 Newsweek cover story, "How Dick Cheney Sold the War" (on newsstands Monday, November 10), a team of correspondents examines how Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff, mindful of past intelligence failures, helped create a secretive network inside the government which produced alarming and pessimistic assessments that catered to the vice president's dark world view. Investigative correspondents Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas explore Cheney's relationships with conventional agencies like the CIA and the National Security Council, with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi, and with the Office of Special Plans, an...

The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a senior Democratic member of the panel clashed in unusually sharp and public ways today in a dispute that has interrupted the committee's review of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The dispute stems from the leak of an internal draft memorandum by a Democratic staff member. The memo suggested that because the committee's inquiry was focusing on the work of intelligence agencies, and not on how the White House used intelligence, Democrats should be ready to disavow the panel's findings and "pull the trigger" to demand an independent investigation. Senator Pat Roberts,...

<p>A leaked memo from the office of West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller urges fellow Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to use its probe into Iraq war planning as a staging ground to beat President Bush. It calls for an independent investigation of the president next year, timed for maximum negative impact on Mr. Bush's re-election effort.</p>