Robert Byrd

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. If the distinguished Senator would yield, let me thank her for her most charitable comments concerning this Senator. She graces the Senate from the great State of Louisiana. She does her work. She is deeply dedicated. She is on the Appropriations Committee, on which I have had the good fortune to serve for many years. I thank her for what she is doing for her people. I thank her for what she is saying on the Senate floor. I thank her very much. I appreciate it. I appreciate the fact that she is my colleague and shares the concerns of my people in what she is saying today.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, Senator McCain has introduced an amendment to address the 9/11 Commission's recommendation for the creation of a committee on intelligence with appropriations powers. I have a great respect for the 9/11 Commission. They are dedicated members who have the Nation's best interests in heart and mind, and, for the most part, they have done an excellent job. Like the Commission members, I want our Government to take steps that will help ensure that our Nation will never again suffer a catastrophe like 9/11. But, I fail to comprehend how giving a legislative committee its own checkbook will help avoid another such disaster. Legislative committees have their plates quite full with evaluating policy. They should not take on the heavy lifting of appropriating public monies as well. The fact that the Commission made this recommendation left me wondering just how it came up with such a proposal. First, I looked at the Commission's report to see what evidence they cited for making this recommendation. I was startled to find that the Commission provides no specifics in its report to substantiate or justify this revolutionary proposal. The Commission offers no examples, no rationales, no justifications, no explanations. In short, the Commission provides no evidence that the appropriations process is flawed when it comes to intelligence matters. There simply is no substantive rationale for the need for this kind of drastic recommendation. According to the Commission, this recommendation was garnered from interviews with ``numerous members of Congress from both parties, as well as congressional staff members. . . . We found that dissatisfaction with congressional oversight remains widespread.'' But curiously the report never mentions any specific member or any staffer by name or position. Who are these phantom critics? Why were they especially qualified to comment? The point is, unspecified dissatisfaction from unidentified Members of Congress and unidentified congressional staff offers very little basis for embracing such a precedent-setting proposal. While I do not know who the Commission interviewed to reach this determination, I do know who they did not interview. They did not speak to Senator Stevens, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and chairman of its Defense Subcommittee. I know they did not talk to Senator Inouye, the ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee. Both Senators Stevens and Inouye are long experienced legislators and appropriators in the field of intelligence. Why weren't they interviewed? Nor did they talk to me, and I am the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and the former chairman of the committee. Knowing just whom the Commission did and did not interview is important because of the makeup of the Commission. While undoubtedly sincere, well-meaning, and honorable, only 4 of the members of the 10 individuals on the 9/11 Commission had ever served in Congress, and only 2 of them had experience with the appropriations process. This recommendation, to grant both appropriation and authorization powers to a legislative committee, in my judgment reflects this lack of experience. Moreover, it belies a lack of familiarity with the history of the appropriations process. This particular recommendation would blur the existing oversight process which tends to ensure a more thorough examination of intelligence matters because of a focus on policy matters which is separate from the focus on budgetary matters. In other words, the commission wants to increase oversight of intelligence matters by paradoxically lessening and collapsing oversight on intelligence operations. The Commission's recommendation would limit the watchdog duties over secret intelligence functions to a tiny group of Senators, thereby fomenting an environment that would probably promote ``group think,'' and secrecy. In other words, the Commission wants to end, or, at the least, reduce ``group think'' and incestuous oversight in intelligence matters, but it is making a recommendation that would create an environment that would likely promote both. Most importantly, the historian in me marvels at the degree to which the Commission's recommendation flies in the face of history. The current Appropriations Committee just happens to be the carefully considered antidote to several past failures of the same sort of decentralized appropriation's fixes which the 9/11 Commission now incredibly recommends. There is nothing new or innovative in this Commission recommendation. It has been tried before, and it has failed miserably. In 1816 the Senate established the Committee on Finance and assigned it appropriations responsibilities in an effort to enhance congressional fiscal control. But as the country grew, the problems did too. The War with Mexico, 1846-1848, for example, caused Federal spending to nearly triple, and this dramatic explosion placed great pressures on Congress to revamp its appropriations process. In 1850, the Senate adopted its first rule governing appropriations. It banned amendments for additional appropriations not previously authorized by law. The Civil War, 1861-1865, as one might expect, vastly expanded and complicated Federal spending. Congress abruptly learned how the lack of centralized control in the Senate played to the strong advantage of the President. Congressional control of the power of the purse went out the window as President Lincoln spent millions of dollars without even bothering to secure formal congressional appropriations. He could be forgiven because he was trying to hold the union together, but the Constitution was circumvented and congressional power of the purse was, for a time, effectively seized. Following the Civil War on March 6, 1867, the Senate established a Committee on Appropriations in an effort to bring unity, authority, conformity, and order to the Federal spending process. As soon as the Appropriations Committee was established, however, authorizing committees began a vigorous struggle to regain their lost appropriations authority. Several House committees first grabbed appropriations authority. Soon, Senate committees were demanding the same. Everybody wanted a piece of the action. What kind of Pandora's box are we opening if we grant appropriations power to the Intelligence Committee? Why not also the Department of Homeland Security? Once the box is opened, the grabbing begins. In the late nineteenth century the grabbing gathered steam even amid stern warnings. Congressman Samuel Randall, D-Pa, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee at the time, warned that combining authorizing and appropriating authorities under one committee's jurisdiction would lead to greater Federal spending. ``Experience and observation,'' he pointed out, ``demonstrate such distribution leads to continually increasing appropriations, and renders it more difficult to keep expenditures within the limits of receipts.'' In other words, blending authority and appropriating leads to deficits. When the Senate debated granting the Committee on the District of Columbia the right to make appropriations in 1883, members of the Appropriations Committee argued against the move. Pointing out that the Appropriations Committee serves as a necessary, coordinating agent with the legislative committees, Senator Beck of Kentucky argued, ``it is not wise legislation to vest any committee with absolute power as to the amount of money necessary to carry those laws into effect. . . . We ought to have one committee as a check upon another, one guard placed upon another, so that no body of men sitting as a committee of Congress should have absolute power over the money of the people.'' Again, that is another important lesson for us today. The Appropriations Committee is a needed, important partner with Congress's legislative committees. When the 9/11 Commission argues for more supervision of intelligence matters, it is bogus to suggest that we start by decreasing oversight. But, in the late 19th century, these members of the Appropriations Committee were ignored. After the DC Committee had sought appropriations powers, more and more authorizing committees began seeking appropriations authority. Responding to pressure, the Senate returned appropriations authority to most Senate committees. The result, a repetition of all of the past problems. Without central authority, oversight and a central controlling mechanism, Federal finances again fell into disarray. Legislative committees were off pursuing their own individual agendas. Budget requests were submitted piecemeal. The practice known as ``coercive deficiencies,'' wherein executive agencies went through their year's appropriation within a matter of months, and then appealed to Congress for additional funds to get them through the year, again became common. Most importantly, the decentralized system of appropriations was simply not capable of managing the expenditures of a Federal Government that was growing large in size and in expense. No one was minding the fiscal store. I would urge any Senator who thinks that giving appropriation power to an authorizing committee will help restrain spending or increase discipline to study Congressional history. Congressman James Tawney, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee from 1905 to 1911, concluded that ``division of jurisdiction and responsibility in the matter of initiating appropriations has contributed more than any other single cause to the enormous increase in appropriations during recent years.'' Everyone always wants to get an oar in the water. A number of scholarly studies support Congressman Tawney's observation, including the 1987 study by David Brady and Mark Morgan, Reforming the Structure of the House Appropriations Process, and the book by Charles Stewart, Budget Reform Politics. These works document that without a central authority to impose overall budgetary discipline on the legislative committees, accountability all but vanished, and the public's money was spent with abandon. World War I, like both the Mexican and Civil Wars, forced the Congress to confront the financial mess that decentralized funding had created, and to establish a supervisory control over the appropriations process. In 1922, the Senate returned jurisdiction over all appropriations measures to the Appropriations Committee. Thus, they created the system that has now served us well for more than 80 years. Now, the 9/11 Commission proposes to return to the failed system of the past, and I adamantly oppose it. It is a formula for less accountability over public funds and for even larger deficits. The lessons of history must not be brushed aside. Most of us probably know the historical truism that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. History really does repeat itself because human nature does not change. In our desire to correct the reasons for our intelligence failures, let us avoid past mistakes. In our understandable desire to improve our intelligence system following 9/11, at least, we can try to avoid so-called solutions which have a proven track record of disaster. While it also endeavors to preserve its Constitutional purpose and traditions the U.S. Senate has an obligation to adapt to new challenges. I know that Senators Reid and McConnell examined the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission with those thoughts in mind. I know that the Working Group they co-chaired has proposed changes that will implement many of the reforms of the 9/11 Commission, while respecting the rights of Senators and the institution of the Senate. I cannot say the same about this amendment. Authorization committees and appropriation committees have very different mandates, one to oversee policy, the other to oversee budgets. Different authorization and appropriations committees ensure checks and balances and better oversight. The amendment would result in fewer Senators looking into intelligence matters. It would eliminate the double punch of oversight with an authorization committee focused on policy matters and the Appropriations Committee focused on budget matters. The message of the 9/11 Commission was to increase, not decrease, the role of the Congress in intelligence matters. It asked the Congress to pursue more vigorous oversight and to ask tougher questions. This amendment would take us in the opposite direction. I urge the defeat of this amendment.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to invoke cloture on the national intelligence reform bill. I voted against cloture on the bill. The Senate leadership, in supporting cloture on this bill--I speak most respectfully--argued that this debate has gone on long enough. In essence, that is what has been stated. I will soon begin my 47th year in this body. I never thought I would see the demise of the Senate as a debating institution. I am very sorry about that. I have seen the demise of the Senate as a debating institution. I have been here when debate on a bill went over 100 days. Today's situation is eerily reminiscent of the autumn of 2002. A few years ago, the hue and cry went up for all Senators to support a massive bureaucratic reshuffling of our homeland security agencies and a war resolution--I will refer to in that way--against Iraq just weeks before election day. Like a whipped dog fearing his master, the Senate obediently complied with the demands of the White House, to which our leadership said: let us get this matter behind us; let us get it behind us. I know many of the Members who come to this body in this day and time are from the other body, and I speak most respectfully of the other body. I came from the other body likewise. But I can remember when I was in the other body I often said, Thank God for the Senate of the United States. That is when I was still in the other body. Thank God for the Senate of the United States. They take their time over there to debate. In this day and time, we do not take time to debate. Hindsight reveals the mistakes that the Senate made 2 years ago. Today, the Department of Homeland Security finds itself bogged down by bureaucratic infighting, unresolved turf wars, and insufficient funding. The central argument for the war resolution against Iraq, the threat of weapons of mass destruction, has disintegrated into a mess of lies and hot air. The calls for Congress to act quickly were revealed to be ill-advised, misguided, misinformed. The 108th Congress has an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the 107th Congress. Yet the repeated calls by Senators for immediate action on this bill suggests we have learned very little. Most of the hundreds of amendments offered to this bill, or certainly scores of amendments, have focused on trying to speed up reforms that we already do not understand. Apparently, few Senators have dared to speak about the need for caution in arranging a massive, secretive bureaucracy. It would be the most secretive around. The risk that this bill will grow into a hydra-headed monster increases exponentially as election day nears. Many believe the House bill will include a number of provisions unrelated to intelligence reform, all the way from amendments on immigration to reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. I hear lately the House has no intention of adding that last mentioned measure. In the rush to pass this bill on a political timetable, what type of Faustian bargains will be struck to jam this bill through the Congress? We have had it happen before. We have been jammed on these important bills. We have had our backs against the wall because of some nearing date, perhaps of a recess, and so forth. What kind of deals with the devil will be made in order to get this bill done in time for election day? That is the big rush--get this bill through in time for election day. Even one Republican Member of the House of Representatives is concerned that a slam-dunk conference would open the door to politically motivated poison pills. Why is there such a clamor to vote on a bill that is increasingly viewed as a way to make political hay in the hours before a Presidential election? Will Senators even get to read the conference report on this bill before we are expected to vote on it? If we pass this bill, who knows what may be lurking in the walls surrounding that conference between the two Houses unless the House should decide to accept the Senate-passed bill, making it all the more important for the Senate to take our time and thoroughly debate the bill. The mistake of how the Senate is choosing to consider this bill is not the fault of the 9/11 Commission. That panel is a group of experienced and dedicated public servants. Their research went straight to the heart of the question that has burned in the minds of millions of Americans for 3 years: Namely, how did such a powerful Nation fail to defend itself from those attacks? In chilling detail, the panel's report lays out the facts about how the U.S. Government failed to stop 19 hijackers--not from Iraq--19 hijackers armed with box cutters; 19 hijackers, not from Iraq, not a one. Not even one of those 19 hijackers came from Iraq. Yet some have attempted to tie the hijackers with Iraq. ``The document is an improbable literary triumph,'' declared U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner in the New York Times Book Review. ``However, the commission's analysis and recommendations are unimpressive,'' he said, ``not sustained by the report's narrative,'' he said, ``come to very little . . . [and more] of the same.'' That is pretty harsh criticism. And contrary to what some believe about the critics of intelligence reform, Judge Posner is not protecting his turf, and he does not have an ax to grind. The Senate Appropriations Committee held hearings 2 weeks ago on the September 11 recommendations. A bipartisan array of national security experts pleaded with the Congress as they gave testimony to the Appropriations Committee, pleaded with the Congress not to rush these reforms. My, what an impressive list of names: The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, David Boren; former Senator Bill Bradley; former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci; former Secretary of Defense William Cohen--we all remember him. He has been an outstanding Secretary of Defense. He was a Republican--former CIA Director Robert Gates; former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre; former Senator Gary Hart; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger--he indicated we ought to take several months on this bill--former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn--there is a good one for you. I served in the Senate with Sam Nunn. I served on the Armed Services Committee when he was chairman. Here is a man who is a careful, careful legislator--former Senator Warren Rudman, Republican from New Hampshire; former Secretary of State George Shultz, another Republican. Among them they have decades of knowledge and experience, and the Congress stands ready to dismiss their concerns out of hand. I pointed out that several of these distinguished persons are Republicans just to emphasize there are several preeminent Republicans who have had great experience in government who say: Wait, take your time. What is the hurry here? Why the big hurry? This group of 11 experienced public servants who urged the Congress to stop, look, and listen, they have no turf to protect. They have long since left the service of the executive and legislative branches. Why does the Senate not take their advice? Why does the Senate not pause to listen to their sage advice? Let us remember that 2 years ago Members of Congress fell all over themselves in a mad frenzy to adopt the advice of Senator Hart and Senator Rudman to create a Department of Homeland Security. Anyone who did not agree with the Hart-Rudman report was viewed as being obstructionist or out of touch. But today, the Senate sloughs off the counsel of those same two men to slow down--slow down. That is what the Senate is all about. The Senate is not a second House of Representatives with a 6-year term. Thank God for that. As I said many years ago when I was a Member of the other body, the body that is closest to the people, I said thank God for the Senate. So I did not come to this body with any idea of changing the rules to make it a second House of Representatives with a 6-year term. I never thought that about it. I have thought that it is meant to be a place where men and women could argue as long as their feet would hold them erect. I have said time and again that as long as we have a forum in which elected representatives of the people can speak out, speak out without fear and speak out as long as they want to speak on a matter they feel very deeply about, thank God, the people's liberties will be secure. But today, as I say, the Senate sloughs off the counsel of these eminent luminaries to slow down. How quickly we turn on the advice of our friends. I fear the Senate wants change, in some instances, merely for the sake of change, and that we do not yet possess an adequate understanding of why we are doing what we are doing. It is not even clear why or how the 9/ 11 Commissioners arrived at all of their recommendations. The Commission's report does not explain it. What recommendations did the Commission consider and reject, and why did they reject the recommendations? Did the 9/11 panel receive any independent assessments of their ideas before they were published? Will the Commission's proposals prevent intelligence failures in other areas, such as stopping a repeat of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction fiasco? Even as the Senate rushes to pass this intelligence reform bill, with one eye on the public opinion polls, of course, and the other on the adjournment date, we do not know the answer to these questions. Given the Senate's failure to ask more questions about the creation of a Department of Homeland Security and the need for war in Iraq, I would hope this Chamber would be more circumspect about rushing to restructure our intelligence agencies on the eve of a Presidential election. These agencies are very secretive--very secretive. And look at the power Congress is about to give the national intelligence director. Look at the power. He is not an elected individual. I would hope that the Senate would pause to consider the powers that may be shifted to the executive branch in this legislation. I also hope that Senators will consider if such a timid Congress could possibly exercise proper oversight over a powerful and secretive bureaucracy. We are being naive about these intelligence reforms. It may be comforting to embrace the 9/11 report, and I hold in the highest regard the members, as I say, of that Commission and for its work. It may be comforting to embrace the 9/11 report, but its reforms ignore more fundamental intelligence problems. At the Appropriations Committee hearing on September 21, 2004, I asked Henry Kissinger: If the 9/11 Commission's recommendations had been implemented in 2002, would our intelligence agencies have come to a different conclusion about Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction? His answer was no, nothing would have been different. There still would have been false claims of huge stockpiles of WMD in Iraq. Mr. President, we are all too focused just on the failings of 9/11. The Senate has not focused enough attention on the intelligence failures leading to war in Iraq, in which, as of the last reading of the news reports, we have lost 1,061 men and women. For what? For what did they give their lives? I would wonder, if I had a grandchild who had gone and lost his life in this war, for what did he give his life? Was it worth it? Was it worth it to invade a country under the new doctrine of preemption, which flies right into the face of the Constitution of the United States? I did not hear the Constitution mentioned last night in the debate. I am not sure, maybe I had my back turned at the moment. I have a sick wife and maybe, perhaps, I did not hear it. But I certainly did not hear it in the first debate between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry; not one time did I hear the Constitution mentioned. And I did not hear it mentioned last night. Yet it is mentioned every day throughout this country in the courtrooms of this Nation, the Constitution of the United States. Here we have these Presidential debates and nobody--if I find I am mistaken about last night's debate, I will certainly amend my words in this respect, but I do not believe I missed something there. The Senate has not focused enough attention on the intelligence failures leading to the war in Iraq. We have not focused enough attention on the nuclear threat posed by Iran and North Korea. We have not focused enough attention on China. We have not focused enough attention on the proliferation of deadly germs and gases. Any of these challenges could be responsible for the next catastrophic attack on our country or our interests, and they are conspicuously ignored by this bill. Congress is showing myopic vision in failing to see the universe of threats to this country. Terrorism may be the most immediate threat to our country, but it is not the only threat. As a Member of the Senate and as the then-chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, I and my committee responded quickly to the attack of 9/11. Within 3 days, Congress passed an appropriations bill, appropriating $40 billion--within 3 days, $40 billion. Congress, both Houses, passed an appropriations bill appropriating $40 billion. In other words, $40 for every minute since Jesus Christ was born, $40 for every minute since Jesus Christ was born--$40 billion. So Congress acted quickly. We all are concerned. There is no monopoly of concern on either side of the aisle here. I support the effort to reform our intelligence agencies. I support the creation of a national intelligence director. But I do not support this hurry in which we are engaged. We need to stop, look, and listen, debate, offer amendments, answer questions, hold more hearings, like Ted Stevens and I holding hearings in the Appropriations Committee. I have been one of the harshest critics of the status quo. Intelligence agencies are expected to uncover terrorists plots against our country and produce unbiased, accurate intelligence, free from political interference. The CIA and other agencies have fallen tragically short on both marks. However, I am not convinced that the Congress fully understands the implications of the reforms proposed by the 9/11 Commission, and the rush to vote on these issues before the Presidential elections means it will not have that opportunity. Henry Kissinger called attention to that fact. We are legislating in an atmosphere, just before a Presidential election, that is not conducive to thoughtful reform of these intelligence agencies. But the greatest contribution the Senate can make to the cause of the 9/11 families is to take the time to get those reforms right. Prematurely cutting off debate on this bill only succeeds in further politicizing a process that is more mindful of election day than it is the result of this debate. Like 2 years ago, the Senate is being stampeded into voting on major, far-reaching legislation. The result of this ill-considered course is easily seen: Any reforms the Congress enacts will be the product of rush and haste rather than thoughtful deliberation. We owe more to the memories of those who lost their lives on September 11. Mr. President, a little earlier I made the statement to the effect that I heard no one in last night's debate on either side mention the Constitution of the United States. My press has since called me and told me I was wrong. That, indeed, one of the candidates--and he said Senator Edwards--did mention the Constitution of the United States. Thank God for that.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, does the rule of germaneness apply under cloture?

Mr. BYRD. I ask unanimous consent to speak for not more than 10 minutes on a matter not germane to the pending matter before the Senate.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, West Virginians have a long and proud record of service to the U.S. military. General Stonewall Jackson, one of the greatest military minds of his time, hailed from present day West Virginia. Chuck Yeager, the World War II ace and the first man ever to travel faster than sound, is proud to be a West Virginian. SSG Junior Spurrier left his home of Bluefield, WV, to fight for the liberation of France and received just one fewer awards than the legendary Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier in World War II. There are many more West Virginians whose names will not be recorded in the great military histories of our country, but these veterans have asked little of their country. They have a right to expect that our Government will provide them with the benefits they earned in service to our country, and that is the one thing they do expect. Time and time again, President Bush has turned his back on veterans who have served our country. Over and over again, President Bush has had to choose between veterans programs and budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, and he has chosen to cut taxes for America's super-wealthy instead of taking care, as he should have, of America's veterans. As veterans evaluate the actions of this administration, I hope they are asking whether they are better off than they were 4 years ago. For the last 3 years, Congress wanted to increase veterans' benefits by allowing military retirees to keep all of their VA disability checks and the military retirement pay, but President Bush opposed it. He fought against it. In fact, he threatened to veto a $396 billion Defense bill in order to keep Congress from allowing veterans to receive all the compensation they have earned through their service in the Armed Forces. Yes, my colleagues heard me right. President George Bush threatened to veto an entire Defense bill because veterans would get the benefits they had earned. This year, President Bush approved plans to shut down three veterans hospitals and partially close nine more. What is more, the Beckley VA Medical Center which serves 40,000 veterans in southern West Virginia and is located in my home county of Raleigh narrowly missed the President's chopping block. Only a last-minute intervention by Senator John D. Rockefeller, Representative Nick Rahall, and me saved the Beckley Veterans Hospital. If the President gets a second term, however, veterans better watch out. You veterans may have to kiss more of your hospitals goodbye. But the Bush administration didn't bother to wait for a second term before slashing veterans health care in other ways. Last year, the Bush administration decided that an entire category of veterans should no longer be eligible to seek health care from the VA. This wrongheaded decision means that by next year more than 520,000 veterans will be barred from VA hospitals. In other words, the White House says it would be too expensive to let these veterans enjoy their VA health care benefits. How can President Bush claim he supports our troops if he doesn't support VA health care for half a million veterans? President Bush has also taken to shortchanging veterans to new, disgusting levels. He is no longer content with simply underfunding veterans health care to the tune of $3.2 billion per year, according to leading veterans' service organizations. Now President Bush has decided that some people who served our country in uniform should pay more for their veterans health care benefits. The President's budget for this year doubles the cost of prescription drugs for these veterans, increases their fees for doctor visits by 33 percent, and sticks them with new annual enrollment fees. I know that when President Bush hits the campaign trail in West Virginia, he will talk about how he cares about veterans, but I doubt that he will tell West Virginia's veterans about his plans to cut their benefits and raise their fees. I am sure you won't hear the President talking about how he has shortchanged the VA, cut veterans health care, fought Congress on veterans benefits, closed veterans hospitals, and increased health care charges. The Bible says: . . . by their fruits ye shall know them. In today's terms, we would say that you have to walk the walk if you want to talk the talk. But when it comes to looking out for veterans, George Bush is ambling off in the wrong direction. The veterans of West Virginia know about sacrifice. They have given up a lot in their service to this country. This administration has spent 4 years undercutting veterans. The people of West Virginia should know that it is time to stand up for our veterans. I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, in a few hours the Senate will vote on the Byrd-Stevens-Inouye-Warner amendment. That amendment's purpose is to ensure that the new national intelligence authority is held accountable to the people's representatives in the Congress. Let me say again, the amendment which I have offered on behalf of myself and Mr. Stevens, Mr. Inouye, and Mr. Warner has a purpose, that purpose being to ensure that the new national intelligence authority, the NID, is held accountable to the people's representatives in the Congress. Last Friday, I spoke about the Englishmen who spilled their blood to wrest the power of the purse away from monarchs, over many centuries, in England. Their struggle was enshrined in Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, which I hold in my hand, the Constitution of the United States--the struggle of Englishmen across many centuries, even prior to 1215 when the barons yielded, the great Magna Carta was agreed to by King John, a mighty monarch. And what does that section 9 of Article I say? No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time. Not just some of the moneys, all of the moneys. How then, I ask Senators, can a regular account of public money be kept if the Congress empowers a new intelligence director to spend money without regard to appropriations law and without regard to this Constitution? This is a debate about power. Make no mistake about it. It is a debate about power and who should wield it--the elected representatives of the people or an unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat nestled deep inside our Nation's intelligence agencies. It goes to the heart of the balance of power between the executive and the legislative branches of Government. I took an oath to support and defend that Constitution, and I have tried to do that now, I will soon be in my 59th year in government, in politics, in the legislative branches of Government--at the State level and at the national level. Under the pending bill, the Treasury Secretary is authorized to create appropriations accounts to which the national intelligence director can transfer funds. Get that. We are talking about an unelected bureaucrat who will be able to transfer funds. The Collins- Lieberman bill includes no limits on how those funds can be used. Let me say, I don't see either of the two managers on the floor but they are listening. I saw Senator Lieberman just a few minutes ago. I am sure he is in the premises here. One of the distinguished persons who is aiding the Governmental Affairs Committee in this connection has nodded in the affirmative. So I am not talking behind Senator Lieberman's back. He is here. He knows very well what I am saying, and I am sure he will be very ready to counter my arguments. I respect him for that. Let me say again, under the pending bill, the Treasury Secretary is authorized to create appropriations accounts to which the national intelligence director can transfer funds. The Collins-Lieberman bill includes no limits on how those funds can be used once they are transferred. Under current law, the intelligence director would be authorized to transfer up to $3.5 billion from the defense budget, giving this director enormous transfer authority never contemplated by the Congress. That places the Congress on the defensive. The Congress would have to act retroactively to transfers made by the national intelligence director, allowing the intelligence director to spend funds without adequate oversight by the Congress. I remind Senators that in 1996, the National Reconnaissance Office-- the Government's spy satellite agency--was discovered to have stashed away billions of dollars into a reserve that was not reported to the Congress. While the proponents of the bill before the Senate argue that the national intelligence director needs strong budget authority to fight the war on terror, Senators should understand that the intelligence director can use that authority for activities that have nothing to do with the war on terror. The intelligence director could use this sweeping transfer authority to circumvent the limitations imposed by the Congress, the elected representatives of the American people. It has happened before, and it will happen again. It can happen again and very likely it will happen again. Senators Collins and Lieberman have argued that our mandate here today is to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations and that those recommendations include an intelligence director with strong budget authority. I respectfully submit that our mandate as Senators-- my mandate, at least, as a Senator--first and foremost is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. We took an oath to do so, and that mandate supersedes any recommendations put forward by any commission, including the 9/11 Commission. To provide virtually unchecked flexibility to an intelligence director to transfer funds from one account to another would nullify and make meaningless the legislative process of reviewing budget requests from the intelligence agencies. It would nullify and make meaningless congressional decisions about how funds are allocated. Congressional judgment by elected lawmakers--I am elected; I am one of the elected lawmakers. From time to time I have to go back before the people and see if they want me to continue in this work. Congressional judgment by elected lawmakers would be made subordinate to executive judgments by unelected bureaucrats. The power of the purse for which our English ancestors spilled their blood and which has protected our democratic institutions and individual rights for centuries would, in a very large measure, pass to the executive branch. I am saying, in essence, that we need more time to discuss this amendment and to discuss this bill. I don't know what is in the bill. I have read parts of the bill, but I have many other duties to perform, and I think we need more time. This is a major bill. This is the very same thing we ran into when we created the Department of Homeland Security--the very same thing. We are backed up against the wall. The idea is you have to pass this. You have to do it. You have to get behind it. And we find we have a lot of problems with that. I sought to have the leadership take a little more time on that bill, discuss it, debate it, but the leadership didn't choose to take more time. It was the very same way with the nefarious resolution that was passed by this Senate on October 11 of 2002 to shift the constitutional power to declare war to a single individual; namely, the President of the United States. I pleaded that we have more time. I pleaded on that same occasion--I think it was with Mr. Lieberman and with the other managers on both sides--please take more time. Here we are shifting the power. Congress says in article I, section 8, that the Congress shall have the power to declare war. So the Framers of the Constitution did not intend for one man to be able to declare war. The Framers of the Constitution did not intend for one body to put this Nation into a war. It required both bodies. The Constitution says Congress--not just the Senate, not just the House-- Congress, which is a combination of both, Congress shall have power to declare war. So the Framers meant for that very great question to be decided by a huge body of men. It was men in those days, only men in the Congress of the United States; but, of course, we know what ``Congress'' meant--for anybody who serves. It is Congress made up of the elected representatives of the American people. So I have a mandate to listen to the American people. I have a mandate to exercise whatever judgment I have and can bring to bear in my own way to look at these things and to ask questions. So there we were. We passed it in a big hurry. The leadership on both sides said: Let's get this behind us. I am talking about the resolution that was passed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2002, shifting the power, shifting the decision to put this country at war, shifting that decision away from the Congress and handing it over lock, stock, and barrel to one man--the President of the United States. It does not make any difference if he is a Democrat or a Republican, that power is his and will be in the next President's hand. He will have that power, and the next one, if he or she decides to use it. It will be there for them because there is no sunset provision in that resolution terminating that power. I sought even to have the Congress adopt an amendment which would have provided for a sunset provision in that power so that within a year or at most 2 years--and the circumstances were set forth in my amendment calling for a sunset provision, a termination of handing this power over to any President, Republican or Democrat. Do you know how many votes I got? Well, I got 31 votes, including my own. I yet am astonished to this very day as to why the Members of the Senate of the United States sought not only to give that power to a President, one man--whether he is Democrat or Republican, that is not the point--shift that power to a President. I said: If we are going to be foolish enough to do that, let's at least have a sunset provision so we can terminate that power. But no, I got 31 votes, including my own-- 31 votes. What a shame that this Senate and the House would give that power to an individual and say: It's yours, take it, keep it until we in the Congress decide to repeal that provision and take it back. How about that. So the sunset provision was turned down. I asked for more time. Oh, the leadership said: Let's get this behind us. The President said: Get it behind you; we have an election coming. That was the manipulation that was wrought to have that key vote occur just a few days before the national elections in the year 2002. Why, those Members who were up for reelection, as they voted on that resolution, they certainly thought: If I vote against this, what is it going to do to me and my reelection? People might think I am unpatriotic; I better vote for this; man, I have to be reelected; I have to be reelected; I am going to vote for it; I have some questions about it, but I am going to put all questions aside because we have an election coming here. The leadership said: Put it behind us; let's vote on it, get it behind us. I said at the time: You will not get this behind you because this President is not going to let you get it behind you. It is in his favor to make you vote before the election. You might vote differently after the election. No, you have to vote before the election. There we were. We did not have time. I pleaded for time, time, wait until after the election, let's wait to hear what the people have to say. Here again, we are pressed for time. We are going to go out on I believe it is October 8 presumably for the elections, at least until they are over, so we are in a hurry. Let's not wait until after the election; no, let's get this behind us. We have to do what the Commission says. What about the Constitution? We are legislating in a tremendous hurry, and that is not good. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in his appearance before the Appropriations Committee said that ought to be put off. You need, I believe he said, 6 or 8 months. I am not sure I am quoting him precisely. In essence, that was his message: Put it off; don't do it in a time before an election; don't do it under the heat that is generated; take your time; this is a measured, measured decision, don't rush it through. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger showed the committee the names of several other very important dignitaries who, by their experience, see the reasoning all joined in the suggestion that we take our time. But no, we are brushing that aside, and that was the decision on the part of former Secretaries of Defense--for example, Mr. Cohen. It included both Republicans and Democrats urging that we take more time. I think we should take more time here because we are doing some dangerous things in this bill. My amendment will keep the power of the purse where it belongs, not in the hands of the intelligence community but here in the hands of the people's elected representatives in the Congress. My amendment retains for the Congress the responsibility for deciding how budget accounts for the intelligence director should be structured while allowing the flexibility the Governmental Affairs Committee seeks for the transfer of personnel and funding within the intelligence community. My amendment is an oversight amendment. It guarantees better oversight over the way these funds are going to be spent. Normally, when we pass an appropriation, we say to Mr. A, who is head of one agency: Here, you take this and you do this, and you do this, and you do this, and you do this, and then come back in a year and tell us what you did; come back in here tell us what you did with our limitations to do this, do this, but don't do this, don't do this. Under those limitations the agency assures Congress he will live up to the mandate, he will do this, he will do this, and he will not do this that Congress said don't do. Well, that is not going to be the case. This national intelligence director will do whatever he wants to do, and then there will not be those limitations, either, on him or her. He is not going to be elected. He is going to be another bureaucrat--and I do not mean to speak in any derogatory manner concerning bureaucrats because we have to have them--but they are not elected by the people. All these seats--these chairs, as I call them--were here many years before I came, and they are filled with Members who are elected by the people of their respective States. We have to answer to those people. This amendment limits the transfer of funds to $100 million or to 5 percent of the Department or Agency budget, whichever is the lesser. Senators should realize that even with the limitations included in this amendment, the intelligence director is granted significant authority to transfer funds. He would still have significant authority. Given the history, though, of abuses of power and the violation of civil liberties that have taken place within our intelligence community, I cannot imagine Senators condoning such sweeping budget transfer authority. Hear me, Senators. We should take time. We are talking about rushing through a massive change, one which will have some bearing upon this Constitution which we are sworn to support and defend, and yet we are going to do it with our ears closed, our eyes closed, and our voices unheard. We are being pressured to act fast before we go home on October 8. I cannot imagine Senators condoning such sweeping budget transfer authority. Common sense and history suggest that if one man is given control of our intelligence agencies and one man is given control over funds appropriated to those agencies, abuses can occur, may occur, and in all probability will occur at some point in time. Those abuses may manifest themselves in the violations of civil liberties, your liberties. They may manifest themselves in scandals such as those at Abu Ghraib prison, or they may manifest themselves as they did in the lead-up to the war in Iraq through politicized intelligence. Therein lies a great danger. The New York Times, on Sunday, wrote a very lengthy article--read it--entitled, ``How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence.'' I ask unanimous consent that the article from the New York Times be reprinted in the Record at the close of my remarks.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the article explores how senior administration officials, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, ``repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists'' when asserting in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. The article reads: They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments . . . It goes on to say: yet minimized or rejected strong doubts of nuclear experts. The article goes on: Today, 18 months after the invasion of Iraq, investigators there have found no evidence of . . . a revived nuclear weapons program. Secretary of State Colin Powell said last Friday he regretted the administration's claims that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in making its case for war. So the gut-wrenching question for the Senator from Maine is--hear me--if we do this intelligence reorganization hurriedly, are we willing to launch our next preemptive war based on the presumption that our handiwork has corrected our intelligence problems? That is a very serious question. I will say it again: The gut-wrenching question for you, Robert C. Byrd, and for every other Member of the Senate, remains: if we do this intelligence reorganization hurriedly, as we are doing, are we willing to launch our next preemptive war based on the presumption that our handiwork has corrected our intelligence problems? Think about it. That should sober one up. The question remains, and we are going to be held to it by the American people and by that Constitution: If we do this intelligence reorganization hurriedly, are we willing to launch our next preemptive war based on the presumption that our handiwork has corrected our intelligence problems? I say to Senators, again, preemptive attack is the official policy of this Government. Preemptive attack today, under the Bush administration, is the official policy of this Government. Remember also that preemption is totally antithetical to the U.S. Constitution because it clearly cuts the Congress out of decisions to go to war. Preemption by its very nature precludes congressional debates or approval of resolutions before commencing to shed the blood of our sons and our daughters. Preemption stands on its face antithetical, opposite, 180 degrees, to this Constitution, which says that the Congress shall have power to declare war; the Congress, meaning a group of people, two bodies, made up of men and women representing all of the States of this Union. Congress shall declare war, not one man. But the doctrine of preemption tells us the President--the President, not the Congress--the President shall have power to declare war. That is the preemptive doctrine. That great power may send your son, your daughter, your grandson, your granddaughter to war. Who says so? One man, the President of the United States. So on its face it is unconstitutional. How can a President declare war without doing it clandestinely, secretly? If he wants to bomb a certain country, he is not going to take it up with the Congress. He wants to be secret about this because that strike has to be preemptive. How can it be preemptive if it is going to be debated by the Members of the United States Senate? It can't be preemptive. Let us remember that intelligence--remember, this is not just Robert Byrd saying this--let us remember that the intelligence was manipulated to get us into the Iraq war. Will it not be more easily manipulated in the hands of one intelligence chief, a partisan chief more free than ever to tweak intelligence to please a President? It may be a Democratic President. Does that make it any better? No. That makes no difference. It is comforting to believe that our intelligence agencies will not be manipulated for political gain, but it is also naive to believe that. To turn over to a greater degree the power of the purse to shadowy figures in the intelligence community is to invite abuses like those that lead to scandal and to the disgrace of the United States in the eyes of the international community. Think of what we are doing here. It is just like it was when we had that resolution before the Senate on which the Senate voted on October 11, 2002. There is not another Senator on this floor, except the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran, who is presently presiding over this body, and myself, two Senators. A major question is before the Senate. We are talking about your oversight duties as a Member of the Senate, as you chair or as you serve on a committee--your oversight; the oversight powers of the Congress, provided for in the Constitution of the United States. Yet we are saying, Well, forget it. The Congress must preserve its power to rein in--not just because it can but because the people expect it of the Congress--our Nation's intelligence agencies and to rein in the executive branch when abuses like these occur. Further, we must do all we can to ensure that the new intelligence positions created by the Collins-Lieberman bill are held accountable to the Congress; in other words, to the people. This Constitution, in its first three words, says, ``We the people . . . .'' So we have a responsibility. We have a duty to the people we represent to see that these people are held accountable to the Congress. On page 47, the pending bill creates four deputy national intelligence director positions as executive level 2 appointments, the equivalent of a Deputy Secretary of Defense or State. Yet none of these new positions is subject to Senate confirmation. How about that? The Congressional Research Service informs me that these deputy intelligence directors would be--listen to this--the only executive level 2 appointments in our Government not subject to confirmation by the Senate. There you have it. These people are going to have tremendous responsibilities, but I am informed that these deputy intelligence directors would be the only executive level 2 appointments in our Government not subject to Senate confirmation. So it is clear that more needs to be done to ensure accountability to the Congress. How much thought was given to this in the distinguished committee? How much thought was given to this in the Commission that recommends to the Congress these reforms? These clearly mean that more needs to be done to ensure accountability to the Congress. The intelligence failures of 9/11 and the intelligence failures in Iraq are in part a testament to the dire consequences of the Congress abdicating its constitutional duties. The Congress was rushed, as it oftentimes is--rushed, pressured--could be pressured by circumstances only, but that is not quite the case. Congress was rushed into creating a homeland security department, and, in the process, it ceded authorities to the executive branch over organization and personnel matters. The result has been an underfunded homeland security agency whose effectiveness has been compromised, to some extent, by turf wars and bureaucratic resistance. So we rushed consideration of the war resolution with Iraq, and in the process ceded the constitutional authority to declare war to the White House. The result has been a rush to war marked by foreign policy failures and scandals, with the death toll rising daily and with no end in sight to the chaos in Iraq. What a pickle. What a pickle we have put ourselves in. Now the Congress is confronted with an intelligence reform bill, proposing to create a national intelligence director who will command 15 intelligence agencies and a $40 billion budget. Rather than learn from our mistakes, rather than take the time to thoughtfully consider this matter outside of Presidential politics, we are being pushed to finish this bill within a handful of days, finish this bill within a shirt- tail full of days, and to cede control over the allocation of the resources to the intelligence community. Think about it. Think what you are doing. Think what you are about to do, Senators. National security experts are pleading with the Congress to stop for a minute. Hold on, here. Hold on, they say. Stop for a minute to think about what it is doing. The Appropriations Committee heard from a bipartisan array of witnesses urging the Congress to slow down. What is the hurry? What is the hurry? The list is impressive. These men are not Members of the Congress. Listen to them, though. They are saying, slow down. David Boren, former Senator from the State of Oklahoma, former chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. Here is another former Senator, Bill Bradley, saying let's slow down here. Slow down. Where is the hurry? Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of Defense under President Reagan. Here is a more recent Secretary of Defense, former Member of this body, a Republican, William Cohen. Robert Gates, Gary Hart, former U.S. Senator; Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State; John Hamre. In the case of some of these, their titles have momentarily escaped me. Sam Nunn, former Senator from the State of Georgia and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Warren Rudman, Republican, former Senator from New Hampshire; George Shultz, former Secretary of State, Republican--there you have it, an impressive roster of Republicans and Democrats who rendered great service to this country in one form or another. They are saying slow down. What is the hurry? What is the hurry? They are former Senators, former Department of Defense Secretaries, former Secretaries of State, Republicans and Democrats, all making the same plea: ``Racing to implement reforms on an election timetable is precisely the wrong thing to do.'' That is not Robert Byrd saying that. Robert Byrd is quoting these luminaries, and Robert Byrd feels the same way they do. ``Racing to implement reforms on an election timetable is precisely the wrong thing to do. Intelligence reform is too complex and too important to undertake at a campaign breakneck speed.'' They are saying this subject matter deserves a thoughtful, comprehensive approach. Why in Heaven's name are we in all of this big hurry? Why is there all of this hurry? I am not saying there shouldn't be reform. I am not saying that at all. I am saying this is a major undertaking and we ought to have the time and we ought to take time to debate and ask questions and to try to remove the gremlins that may come to light if we take more time. The Wall Street Journal concluded in August that: The larger point here is that there is no need to rush to any quick political fix. We may have a different President after the election. He may appoint--and probably would--a national intelligence director who will be a different person from that whom the current President may appoint, should he be reelected. We ought not to do this in such a big hurry. The Wall Street Journal continues: We are contemplating the biggest change to our intelligence services since 1947, while we are fighting a war against a lethal enemy . . . a war that in large measure has resulted from faulty intelligence. Are we fixing that fault in this bill? Are we dealing with 9/11 in this bill without casting a watchful eye to the future, to Iraq? How about it? That work should take some time--and beltway forbid, maybe even a little thought. That is a quotation from the Wall Street Journal of the month of August. The case for stopping and thinking for a moment grows even stronger when one reads U.S. Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner's critique of the 9/11 Commission's report in the New York Times Book Review. Judge Posner writes: The enormous public relations effort that the commission orchestrated to win support for the report before it could be digested . . . invites criticism . . . [as does] the commissioners' misplaced, though successful, quest for unanimity. . . . The Commission's contention that our intelligence structure is unsound predisposed it to blame the structure for the failure of the 9/11 attacks, whether it did or not. And pressure for unanimity encourages just the kind of herd thinking now being blamed for that other recent intelligence failure--the belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. . . . For all one knows, the price of unanimity was adopting recommendations that were the second choice [or maybe even the third or fourth choice] of many of the commission's members. . . . The larger concern is not only that the Congress, in its rush to act, may botch the implementation of the 9/11 Commission's recommendation, but that those recommendations may not be as well-thought-out as the public relations campaign would have us believe. We are so threatened by the politics surrounding the 9/11 Commission's report and the release of its recommendations prior to the Presidential election that we stand ready--stand, salute--to abdicate our constitutional responsibilities rather than to question or probe deeper into the potential flaws of the Commission's recommendations. I say again it is the same kind of thinking that occurred prior to the vote on the war resolution with Iraq, the same mentality that led to the much regretted passage of the PATRIOT Act with only a single dissenting vote in this Chamber, and that led to the creation of a Homeland Security Department that now struggles with its mission to make Americans safer from terrorism. I urge Senators, I plead with Senators, I beg Senators to consider carefully their vote on this amendment. I am sure there are many Senators who have regretted and will regret to their dying day their decision to vote for the Iraq resolution that was passed by this body on October 11, 2002. I am sure many Senators have lived to regret that vote because we were being pressured: Hurry, hurry, hurry, get this vote behind us. We don't want to talk more about this. We want to talk about the economy. They will regret it. I have had Senators tell me they regret it. I urge Senators to consider carefully their vote on this amendment. Also, consider this Constitution and the oath I have taken this many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. This Constitution provides for adequate oversight. It gives the Congress the power, the oversight. This bill will, to a considerable extent, take away that power. I am not seeking to undermine the intelligence reforms proposed by the Governmental Affairs Committee. I seek only to ensure that the Congress retain its oversight functions in intelligence and national security matters. We owe it to the people who had faith and confidence in us and who sent us here. We are not elected here, sent here, by any President of the United States. No President tapped me on the shoulder and said, go get him, boy, I am going to see that you get it. No President can do that. No President can tap me on the shoulder and say: Boy, you are gone; you won't be back after this election. No, no President can say that, thank God. No President is king in this country. Not here, no. We did not swear an oath to adopt any particular commission's report. We should use our own best judgment in this case, and in doing that we will arrive at different signals, of course, but that is our responsibility. We owe it to the victims of the September 11 attack and their families to get these reforms straight and to take time to study and debate them. Why not take more time? It would be a sad legacy if the suffering of these victims of the September 11 attack, it would be a sad legacy if their suffering and loss resulted not in the strengthening but in the weakening of our national security and intelligence service, leaving more Americans vulnerable to a terrorist attack. In summary, it is a critical mistake to hand to an unelected intelligence chief nearly unfettered budget transfer authority. We are handing off the ability to exercise oversight. When we do that, we cannot determine whether congressional intent for the people's tax dollars has been met. We will not know about transfers until some time, perhaps, after the fact. Millions of dollars--nay, billions of dollars--could be moved around at the discretion of one man, an unelected figure, with no one the wiser. Resources could be switched from one area of the world to another area of the globe at the discretion of one man. Secret operations could be funded without the prior knowledge of any Member of Congress at the discretion of one man. This is one-man rule. Intelligence could be manipulated by one man, with discretion concerning where to take away secret resources and where to add them. Absolute power, Senators just heard, corrupts absolutely, and the United States is about to aid and abet that truism. Senators, Republicans and Democrats, we will rue the day when, because of rushing and posturing and hurrying, we created a spy chief with such awesome power. I ask unanimous consent to add the names of Senator Leahy, Senator Dorgan, and Senator Burns as cosponsors.

Mr. BYRD. May the record show that John Hamre is a former Deputy Defense Secretary and Robert Gates is a former CIA Director. [From the New York Times, Oct. 3, 2004] How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence (By David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth) In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. Speaking to a group of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States now had ``irrefutable evidence''--thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States. Those tubes became a critical exhibit in the administration's brief against Iraq. As the only physical evidence the United States could brandish of Mr. Hussein's revived nuclear ambitions, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President Bush and his advisers. The tubes were ``only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,'' Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. ``We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'' But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets. The White House, though, embraced the disputed theory that the tubes were for nuclear centrifuges, an idea first championed in April 2001 by a junior analyst at the C.I.A. Senior nuclear scientists considered that notion implausible, yet in the months after 9/11, as the administration built a case for confronting Iraq, the centrifuge theory gained currency as it rose to the top of the government. Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists, an examination by The New York Times has found. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of nuclear experts. They worried privately that the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in public. One result was a largely one-sided presentation to the public that did not convey the depth of evidence and argument against the administration's most tangible proof of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq. Today, 18 months after invasion of Iraq, investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. The absence of unconventional weapons in Iraq is now widely seen as evidence of a profound intelligence failure, of an intelligence community blinded by ``group think,'' false assumptions and unreliable human sources. Yet the tale of the tubes, pieced together through records and interviews with senior intelligence officers, nuclear experts, administration officials and Congressional investigators, reveals a different failure. Far from ``group think,'' American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A ``holy war'' is how one Congressional investigator described it. But if the opinions of the nuclear experts were seemingly disregarded at every turn, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions. Precisely how knowledge of the intelligence dispute traveled through the upper reaches of the administration is unclear. Ms. Rice knew about the debate before her Sept. 2002 CNN appearance, but only learned of the alternative rocket theory of the tubes soon afterward, according to two senior administration officials. President Bush learned of the debate at roughly the same time, a senior administration official said. Last week, when asked about the tubes, administration officials said they relied on repeated assurances by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the tubes were in fact for centrifuges. They also noted that the intelligence community, including the Energy Department, largely agreed that Mr. Hussein has revived his nuclear program. ``These judgments sometimes require members of the intelligence community to make tough assessments about competing interpretations of facts,'' said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the president. Mr. Tenet declined to be interviewed. But in a statement, he said he ``made it clear'' to the White House ``that the case for a possible nuclear program in Iraq was weaker than that for chemical and biological weapons.'' Regarding the tubes, Mr. Tenet said ``alternative views were shared'' with the administration after the intelligence community drafted a new National Intelligence Estimate in late September 2002. The tubes episode is a case study of the intersection between the politics of pre-emption and the inherent ambiguity of intelligence. The tubes represented a scientific puzzle and rival camps of experts clashed over the tiniest technical details in secure rooms in Washington, London and Vienna. The stakes were high, and they knew it. So did a powerful vice president who saw in 9/11 horrifying confirmation of his long-held belief that the United States too often naively underestimates the cunning and ruthlessness of its foes. ``We have a tendency--I don't know if it's part of the American character--to say, `Well sit down and we'll evaluate the evidence, we'll draw a conclusion,' '' Mr. Cheney said as he discussed the tubes in September 2002 on the NBC News program ``Meet the Press.'' ``But we always think in terms that we've got all the evidence,'' he said. ``Here, we don't have all the evidence. We have 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent. We don't know how much. We know we have a part of the picture. And that part of the picture tells us that he is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.'' joe raises the tube issue Throughout the 1990's, United States intelligence agencies were deeply preoccupied with the status of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, and with good reason. After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, arms inspectors discovered that Iraq had been far closer to building an atomic bomb than even the worst-case estimates had envisioned. And no one believed that Saddam Hussein had abandoned his nuclear ambitions. To the contrary, in one secret assessment after another, the agencies concluded that Iraq was conducting low-level theoretical research and quietly plotting to resume work on nuclear weapons. But at the start of the Bush administration, the intelligence agencies also agreed that Iraq had not in fact resumed its nuclear weapons program. Iraq's nuclear infrastructure, they concluded, had been dismantled by sanctions and inspections. In short, Mr. Hussein's nuclear ambitions appeared to have been contained. Then Iraq started shopping for tubes. According to a 511-page report on flawed prewar intelligence by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the agencies learned in early 2001 of a plan by Iraq to buy 60,000 high-strength aluminum tubes from Hong Kong. The tubes were made from 7075-T6 aluminum, an extremely hard alloy that made them potentially suitable as rotors in a uranium centrifuge. Properly designed, such tubes are strong enough to spin at the terrific speeds needed to convert uranium gas into enriched uranium, an essential ingredient of an atomic bomb. For this reason, international rules prohibited Iraq from importing certain sizes of 7075-T6 aluminum tubes; it was also why a new C.I.A. analyst named Joe quickly sounded the alarm. At the C.I.A.'s request, The Times agreed to use only Joe's first name; the agency said publishing his full name could hinder his ability to operate overseas. Joe graduated from the University of Kentucky in the late 1970's with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, then joined the Goodyear Atomic Corporation, which dispatched him to Oak Ridge, Tenn., a federal complex that specializes in uranium and national security research. Joe went to work on a new generation of centrifuges. Many European models stood no more than 10 feet tall. The American centrifuges loomed 40 feet high, and Joe's job was to learn how to test and operate them. But when the project was canceled in 1985, Joe spent the next decade performing hazard analyses for nuclear reactors, gaseous diffusion plants and oil refineries. In 1997, Joe transferred to a national security complex at Oak Ridge known as Y-12, his entry into intelligence work. His assignment was to track global sales of material used in nuclear arms. He retired after two years, taking a buyout with hundreds of others at Oak Ridge, and moved to the C.I.A. The agency's ability to assess nuclear intelligence had markedly declined after the cold war, and Joe's appointment was part of an effort to regain lost expertise. He was assigned to a division eventually known as Winpac, for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control. Winpac had hundreds of employees, but only a dozen or so with a technical background in nuclear arms and fuel production. None had Joe's hands-on experience operating centrifuges. Suddenly, Joe's work was ending up in classified intelligence reports being read in the White House. Indeed, his analysis was the primary basis for one of the agency's first reports on the tubes, which went to senior members of the Bush administration on April 10, 2001. The tubes, the report asserted, ``have little use other than for a uranium enrichment program.'' This alarming assessment was immediately challenged by the Energy Department, which builds centrifuges and runs the government's nuclear weapons complex. The next day, Energy Department officials ticked off a long list of reasons why the tubes did not appear well suited for centrifuges. Simply put, the analysis concluded that the tubes were the wrong size--too narrow, too heavy, too long-- to be of much practical use in a centrifuge. What was more, the analysis reasoned, if the tubes were part of a secret, high-risk venture to build a nuclear bomb, why were the Iraqis haggling over prices with suppliers all around the world? And why weren't they shopping for all the other sensitive equipment needed for centrifuges? All fine questions. But if the tubes were not for a centrifuge, what were they for? Within weeks, the Energy Department experts had an answer. It turned out, they reported, that Iraq had for years used high-strength aluminum tubes to make combustion chambers for slim rockets fired from launcher pods. Back in 1996, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had even examined some of those tubes, also made of 7075-T6 aluminum, at a military complex, the Nasser metal fabrication plant in Baghdad, where the Iraqis acknowledged making rockets. According to the international agency, the rocket tubes, some 66,000 of them, were 900 millimeters in length, with a diameter of 81 millimeters and walls 3.3 millimeters thick. The tubes now sought by Iraq had precisely the same dimensions--a perfect match. That finding was published May 9, 2001, in the Daily Intelligence Highlight, a secret Energy Department newsletter published on Intelink, a Web site for the intelligence community and the White House. Joe and his Winpac colleagues at the C.I.A. were not persuaded. Yes, they conceded, the tubes could be used as rocket casings. But that made no sense, they argued in a new report, because Iraq wanted tubes made at tolerances that ``far exceed any known conventional weapons.'' In other words, Iraq was demanding a level of precision craftsmanship unnecessary for ordinary mass-produced rockets. More to the point, those analysts had hit on a competing theory; that the tubes' dimensions matched those used in an early uranium centrifuge developed in the 1950's by a German scientist, Gernot Zippe. Most centrifuge designs are highly classified; this one, though, was readily available in science reports. Thus, well before Sept. 11, 2001, the debate within the intelligence community was already neatly framed: Were the tubes for rockets or centrifuges? Experts Attack Joe's Case It was a simple question with enormous implications. If Mr. Hussein acquired nuclear weapons, American officials feared, he would wield them to menace the Middle East. So the tube question was critical, yet none too easy to answer. The United States had few spies in Iraq, and certainly none who knew Mr. Hussein's plans for the tubes. But the tubes themselves could yield many secrets. A centrifuge is an intricate device. Not any old tube would do. Carefully inquiry might answer the question. The intelligence community embarked on an ambitious international operation to intercept the tubes before they could get to Iraq. The big break came in June 2001; a shipment was seized in Jordan. At the Energy Department, those examining the tubes included scientists who had spent decades designing and working on centrifuges, and intelligence officers steeped in the tricky business of tracking the nuclear ambitions of America's enemies. They included Dr. Jon A. Kreykes, head of Oak Ridge's national security advanced technology group; Dr. Duane F. Starr, an expert on nuclear proliferation threats; and Dr. Edward Von Halle, a retired Oak Ridge nuclear expert, Dr. Houston G. Wood III, a professor of engineering at the University of Virginia who had helped design the 40-foot American centrifuge, advised the team and consulted with Dr. Zippe. On questions about nuclear centrifuges, this was unambiguously the A-Team of the intelligence community, many experts say. On Aug. 17, 2001, weeks before the twin towers fell, the team published a secret Technical Intelligence Note, a detailed analysis that laid out its doubts about the tubes' suitability for centrifuges. First, in size and material, the tubes were very different from those Iraq had used in its centrifuge prototypes before the first gulf war. Those models used tubes that were nearly twice as wide and made of exotic materials that performed far better than aluminum. ``Aluminum was a huge step backwards,'' Dr. Wood recalled. In fact, the team could find no centrifuge machines ``deployed in a production environment'' that used such narrow tubes. Their walls were three times too thick for ``favorable use'' in a centrifuge, the team wrote. They were also anodized, meaning they had a special coating to protect them from weather. Anodized tubes, the team pointed out, are ``not consistent'' with a uranium centrifuge because the coating can produce bad reactions with uranium gas. In other words, if Joe and his Winpac colleagues were right, it meant that Iraq had chosen to forsake years of promising centrifuge work and instead start from scratch, with inferior material built to less-than-optimal dimensions. The Energy Department experts did not think that made much sense. They concluded that using the tubes in centrifuges ``is credible but unlikely, and a rocket production is the much more likely end use for these tubes.'' Similar conclusions were being reached by Britain's intelligence service and experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body. Unlike Joe, experts at the international agency had worked with Zippe centrifuges, and they spent hours with him explaining why they believed his analysis was flawed. They pointed out errors in his calculations. They noted design discrepancies. They also sent reports challenging the centrifuge claim to American government experts through the embassy in Vienna, a senior official said. Likewise, Britain's experts believe the tubes would need ``substantial re-engineering'' to work in centrifuges, according to Britain's review of its prewar intelligence. Their experts found it ``paradoxical'' that Iraq would order such finely crafted tubes only to radically rebuild each one for a centrifuge. Yes, it was theoretically possible, but an Energy Department analyst later told Senate investigators, it was also theoretically possible to ``turn your new Yugo into a Cadillac.'' In late 2001, intelligence analysts at the State Department also took issue with Joe's work in reports prepared for Secretary of State Colin Powell. Joe was ``very convinced, but not very convincing,'' recalled Greg Thielmann, then director of strategic, proliferation and military affairs in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. By year's end, Energy Department analysts published a classified report that even more firmly rejected the theory that the tubes could work as rotors in a 1950's Zippe centrifuge. These particular Zippe centrifuges, they noted, were especially ill suited for bomb making. The machines were a prototype designed for laboratory experiments and mean to be operated as single units. To produce enough enriched uranium to make just one bomb a year, Iraq would need up to 16,000 of them working in concert, a challenge for even the most sophisticated centrifuge plants. Iraq had never made more than dozen centrifuge prototypes. Half failed when rotors broke. Of the rest, one actually worked to enrich uranium, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who once ran Iraq's centrifuge program, said in an interview last week. The Energy Department team concluded it was ``unlikely that anyone'' could build a centrifuge site capable of producing significant amounts of enriched uranium ``based on these tubes.'' One analyst summed it up this way: the tubes were so poorly suited for centrifuges, he told Senate investigators, that if Iraq truly wanted to use them this way, ``we should just give them the tubes.'' enter cheney In the months after Sept. 11, 2001, as the Bush administration devised a strategy to fight Al Qaeda, Vice President Cheney immersed himself in the world of top-secret threat assessments. Bob Woodward, in his book `` Plan of Attack,'' described Mr. Cheney as the administration's new ``self-appointed special examiner of worst-case scenarios,'' and it was a role that fit. Mr. Cheney had grappled with national security threats for three decades, first as President Gerald R. Ford's chief of staff, later as secretary of defense for the first President Bush. He was on intimate terms with the intelligence community, 15 spy agencies that frequently feuded over the significance of raw intelligence. He knew well their record of getting it wrong (the Bay of Pigs) and underestimating threats (Mr. Hussein's pre-1991 nuclear program) and failing to connect the dots (Sept. 11). As a result, the vice president was not simply a passive recipient of intelligence analysis. He was known as a man who asked hard, skeptical questions, a man who paid attention to detail. ``In my office I have a picture of John Adams, the first vice president,'' Mr Cheney said in one of his first speeches as vice president. ``Adams like to say, `The facts are stubborn things.' Whatever the issue, we are going to deal with facts and show a decent regard for other points of view.'' With the Taliban routed in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, Mr. Cheney and his aides began to focus on intelligence assessments of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Cheney had long argued for more forceful action to topple Mr. Hussein. But in January 2002, according to Mr. Woodward's book, the C.I.A. told Mr. Cheney that Mr. Hussein could not be removed with covert action alone. His ouster, the agency said, would take an invasion, which would require persuading the public that Iraq posted a threat to the United States. The evidence for that case was buried in classified intelligence files. Mr. Cheney and his aides began to meet repeatedly with analysts who specialized in Iraq and unconventional weapons. They wanted to know about any Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda and Baghdad's ability to make unconventional weapons. ``There's no question they had a point of view, but there was no attempt to get us to hew to a particular point of view ourselves, or to come to a certain conclusion,'' the deputy director of analysis at Winpac told the Senate Intelligence Committee. ``It was trying to figure out, why do we come to this conclusion, what was the evidence. A lot of questions were asked, probing questions.'' Of all the worst-case possibilities, the most terrifying was the idea that Mr. Hussein might slip a nuclear weapon to terrorists, and Mr. Cheney and his staff zeroed in on Mr. Hussein's nuclear ambitions. Mr. Cheney, for example, read a Feb. 12, 2002, report from the Defense Intelligence Agency about Iraq's reported attempts to buy 500 tons of yellowcake, a uranium concentrate, from Niger, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report. Many American intelligence analysts did not put much stock in the Niger report. Mr. Cheney pressed for more information. At the same time, a senor intelligence official said, the agency was fielding repeated requests from Mr. Cheney's office for intelligence about the tubes, including updates on Iraq's continuing efforts to procure thousands more after the seizure in Jordan. ``Remember,'' Dr. David A. Kay, the chief American arms inspector after the war, said in an interview, ``the tubes were the only piece of physical evidence about the Iraqi weapons programs that they had.'' In March 2002, Mr. Cheney traveled to Europe and the Middle East to build support for a confrontation with Iraq. It is not known whether he mentioned Niger or the tubes in his meetings. But on his return, he made it clear that he had repeatedly discussed Mr. Hussein and the nuclear threat. ``He is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time,'' Mr. Cheney asserted on CNN. At the time, the C.I.A. had not reached so firm a conclusion. But on March 12, the day Mr. Cheney landed in the Middle East, he and other senior administration officials had been sent two C.I.A. reports about the tubes. Each cited the tubes as evidence that ``Iraq currently may be trying to reconstitute its gas centrifuge program.'' Neither report, however, mentioned that leading centrifuge experts at the Energy Department strongly disagreed, according to Congressional officials who have read the reports. what white house is told As the Senate Intelligence Committee report made clear, the American intelligence community ``is not a level playing field when it comes to the competition of ideas in intelligence analysis.'' The C.I.A. has a distinct edge: ``unique access to policy makers and unique control of intelligence reporting,'' the report found. The Presidential Daily Briefs, for example, are prepared and presented by agency analysts; the agency's director is the president's principal intelligence adviser. This allows agency analysts to control the presentation of information to policy makers ``without having to explain dissenting views or defend their analysis from potential challenges,'' the committee's report said. This problem, the report said, was ``particularly evident'' with the C.I.A.'s analysis of the tubes, when agency analysts ``lost objectivity and in several cases took action that improperly excluded useful expertise from the intelligence debate.'' In interviews, Senate investigators said the agency's written assessments did a poor job of describing the debate over the intelligence. From April 2001 to September 2002, the agency wrote at least 15 reports on the tubes. Many were sent only to high- level policy makers, including President Bush, and did not circulate to other intelligence agencies. None have been released, though some were described in the Senate's report. Several senior C.I.A. officials insisted that those reports did describe at least in general terms the intelligence debate. ``You don't go into all that detail but you do try to evince it when you write your current product,'' one agency official said. But several Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate. Over and over, the reports restated Joe's main conclusions for the C.I.A.--that the tubes matched the 1950's Zippe centrifuge design and were built to specifications that ``exceeded any known conventional weapons application.'' They did not state what Energy Department experts had noted--that many common industrial items, even aluminum cans, were made to specifications as good or better than the tubes sought by Iraq. Nor did the reports acknowledge a significant error in Joe's claim--that the tubes ``matched'' those used in a Zippe centrifuge. The tubes sought by Iraq had a wall thickness of 3.3 millimeters. When Energy Department experts checked with Dr. Zippe, a step Joe did not take, they learned that the walls of Zippe tubes did not exceed 1.1 millimeters, a substantial difference. ``They never lay out the other case,'' one Congressional official said of those C.I.A. assessments. The Senate report provides only a partial picture of the agency's communications with the White House. In an arrangement endorsed by both parties, the Intelligence Committee agreed to delay an examination of whether White House descriptions of Iraq's military capabilities were ``substantiated by intelligence information.'' As a result, Senate investigators were not permitted to interview White House officials about what they knew of the tubes debate and when they knew it. But in interviews, C.I.A. and administration officials disclosed that the dissenting views were repeatedly discussed in meetings and telephone calls. One senior official at the agency said its ``fundamental approach'' was to tell policy makers about dissenting views. Another senior official acknowledged that some of their agency's reports ``weren't as well caveated as, in retrospect, they should have been.'' But he added, ``There was certainly nothing that was hidden.'' Four agency officials insisted that Winpac analysts repeatedly explained the contrasting assessments during briefings with senior National Security Council officials who dealt with nuclear proliferation issues. ``We think we were reasonably clear about this,'' a senior C.I.A. official said. A senior administration official confirmed that Winpac was indeed candid about the differing views. The official, who recalled at least a half dozen C.I.A. briefings on tubes, said he knew by late 2001 that there were differing views on the tubes. ``To the best of my knowledge, he never hid anything from me,'' the official said of his counterpart at Winpac. This official said he also spoke to senior officials at the Department of Energy about the tubes, and a spokeswoman for the department said in a written statement that the agency ``strongly conveyed its viewpoint to senior policy makers.'' But if senior White House officials understood the department's main arguments against the tubes, they also took into account its caveats. ``As for as I know,'' the senior administration official said, ``D.O.E. never concluded that these tubes could not be used for centrifuges.'' a referee is ignored Over the summer of 2002, the White House secretly refined plans to invade Iraq and debated whether to seek more United Nations inspections. At the same time, in response to a White House request in May, C.I.A. officials were quietly working on a report that would lay out for the public declassified evidence of Iraq's reported unconventional weapons and ties to terror groups. That same summer the tubes debate continued to rage. The primary antagonists were the C.I.A. and the Energy Department, with other intelligence agencies drawn in on either side. Much of the strife centered on Joe. At first glance, he seem an unlikely target. He held a relatively junior position, and according to the C.I.A. he did not write the vast majority of the agency's reports on the tubes. He has never met Mr. Cheney. His one trip to the White House was to take his family on the public tour. But he was, as one staff member on the Senate Intelligence Committee put it, ``the ringleader'' of a small group of Winpac analysts who were convinced that the tubes were destined for centrifuges. His views carried special force within the agency because he was the only Winpac analyst with experience operating uranium centrifuges. In meetings with other intelligence agencies, he often took the lead in arguing the technical basis for the agency's conclusions. ``Very few people have the technical knowledge to independently arrive at the conclusion he did,'' said Dr. Kay, the weapons inspector, when asked to explain Joe's influence. Without identifying him, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report repeatedly questioned Joe's competence and integrity. It portrayed him so determined to prove his theory that he twisted test results, ignored factual discrepancies and excluded dissenting views. The Senate report, for example, challenged his decision not to consult the Energy Department on tests designed to see if the tubes were strong enough for centrifuges. Asked why he did not seek their help, Joe told the committee: ``Because we funded it. It was our testing. We were trying to prove some things that we wanted to prove with the testing.'' The Senate report singled out that comment for special criticism, saying, ``The committee believes that such an effort should never have been intended to prove what the C.I.A. wanted to prove.'' Joe's superiors strongly defend his work and say his words were taken out of context. They describe him as diligent and professional, an open-minded analyst willing to go the extra mile to test his theories. ``Part of the job of being an analyst is to evaluate alternative hypotheses and possibilities, to build a case, think of alternatives,'' a senior agency official said. ``That's what Joe did in this case. If he turned out to be wrong, that's not an offense. He was expected to be wrong occasionally.'' Still, the bureaucratic infighting was by then so widely known that even the Australian government was aware of it. ``U.S. agencies differ on whether aluminum tubes, a dual-use item sought by Iraq, were meant for gas centrifuges,'' Australia's intelligence services wrote in a July 2002 assessment. The same report said the tubes evidence was ``patchy and inconclusive.'' There was a mechanism, however, to resolve the dispute. It was called the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, a secret body of experts drawn from across the federal government. For a half century, Jaeic (pronounced jake) has been called on to resolve disputes and give authoritative assessments about nuclear intelligence. The committee had specifically assessed the Iraqi nuclear threat in 1989, 1997 and 1999. An Energy Department expert was the committee's chairman in 2002, and some department officials say the C.I.A. opposed calling in Jaeic to mediate the tubes fight. Not so, agency officials said. In July 2002, they insist, they were the first intelligence agency to seek Jaeic's intervention. ``I personally was concerned about the extent of the community's disagreement on this and the fact that we weren't getting very far,'' a senior agency official recalled. The committee held a formal session in early August to discuss the debate, with more than a dozen experts on both sides in attendance. A second meeting was scheduled for later in August but was postponed. A third meeting was set for early September; it never happened either. ``We were O.B.E.--overcome by events,'' an official involved in the proceedings recalled. white house makes a move ``The case of Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of our country, requires a candid appraisal of the facts,'' Mr. Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002, at the outset of an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Nashville. Warning against ``wishful thinking or willful blindness,'' Mr. Cheney used the speech to lay out a rationale for pre- emptive action against Iraq. Simply resuming United Nations inspections, he argued, could give ``false comfort'' that Mr. Hussein was contained. ``We now know Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,'' he declared, words that quickly made headlines worldwide. ``Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge. Intelligence is an uncertain business, even in the best of circumstances.'' But the world, Mr. Cheney warned, could ill afford to once again underestimate Iraq's progress. ``Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.'' A week later President Bush announced that he would ask Congress for authorization to oust Mr. Hussein. He also met that day with senior members of the House and Senate, some of whom expressed concern that the administration had yet to show the American people tangible evidence of an imminent threat. The fact that Mr. Hussein gassed his own people in the 1980's, they argued, was not sufficient evidence of a threat to the United States in 2002. President Bush got the message. He directed Mr. Cheney to give the public and Congress a more complete picture of the latest intelligence on Iraq. In his Nashville speech, Mr. Cheney had not mentioned the aluminum tubes or any other fresh intelligence when he said, ``We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.'' The one specific source he did cite was Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Mr. Hussein's who defected in 1994 after running Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. But Mr. Majid told American intelligence officials in 1995 that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled. What's more, Mr. Majid could not have had any insight into Mr. Hussein's current nuclear activities: he was assassinated in 1996 on his return to Iraq. The day after President Bush announced he was seeking Congressional authorization, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, traveled to Capitol Hill to brief the four top Congressional leaders. After the 90-minute session, J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, told Fox News that Mr. Cheney had provided new information about unconventional weapons, and Fox went on to report that one source said the new intelligence described ``just how dangerously close Saddam Hussein has come to developing a nuclear bomb.'' Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat and Senate majority leader, was more cautious. ``What has changed over the course of the last 10 years, that brings this country to the belief that it has to act in a pre-emptive fashion in invading Iraq?'' he asked. A few days later, on Sept. 8., the lead article on Page 1 of The New York Times gave the first detailed account of the aluminum tubes. The article cited unidentified senior administration officials who insisted that the dimensions, specifications and numbers of tubes sought showed that they were intended for a nuclear weapons program. ``The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more credible is his threat to use chemical and biological weapons,'' a senior administration official was quoted as saying. ``Nuclear weapons are his hole card.'' The article gave no hint of a debate over the tubes. The White House did much to increase the impact of The Times' article. The morning it was published, Mr. Cheney went on the NBC News program ``Meet the Press'' and confirmed when asked that the tubes were the most alarming evidence behind the administration's view that Iraq had resumed its nuclear weapons program. The tubes, he said, had ``raised our level of concern.'' Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, went on CNN and said the tubes ``are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.'' Neither official mentioned that the nation's top nuclear design experts believed overwhelmingly that the tubes were poorly suited for centrifuges. Mr. Cheney, who has a history of criticizing officials who disclose sensitive information, typically refuses to comment when asked about secret intelligence. Yet on this day, with a Gallup poll showing that 58 percent of Americans did not believe President Bush had done enough to explain why the United States should act against Iraq, Mr. Cheney spoke openly about one of the closest held secrets regarding Iraq. Not only did Mr. Cheney draw attention to the tubes; he did so with a certitude that could not be found in even the C.I.A.'s assessments. On ``Meet the Press,'' Mr. Cheney said he knew ``for sure'' and ``in fact'' and ``with absolute certainty'' that Mr. Hussein was buying equipment to build a nuclear weapon. ``He has reconstituted his nuclear program,'' Mr. Cheney said flatly. But in the C.I.A. reports, evidence ``suggested'' or ``could mean'' or ``indicates''--a word used in a report issued just weeks earlier. Little if anything was asserted with absolute certainty. The intelligence community had not yet concluded that Iraq had indeed reconstituted its nuclear program. ``The vice president's public statements have reflected the evolving judgment of the intelligence community,'' Kevin Kellems, Mr. Cheney's spokesman, said in a written statement. The C.I.A. routinely checks presidential speeches that draw on intelligence reports. This is how intelligence professionals pull politicians back from factual errors. One such opportunity came soon after Mr. Cheney's appearance on ``Meet the Press.'' On Sept. 11, 2002, the White House asked the agency to clear for possible presidential use a passage on Iraq's nuclear program. The passage included this sentence: ``Iraq has made several attempts to buy high- strength aluminum tubes used in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.'' The agency did not ask speechwriters to make clear that centrifuges were but one possible use, that intelligence experts were divided and that the tubes also matched those used in Iraqi rockets. In fact, according to the Senate's investigation, the agency suggested no changes at all. The next day President Bush used virtually identical language when he cited the aluminum tubes in an address to the United Nations General Assembly. dissent, but to little effect The administration's talk of clandestine centrifuges, nuclear blackmail and mushroom clouds had a powerful political effect, particularly on senators who were facing fall election campaigns. ``When you hear about nuclear weapons, this is the national security knock-out punch,'' said Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who sits on the Intelligence Committee and ultimately voted against authorizing war. Even so, it did not take long for questions to surface over the administration's claims about Mr. Hussein's nuclear capabilities. As it happened, Senator Dianne Feinstein, another Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, had visited the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in August 2002. Officials there, she later recalled, told her they saw no signs of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq. At that point, the tubes debate was in its 16th month. Yet Mr. Tenet, of the C.I.A., the man most responsible for briefing President Bush on intelligence, told the committee that he was unaware until that September of the profound disagreement over critical evidence that Mr. Bush was citing to world leaders as justification for war. Even now, committee members from both parties express baffled anger at this possibility. How could he not know? ``I don't even understand it,'' Olympia Snowe, a Republican senator from Maine, said in an interview. ``I cannot comprehend the failures in judgment or breakdowns in communication.'' Mr. Tenet told Senate investigators that he did not expect to learn of dissenting opinions ``until the issue gets joined'' at the highest levels of the intelligence community. But if Mr. Tenet's lack of knowledge meant the president was given incomplete information about the tubes, there was still plenty of time for the White House to become fully informed. Yet so far, Senate investigators say, they have found little evidence the White House tried to find out why so many experts disputed the C.I.A. tubes theory. If anything, administration officials minimized the divide. On Sept. 13, The Times made the first public mention of the tubes debate in the sixth paragraph of an article on Page A13. In it an unidentified senior administration official dismissed the debate as a ``footnote, not a split.'' Citing another unidentified administration official, the story reported that the ``best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the C.I.A. assessments.'' As a senior Oak Ridge official pointed out to the Intelligence Committee, ``the vast majority of scientists and nuclear experts'' in the Energy Department's laboratories in fact disagreed with the agency. But on Sept. 13, the day the article appeared, the Energy Department sent a directive forbidding employees from discussing the subject with reporters. The Energy Department, in a written statement, said that it was ``completely appropriate'' to remind employees of the need to protect nuclear secrets and that it had made no effort ``to quash dissent.'' It closed hearings that month, Congress began to hear testimony about the debate. Several Democrats said in interviews that secrecy rules had prevented them from speaking out about the gap between the administration's view of the tubes and the more benign explanations described in classified testimony. One senior C.I.A. official recalled cautioning members of Congress in a closed session not to speak publicly about the possibility that the tubes were for rockets. ``If people start talking about that and the Iraqis see that people are saying rocket bodies, that will automatically become their explanation whenever anyone goes to Iraq,'' the official said in an interview. So while administration officials spoke freely about the agency's theory, the evidence that best challenged this view remained almost entirely off limits for public debate. In late September, the C.I.A. sent policymakers its most detailed report on the tubes. For the first time, an agency report acknowledged that ``some in the intelligence community'' believed rocket were ``more likely end uses'' for the tubes, according to officials who have seen the report. Meanwhile, at the Energy Department, scientists were startled to find senior White House officials embracing a view of the tubes they considered thoroughly discredited. ``I was really shocked in 2002 when I saw it was still there,'' Dr. Wood, the Oak Ridge adviser, said of the centrifuge claim. ``I thought it had been put to bed.'' Members of the Energy Department team took a highly unusual step: They began working quietly with a Washington arms- control group, the Institute for Science and International Security, to help the group inform the public about the debate, said one team member and the group's president, David Albright. On Sept. 23, the institute issued the first in series of lengthy reports that repeated some of the Energy Department's arguments against the C.I.A. analysis, though no classified ones. Still, after more than 16 months of secret debate, it was the first public airing of facts that undermined the most alarming suggestions about Iraq's nuclear threat. The reports got little attention, partly because reporters did not realize they had been done with the cooperation of top Energy Department experts. The Washington Post ran a brief article about the findings on Page A18. Many major newspapers, including The Times, ran nothing at all. scrambling for an ``estimate'' Soon after Mr. Cheney's appearance on ``Meet Press,'' Democratic senators began pressing for a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, terrorism and unconventional weapons. A National Intelligence Estimate is a classified document that is supposed to reflect the combined judgment of the entire intelligence community. The last such estimate had been done in 2000. Most estimates take months to complete. But this one had to be done in days, in time for an October vote on a war resolution. There was little time for review or reflection, and no time for Jaeic, the joint committee, to reconcile deep analytical differences. This was a potentially thorny obstacle for those writing the nuclear section: What do you do when the nation's nuclear experts strongly doubt the linchpin evidence behind the C.I.A.'s claims that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program? The Energy Department helped solve the problem. In meetings on the estimate, senior department intelligence officials said that while they still did not believe the tubes were for centrifuges, they nonetheless could agree that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons capability. Several senior scientists inside the department said they were stunned by that stance; they saw no compelling evidence of a revived nuclear program. Some laboratory officials blamed time pressure and inexperience. Thomas S. Ryder, the department's representative at the meetings, had been acting director of the department's intelligence unit for only five months. ``A heck of a nice guy but not savvy on technical issues,'' is the way one senior nuclear official described Mr. Ryder, who declined comment. Mr. Ryder's position was more alarming than prior assessments from the Energy Department. In an August 2001 intelligence paper, department analysts warned of suspicious activities in Iraq that ``could be preliminary steps'' toward reviving a centrifuge program. In July 2002 an Energy Department report, ``Nuclear Reconstitution Efforts Underway?'', noted that several developments, including Iraq's suspected bid to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, suggested Baghdad was ``seeking to reconstitute'' a nuclear weapons program. According to intelligence officials who took part in the meetings, Mr. Ryder justified his department's now firm position on nuclear reconstitution in large part by citing the Niger reports. Many C.I.A. analysts considered that intelligence suspect, as did analysts at the State Department. Nevertheless, the estimate's authors seized on the Energy Department's position to avoid the entire tubes debate, with written dissents relegated to a 10-page annex. The estimate would instead emphasize that the C.I.A. and the Energy Department both agreed that Mr. Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. Only the closest reader would see that each agency was basing its assessment in large measure on evidence the other considered suspect. On Oct. 2, nine days before the Senate vote on the war resolution, the new National Intelligence Estimate was delivered to the Intelligence Committee. The most significant change from past estimates dealt with nuclear weapons; the new one agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was in aggressive pursuit of the atomic bomb. Asked when Mr. Cheney became aware of the disagreements over the tubes, Mr. Kellems, his spokesman, said, ``The vice president knew about the debate at about the time of the National Intelligence Estimated.'' Today, the Intelligence Committee's report makes clear, that 93-page estimate stands as one of the most flawed documents in the history of American intelligence. The committee concluded unanimously that most of the major findings in the estimate were wrong, unfounded or overblown. This was especially true of the nuclear section. Estimates express their most important findings with high, moderate or low confidence levels. This one claimed ``moderate confidence'' on how fast Iraq could have a bomb, but ``high confidence'' that Baghdad was rebuilding its nuclear program. And the tubes were the leading and most detailed evidence cited in the body of the report. According to the committee, the passages on the tubes, which adopted much of the C.I.A. analysis, were misleading and riddled with factual errors. The estimate, for example, included a chart intended to show that the dimensions of the tubes closely matched a Zippe centrifuge. Yet the chart omitted the dimensions of Iraq's 81-millimeter rocket, which precisely matched the tubes. The estimate cited Iraq's alleged willingness to pay top dollar for the tubes, up to $17.50 each, as evidence they were for secret centrifuges. But Defense Department rocket engineers told Senate investigators that 7075-T6 aluminum is ``the material of choice for low-cost rocket systems.'' The estimate also asserted that 7075-T6 tubes were ``poor choices'' for rockets. In fact, similar tubes were used in rockets from several countries, including the United States, and in an Italian rocket, the Medusa, which Iraq had copied. Beyond tubes, the estimate cited several other ``key judgments'' that supported its assessment. The committee found that intelligence just as flawed. The estimate, for example, pointed to Iraq's purchases of magnets, balancing machines and machine tools, all of which could be used in a nuclear program. But each item also had legitimate non-nuclear uses, and there was no credible intelligence whatsoever showing they were for a nuclear program. The estimate said Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission was building new production facilities for nuclear weapons. The Senate found that claim was based on a single operative's report, which described how the commission had constructed one headquarters building and planned `` a new high-level polytechnic school.'' Finally, the estimate stated that many nuclear scientists had been reassigned to the A.E.C. The Senate found nothing to back that conclusion. It did, though, discover a 2001 report in which a commission employee complained that Iraq's nuclear program ``had been stalled since the gulf war.'' Such ``key judgments'' are supposed to reflect the very best American intelligence. (The Niger intelligence, for example, was considered too shaky to be included as a key judgment.) Yet as they studied raw intelligence reports, those involved in the Senate investigation came to a sickening realization. ``We kept looking at the intelligence and saying, `My God, there's nothing here,' '' one official recalled. The Vote for War Soon after the National Intelligence Estimate was completed, Mr. Bush delivered a speech in Cincinnati in which he described the ``grave threat'' that Iraq and its ``arsenal of terror'' posed to the United States. He dwelled longest on nuclear weapons, reviewing much of the evidence outlined in the estimate. The C.I.A. had warned him away from mentioning Niger. ``Facing clear evidence of peril,'' the president concluded, ``we cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.'' Four days later, on Oct. 11, the Senate voted 77-23 to give Mr. Bush broad authority to invade Iraq. The resolution stated that Iraq posed ``a continuing threat'' to the United States by, among other things, ``actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.'' Many Senators who voted for the resolution emphasized the nuclear threat. ``The great danger is a nuclear one,'' Senator Feinstein, the California Democrat, said on the Senate floor. But Senator Bob Graham, then chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said he voted against the resolution in part because of doubts about the tubes. ``It reinforced in my mind pre-existing questions I had about the unreliability of the intelligence community, especially the C.I.A.,'' Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, said in an interview. At the Democratic convention in Boston this summer, Senator John Kerry pledged that should he be elected president, ``I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence.'' But in October 2002, when the Senate voted on Iraq, Mr. Kerry had not read the National Intelligence Estimate, but instead had relied on briefing from Mr. Tenet, a spokeswoman said. ``According to the C.I.A.'s report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons,'' Mr. Kerry said then, explaining his vote. ``There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons.'' The report cited by Mr. Kerry, an unclassified white paper, said nothing about the tubes debate except that ``some'' analysts believed the tubes were ``probably intended'' for conventional arms. ``It is common knowledge that Congress does not have the same access as the executive branch,'' Brooke Anderson, a Kerry spokeswoman, said yesterday. Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, severed on the Intelligence Committee, which gave him ample opportunity to ask hard questions. But in voting to authorize war, Mr. Edwards expressed no uncertainty about the principal evidence of Mr. Hussein's alleged nuclear program. ``We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons,'' Mr. Edwards said then. On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq submitted a 12,200-page declaration about unconventional arms to the United Nations that made no mention of the tubes. Soon after, Winpac analysts at the C.I.A. assessed the declaration for President Bush. The analysts criticized Iraq for failing to acknowledge or explain why it sought tubes ``we believe suitable for use in a gas centrifuge uranium effort.'' Nor, they said, did it ``acknowledge efforts to procure uranium from Niger.'' Neither Energy Department nor State Department intelligence experts were given a chance to review the Winpac assessment, prompting complaints that dissenting views were being withheld from policy makers. ``It is most disturbing that Winpac is essentially directing foreign policy in this matter,'' one Energy Department official wrote in an e-mail message. ``There are some very strong points to be made in respect to Iraq's arrogant noncompliance with U.N. sanctions. However, when individuals attempt to convert those `strong statements' into the `knock-out' punch, the administration will ultimately look foolish--i.e., the tubes and Niger!'' The U.N. Inspectors Return For nearly two years Western intelligence analysts had been trying to divine from afar Iraq's plans for the tubes. At the end of 2002, with the resumption of United Nations arms inspectors, it became possible to seek answers inside Iraq. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency immediately zeroed in on the tubes. The team quickly arranged a field trip to the Nasser metal fabrication factory, where they found 13,000 completed rockets, all produced from 7075-T6 aluminum tubes. The Iraqi rocket engineers explained that they had been shopping for more tubes because their supply was running low. Why order tubes with such tight tolerances? An Iraqi engineer said they wanted to improve the rocket's accuracy without making major design changes. Design documents and procurement records confirmed his account. The inspectors solved another mystery. The tubes intercepted in Jordan had been anodized, given a protective coating. The Iraqis had a simple explanation: they wanted the new tubes protected from the elements. Sure enough, the inspectors found that many thousands of the older tubes, which had no special coating, were corroded because they had been stored outside. The inspectors found no trace of a clandestine centrifuge program. On Jan. 10, 2003, The Times reported that the international agency was challenging ``the key piece of evidence'' behind ``the primary rationale for going to war.'' The article, on Page A10, also reported that officials at the Energy Department and State Department had suggested the tubes might be for rockets. The C.I.A. theory was in trouble, and senior members of the Bush administration seemed to know it. Also that January, White House officials who were helping to draft what would become Secretary Powell's speech to the Security Council sent word to the intelligence community that they believed ``the nuclear case was weak,'' the Senate report said. In an interview, a senior administration official said it was widely understood all along at the White House that the evidence of a nuclear threat was piecemeal and weaker than that for other unconventional arms. But rather than withdraw the nuclear card--a step that could have undermined United States credibility just as tens of thousands of troops were being airlifted to the region-- the White House cast about for new arguments and evidence to support it. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked the intelligence agencies for more evidence beyond the tubes to bolster the nuclear case. Winpac analysts redoubled efforts to prove that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Africa. When rocket engineers at the Defense Department were approached by the C.I.A. and asked to compare the Iraqi tubes with American ones, the engineers said the tubes ``were perfectly usable for rockets.'' The agency analysts did not appear pleased. One rocket engineer complained to Senate investigators that the analysts had ``an agenda'' and were trying ``to bias us'' into agreeing that the Iraqi tubes were not fit for rockets. In interviews, agency officials denied any such effort. According to the Intelligence Committee report, the agency also sought to undermine the I.A.E.A.'s work with secret intelligence assessments distributed only to senior policy makers. Nonetheless, on Jan. 22, in a meeting first reported by The Washington Post, the ubiquitous Joe flew to Vienna in a last-ditch attempt to bring the international experts around to his point of view. The session was a disaster. ``Everybody was embarrassed when he came and made this presentation, embarrassed and disgusted,'' one participant said. ``We were going insane, thinking, `Where is he coming from?' '' On Jan. 27, the international agency rendered its judgment: it told the Security Council that it had found no evidence of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq. ``From our analysis to date,'' the agency reported, ``it appears that the aluminum tubes would be consistent with the purpose stated by Iraq and, unless modified, would not be suitable for manufacturing centrifuges.'' The Powell Presentation The next night, during his State of the Union address, President Bush cited I.A.E.A. findings from years past that confirmed that Mr. Hussein had had an ``advanced'' nuclear weapons program in the 1990's. He did not mention the agency's finding from the day before. He did, though, repeat the claim that Mr. Hussein was trying to buy tubes ``suitable for nuclear weapons production.'' Mr. Bush also cited British intelligence that Mr. Hussein had recently sought ``significant quantities'' of uranium from Africa--a reference in 16 words that the White House later said should have been stricken, though the British government now insists the information was credible. ``Saddam Hussein,'' Mr. Bush said that night, ``has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide. The dictator of Iraq is not disarming.'' A senior administration official involved in vetting the address said Mr. Bush did not cite the I.A.E.A. conclusion of Jan. 27 because the White House believed the agency was analyzing old Iraqi tubes, not the newer ones seized in Jordan. But senior officials in Vienna and Washington said the international group's analysis covered both types of tubes. The senior administration official also said the President's words were carefully chosen to reflect the doubts at the Energy Department. The crucial phrase was ``suitable for nuclear weapons production.'' The phrase stopped short of asserting that the tubes were actually being used in centrifuges. And it was accurate in the sense that Energy Department officials always left open the possibility that the tubes could be modified for use in a centrifuge. ``There were differences,'' the official said, ``and we had to address those differences.'' In his address, the President announced that Mr. Powell would go before the Security Council on Feb. 5 and lay out the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs. The purpose was to win international backing for an invasion, and so the administration spent weeks drafting and redrafting the presentation, with heavy input from the C.I.A., the National Security Council and I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff. The Intelligence Committee said some drafts prepared for Mr. Powell contained language on the tubes that was patently incorrect. The C.I.A.wanted Mr. Powell to say, for example, that Iraq's specifications for roundness were so exacting ``that the tubes would be rejected as defective if I rolled one under my hand on this table, because the mere pressure of my hand would deform it.'' Initelligence analyst at the State Department waged a quiet battle against much of the proposed language on tubes. A year before, they had sent Mr. Powell a report explaining why they believed the tubes were more likely for rockets. The National Intelligence Estimate included their dissent--that they saw no compelling evidence of a comprehensive effort to revive a nuclear weapons program. Now, in the days before the Security Council speech, they sent the secretary detailed memos warning him away from a long list of assertions in the drafts, the intelligence committee found. The language on the tubes, they said, contained ``egregious errors'' and ``highly misleading'' claims. Changes were made, language softened. The line about ``the mere pressure of my hand'' was removed. ``My colleagues,'' Mr. Powell assured the Security Council, ``every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions.'' He made his way to the subject of Mr. Hussein's current nuclear capabilities. ``By now,'' he said, ``just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we all know there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts and the Iraqis themselves argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.'' But Mr. Powell did not acknowledge that those ``other experts'' included many of the nation's most authoritative nuclear experts, some of whom said in interviews that they were offended to find themselves now lumped in with a reviled government. In making the case that the tubes were for centrifuges, Mr. Powell made claims that his own intelligence experts had told him were not accurate. Mr. Powell, for example, asserted to the Security Council that the tubes were manufactured to a tolerance ``that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets.'' Yet in a memo written two days earlier, Mr. Powell's intelligence experts had specifically cautioned him about those very same words. ``In fact,'' they explained, ``the most comparable U.S. system is a tactical rocket--the U.S. Mark 66 air-launched 70-millimeter rocket--that uses the same, high-grade (7075-T6) aluminum, and that has specifications with similar tolerances,'' In the end, Mr. Powell put his personal prestige and reputation behind the C.I.A.'s tube theory. ``When we came to the aluminum tubes,'' Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said in an interview, ``the secretary listened to the discussion of the various views among intelligence agencies, and reflected those issues in his presentation. Since his task at the U.N. was to present the views of the United States, he went with the overall judgment of the intelligence community as reflected by the director of central intelligence.'' As Mr. Powell summed it up for the United Nations, ``People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind these illicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program: the ability to produce fissile material.'' Six weeks later, the war began.

Mr. BYRD. I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BYRD. Why not take more time? What is all the rush? Why not take time? That is all I am asking for is take time. The distinguished Senator has offered to sit down with the distinguished Senator from North Dakota. Why do we not take time and try to work this out? There are many other questions. That is what I am asking. Let us have more time. We are being forced to operate under the gun here and that does not lend itself to very wise legislation. That is what I am asking: How about more time? We might resolve several of these problems then.

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes. I would like to yield to the distinguished Senator, chairman of the Appropriations Committee and President pro tempore of the Senate.

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, we must not take control of public moneys from the elected representatives of the people and give it to an unelected bureaucrat. The Byrd-Stevens-Inouye-Warner amendment gives the director the flexibility to transfer personnel and appropriations to protect against terrorist attacks but provides a leash with which to rein him in should abuses occur. They may occur. They probably will in time. This is a safeguard. I say listen to the Constitution of the United States. I am very interested in reform, and I admire the work the committee has done. But we are acting too hastily. We are not given enough time, and we are going to rue the day that we turned this amendment down and failed to leash this unelected bureaucrat. We, the people, stand by the Constitution.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to offer an amendment that affects the bill in more than one place. I have cleared this with the two managers.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3845.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be added as cosponsors of my amendment: Senators Stevens, Inouye, Warner, Harkin, and Johnson.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, first, I express my appreciation to the two managers for their courtesies that they never fail to extend. I also want to express my appreciation to the distinguished President pro tempore who is in the chair this morning, Senator Stevens, my soulmate on the Appropriations Committee. In 2001, we witnessed the failure of our Government to utilize its intelligence capabilities to protect our Nation against a terrorist attack. For too long, the Congress has deferred to the executive branch on intelligence matters. Congress has failed to vigorously discharge its constitutional oversight responsibilities. I do not say that by way of finding fault with any Senator. The 9/11 Commission illustrated the dangers of this practice. The consequence has been foreign policy failures, prison scandals, politicized intelligence that has led not only to a desperate state of affairs in Iraq but has also left our Nation vulnerable to further terrorist attacks. It is painfully clear that there are dire consequences when the Congress abdicates its constitutional duties to oversee the intelligence agencies within the executive branch. Senators need to be reminded--I need to be reminded as well--that the Congress is a consumer of intelligence. Senators must have access to good intelligence to make informed decisions about our military, about our foreign policy, about the solemn charge to authorize war, and that remains a constitutional function, authorization of war. I am sorry to say I did not hear anybody in last night's debate on either side mention the Constitution of the United States, not once. The Constitution gives Congress alone the power to declare war or authorize war. The Congress must ensure that it is fully and currently informed of all matters that may bear on the exercise of that constitutional authority. Senators ought to be cautious about intelligence reforms and ensure that the role of the Congress in intelligence matters is not undermined. Reform means fixing what has gone wrong, not giving the executive branch more authority to conduct end runs around the Congress. When I speak of the executive branch, I speak generically, both when it is under Democratic control and Republican control. We must ensure that the top national security officials specified in this bill are subject to Senate confirmation so that they are held accountable to the elected representatives of the people. The first three words in the preamble of the Constitution are, ``We the people. . . .'' ``We the people. . . .'' And yet, I say, that Constitution was not mentioned once last night. We must ensure that Senators have access to information necessary to fulfill their Constitutional duties. We must ensure that the Congress does not codify loopholes through which the executive can deny the Congress relevant information. Perhaps most importantly, we must ensure that funds appropriated by the Congress cannot be rerouted without the consent of the people's representatives in Congress. The Governmental Affairs Committee has ensured accountability to the Congress in many of these areas, but I believe more can be done. This is an amendment which I have proposed, along with Senators Stevens, Inouye, Warner, Harkin, and Johnson to remove the qualifiers on Congressional access to information, to ensure that the Congress's role in intelligence matters is preserved, and to ensure that the American people are protected. This amendment requires Senate confirmation of the following positions within the National Intelligence Authority and the Office of Management and Budget: four deputy national intelligence directors, the Officer for Civil Rights and Liberties, the Privacy Officer, and the Deputy Director of OMB for Information Sharing. It is vital that the Congress have access to these officials and be able to hold them accountable for their decisions, particularly in the area of civil liberties. To further that goal, my amendment requires that the Inspector General of the National Intelligence Authority keep the congressional intelligence committees fully and currently informed of violations of law and civil liberties. However, the greatest protection against abuse within the intelligence agencies is to monitor closely their budgets. The Congress should jealously guard its power of the purse, and, to do that, I have worked with Senators Stevens and Inouye to ensure that the authorities granted to the national intelligence director to transfer personnel and funding within the National Intelligence Program closely reflect current law. Our amendment strikes language authorizing the Treasury Secretary to establish new budget accounts for the use of the national intelligence director. This is a function of the Congress, which has the authority to determine how accounts should be constructed to fund our national intelligence. My amendment allows the national intelligence director, with the approval of the OMB Director, to transfer appropriated funds within the National Intelligence Program, and the heads of the departments and agencies to transfer personnel within the intelligence community for periods up to 1 year, under the following conditions: A transfer of funds or personnel may be made only to an activity that is a higher priority; and unforeseen requirement; but not to the Reserve for Contingencies of the national intelligence director. The cumulative transfer in a single fiscal year must be less than $100 million and less than 5 percent of amounts available to such department, agency, or element; and the transfer of funds cannot terminate a program. A transfer may be made without regard to the $100 million and 5 percent limitation if the transfer has the concurrence of the head of the department, agency, or entity concerned--provided, always, that the transfer conforms with the strict limitations set by the Congress each year in its annual appropriations acts. Funds transferred shall remain available for the same period as the appropriations account to which transferred; and any transfer of funds or personnel shall be reported to the appropriate congressional committees, such as Appropriations, Judiciary, Armed Services, and Intelligence. I am confident that if these qualifications are adhered to, the power of the purse will continue to rest safely in the hands of the people's elected representatives. In addition, Senators should take note of Section 224(b)(3) of the pending bill, which would permit the national intelligence director, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, or the Director of a national intelligence center to withhold information requested by the Congress if the President certifies that such information will not be provided because the President is asserting a privilege pursuant to the United States Constitution. It is unclear exactly which privilege the President would invoke, but, given the vague language contained in this provision, a bold and impulsive administration, much like the one currently inhabiting the White House, could concoct nearly any excuse to invoke a so-called ``privilege'' to withhold documents requested by the Congress. Giving any administration an unrestrained green light to trump any and all forthcoming Congressional requests for information, based on some undefined and nefarious assertion of executive privilege as described in this provision, would be an unmitigated disaster. My amendment strikes that egregious language. It is my hope, as well as the hope of my colleagues who cosponsored this measure with me, that this amendment will ensure that the Congress's Constitutional role in intelligence and foreign policy matters is safeguarded. However, Senators should understand that the statutory authority to oversee our intelligence community means very little if it is not utilized. We must be vigilant in our oversight. We must be aggressive in our inquiries. We must not abdicate our Constitutional duties. I urge the adoption of my amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD. Walt Whitman said: A man is a great thing upon the Earth, and through eternity--but every jot of greatness of man is unfolded out of woman. So let me pay tribute to our Presiding Officer at this moment. Madam President, I have the utmost respect for the two managers of this bill. I have the utmost respect for their dedication and for the knowledge which they bring to bear upon this subject. I am not a member of the committee that has jurisdiction over the legislation before the Senate. So I salute them and tip my hat to them and bow to them. So what I say is certainly in no fashion, in no way or form any criticism of them. They are doing the best they can do. But the Constitution of the United States still lives. It still governs. Let's read this paragraph from section 9 of the U.S. Constitution: No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time. Let these words sink in: . . . and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time. We have to keep that provision in mind. The amendment I have offered today simply ensures that the national intelligence director spends money in accordance with the annual appropriations bills. It provides the flexibility that the director may require but limits that flexibility to the laws passed by Congress and to the knowledge that there is this provision: . . . a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public money-- ``All public money.'' . . . all public money shall be published from time to time. We cannot allow this national intelligence director to spend the people's tax dollars without restraint, without some limitation, without some restraint. A $40 billion blank check? We cannot allow the national intelligence director to spend money without regard to Congress. There must be some limitations on his spending authority. Without this amendment, the intelligence director, and not the Congress, will determine how certain appropriated moneys are spent. We must not remove all limitations on this new intelligence director. If we yield the power of the purse to this new intelligence director, then we have only limited means to rein him in if there are abuses of power. My amendment limits the transfer of appropriations to $100 million and even allows the Department heads to waive that limitation as long as it is consistent with appropriations law. That, it seems to me, should be more than enough flexibility. We must retain some limitation. The intelligence director must not be allowed to write his own appropriations bill. That would elevate him above the Congress. That will elevate him, an intelligence director, above the people's elected representatives in Congress. We talk about the trumpet that gives an uncertain sound. Yes. How can we be certain as to what we are doing when we are rushed and pressured into passing legislation as major as this legislation in such a limited time, which is hours? We are being pressured to pass this legislation before we adjourn sine die. This is massive legislation. It is far- reaching legislation. The Congress should not have to operate under a hammer, as we are being driven here. Henry Kissinger came before the Appropriations Committee when Senator Stevens held those hearings. I compliment my chairman, Mr. Stevens, on having those hearings. Henry Kissinger, a man with vast experience, vast knowledge, advised us not to pass this gargantuan measure in such a hurry and under such pressure and during a Presidential campaign. I say to my colleagues, we ought not bend to the lash of the whip on the part of the leadership, on the part of the administration, on the part of anyone else. We should take more time. We do not know what we are doing here. I am seeking to protect the people's representatives and the Congress from making what could be a major mistake. We were rushed into passing legislation creating a Department of Homeland Security, were we not? I tried to get more time. I tried to get the leadership on both sides to listen. They would not listen. Now we find that there are major problems with that Department. On that fateful occasion on October 11, when the Senate voted to shift the constitutional power to declare war from the Congress--not just one body of Congress, but both bodies of Congress--to one man, oh, what a terrible mistake that was, what a terrible error. We were told: Let's get it behind us. Let's get it behind us. Let's get it behind us. The idea was to get that legislation passed before that election. So the Senate passed that legislation in a hurry, on October 11 of that year. Oh, we will always rue that day that the Senate bent to the urgings of the leadership, which said: Let's get it behind us. We have not gotten it behind us. We did not get it behind us. I said at the time we would not get it behind us. I said at the time that the President, Mr. Bush, would not let us get it behind us. That was what he wanted. He wanted the Senate to bend in that critical hour before an election so that the Senators who voted on that measure would be somehow conscious that there was an election down the road, and particularly those who were running would be under the whiplash of an election. Oh, what a terrible mistake. I felt so ashamed. For the first time in my 46 years in this Senate, I felt ashamed that the Senate was knuckling under to the executive branch and making a mistake which is rued to this day and will be rued to the end of time. That blotch upon the escutcheon of this great body, the first time in my 46 years that I was ashamed, this Senate stood mute. It stood bowed. It was intimidated. And we can make another mistake if we go and rush in too big a hurry. We are doing a big thing here. I do not set myself up as anyone who has the vast knowledge that Mr. Lieberman has or that Ms. Collins has over this subject matter. I am not on that committee. But I do know when we are being pressured to act in too big a hurry. This is a big bill. Why can't we wait until after the first of the year? Why can't we wait until a new Congress, perhaps with a new President--who knows?--a new Chief Executive? Why can't we wait and do the job right? This is a job that we ought to do right and not do it under the gun. I do not know what is in this bill. I am not on the committee. I do not know what is in this bill. I do not claim to know what is in the bill. But I tell you, we must not remove all limitations on this new intelligence director. Why, this man is going to be God when it comes to appropriations and legislation and matters affecting the people. This is the perfect example of how we are rushing through this intelligence bill without fully understanding what we are doing. I do not understand what we are doing, and I need to understand what we are doing. To properly represent the people from West Virginia, I need to understand what we are doing. Now, fortunately, I have a good colleague on the Intelligence Committee, Senator Rockefeller. But I tell you, we are dealing with matters that go to the heart--the heart--of a free government. Englishmen spilled their blood for centuries to wield the power of the purse away from monarchs in England. They shed their blood, yes, going all the way back to the Magna Carta, the great charter, in 1215. It was signed on the banks of the Thames River. I think we ought to go a little slower. This is a perfect example of how we are rushing through this intelligence bill. I say it with all due respect to Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins. I admire them, but I admire the Constitution also. I think we ought to stop, look, and listen, and slow down a little bit here. Without this amendment, the Congress will cede its power of the purse just as it ceded the authority to declare war 2 years ago. We owe it to the 9/11 families to get this right. I say to my staff all the time: If you don't do the job right, how are you going to find time to do it over? That applies in this instance, too. I say that with all due respect. There is nothing to keep my colleague--my cherished friend, for whom I have great admiration--from coming back next year, from sitting in the driver's seat and doing this thing and doing it perhaps better than he has done it in the first instance. I have no doubt that he would go at it with a will. In the long run, the victims of 9/11 will not forgive us if we give away the power of the purse. And don't forget, it is not just that first sentence. There is more to it than the first sentence: No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all-- Not just some, all-- public Money shall be published from time to time. Better ponder that bit of verbiage before we get in too big a hurry here. We will have some opportunities to talk further about this amendment. In sitting down, let me again pay homage to my friend, a public servant whom I long have admired, and this fine lady. I tell you, she is a stalwart. But God save the Constitution. God save it. Let's don't be in too big a hurry. Take a little more time and do it right. I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I have no intention of belaboring this today. I understand we are going to vote next week, on Monday at 3. I hope we will have an opportunity to debate this further on Monday. The distinguished Senator, Ms. Collins, has said: What more do we need? What other witnesses do we need to hear? Let me name some witnesses who are represented by the distinguished Henry Kissinger when he appeared before the Appropriations Committee. What an impressive bipartisan array of national security experts pleading with Congress not to rush these reforms. The list is a list of stars from both sides of the aisle, as it were: David Boren, Bill Bradley, Frank Carlucci, William Cohen, Robert Gates, John Hamre, Gary Hart, Sam Nunn, Warren Rudman, George Shultz, as I have already mentioned, Henry Kissinger. These men from both sides, both political parties, men who have held preeminent positions in this Government, Republicans and Democrats, appeared before the Appropriations Committee and said: Wait, don't act in too great a hurry. They have decades of knowledge and experience, and yet we stand ready to dismiss their concerns out of hand. Let us not be rushed into this. I am not opposed to a national intelligence director. I am not opposed to that. Elections are a perfect time for a debate but a terrible time for decisionmaking. When it comes to intelligence reform, Americans should not settle for adjustments that are driven by the calendar instead of by common sense. They deserve a thoughtful, comprehensive approach to these critical issues. I am not saying the distinguished members of that committee were not thoughtful. They were. But if, as seems likely, Congress considers it is essential to act now on certain structural reforms, we believe it has an obligation--I do--to return to this issue early next year in the 109th Congress to address these issues more comprehensively. It would seem to me that--let me say again--such a list, a list of stars, as former members of the Government are concerned: David Boren, Bill Bradley, Frank Carlucci, William Cohen--so you see, we have former Secretaries of Defense here--Roberts Gates, John Hamre, Gary Hart, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Warren Rudman, and George Shultz. These luminaries are asking for more time. These witnesses testified before the Appropriations Committee, and all of them said: Go slow; go slow. Let me tell you who these people are. Dr. John Hamre is the CEO at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The others have services and titles that speak for themselves. I will not go into these. But I am simply saying we need to talk some more about this next week. I hope we will ponder carefully. I am not opposed to a national intelligence director, but I simply say we should have more time. We saw, Madam President, the unwisdom of being in a hurry when it came to the invasion of Iraq. Our Government invaded. It won a short war, but it had not given proper thought to what would come after, had not given proper thought, it had not planned properly and carefully for a postwar Iraq. And now look at what is happening. Look at the terrible cost, the terrible price this Government is paying--paying with the blood of the sons and daughters of our country. Think of it. Let's don't be in such a big hurry. Let's take more time. Madam President, I shall have more to say at a later time. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, will the distinguished Senator yield?