By setting up the investigation himself, Bush, who had resisted a probe, will have greater control over its membership and mandate. The senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it would be patterned after the Warren Commission, so named for its chairman Earl Warren, then the chief justice of the Supreme Court, which led a 10-month investigation that concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy.
The investigation will examine not only Iraq but also intelligence issues dealing with stateless groups such as terrorists and secretive regimes such as North Korea, the official said, insisting on anonymity. Given the broad mandate of the investigation, it is not likely to be completed before the November elections.
Lawmakers from both parties say America's credibility has been undermined by uncertainty over flawed intelligence that led the United States into war in Iraq. Republicans joined Democrats in calling for an investigation.
"I don't see there's any way around it," Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition."
"We need to open this up in a very nonpartisan, outside commission, to see where we are," Hagel said. The issue is not just shortcomings of US intelligence, he said, but "the credibility of who we are around the world and the trust of our government and our leaders."
Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, another top Republican on the committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that he may be willing to go along with an independent commission because "I think we have major problems with our intelligence community. I think we need to take a look at a complete overhaul."
