Ten Senators Send Letter on Downing Street Minutes to Senate Intelligence Committee
AfterDowningStreet.org Coalition Welcomes Senators' Letter as "Another Major Step Forward"
"The senators' letter is another major step forward in our demand for the truth," said John Bonifaz, Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org , a coalition of organizations lobbying for an investigation of the build-up to the war.
"Has the President of the United States engaged in a deliberate conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States
Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq?" Bonifaz asked. "The United States
Constitution demands that we investigate fully this question, wherever it may lead."
Senator Kerry (D - MA) has sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee pressing for answers on the Downing Street
Minutes and related documents. The letter, obtained by RawStory.com, is also signed by Senators Johnson, Corzine, Reed,
Lautenberg, Boxer, Kennedy, Harkin, Bingaman, and Durbin. The text of the letter is below.
June 22, 2005
The Honorable Pat Roberts, Chairman
The Honorable John D. Rockefeller, IV, Vice Chairman
United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence SH-211
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller:
We write concerning your committee's vital examination of pre-war Iraq intelligence failures. In particular, we urge you
to accelerate to completion the work of the so-called "Phase II" effort to assess how policy makers used the
intelligence they received.
Last year your committee completed the first phase of a two-phased effort to review the pre-war intelligence on Iraq.
Phase I-begun in the summer of 2003 and completed in the summer of 2004-examined the performance of the American
intelligence community in the collection and analysis of intelligence prior to the war, including an examination of the
quantity and quality of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence on ties between
Saddam Hussein's regime and terrorist groups. At the conclusion of Phase I, your committee issued an unclassified report
that made an important contribution to the American public's understanding of the issues involved.
In February 2004-well over a year ago-the committee agreed to expand the scope of inquiry to include a second phase
which would examine the use of intelligence by policy makers, the comparison of pre-war assessments and post-war
findings, the activities of the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans in the
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and the use of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress.
The committee's efforts have taken on renewed urgency given recent revelations in the United Kingdom regarding the
apparent minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security
advisors. These minutes-known as the "Downing Street Memo"-raise troubling questions about the use of intelligence by
American policy makers-questions that your committee is uniquely situated to address.
The memo indicates that in the summer of 2002, at a time the White House was promising Congress and the American people
that war would be their last resort, that they believed military action against Iraq was "inevitable."
The minutes reveal that President "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction
of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The American people took the warnings that the administration sounded seriously-warnings that were echoed at the United
Nations and here in Congress as we voted to give the president the authority to go to war. For the sake of our democracy
and our future national security, the public must know whether such warnings were driven by facts and responsible
intelligence, or by political calculation.
These issues need to be addressed with urgency. This remains a dangerous world, with American forces engaged in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and other challenges looming in Iran and North Korea. In this environment, the American public should have
the highest confidence that policy makers are using intelligence objectively-never manipulating it to justify war, but
always to protect the United States. The contents of the Downing Street Memo undermine this faith and only rigorous
Congressional oversight can determine the truth.
We urge the committee to complete the second phase of its investigation with the maximum speed and transparency
possible, producing, as it did at the end of Phase I, a comprehensive, unclassified report from which the American
people can benefit directly.
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AfterDowningStreet.org is a rapidly growing coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups, which launched on May
26, 2005, a campaign to urge the U.S. Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed
impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war.