Eric Umansky: Kicking the can down the road

June 13, 2004

Kicking the can down the road

As you may remember, early this year former top weapons searcher David Kay admitted that "we were all wrong" about the existence of banned weapons in Iraq. Facing heat, the White House appointed a commission to look into the supposedly intel flop. The commission doesn't have subpoena power, is tasked with looking generally at intel and WMD issues rather than only Iraq, and doesn't have to complete its work until March 2005. Nor is it expressly mandated to look at how the White House portrayed the intel. The goal, as one Republican congressional staffer told the Post, was to "kick the can down the road."

Despite all the shortcomings, the panel still has the potential to make some waves... if it ever gets off the ground. So four months on, what progress has the commission made?

Not much.

Larry McQuillan, the commission's spokesperson, explains that members of the panel have had a total of one meeting, on May 26. They plan on getting together about once a month for two days each. (The 9/11 commissioners, by contrast, has been confabbing about six days per month.)

Of course, like the 9/11 panel, the WMD commission will rely heavily on full-time staffers to do the grunt work. McQuillan says the the commission will eventually have about 50 people and is "pretty far along" in the hiring process. (The 9/11 has about 80 staffers, who, btw, have done great work.) How many staffers does that mean they have now? "I've been asked not to say," says McQuillan. Um, is this a national security secret? "It's above my pay grade."

Well, at least they have one staffer hanging around, their spokesman. Except not really. McQuillan explains, he's currently moonlighting for the commission and works full-time elsewhere.

June 13, 2004 at 12:11 PM | Permalink