WP: Lawmakers Focus on Daily Brief In Prewar Intelligence Debate

[Rose Siding]

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 19, 2005; Page

Senate and House Democrats focused their attention yesterday on the highly classified intelligence provided in the President's Daily Brief, as they continued to challenge White House statements that members of Congress saw the same intelligence on prewar Iraq that President Bush saw.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) worked yesterday to attach to the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill an amendment that would require portions of Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs) from Jan. 20, 2000, to March 19, 2003, that referred to Iraq to be submitted to the appropriate congressional committees by the CIA Director Porter J. Goss.

In the House, Democrats on the intelligence committee sent a letter to Stephen J. Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, citing the PDB and other intelligence to argue that it was "highly misleading" to claim that the White House and Congress had equal access to prewar intelligence.
....
Harman's group also held a news conference yesterday to complain that the chairman of the House intelligence panel, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), had rejected a request for investigating the prewar intelligence because the Senate intelligence committee was undertaking that task.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111802578.html

[rodeodance]

1. "Congress does not have access to the President's Daily Brief"

.......In the House, Democrats also talked about the PDB.

"Congress does not have access to the President's Daily Brief" and other materials, said the letter sent to Hadley by a group led by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee. They also pointed out that the president meets with top intelligence officials in the session for which the PDB is prepared. That "allows him full access to intelligence community officials and provides a set time each day when he can ask senior intelligence officials about the basis for their judgments."

Harman's group also held a news conference yesterday to complain that the chairman of the House intelligence panel, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), had rejected a request for investigating the prewar intelligence because the Senate intelligence committee was undertaking that task...........

[rodeodance]

2. this is key--to knock down the myth that Congress read the same intell.