The Clinton and Obama camps' fight over the Iraq War vote has spilled over into the today's WaPo:
Mark Penn and Obama strategist David Axelrod engaged in a pointed and occasionally heated exchange during a public forum at Harvard University over the issue that has become the central point of dispute between the two leading candidates for the 2008 Democratic nomination. [...]
The Clinton campaign later supplied several Obama quotations from 2004 to buttress Penn's attack. One came from the New York Times, in which Obama declined to criticize the Democratic Party's presidential and vice presidential nominees, Sen. John F. Kerry and then-Sen. John Edwards, for supporting the 2002 war resolution. "But I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports," Obama said, according to the Times.
All 100 US Senators were privy to the full classifed Iraq NIE complete with INR, DOE, and US Air Force intelligence dissents. Only 6 bothered to read it. Was Sen. Hillary Clinton one of the six?
More on the flip...
On April 27, 2004 Dana Priest wrote the following on page A1 of the WaPo:
In the fall of 2002, as Congress debated waging war in Iraq, copies of a 92-page assessment of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction sat in two vaults on Capitol Hill, each protected by armed security guards and available to any member who showed up in person, without staff.
But only a few ever did. No more than six senators and a handful of House members read beyond the five-page National Intelligence Estimate executive summary, according to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material.
This original Dana Priest reporting was repackaged as an attack (legitimate) on John Kerry by the GOP in July of '04 when it was revealed that the Democratic nominee himself did not read the full classified Iraq NIE (see Reuters). It was important to read the full NIE because the dissents were not in the summary views. This 'Who read the NIE?' story bubbled up again in 2005 when Democrats ramped up their criticism of the war and Harry Reid shut down the Senate in a closed door session to debate the long-awaited but never produced Part II of the SSCI whitewash report on the politicization of intelligence.
From the conservative Human Events:
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.), who is leading a spurious Democratic campaign that alleges President Bush misled the country into war, admitted last week that he did not read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs that Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet prepared in 2002 at the request of Senate Democrats specifically so Congress would have up-to-date intelligence as it debated whether to authorize the Iraq war.
Who else was quoted in the Human Events piece? Sen. Hillary Clinton:
Asked if she had read it, likely 2008 presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.), said: "I’m not going to say anything about that. Just let the intelligence committee do their work, okay?"
I'll be generous and call that unclear. So I ask respectfully of Sen. Hillary Clinton:
Did you read the full 92-page classified Iraq NIE from Oct.'02 PRIOR to your 10/11/02 vote to 'authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.'? A simple YES or NO will do.
_
Back to today's WaPo political story about Clinton vs. Obama. There is an obvious attempt on the part of the Clinton camp to turn Barack Obama's 2004 comments regarding John Kerry ("I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports") into some kind of innoculation against future criticism of Sen. Clinton's Iraq War vote.
You see it in Mark Penn's comments in today's WaPo:
Penn, responding to a question about Clinton's vote for the resolution, used the opportunity to attack Obama, arguing that he had said in 2004 that he was not sure whether he would have voted against the resolution had he been in the Senate.
"Obama said he didn't know exactly how he would have voted in Congress because he didn't have the full intelligence," Penn said.
Press releases from the Hillary Clinton camp:
The Clinton campaign later supplied several Obama quotations from 2004 to buttress Penn's attack. [...] The Clinton campaign also distributed an e-mail citing an Obama interview from the week of the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" and was asked by moderator Tim Russert: "How could they have been so wrong and you so right as a state legislator in Illinois and they're on the Foreign Relations and intelligence committees in Washington?"
Obama replied, "Well, I think they have access to information that I did not have."
And backstage manueverings by the Big Dog himself. From Greg Sargent:
Okay, I think I've unearthed the Barack Obama quote that Bill Clinton is criticizing The New York Times for not giving more attention to. It's from July of 2004.
As reported below, Clinton sharply criticized The Times at a private fundraiser the other day. His gripe was that the paper spends too much time dwelling on Hillary's refusal to say her war vote was a "mistake," and not enough time on certain past Barack Obama quotations about the war. The former President didn't specify exactly which quote he was referring to, but I'm certain that I've found it. It actually ran in a Times piece about Obama from July 26, 2004 (via Nexis):
[...]''But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,'' Mr. Obama said. ''What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.''[...]
For those who are unfamiliar with the full clasified Iraq '02 NIE (96-pg PDF) it is the document that contained the full State Department INR dissent on the Iraqi nuclear program, the full Department of Energy dissent on the aluminum tubes, and US Air Force intelligence dissent on the purpose of Iraqi flying drones. The NIE and it's various executive summaries, key judgements, and 'white paper' versions have been part of the Libby trial and some version of the NIE was what was discussed over breakfast with Judith Miller. (paging emptywheel and eriposte - I'm no expert on the NIE).
The fact remains that before a vote whether or not to authorize war only 6 US Senators read the book, and 94 Senators relied on the CliffsNotes version of intelligence even though they were 'privy' to the full original. The two Senators who pushed hardest to have the US intelligence community compile an NIE, Senator Bob Graham and Senator Dick Durbin, both voted against authorizing military force against Iraq - largely because the full classified 96-page NIE contained many more caveats and dissents than any of the summaries.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (and her surrogates) want to probe Sen. Obama's statements 'I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports' and 'I think they have access to information that I did not have.'. This is fair game. But having 'access' to intelligence reports isn't the same as actually reading the reports. Nevermind that the more intelligence you saw the stronger the case AGAINST the war became, according to Sens. Graham and Durbin.
So I will again ask respectfully of Sen. Hillary Clinton:
Did you read the full 92-page classified Iraq NIE from Oct.'02 PRIOR to your 10/11/02 vote to 'authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.'? A simple YES or NO will do.
**Update** - Joynow found Sen. Bob Graham's floor statement urging his fellow Senators to read the full classifed NIE. Here is Sen. Graham's statement: "Friends, I encourage you to read the classified intelligence reports which are much sharper than what is available in declassified form," Sen. Graham reports stating on the floor of the Senate in October 2002.
"We are going to be increasing the threat level against the people of the United States." He warned: "Blood is going to be on your hands"