Conservatives falsely claimed White House and Congress saw "same intelligence" on Iraqi threat

Shortly after leading Democrats pushed for the completion of a congressional investigation into the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence, White House officials responded that such scrutiny of their handling of the intelligence is unwarranted because both the White House and Congress possessed the same flawed reports and came to the same incorrect conclusions. Numerous conservative media figures have since echoed this argument. But the claim that the administration and Congress saw the same intelligence ignores several important facts. First, taking into account assessments such as the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), the White House typically has access to more intelligence than does Congress -- and indeed, this was the case with prewar intelligence on Iraq. Second, the Bush administration began making claims about the Iraqi threat months before Congress received any substantial intelligence analysis. And third, the administration received information directly from alternative intelligence sources, specifically the since-discredited Office of Special Plans and Iraqi National Congress.

On November 1, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) forced the Senate into closed session and demanded a pledge that the Senate Intelligence Committee complete "phase two" of its investigation into prewar intelligence, as the committee's chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), had previously promised.

The "phase one" probe concerned the intelligence community's failure to provide accurate intelligence on the Iraqi threat and was completed in April 2004. During the course of the initial investigation, Democrats on the committee reached an agreement with their Republican counterparts to conduct a second phase of the probe. This investigation would examine five additional matters, including how the administration had used the available intelligence in public statements and reports. But 19 months after this agreement, and a year past the point at which Roberts had stated that "phase two" would become a priority, the Democrats on the committee claimed they had yet to see a draft, despite sustained efforts to move the investigation forward.

In response to Democratic demands for completion of phase two, the Republican National Committee issued talking points saying that "Just A Few Years Back, Dems Were Warning About WMDs In Iraq," and quoting numerous Democratic members of Congress stating in late 2002 that Iraq posed a significant threat to the United States. On the November 2 edition of CNN's The Situation Room -- a day after the closed Senate session -- White House communications director Dan Bartlett suggested that the investigation should start with the Democrats themselves, rather than the administration:

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