Jay Rockefeller: “I oppose this amendment for a variety of reasons. I do not oppose this amendment because of the intent of trying to get…”

“I oppose this amendment for a variety of reasons. I do not oppose this amendment because of the intent of trying to get to the bottom of all of the problems we face in the work we are doing in the Intelligence Committee, on which I serve as vice chair. But I oppose it because it would have the effect of undermining what we are doing, further diluting the focus on the issue of WMD prewar intelligence, all the rest of it. I do not mean to imply by that that the investigation is moving at the speed with which I would like to see it in the committee. Those issues are being addressed between the chairman and myself and members on each side of the aisle trying to work in a bipartisan fashion. This is an investigation which not only has the comparison of prewar intelligence to what we more recently discovered or may be discovering, but it also has the whole question of wherever the trail leads, which is a phrase the chairman of the committee has used. There are other aspects of this, whether you use the word dissemination of intelligence; you collect it; you analyze it, and then it gets put over to the policy people. Then they use it in one way or another. The use of that, whether there was any pressure brought to bear, all of those things are areas that we are in the process of examining right now. It is a difficult subject.”