A March 12 article by New York Times staff writer Scott Shane attributed to a “partisan standoff” both the Senate Intelligence Committee's delay in completing the second phase of its investigation of prewar intelligence on Iraq and its failure to probe the CIA's handling of terrorism suspects. But in attributing the committee's failures to partisanship, Shane ignored the conduct of committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KA) in apparently impeding both of these investigations or blocking them outright.

Shane's article, "Senate Panel's Partisanship Troubles Former Membership," covered the ongoing rift between Roberts and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the committee. Shane wrote that a “tone of recrimination and hurt feelings, sarcasm and distrust” pervaded their recent disagreement over whether to conduct a full investigation of the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program. Shane further noted that the frayed relations between the two senators have had other “practical consequences”:

It is the same tone that has left the committee deadlocked over the last 18 months over how to address a host of incendiary issues, including how the Bush administration used prewar intelligence on Iraq and the rules for detention and interrogation of terror suspects.

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The partisan standoff has had practical consequences. Though the committee managed to complete a well-regarded investigation of flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons, it has been stalled for months over the completion of the second phase of that inquiry, which examines how policy makers used the intelligence.

Even as the American news media and European parliaments have produced report after report on the Central Intelligence Agency's handling of terror suspects, the committee has held no hearings on the topic and conducted no formal investigation.

But Shane overlooked Roberts's apparent responsibility in both cases. Roberts has apparently delayed -- repeatedly -- the second phase of the committee's investigation into the administration's use of prewar intelligence, deeming it unnecessary. The committee's Phase I investigation, completed in April 2004, concerned the intelligence community's failure to provide accurate intelligence on the Iraqi threat. During the course of the initial investigation, Democrats on the committee reached an agreement with their Republican counterparts to conduct a second phase examining the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

Roberts initially called Phase II a "priority" and claimed that it would be completed sometime after the 2004 presidential election. But, in March 2005, he disclosed that it had been put "on the back-burner" and, on March 31, 2005, released a statement describing the investigation as “a monumental waste of time.” In a June 22, 2005, letter, Senate Democrats urged the committee to “accelerate to completion the work of the so-called 'Phase II' effort to assess how policy makers used the intelligence they received.” But in a July 20, 2005, response, Roberts disputed the fact that the committee had “agree[d] to examine the vague notion” of how policymakers used intelligence.

During the following months, Roberts failed to report any subsequent progress on Phase II, despite repeated inquiries from Democratic committee members. In response, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (NV) forced the Senate into a rare closed-door session on November 1, 2005, and demanded a pledge from Roberts that the investigation would be completed.

Roberts immediately denied that he had stalled the investigation. “It isn't like it's been delayed,” he said on the Senate floor that day. “As a matter of fact, it's been ongoing. As a matter of fact, we have been doing our work on Phase II.” He again pledged to finish the investigation, despite continuing to dismiss the probe as unnecessary and irrelevant. On November 14, 2005, three Democratic members of the committee reported to Reid and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) that Roberts refused to exact “additional interviews and documents” needed to fully answer the “critical questions surrounding the use of intelligence in the months leading up to the war.”

While Shane failed to note Roberts's efforts to delay Phase II, the Times' editorial board criticized the chairman's tactics in a February 17 editorial headlined "Doing the President's Dirty Work":

For more than a year, Mr. Roberts has been dragging out an investigation into why Mr. Bush presented old, dubious and just plain wrong intelligence on Iraq as solid new proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was in league with Al Qaeda. It was supposed to start after the 2004 election, but Mr. Roberts was letting it die of neglect until the Democrats protested by forcing the Senate into an unusual closed session last November.

In his March 12 article, Shane similarly noted that the committee has “held no hearings ... and conducted no formal investigation” on the CIA's controversial practice of transferring suspected terrorists to countries where torture is common. But he ignored the fact that Democratic members of the committee have repeatedly called for such an investigation.

In early February 2005, Rockefeller sent a letter to Roberts advocating that the committee review the CIA's handling of suspected terrorists. Times staff writer Douglas Jehl reported on Roberts's intransigence in a March 2, 2005, article (subscription required):

The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is opposing a request by the panel's top Democrat to investigate possible misconduct by the C.I.A. in the treatment of terrorism suspects, Congressional officials said Tuesday.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, is insisting that any review be conducted only as part of the committee's standard oversight role, not a broader inquiry, an aide to Mr. Roberts said.

By contrast, the proposal by the Democratic vice chairman, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, outlined by his staff for the first time on Tuesday, calls for ''an investigation into all matters that have any tendency to reveal the full facts about the detention, interrogation and rendition authority and practices'' used by government agencies for intelligence purposes.

In a speech the following month, Roberts said that “he saw no need for the panel to investigate allegations that the agency abused prisoners or transferred them to countries that engage in torture,” according to a March 11 Los Angeles Times article. In response, Rockefeller issued a statement on behalf of all seven Democrats on the committee demanding an investigation into this “extremely critical issue.”