White House withholds intelligence-panel data

By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times

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Administration officials say the arrangement has helped to attract the best-qualified people, but critics say the White House's refusal to disclose financial information raises questions about potential conflicts of interest that could cloud the commission's work.

Citing an exemption to federal ethics regulations, the White House says the financial-disclosure statements filed by the commission's nine members will remain confidential because they are not being paid for their work.

"The president was looking for highly qualified, well-respected individuals to serve on a temporary basis, and he thought that this was the best way to set up the commission," said Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman.

Experts said the White House's refusal to make public the commission's business links may fuel questions about its independence and taint its investigation into one of the Bush administration's biggest potential political vulnerabilities: the quality of intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.

In addition to issues of financial disclosure, some critics of the Bush administration have charged that political interests could influence its findings.

Laurence Silberman, a conservative judge who is one of the commission's two co-chairmen, has drawn criticism because of his judicial record and close ties to the Bush administration. Several other commissioners also have financial links to groups in the Middle East and the defense industry that could become involved in the inquiry.

"This is a critical commission, and if the White House is going to withhold basic information about its members that should be made public, that's a shame," said Bill Allison, a spokesman for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit that tracks government ethics issues.

One high-level commission that does make public the financial interests of its members is the panel created by Congress and the White House in late 2002 to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But it, too, has been dogged by charges of conflicts of interest.

The original chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, Henry Kissinger, stepped down because he said resolving potential conflicts of interest would have meant liquidating his consulting firm, while his vice chairman, former Sen. George Mitchell, stepped aside in part because of an unwillingness to sever ties with his law firm.

The commission's current executive director and a commissioner also have been interviewed by the intelligence commission about their knowledge of intelligence activities leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, spurring charges of a conflict from some of the victims' survivors.
 
Bush administration officials and ethics specialists said that when politicians seek to appoint people with broad experience to serve on important commissions, charges of conflicts arise almost inevitably because those people usually have extensive contacts in business and global affairs as well.

"It's a problem that's endemic to Washington," said Stan Brand, a Washington, D.C., lawyer specializing in government ethics. "If this commission is really going to conduct a wide-ranging review of intelligence gathering, at some point its members are going to bump into individuals or entities of the kind that they've represented, and they're going to have to confront that by sealing themselves off from those clients."

Clearly the most scrutiny has fallen on Silberman, a senior part-time judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Conservatives hail him as a well-respected leader who has had a long career as a diplomat, law-enforcement official and jurist. But several liberal groups and Democratic lawmakers have attacked what they call his severe partisanship on and off the bench in episodes including the Iran-contra affair, the Whitewater investigation and accusations of sexual misconduct against former President Clinton.

Silberman acknowledged that he counts among his friends both Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And he said, "I plead guilty to being something of a conservative," but added that this would not color his leadership of the commission.

As for the commission members' financial interests, Silberman said he was unaware that the White House planned to keep the information confidential, and he pledged to make his disclosure form available in the coming days.

"It's plain vanilla — the only financial interests I have are mutual funds," he said.

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