Questions on DOCEX

THE SENATE SELECT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE meets at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday for an open hearing on worldwide threats. Among the attendees will be director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and DIA director Michael Maples.

For months, these officials have refused to answer questions about the ongoing exploitation of documents (known as DOCEX) recovered in postwar Iraq. While much of the questioning will rightly focus on current issues such as Iran, terrorist surveillance, Hamas, and Syria, these hearings present senators with an opportunity to press these intelligence officials on the DOCEX project--both its process and its results. Questions regarding DOCEX should be directed to Negroponte and Maples; others queries should be asked of Negroponte, Maples, CIA director Porter Goss, and FBI director Robert Mueller. If the intelligence community continues to block the release of recovered documents, its representatives should at least be required to provide reasons for their stonewalling and a sense of what we are learning from our limited exploitation thus far.

Here are some questions they should be required to answer:

(1) Intelligence officials who have worked on document exploitation tell us that there are roughly 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Afghanistan and postwar Iraq. Of that number, they say, some 50,000 have been fully exploited. To the best of your knowledge, are those numbers accurate?

(2) Some of the documents are believed to contain intelligence that may have a direct bearing on the current insurgency in Iraq. If those numbers are accurate, why has the U.S. intelligence community exploited less than 3 percent of the overall document take?

(3) What can be done to expedite this process?

(4) Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts and House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra have recommended that the U.S. intelligence community "release these documents to the general public" and that we should "explore the establishment of one or more international academic commissions or institutes dedicated to the study of these documents and media." This request was sent to DNI Negroponte and dated November 18, 2005. The DNI press office will say only that the proposal is being studied. Will the documents be released publicly? If so, when? If not, why not?

(5) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently asked the DIA for a plan detailing how, exactly, the documents could be released in the event that a decision was made to release them. Has the DIA responded to Secretary Rumsfeld's request? If so, what is the plan?

(6) Have you seen evidence that the former Iraqi regime trained jihadists, including, but not limited to, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Liberation Front, the GSPC from Algeria, and an organization known to the Iraqi regime as the Sudanese Islamic Army? If so, can you describe this evidence?

(7) Does the U.S. intelligence community, based on the very limited exploitation of documents performed to date, have an estimate of how many terrorists the former Iraqi regime trained between the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom? If not, why not?

(8) Among the documents reported in the press was an Iraqi Intelligence document from some time after January 1997. The document, first reported on June 25, 2004, in the New York Times, described the former Iraqi regime's outreach to Saudi opposition groups, including what it called the "Reform and Advice Committee" run by Osama bin Laden. The document further discusses the desire of the Iraqi regime to "continue the relationship" with bin Laden after he left Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996. Is there additional evidence that sheds light on that relationship?

(9) Reporters from the Toronto Star and Sunday Telegraph found documents in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters indicating that a "trusted confidant" of Osama bin Laden traveled to Iraq on March 5, 1998 for meetings with Iraqi Intelligence. According to the documents, the bin Laden envoy stayed at the expense of Iraqi Intelligence at the Mansour al Melia Hotel; he was scheduled to stay for one week but extended his visit to sixteen days. Does the DIA believe the documents are authentic? Does the U.S. intelligence community have evidence that corroborates the information in that document? If so, can you share it publicly? And if not in public, can you share the corroborating intelligence in closed session?

(10) Based on documents a reporter found in an Iraqi Mukhabarat safe house, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in April 2003 that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) was training Iraqi Intelligence operative as late as September 2002. Are those documents authentic? If so, what can we learn about Russian behavior with respect to Iraq that might be applicable to Russia's role on Iran?