Senators to Press Scandal

WASHINGTON —  As the White House struggles to get beyond the prisoner abuse scandal, it faces an unsettling fact: The Senate Armed Services Committee -- controlled by Republicans -- plans to keep the issue alive for weeks to come.

That promises more headaches for the White House and once undreamed-of opportunities for Democrats on the committee, such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and other critics of President Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq.

The Armed Services Committee, led by 77-year-old Senate veteran John W. Warner of Virginia, has served noticed that it would not pull back, as the House Armed Services Committee has done. Instead, Warner plans extended hearings to call on the carpet such high-profile officials as Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

More disturbing still for the White House, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate committee say they will shift the focus from the misdeeds of a handful of guards at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. What they want to dig into instead is how senior Pentagon officials loosened the rules protecting prisoners during interrogation.

The rules, changed to speed the flow of intelligence on terrorism, complied with the Geneva Convention, the officials say. But critics say the changes may have contributed to a climate in which abuses could occur.

In a report on the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the New Yorker magazine says this week that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld secretly approved a plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on prisoners in Iraq -- a contention the CIA and the Pentagon deny.

In addition, the current issue of Newsweek says that a memo from White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, issued shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, may have established the legal foundation for the abusive treatment of prisoners.

For congressional leaders to get into such questions when a president from their party faces a tough reelection campaign isn’t the way the game is meant to be played in Washington.

These days, politicians tend to march in lock-step with their party leadership, always “on message” and quick to deny their opponents even the smallest opportunity to exploit a weakness. That’s partly because the political climate is highly polarized and partly because elected officials have become dependent on ideological constituencies that demand total loyalty.

In the prisoner abuse scandal, however, circumstances have conspired to create an exception to the current rules of political warfare.

One of those circumstances is the sheer magnitude of the scandal, which has triggered indignation around the world, inflamed public opinion in Iraq and other Muslim nations, and threatened to undermine U.S. foreign policy on a wide front.

“The Republican strategists would love for this story to die, but no one knows how to kill it,” University of Wisconsin political scientist Donald F. Kettl said. “They know they can’t take a dump-it-and-run approach, and they know they can’t keep it bottled up. It’s an impossible dilemma.”

There are other factors at work, too, factors unique to this Senate committee.

For one thing, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is not a typical modern-day politician. With courtly manners and an excellent tailor, Warner is a member of Virginia’s “hunt country” aristocracy. His military service began in World War II, when he joined the Navy at 17; during the Korean War, he served in the Marine Corps.

Warner was Navy secretary under President Nixon and has been in the Senate for 25 years.

That background gives Warner deep roots and a sense of independence that are increasingly rare in a Congress marked by relatively rapid turnover.

He represents a state that combines conservative rural communities, the headquarters of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Christian right organization, large military installations -- including the Pentagon itself -- and moderate-to-liberal Washington suburbs. To satisfy that political mix, Warner has been a moderate but loyal Republican most of the time, while shrewdly picking opportunities to display his independence.

“He is not one who has hewed the party line,” said Robert D. Holsworth, an expert on state politics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “He has on a number of occasions broken with party orthodoxy.”

As a senator, Warner is also a child of an earlier era. He grew up when chairmen and senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, such as former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), were powerful players in military affairs, courted and consulted by presidents and senior defense officials regardless of party.

“Warner is a man of the Senate. He revels in the institution’s traditions, and he knows that oversight is an essential part of the Senate’s work,” said a veteran congressional analyst.

Warner and his committee believe they have been treated cavalierly by Rumsfeld and his senior aides, which they find personally and institutionally offensive. For example, committee members are quick to recall that Rumsfeld appeared before Armed Services the day CBS News reported on the Abu Ghraib scandal -- without notifying any of them.

“The entire Senate was shocked that they were not given any notice or even a whiff of this imploding scandal,” a Senate GOP aide said.

“The textbooks that members of this administration had when they were young just had two branches of government -- the executive and the judicial,” the aide said. “The Senate’s oversight role has been completely ignored by this administration.”

“Congress does not like to be surprised,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a member of the committee. And Warner made his feelings clear at the outset of the panel’s first hearing. With Rumsfeld facing him in the witness chair, Warner said:

“In my 25 years on this committee, I’ve received hundreds of calls, day and night, from ... all levels, uniform and civilian, from the Department of Defense when they, in their judgment, felt it was necessary, and I daresay other members on this committee have experienced the same courtesy.

“I did not receive such a call in this case, and yet I think the situation was absolutely clear and required it -- not only to me, but my distinguished ranking member and other members of this committee.”

Warner is not the only Republican who seems determined to keep the feet of the administration to the fire. At least three other GOP senators on Armed Services questioned administration witnesses aggressively during the opening round of hearings last week: John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina.

Collins, representing a swing state, is often independent. Graham spent 6 1/2 years as an Air Force lawyer on active duty and, according to his biography, is the only U.S. senator currently serving in the National Guard or Reserves. He is a colonel, assigned as a reserve judge to the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals.

Beyond political stakes or resentment at the Pentagon’s failure to show deference to the Armed Services Committee, many committee members consider the prisoner abuse scandal -- and their role in dealing with it -- unusually serious.

“The role of the Senate at moments like this is to provide an educational role for the American people,” said Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation. “The senators can help frame what happened and help explain why.”

Both chambers have been inattentive to oversight of the war in Iraq, said Thomas E. Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, “reflecting a strong incentive among congressional Republicans not to damage in any way the president’s political standing.”

“But the vividness of the detainee abuses and the failure of the administration to give senators a heads up has finally broken the logjam in the Senate, where there is a greater sense of institutional responsibility,” he said.

“Every once in a while, members of Congress simply decide to do the right thing.... Members could not look themselves in the mirror if they didn’t get to the bottom of these horrible acts,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

Joe Garecht, a GOP political strategist, agreed.

“Lawmakers like John Warner, Lindsey Graham, John McCain and others are truly angry that this situation existed, and believe that it is the Congress’ duty to reestablish America’s moral credibility abroad,” he said.

Echoing that sentiment, Collins of Maine said in an interview last week, “I believe that the Armed Services Committee should continue its investigation. There are still many unanswered questions....

“I don’t see this as a partisan issue,” she said. “It’s far too important.”