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Congress, DoD spar over who can testify

Pentagon efforts to block service members involved in training Iraqi security forces from telling Congress about the slow pace of their efforts have led to a behind-the-scenes battle between Congress and defense officials over having rank-and-file troops testify on Capitol Hill.

The issue came to a head when an assistant defense secretary, Robert Wilkie, announced a new policy barring O-5s and below from testifying before Congress or providing briefings if their remarks would be made part of the official record.

“This will not stand,” said Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., chairman of the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee, who called the policy a “stupid, ridiculous” decision.

Snyder said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has pledged to take up the issue directly with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

“We do not believe Gates knew anything about this,” Snyder added.

In a May 11 interview with Military Times, Wilkie said the “front office” — the Office of the Secretary of Defense — “and the services were involved in our discussions.”

Wilkie, assistant secretary for legislative affairs, said the policy letter actually is a set of “general parameters, open to negotiation.”

The main reason for outlining such limits, he said, is to attempt to deal with the sheer number of requests for testimony or briefings by defense personnel.

“What we are trying to do is create a system whereby we can work with the hundreds and hundreds of requests that we were getting every day, and create some semblance of order and a pattern — with the understanding that everything we do is subject to negotiation,” he said.

“People are new to their positions,” Wilkie said. “You have a new chairman, new staff directors — I mean, a change in the Congress is a traumatic thing. We have new leadership here, they have new leadership there. We’re all getting used to each other. That’s been part of this process.”

The new policy allows senior officers and Defense Department executives to take part in hearings and briefings, but limits lower-ranking personnel to briefings and interviews only when “deemed appropriate” by senior department officials.

Wilkie said that’s because preparing for briefings is far different than preparing for hearings, when written testimony must be vetted by the Office of Management and Budget before being presented to Congress.

“There is a difference between me going up and talking rather informally, and me sitting down with a court reporter,” Wilkie said. “There’s a different amount of preparation.”

Wilkie said he is “trying to create something that gives us a framework within which we can provide quicker responses — and also trying to take care of our junior folks.”

“We don’t want to put our folks in [the] position of debating, for instance, professors, or some outside witnesses,” he said. “That is designed to keep our folks from getting involved in the back-and-forth of policy debates — and make sure that the Congress, with our cooperation, hears the department’s position.”

Snyder said junior officers and enlisted personnel “have never been embarrassed” by appearing before the House Armed Services Committee. “We treat them with great respect,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Skelton confirmed that the chairman will take the matter up directly with Gates. The only reason this has not already happened is that Skelton was busy with the 2008 defense authorization bill, which the committee passed May 9 in a 20-hour session, she said.

She acknowledged Skelton was unhappy with the Wilkie order and plans to fight it.“The American people will not tolerate Congress being cut off” from access to service members, Snyder said., adding that the order seemed to be written by “a guy who somehow has a siege mentality” and is “from a different side of the moon.”

Wilkie is a Navy Reserve intelligence officer and a former congressional aide to former Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and current Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. He also worked on the national security portion of the Republican Party platform in 2000 that helped shape President Bush’s defense program, and was a member of the National Security Council staff from 2003 to 2005.

Wilkie’s order was issued in mid-April, at a time when the House Armed Services oversight and investigations panel was trying to learn more details about the U.S. military’s efforts to train Iraqi security forces.

In what Snyder said was a “bizarre” episode, a Pentagon lawyer interrupted a classified briefing by an Army officer to demand that the session not be recorded because an official transcript would violate the new policy. This incident, first reported by the Boston Globe, led to Army witnesses leaving the briefing.

Wilkie said there was a prior agreement with staff director Erin Conaton that the meeting would be a briefing, not a hearing. So when court reporters emerged to begin recording and transcribing what the opening statement of Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., oversight and investigations panel chairman, described as an “open hearing,” Wilkie said the participation of the Army personnel was halted because “they weren’t prepared for that.”

Snyder called it “nonsense” to not allow a transcript to ensure the accuracy of what was said.

Meehan mentioned the incident at a later public hearing on April 25. Addressing defense officials in the audience, he said: “I would like our record to reflect how unhappy we were about what happened last week, and furthermore, that no one from the senior levels of DoD or the Joint Staff has even called me to discuss the situation.

“I would also like to have it on our record today that this is not a settled question.”

Meehan had asked for the people actually training Iraqis to provide testimony — in a closed briefing because of the classified nature of their work — out of concern that more senior officers were being overly optimistic about how things were going.

The subcommittee has had problems, however, in getting the military to provide witnesses.

Snyder said having O-5s and below testify before Congress is unusual, but his subcommittee has depended on testimony from troops and their families to provide information that might not be included in statements from senior military officials.

He recalled hearing complaints from a Marine sergeant at one hearing about the poor quality of produce sold at the on-base commissary, an issue that Snyder followed up with his own visits to commissaries.

The sergeant was right, Snyder said, and he told military officials they needed to do better because the quality of produce reflects on the overall perception shoppers have of the store.

“That is the kind of information we need to hear, and we are not going to hear it from the generals,” Snyder said.

Wilkie’s memo, dated April 16 and addressed to Conaton, appears on first read to apply only to witnesses requested by Meehan for an April 19 briefing before his oversight panel on the use of contractors to train, equip and sustain Iraqi security forces.

But Wilkie goes on to say: “I want to take this opportunity to state the Department’s policy with regard to participants and witnesses for briefings, and hearings before the Congress.”

Wilkie’s memo states that only officers in grades O-6 and above, Defense Department “noncareer Senior Executive Service,” and presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed employees “deemed appropriate” by the Pentagon may take part in briefings and hearings.

O-5s and below may not take part in hearings, but, if “deemed appropriate,” may take part in staff briefings and interviews.

If “deemed appropriate,” O-4s and below, and noncommissioned and petty officers “may provide support to briefers and witnesses,” but “shall not be asked or required to have their names entered into the record or speak on the record.”

Wilkie said Congress is getting what it wants and needs from the Defense Department.

“We’re cooperating,” he said. “The record speaks for itself.”