No evidence: Levin’s latest accusations against Pentagon blow up in his face

Yet another congressional "investigation" of the administration’s anti-terrorism efforts has blown up in the faces of the accusers.

The Washington Post finds no truth to the allegations, led by Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), that Pentagon leaders set up their own unauthorized bureaucracy to collect their own intelligence and shape the rationale for the war effort.

"Congressional Democrats contend that two Pentagon shops – the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group – were established by [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, [Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas] Feith and other defense hawks expressly to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies," according to the Post. "They argue that the offices supplied the administration with information, most of it discredited by the regular intelligence community, that President Bush, Cheney and others used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

"Neither the House nor Senate intelligence committees, for example, which have been investigating prewar intelligence for eight months, have found support for allegations that Pentagon analysts went out and collected their own intelligence, congressional officials from both parties say," the Post reports. "Nor have investigators found that the Pentagon analysis about Iraq significantly shaped the case the administration made for going to war."

Levin is considered the key operator in a scandal over Senate Democrats’ use of the intelligence committee for partisan political purposes.

The scandal, which has paralyzed the Senate intelligence oversight process, erupted in a scandal last fall when a memo by the staff of Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V), the top Democrat on the committee, outlined a plan to use the investigative processes to destabilize the Bush administration as it tried to carry out the war on terror.