A Tossup on Reagan Tribute

Easier Than Pulling Teeth

It's simply not true that the Bush administration is hostile to congressional oversight. Why just a couple of weeks ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld answered an eight-month-old request by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for Defense Department e-mails and other records pertaining to Air Force decision-making about a controversial $23.5 billion tanker leasing deal with Boeing Co.

Okay. It took eight months. But Rumsfeld fully agreed to allow Congress to see the documents. Just a couple of teensy restrictions. The Pentagon, not Congress, will decide which documents the lawmakers can see.

Oh, and the senators, along with a "limited number" of Senate Armed Services Committee staff members, must schlep over to a special room in the Pentagon and can look at the documents for only six hours a day, for five days. No copying permitted. No note-taking, either.

One other thing, Rumsfeld said. The senators will not, alas, be able to see any documents related to the tanker-leasing deal that mention him, or the deputy defense secretary, or the president, or anybody who works for the president's executive office or the Office of Management and Budget, or the Pentagon's attorney, or that discuss budget options or base closings.

In short, they can see anything that mentions nothing of any conceivable interest.

Predictably, McCain is fuming. The General Accounting Office, the Congressional Research Service and the Defense Science Board more or less agree with him that the tank deal's a waste of money. The Pentagon's inspector general found numerous improprieties, and a former senior Air Force official has been indicted.

McCain not only wants to kill the deal, he wants to know how and why the Air Force agreed to it in the first place. Internal Boeing documents, obtained under threat of subpoena, showed its intense lobbying efforts and White House involvement in the deal.

Who knows what internal Pentagon documents -- which McCain now wants the Senate Armed Services Committee to subpoena -- might show?

But there's no need for that, Rumsfeld says. "Should a senator bring to our attention an allegation of impropriety contained in the documents made available for review, we would forward that information" to the IG.

See? Nothing if not cooperative.