Oversight for Sore Eyes

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner met with Pentagon officials on planted stories in Iraq and then offered more questions than answers. (By Chip Somodevilla -- Getty Images)

It sounded on Thursday as if Senate committee chairmen were about to flex their oversight muscles.

An angry Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) summoned Pentagon officials for a briefing on the military's paying for favorable coverage in Iraqi newspapers. And a concerned Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) ordered President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Samuel A. Alito Jr., to explain documents he wrote expressing his opposition to Roe v. Wade .

But the senators, looking for answers, emerged instead from their meetings yesterday with questions.

"We can't verify this question of payments to the journalists," Warner reported to journalists in the Senate television gallery after his session with Pentagon officials. "More facts are needed."

Does he see evidence of illegality? "We simply do not have all of the facts."

Does the practice need to be stopped? "I wouldn't want to render judgment to stop something until I have all the facts."

Was the distinction between propaganda and factual information blurred? "I don't have enough facts."

What's the most important unanswered question that you have? "Well, seriously, there's so many questions that are unanswered," he replied.

Part of the problem, Warner explained, is that pieces of the program in question are classified, "to protect the interests of our troops."

This started a new line of questioning. If the purpose of the military project is to "get the truth and the facts out," as Warner put it, why is it classified?

"That's the ultimate question you've got to answer," explained Warner, who had apparently not answered it himself. "And, at this moment, I can't give you any facts to help you on that. . . . I have only but a bare initial understanding of why classification is needed."

Specter fared little better than his colleague when he sat down with Alito to talk about the judge's 1985 statement that he did not believe that the Constitution protected a right to abortion, and the legal arguments he later made against the Roe decision but did not mention in his response to a questionnaire from the Judiciary Committee.