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who is Henry Waxman?

Congressman Henry Waxman is the Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

That committee today approved a subpoena for former National Security Advisor, now Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice “regarding the fabricated claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger and other issues.”

You can read a statement about why Chairman Waxman felt a subpoena was necessary to compel the Secretary of State’s testimony in this matter by clicking here.

That statement says, in part:

“We will hear today that there have already been several investigations into why the intelligence about Iraq was so wrong. There have been some investigations. But they all looked at the mistakes made by the intelligence agencies. There has been no inquiry about what went wrong inside the White House.

“There was one person in the White House who had the primary responsibility to get the intelligence about Iraq right: and that was Secretary Rice, who was President Bush's National Security Advisor. She has never testified in public about what she may know about how the intelligence was used - or misused - by the White House. That is all we are asking her to do.

“The days of averting our eyes from the hard questions are over. The American public was misled about the threat posed by Iraq. And this Committee is going to do its part to find out why.

“I urge Members to support the motion.”

an interview with Chairman Waxman about today’s subpoena for Secretary of State Rice

On Thursday, April 12, 2007, Congressman Waxman sat down in his Los Angeles district officer for a half-hour interview with Etopia News publisher Marc Strassman.

During that interview, the Congressman made the case for presidential accountability, and against impeaching George W. Bush and/or Richard B. Cheney. He also talked about the War in Iraq, how to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and his regret that the tobacco executives who lied to his House investigatory committee in 1994 were not indicted for perjury.

Today, Congressman Waxman took five minutes off from the floor action on the supplemental bill to fund, with conditions, the War in Iraq into which George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice led the country on the basis of what his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee web site now refers to as a “fabricated claim,” to speak again with Etopia News publisher Marc Strassman about the committee’s decision today to subpoena Dr. Rice.

You can listen to that five-minute phone interview with Representative Waxman in the “california politics today 1" line-up in the California Politics Today Channel below:

In the clip directly under the five-minute Waxman interview from this afternoon, you can listen to a slightly-earlier recording of State Department spokesperson Karl Duckworth reading a statement from Thomas Casey, Deputy Spokesman for the State Department, which says, in its entirety: “We note the committee’s actions and will be consulting with the White House on this matter. As I said earlier today, the Secretary has addressed this four-year-old issue on many occasions and the subject already has been exhaustively investigated.”

State Department spokesperson Duckworth directed this reporter to transcripts from today‘s and yesterday’s State Department Daily Briefings, in which State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack argued yesterday that Secretary Rice had already sent “thorough [and] complete responses…to Chairman Waxman,” adding “Look, I can only assume that members of Congress would rather have the Secretary of State be focused on issues of war and peace” and State Department spokesperson Tom Casey said today, “But again, I think if you look at the record of what is there, the Secretary has spoken to this issue repeatedly….While we certainly will do everything we can to answer questions that are posed, whether by Chairman Waxman or any other member of Congress, again, I think you have to question the motivation behind looking at something that, in effect, has been addressed and answered multiple times.”

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