Obstacle in chief: Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) does all he can to hamper the administration in the War on Terror.

THERE are several reasons for the Bush administration to fear--indeed, to dread--the possibility of a Democratic takeover of the Senate in 2006. Chairman Leahy of the Judiciary Committee is one. Chairman Rockefeller of the Intelligence Committee is another. But perhaps the most consequential, at least in terms of national security, would be Chairman Levin of the Armed Services Committee. Just mention the prospect of Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat from Michigan, overseeing the Pentagon--and therefore much of the War on Terror--and it's enough to send a chill down administration spines.

Certainly, there are several Democrats who strongly oppose the administration's national-security policies. But much of that opposition is rhetorical. Levin, on the other hand, works hard to actually block some of those policies. Inside the Bush administration, and among Republicans on Capitol Hill, Levin has won the reputation of being perhaps the chief congressional obstacle to prosecuting the War on Terror.

He has done it in two ways. First, he has put "holds" on key Bush nominees to national-security posts. And second, he has conducted an ongoing bureaucratic war with the Department of Defense, demanding investigations and re-investigations of issues that have already been extensively examined, all in the hope of finding evidence to support his apparently unshakable belief that a neoconservative conspiracy inside the Pentagon led to the war in Iraq.

First the nominees. Although in the minority, Levin enjoys powerful positions on both the Armed Services Committee, where he is the ranking Democrat, and the Intelligence Committee, where he sits beside Senator Rockefeller. In the last nine months, Levin has used his position to block three key national-security nominees. The first is Eric Edelman, chosen by President Bush to be undersecretary of defense for policy (succeeding the controversial Douglas Feith--more on him later). The second is Peter Flory, picked to be assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. And the third is Benjamin Powell, nominated for a top job at the new Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

None of them faces any substantive objections from Democrats; they're all qualified candidates who have no problems in their past that would derail their nominations. Instead, Flory and Edelman found themselves blocked because Levin decided to use their nominations as leverage for his demand that the Defense Department provide him with documents about pre-war intelligence. For his part, Powell was blocked as leverage for Levin's demand that the administration give up documents on the treatment of suspected terrorist detainees. (Levin has also blocked the nomination of former ABC News executive Dorrance Smith to be Pentagon spokesman, but for an actual, if somewhat petty, reason: Levin didn't like a newspaper op-ed Smith once wrote.)

In the cases of Flory and Edelman, the Pentagon gave Levin what he wanted--piles and piles and piles of paper--but Levin still was not satisfied. By summer, the issue had become a standoff, so in August, when senators went home on break, President Bush used his recess appointment power to place both Edelman and Flory in office. Powell, however, remains in limbo.

Republicans find his case particularly frustrating, because the job to which he is nominated was created in part because of the demands of Democrats--and now Levin and his colleagues refuse to allow the president to fill it. The establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was one of the main recommendations of the September 11 commission. During last year's campaign, Democrats pressed the administration hard to go along with the idea. When the DNI was created, the new director, John Negroponte, chose Powell to be his general counsel. It's an indisputably important job, dealing with the myriad of complex legal questions that are involved with the War on Terror.

That's when Levin stepped in. Although he has never publicly stated his precise reason for blocking Powell, Republicans believe he is holding the nominee hostage in an attempt to force the administration to produce what is widely known as the Bybee Memo, a document outlining interrogation techniques for suspected terrorist prisoners. When asked in an e-mail inquiry by NATIONAL REVIEW, a Levin spokeswoman wrote that the senator "has said that the hold is related to the administration's refusal, without justification, to let the Senate review key documents regarding detainee treatment policies. The general counsel for the DNI will play a central role in advising the DNI and the intelligence community on these issues, and Sen. Levin believes that the Senate must have the opportunity to review these critical documents before considering a nominee for that position."

Levin's action has caused enormous frustration inside the DNI. On November 8, apparently running out of patience, Negroponte appealed directly to Senate majority leader Bill Frist and minority leader Harry Reid for help in breaking the impasse. Levin's hold is "hampering my ability to carry out my critical responsibilities," Negroponte wrote in a letter obtained by NATIONAL REVIEW. "I ... have spoken multiple times with the relevant senator [Levin] about the objection to proceeding forward to confirm someone to this position. We understand there is a long-running dispute, but it is unrelated to the nominee. In the meantime, the DNI is without a General Counsel during the office's crucial formative months.... This delay is more than an unfortunate impasse. This is a delay that directly undermines my ability to carry out the mandate of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act."

So far, nothing has happened.

To Republicans who work in the field, the Powell situation is classic Levin. "He's very good at picking mid-level appointees and holding them up," says one Hill Republican. "It's just enough to p*** people off, but not enough to attract a lot of attention." Right now, at least, it's working. Asignificant number of people, on the Hill, in the intelligence community, in the Pentagon, and at the White House, are indeed angry at Levin for holding up Powell. Yet a search of the Nexis database reveals that Levin's hold has been reported just three times--twice in NATIONAL REVIEW once by UPI. Nothing in the Washington Post. Nothing in the New York Times. Nothing on television. Without widespread press coverage, there is little public pressure on Levin to change his position.

The other way Levin has thrown a wrench into the antiterrorism effort is by maintaining a lengthy feud with the Defense Department over documents. For more than two years now, Levin has been acutely interested in the workings of the Office of Special Plans, the unit inside the Pentagon run by undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, until Feith left government service last summer. Levin has often suggested that Feith's office distorted, exaggerated, invented, or in some other way manipulated intelligence about the connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda and about Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities before the war.

In 2004, as he demanded that the Defense Department provide him documents about Feith's operation, Levin was quite open about his ultimate purpose: to influence the presidential campaign. "If people believe that the administration or the president exaggerated or embellished intelligence," he told Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, shortly before the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-war intelligence was released, "I think that there will be some people [who] would say that is a factor in their vote."

The problem was, the committee did not find the Feith connection that Levin was seeking; in fact, its conclusions tended to discredit Levin's theories. So Levin changed course, deciding to write a report of his own. He released it on October 21, 2004, twelve days before the election. Compiled by his staff on the Armed Services Committee, and based on what Levin called an "alternative analysis" of the evidence, the report argued that "intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was exaggerated by high ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the Administration's decision to invade Iraq ... " The high-ranking official most responsible for the exaggeration, Levin said, was Feith.

The report was not the result of any new evidence but was instead based on Levin's reading of the Intelligence Committee report, the September 11 commission report, books by Bob Woodward, Richard Clarke, and Ron Suskind, and an article in the New York Times. "It was ridiculous," says one Hill Republican. "Any time you see any government entity refer repeatedly to media articles, it's because they could find no factual evidence."

But Levin nevertheless made some very serious charges. The day the report was released, Levin told the New York Times that it showed Feith had engaged in a "continuing deception of Congress" about the Iraq/al-Qaeda issue. But then, in the very next sentence, Levin "said he had no evidence that Mr. Feith's conduct had been illegal," according to the Times. Republicans were baffled. Deceiving Congress is a crime. Was Levin accusing Feith or criminal activity or not?

It was never entirely clear. And the report had little, if any, influence on the campaign. But Levin hasn't stopped. In recent months, he has been pressing for the Intelligence Committee--in the "phase two" part of its investigation--to probe Feith's office. Committee chairman Pat Roberts has resisted, arguing that the issue has already been examined and reexamined. But Levin has persisted. As a compromise, in early September Roberts decided that, rather than have the committee do another investigation, he would refer Levin's questions to the Department of Defense's inspector general for a review.

Reading Roberts's September 9 letter to the Pentagon, in which he requested the review, it does not take much parsing to see that the chairman has reached the end of his rope with Levin. "The committee is concerned about persistent and, to date, unsubstantiated allegations that there was something unlawful or improper about the activities of the Office of Special Plans within the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the period prior to the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom," Roberts wrote, adding:

   The Senate Armed Services Committee
   and the Senate Select Committee on
   Intelligence have both examined this
   issue. Both staffs have reviewed thousands
   of documents and conducted
   numerous interviews. Under Secretary
   Feith has appeared before both committees
   to testify on the issue. I have not
   discovered any credible evidence of
   unlawful or improper activity, yet the
   allegations persist.

Roberts might more accurately have said that Levin has persisted.

And he still does. A few days after the Roberts letter, on September 22, Levin wrote a letter of his own to the Pentagon. He included a copy of his October 2004 report--to assist in the review--and asked ten detailed questions, all about Feith or his office. And at the end, whereas Roberts had asked the inspector general to determine whether any of the Feith office's actions were "unlawful or improper," Levin asked that the review determine whether Feith's actions were inappropriate or improper. Having failed to find what he was seeking, Levin changed the standards of the search--although it's unlikely that Roberts will go along with the type of fishing-expedition inquiry that a search for "inapproriate" conduct would involve.

Why does he do it? It's always possible that Levin actually believes strongly in what he is doing and feels that the evidence is there, if he can just dig deep enough. It's also possible that he has gotten caught up in the chase, in what the Wall Street Journal has called his "Ahab-like" pursuit of Feith. And, of course, there's always another election coming around.

And who knows? What didn't work in 2004 might do better in 2006. "When you aren't winning at the polls, you go after the people and do your best to cast shadows over them," says the Hill Republican. "And if you can do that, then maybe you can win at the polls."