President George W. Bush named Graduate School of Business Prof. Emeritus Henry S. Rowen last Thursday to a bipartisan commission charged with the investigation of possible intelligence failures concerning the United States assessment of Iraq’s weapons arsenal.

EnlargeEnlarge
Prof. Emeritus Henry Rowen said he will add an expert opinion to the nine-member panel investigating weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/3318
Adrian Gaitan

Prof. Emeritus Henry Rowen said he will add an expert opinion to the nine-member panel investigating weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Rowen was one of the final two members appointed to the nine-person Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.

An executive order by Bush released on Feb. 6 qualified the panel’s role in advising the President: “In order to ensure the most effective counter-proliferation capabilities of the United States in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the ongoing threat of terrorist activity.”

The timing of the order, however, has led some to interpret the commission’s creation as a result of the current controversy over whether the United States was justified in claiming that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The panel members have yet to meet and do not know the specific details of their task.

“It’s too early to know the scope of the commission,” Rowen said. “We still have to get security clearances for this particular commission.”

The panel’s co-chairmen are Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican, and Virginia Governor Chuck Robb, a Democrat. Rowen — a self-proclaimed “technocrat” who worked in the administration of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — said that his interest in the commission is purely as an expert and not as a political partisan.

“I’ve been both a Democrat and a Republican,” Rowen said. “I’m not sure how I’m registered now. I might be a registered Democrat. I’m an independent, basically.”

Because the panel’s full report is not due until March 31, 2005 — after the 2004 presidential election — some have criticized the Bush administration for politicizing the commission process.

Rowen dismissed such claims, saying that criticism could not be avoided in a subject as polemical as the recent war in Iraq.

“What else is new?” he said. “You’d expect the criticism. It would be surprising if there were no criticism. This subject of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has become so contentious recently.”

The other six members of the commission are Lloyd Cutler, a White House counsel member under the administrations of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter; Yale president Richard Levin; Arizona Republican Senator John McCain; former deputy director of the CIA Admiral William Studeman; former Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Pat Wald and MIT president Charles Vest.

Following his retirement in 1995, Rowen has remained active in both the government and at Stanford, serving as a member of the Defense Policy Board for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and performing as director emeritus of the Asia / Pacific Research Center.

He also continues to pursue research at the Hoover Institution, working with Stanford students to explore such topics as the political structure of North Korea. Sophomore Mojan Movassate, who worked as a research assistant for Rowen over the summer, said that Bush made a wise decision in appointing Rowen to the commission.

“Professor Rowen is a very experienced and distinguished public servant who possesses a keen understanding of international security issues,” Movassate said. “In our meetings, he would constantly challenge me to analyze situations more deeply.”

Rowen was deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1961 to 1964, president of the RAND Corporation from 1967 to 1972, chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 1981 to 1983 and assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1989 to 1991. He became a Stanford professor in 1972, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1983 and is emeritus professor of public policy and management at the Graduate School of Business.