On February 6, 2004, President Bush issued Executive Order 13328, creating a nine-member commission to investigate intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. The Commission is chaired by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Governor and Senator Chuck Robb. Other members appointed are Senator John McCain; Lloyd Cutler, former White House Counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton; Rick Levin, President of Yale University; Admiral Bill Studeman, former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Judge Pat Wald; Charles Vest, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Henry Rowen, professor emeritus of public policy and management at Stanford University, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a former Pentagon official.

The Commission has been charged with assessing “whether the Intelligence Community is sufficiently authorized, equipped, trained, and resourced to identify and warn in a timely manner of, and to support United States Government efforts to respond to, the development and transfer of knowledge, expertise, technologies, materials, and resources associated with the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction” and related threats. With respect to Iraq specifically, the Commission is to examine “the Intelligence Community's intelligence prior to the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom” and “compare it with the findings of the Iraq Survey Group and other relevant agencies or organizations concerning the capabilities, intentions, and activities of Iraq relating to the design, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, proliferation, transfer, testing, potential or threatened use, or use of Weapons of Mass Destruction and related means of delivery.”

The President’s Executive Order fails to ensure the most basic elements necessary for a meaningful review of what went wrong with intelligence on Iraq. This fact sheet details some of the major shortcomings.