Senate Panel Presses Bush on War's Plan
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — Faced with a refusal by the Bush administration to provide certain documents related to prewar intelligence on Iraq, the Senate intelligence committee voted in a closed session on Thursday to move toward a possible subpoena, according to senior Congressional officials.
The bipartisan vote on the Republican-led panel sets a three-week deadline for a voluntary handover by the administration, after which the committee would employ unspecified "further action," which could only mean a subpoena, the officials said.
In a brief telephone interview, the top Democrat on the panel said that "there's no other interpretation" of the committee's action if the White House fails to turn over the documents by late March.
"We need these things, we want them, and if we don't get them, we will resort to other means," said the Democrat, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, who declined to discuss the committee's deliberations in detail.
The plan approved by the panel calls for Senator Rockefeller and Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the top Republican, to issue an explicit warning in a letter to President Bush if the documents are not received, Congressional officials said.