    [House Hearing, 114 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                WHITE HOUSE NARRATIVES ON THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL

    =======================================================================

                                     HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                             COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
                             AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                  MAY 17, 2016

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 114-77

                                   __________

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

             Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
                          http://www.house.gov/reform

                                    __________

                            U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    22-276 PDF                    WASHINGTON : 2016

    ________________________________________________________________________________________
    For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
    http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,
    U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free).
    E-mail, gpo@custhelp.com.

                 COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

                         JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman
    JOHN L. MICA, Florida                ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
    MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio                  Ranking Minority Member
    JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee       CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
    JIM JORDAN, Ohio                     ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
    TIM WALBERG, Michigan                    Columbia
    JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan               WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
    PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona               STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
    SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee          JIM COOPER, Tennessee
    TREY GOWDY, South Carolina           GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
    BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas              MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
    CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming           TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
    MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina         BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan
    RON DeSANTIS, Florida                TED LIEU, California
    MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina        BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
    KEN BUCK, Colorado                   STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
    MARK WALKER, North Carolina          MARK DeSAULNIER, California
    ROD BLUM, Iowa                       BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
    JODY B. HICE, Georgia                PETER WELCH, Vermont
    STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma              MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico
    EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
    GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
    WILL HURD, Texas
    GARY J. PALMER, Alabama

                       Jennifer Hemingway, Staff Director
                     David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
                    Art Arthur, Subcommittee Staff Director
                              William Marx, Clerk

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page
    Hearing held on May 17, 2016.....................................     1

                                   WITNESSES

    Mr. Michael Rubin, Resident Scholar, The American Enterprise
      Institute
        Oral Statement...............................................     6
        Written Statement............................................     9
    Mr. Michael Doran, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
        Oral Statement...............................................    19
        Written Statement............................................    22
    Mr. John Hannah, Senior Counselor, Foundation for Defense of
      Democracies
        Oral Statement...............................................    31
        Written Statement............................................    33

                                    APPENDIX

    Article from the New York Times Magazine, by David Samuels,
      Published on May 5, 2016 Titled, ``The Aspiring Novelist Who
      Became Obama's Foreign-Policy Guru''...........................    78
    A May 16, 2016 letter from W. Neil Eggleston, Counsel to the
      President, to Jason Chaffetz, Chairman of the House Committee
      on Oversight and Government Reform.............................   106
    A May 16, 2016 letter from Senator John Cornyn (TX), Senator Mark
      Kirk (IL), and Senator John Barrasso (WY), to President Barack
      Obama..........................................................   108
    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report by the
      Director General Titled, ``Verification and Monitoring in the
      Islamic Republic of Iran in Light of United Nations Security
      Council Resolution 2231 (2015)'' dated January 16, 2016,
      Submitted by Representative Stephen F. Lynch (MA)..............   110
    Written Statement for the Record from Representative John J.
      Duncan, Jr (TN)................................................   115

                WHITE HOUSE NARRATIVES ON THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL

                                  ----------

                             Tuesday, May 17, 2016

                      House of Representatives,
          Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
                                               Washington, D.C.
        The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in Room
    2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jason Chaffetz
    [chairman of the committee] presiding.
        Present: Representatives Chaffetz, Mica, Turner, Duncan,
    Jordan, Walberg, Amash, Gosar, Gowdy, Farenthold, Massie,
    Meadows, DeSantis, Mulvaney, Buck, Walker, Blum, Hice, Russell,
    Carter, Grothman, Palmer, Cummings, Maloney, Norton, Clay,
    Lynch, Connolly, Cartwright, Lawrence, DeSaulnier, Welch, and
    Lujan Grisham.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Good morning. The Committee on Oversight
    and Government Reform will come to order.
        Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
    recess at any time.
        Today's hearing is entitled ``The White House Narratives on
    the Iran Nuclear Deal.'' I think this is important that we take
    this up and deal with this situation.
        As we get going, there are three items I would ask
    unanimous consent to enter into the record. The first is the
    New York Times Magazine article ``The aspiring novelist who
    became Obama's foreign policy guru.''
        The second is a letter from the White House of May 16. This
    is a letter addressed to me, copied to the ranking member, Mr.
    Cummings, and it is from Neil Eggleston talking about how the
    White House would not make Ben Rhodes available to the
    committee today.
        And I would also like to enter into the record a May 16
    letter. This is from Senator Cornyn, Senator Mark Kirk, and
    Senator John Barrasso.
        And without objection, I would like to enter these three
    into the record. Without objection, so ordered.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Iran, it is one of three countries that
    are still on the state-sponsors of terrorism, and I think it is
    important that we have some clarity. There are some issues that
    are outstanding. It is one of the most important foreign policy
    initiatives that the President has taken forward, but I still
    think it demands a lot of clarity.
        We were hoping that the clarity would be provided by
    Benjamin Rhodes. He is the assistant to the President and
    deputy national security advisor for strategic communications
    and speechwriting. He is obviously a very talented and trusted
    person in the White House. I do not doubt his talents and his
    knowledge. But the deal that had been spun up and sold to the
    American people I am not sure was as clear as it should have
    been, and I have serious questions about the transparency, the
    truthfulness, and when it really ultimately started.
        And I think those are legitimate questions as we move
    forward because here you have a state sponsor of terrorism in
    Iran and we still don't fully know the answer to a lot of these
    questions. Now, some may think they know the answers to all
    these questions, but there is still a shroud of secrecy, and I
    think this is a very viable thing to look at. Mr. Rhodes was in
    a unique position to offer this perspective, given his heavy
    duty and work on this.
        What is mystifying to me is how readily available he made
    himself to the media, but only select media, those in his echo
    chamber. He showed obviously disdain for people with foreign
    policy credentials. He showed great disdain for the media
    themselves. He is entitled to those personal opinions, but he
    also elected to share those with the New York Times and put
    them out there. He is also very negative about Congress going
    so far as to saying could not have a rational discussion--I am
    summarizing here--with the Congress. So we provided that.
        Josh Earnest from the podium there at the White House
    openly mocked Congress, said that perhaps we should be calling
    other members up such as Senator Tom Cotton, who should also
    raise their right hand and swear and affirm and answer
    questions.
        I took that suggestion, shared it with Senator Cotton. We
    accommodated that. Mr. Cotton, Senator Cotton had agreed, if
    Mr. Rhodes would be here, to also be here to answer questions
    and ferret out any of these details. But Mr. Rhodes elected not
    to speak. Now, he does have a public speaking engagement today.
    He is out giving a public speech today but refuses to come and
    speak with Congress.
        I am going to play a clip. I have got two clips in my
    opening statement. And I think you can see where maybe some on
    the other side of the aisle will say, oh, we know everything
    about this, it has been thoroughly debated, but I want you to
    watch this clip. We are going to go to what we call clip B if
    we could, and let's watch this.
        [Video shown.]
        Chairman Chaffetz. So as you can see there, Victoria Nuland
    offered what turned out to be absolutely and totally not true.
    Ms. Psaki, I think, was more candid in that assessment. And
    then you have this article comes out and basically the
    administration thought it was in their best interest to spin up
    the story that negotiations started with a more moderate regime
    in 2013, but that is not what had happened. That was fiction as
    well.
        I also want to talk about 24 by 7 access. I think the
    American people were led to believe that Americans with the
    best interest would have access and be able to see and get in
    there and go into these nuclear facilities 24/7. So I want to
    play another clip. This is clip number E or letter E.
        [Video shown.]
        Chairman Chaffetz. Thanks. You can take that down.
        So, first of all, as somebody pointed out on our committee,
    I think Mr. Palmer pointed out I don't think Mr. Kerry was the
    chief negotiator, but that is another point. But the second
    part of it is, is there 24 by 7 access? Can you access
    anything, anywhere, any time? Spinning quite a different story
    as we go along.
        We have also heard a lot of numbers related to sanctions
    relief and dealing with escrowed oil funds. President Obama was
    quoted in an Atlantic article talking about $150 billion that
    would be going back to Iran. The Iranians say they have access
    to $100 billion. The Treasury Department says it is $50
    billion. Secretary Kerry said they have only had access to $3
    billion, and then blamed Treasury, talking about a lot of money
    going to a state sponsor of terrorism.
        There are also questions about ballistic missiles. In
    December 2015 he said there was a violation of the United
    Nations Resolution 2231 in testimony by the Iran Deal
    coordinator, Ambassador Mull. But in March of 2016 you have the
    United States Ambassador Power to the United Nations who toned
    it down a little bit. Now, they are calling it just an
    ``inconsistent with'' is their quote, as opposed to a violation
    of the United Nations resolution.
        Then you also have issues about boosting Iran's economy.
    Secretary Kerry is currently on tour in Europe. The State
    Department suggests that we are obligated, we are obligated,
    the United States of American is obligated to boost the Iranian
    economy, again, something we need to understand. We don't
    understand the side deals. There are still sanctions of
    terrorism on Iran. We want to understand that.
        And then there are questions about everything that has
    actually been agreed to not just in writing but the side deals
    and any other verbal commitments that were also made.
        I would also note to our colleagues that the chairman of
    Armed Services, Mr. Thornberry, has a very important amendment
    I think we should all consider and look at that will be part of
    the NDAA issue as we move forward.
        Again, there are a lot of outstanding questions. We wanted
    to get the person who is right in the thick of things from the
    White House to come here and testify. The White House on
    Thursday claimed that this wasn't about executive privilege,
    and then less than 24 hours before this hearing, they reversed
    course and said, oh, it is about executive privilege. Now, who
    is being inconsistent? Who is being inconsistent?
        You have plenty of time, Mr. Rhodes, to go out and talk to
    all the media friends and talk to the echo chamber that you
    brag about in the New York Times, but when it comes time to
    actually answer hard questions under oath did you decide not to
    do it.
        Chairman Chaffetz. My time has far exceeded what we had
    allocated. We will now recognize the ranking member, Mr.
    Cummings.
        Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I
    thank all our witnesses for being here today.
        Mr. Chairman, sitting here today, I am surprised and--I
    mean, very surprised and shocked that you would invite John
    Hannah to testify before our committee as an expert witness,
    particularly on the subject of false White House narratives.
    Mr. Hannah was Vice President Dick Cheney's top national
    security advisor in the White House. He personally, personally
    helped prepare Secretary of State Colin Powell's infamous
    speech to the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq War, a
    speech that Secretary Powell has called a permanent blot on his
    record.
        Mr. Hannah was identified by the Iraqi National Congress as
    ``principal point of contact'' in the Vice President's office.
    The INC was an organization that supplied our nation with
    reams, with reams of false information about weapons of mass
    destruction.
        Mr. Hannah worked directly for Scooter Libby who was
    convicted after the Bush administration leaked the identity of
    a covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Her husband, Ambassador Joe
    Wilson, had publicly debunked the administration's false claims
    about the Iraqi nuclear program.
        This was the same Scooter Libby who told the FBI that it
    was ``possible'' that Vice President Cheney actually directed
    him to leak information about Ms. Plame's covert status. That
    is Mr. Hannah.
        Now, I don't know Mr. Hannah and I don't believe I have
    ever met him before today, but based on the public record
    alone, let me say this. If our goal is to hear from an expert
    who actually promoted false, false White House narratives, then
    I think you picked the right person. But if our goal is to hear
    from someone who was not involved in one of the biggest
    misrepresentations in our nation's history, then you picked the
    wrong person.
        Listening to John Hannah criticize anyone else for pushing
    a false White House narrative is beyond ironic. He and Dick
    Cheney and their colleagues in the White House wrote the how-to
    manual on this. The profound tragedy here is that thousands,
    thousands of U.S. service members from our districts were
    killed in Iraq and thousands more sustained terrible injuries.
    The American taxpayers have now spent hundreds of billions,
    billions of dollars even by the most conservative estimates.
        Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, you rushed to invite Mr.
    Hannah without consulting anyone. In fact, this entire panel
    has been stacked with hand-picked witnesses who all oppose the
    Iran agreement. You did not invite prominent Republicans like
    Brent Scowcroft or Richard Lugar. You did not invite any of the
    dozens of generals or admirals or other military experts who
    support this agreement.
        Other committees have held dozens of substantive hearings
    on the Iran agreement, but do you know how many this committee
    has held? Zero. The Subcommittee on National Security held one
    last November, but that was it, nothing at the committee level.
    Yet all of a sudden now our committee is rushing to hold
    today's hearing without even the one-week notice required by
    the House rules according to the parliamentarian.
        These experts here are all repeating the same talking
    points for the same Republican political narrative. This
    committee has basically created its own Republican echo
    chamber.
        With respect to Ben Rhodes, I am struggling to understand
    the allegations against him. If I understand it correctly,
    Republicans accuse him of misleading the American people by
    claiming that nothing happened with Iran before 2013 when they
    elected a so-called moderate president. Republicans claim that
    if the Americans just knew the president was working towards an
    agreement before 2013, they would have rejected the deal.
        Of course, this is absurd. There are dozens of public press
    reports from every single year of the Obama administration
    documenting how they were working to reach out to Iran with
    varying degrees of success. All you have to do is Google it.
    From the time President Barack Obama was a candidate for
    President until today, press reports are full of accounts of
    how letters were being exchanged, meetings were being held, and
    negotiations were being launched.
        The Republicans rushed to hold this hearing not as a way to
    obtain substantive information about the merits of the Iran
    agreement or even to investigate a legitimate allegation.
    Instead, this hearing is exactly what it purports to condemn, a
    partisan narrative designed to mislead the American people.
    That is not just ironic, that is hypocritical.
        With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back, and I thank the
    witnesses again for being here.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        The prime witness that we had invited, Mr. Rhodes from the
    White House, declined to come before the committee. We are
    disappointed in his failure to appear.
        The chair also notes that contingent upon Mr. Rhodes
    appearing, an invitation to appear was extended to the
    Honorable Tom Cotton, United States Senator from the State of
    Arkansas. This was done at a request of the White House. Given
    that Mr. Rhodes had refused to appear before the committee
    today, the distinguished Senator from Arkansas is also excused.
        Mr. Gowdy. Mr. Chairman?
        Chairman Chaffetz. Yes, the gentleman from South Carolina.
        Mr. Gowdy. I have an inquiry.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Yes.
        Mr. Gowdy. Is Mr. Hannah here?
        Chairman Chaffetz. Yes.
        Mr. Gowdy. Well, then why did Mr. Cummings ask him the
    questions? He will have a chance to ask Mr. Hannah whatever
    questions he wants to ask him. We don't have a chance to ask
    Mr. Rhodes the questions we want to ask because he didn't
    bother to show up ----
        Mr. Cummings. Will the chairman yield?
        Mr. Gowdy.--but Mr. Hannah did.
        Mr. Cummings. Will the chairman yield?
        Chairman Chaffetz. Yes.
        Mr. Cummings. I can say whatever I want to say in my
    opening statement.
        Mr. Gowdy. Yes, you can. It just needs to be fair.
        Mr. Cummings. And I can ----
        Mr. Gowdy. That is my point.
        Mr. Cummings. Well ----
        Mr. Gowdy. Just be fair about it. You can say what you
    want.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Gentleman will state his inquiry.
        Mr. Gowdy. I just wanted to know if he was here.
        Mr. Cummings. He is here.
        Mr. Gowdy. And you tell me he is.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        Mr. Gowdy. Okay.
        Chairman Chaffetz. And Mr. Rhodes is not here.
        I would also note that the Democrats were free and usually
    almost always in my experience invite a Democratic witness, but
    there is no Democratic witness today because you didn't invite
    one.
        Mr. Cummings. Will the gentleman yield?
        Chairman Chaffetz. Sure.
        Mr. Cummings. Chairman, you know for a fact that we got
    less than the notice that is required in the rules and did not
    object and went on with the hearing. You know that.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I disagree ----
        Mr. Cummings. All right.
        Chairman Chaffetz.--with the timing issue that you suggest.
        Mr. Cummings. You gave us the required time?
        Chairman Chaffetz. Yes.
        Mr. Cummings. I disagree with you.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Okay. We will sort that out. We have a
    good working relationship, Mr. Cummings and I, but ----
        Mr. Gowdy. Parliamentary inquiry.
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman from South Carolina.
        Mr. Gowdy. Does the executive privilege apply to media
    interviews or only to appearances before Congress?
        Chairman Chaffetz. I don't know the full answer to that,
    but I believe they are free to talk to whoever they want to in
    the media, but they did claim in Mr. Eggleston's letter to
    claim executive privilege.
        Mr. Gowdy. So is that a yes or a no? Does it apply when you
    are being interviewed by the New York Times or ABC or CBS or
    just when Members of Congress just want to ask questions?
        Chairman Chaffetz. Evidently just when Members of Congress.
        Mr. Gowdy. I thank the chairman for that clarification.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. We are going to continue with
    the hearing. We do have Mr. Michael Rubin. He is the resident
    scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Mr. Michael
    Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; and Mr. John
    Hannah, senior counselor at the Foundation for Defense of
    Democracies. We welcome you all and thank you for being here.
        Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses are to be sworn
    before they testify. And if you will please rise and raise your
    right hand.
        [Witnesses sworn.]
        Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. Let the record reflect that
    all witnesses answered in the affirmative.
        We would appreciate you limiting your verbal comments to 5
    minutes. It will give us time to ask you questions. And your
    entire written statement will be entered into the record.
        I now recognize Mr. Rubin for his opening statement.

                           WITNESS STATEMENTS

                       STATEMENT OF MICHAEL RUBIN

        Mr. Rubin. Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member Cummings,
    honorable members, thank you for the opportunity to testify
    here today.
        The major Iran-related issues about which the White House
    misled when selling the Iran deal were verification. The JCPOA
    loosened the standard set in South Africa and Libya. It
    embraced Iran's voluntary compliance with the additional
    protocol when previously Rouhani had bragged that voluntary
    compliance allows Iran to reverse course at any time.
        It also ignores the problem of offsite research. Have
    Iranians transferred some nuclear work to labs in North Korea?
    Under the JCPOA, we will never know.
        Another issue in which it misled was Rouhani as a moderate.
    Rouhani is no moderate. Loyalty to Khomeini's vision was a
    major theme of his campaign commercials. He stuffed his cabinet
    with veterans of the Intelligence in effect constructing not a
    reformist cabinet but a KGB cabinet. In 2005 he laid out a
    doctrine of surprise. Lull the Americans into complacency with
    dialogue and then deliver a knockout blow. Just last week, he
    offered full-throated endorsement to the legacy of Qods Force
    Chief Qassem Soleimani, Iran's master terrorist.
        It also misled about who benefits inside Iran. The real
    tragedy of the deal is it pumps money into the coffers of the
    Revolutionary Guard. History belies the idea that showering
    Iran with trade moderates the country or trickles down to
    ordinary people. Between 1998 and 2005, the European Union
    almost tripled its trade with Iran and the price of oil
    quintupled. Iran took its hard currency windfall and invested
    in its ballistic missile program and its covert nuclear
    enrichment facilities.
        Reformist President Khatami's spokesman bragged about how
    he had defeated the West. We had an overt policy, which was one
    of negotiation and confidence-building he said, and a covert
    policy, which was continuation of the activities. The person in
    charge of directing the money into the military, Rouhani in his
    capacity as chairman of the National Security Council.
        The problem goes beyond the supreme leader's investment
    arm. The economic wing of IRGC controls perhaps 40 percent of
    the economy, including every sector now open for business.
        Many of those who supported the JCPOA acknowledge it to be
    a flawed and faulty agreement but argued the alternative was
    war. This may have been crafty politics, but it undermined the
    U.S. position. By creating a binary choice between the JCPOA
    and war, Rhodes removed credibility to the notion that the
    Obama administration envisioned the best alternative to
    negotiated agreement. This played into Iranian hands because
    they knew no matter what they pushed for, Kerry would concede.
        The problem now is that what Rhodes did has become the rule
    rather than the exception. In my written testimony I detail the
    long history of diplomats and politicians lying to keep
    diplomacy alive. Too often they blame political opponents in
    the United States more than foreign adversaries for the failure
    at diplomacy.
        As I document in Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of
    Engaging Rogue Regimes, a history of the last half-century of
    U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes and terrorist groups, as
    diplomats proceed with high-level engagement, they too often
    calibrate it to the fantasy they have constructed rather than
    reality.
        This often leads officials to avoid congressional oversight
    and, on occasion, to lie to Congress. During the 1990s, senior
    State Department officials testified that they could draw no
    direct links between Yasser Arafat and terrorism to avoid
    triggering an aid cutoff. Declassified documents show Clinton's
    peace team knew their testimony was false.
        Likewise, in 2007 during the Bush administration,
    Christopher Hill, the State Department's point man on North
    Korean issues, presented to Congress an artificially rosy
    picture of the diplomatic process with North Korea in order to
    keep support for engagement alive, no matter the truth of
    Pyongyang's behavior.
        More recently, diplomats advocating the New START treaty
    lied, both directly and by omission, to Congress in order to
    avoid reporting that Russia had been cheating on arms control
    accords.
        So what to do? Rhodes has placed the security of the United
    States and its allies at risk. Certainly, any dissemination of
    falsehoods to Congress and the American people merit a broader
    investigation. National security and Congress' credibility are
    at risk. That is not enough. In the past six decades, the U.S.
    State Department has failed to conduct lessons-learned
    exercises as to why its high-profile diplomacy with rogue
    regimes has seldom, if ever, succeeded.
        Conducting a broader review is not to criminalize policy
    debate; that would be poisonous and counterproductive. But if
    the State Department refuses due diligence, it would be
    beneficial if Congress would examine diplomacy leading up to
    the JCPOA if only to ensure that the same mistakes are not made
    for a seventh time. There should be bipartisan consensus. Even
    supporters of the deal acknowledge serious concerns about its
    flaws, so, too, do most serious arms control and
    counterproliferation experts outside of the echo chamber about
    whose crafting Rhodes bragged.
        One final point if I may, I'm concerned that perhaps by
    creating an echo chamber and solely talking to people within
    it, in effect what Rhodes did was create a propaganda operation
    in which he entrapped none other than Secretary of State John
    Kerry. Did Secretary of State Kerry talk to people outside the
    echo chamber? If not, he's a victim of Ben Rhodes as well.
        Thank you.
        [Prepared statement of Mr. Rubin follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        I will now go to Mr. Doran of the Hudson Institute. You are
    now recognized for 5 minutes.

                       STATEMENT OF MICHAEL DORAN

        Mr. Doran. Chairman Chaffetz ----
        Chairman Chaffetz. Sorry, microphone there, please.
        Mr. Doran. Thanks. Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member
    Cummings, members of the committee ----
        Chairman Chaffetz. Sorry, if you can move that microphone
    right up close and comfortable. There you go. Thank you.
        Mr. Doran. Thank you for inviting me to address some of the
    problems raised by the recent profile New York Times Magazine
    of Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for
    strategic communications. Mr. Rhodes admitted to the New York
    Times that he created a war room of some two dozen detailees
    from around the executive branch who came to the White House
    and monitored all communications--all public communications
    about the Iran deal, communications coming out of the--Capitol
    Hill, the think tank world, on social media, and in the
    traditional media.
        He also created what he called an echo chamber. That was a
    network of sympathetic NGOs, think tanks, and pliant members of
    the press to whom he ceded narratives, false narratives I would
    say, about the Iran deal, and then he directed the reporters to
    these NGOs and think tanks to give seemingly independent
    verification to the narratives that he put out.
        In my view, the creation of the echo chamber and the war
    room does constitute a deception of the American people and of
    their representatives. But the question is what were--what
    exactly was the nature of the deception? And I think to
    understand that we have to understand the larger policy
    context, and that is that the strategic goal of the President
    was to carry out a detente with Iran. It was to end the
    conflict with Iran as a necessary precondition to pulling the
    United States back from the Middle East because ending the
    military engagement in the Middle East, I think, is the
    President's overall goal.
        Now, if the President had been up front about this with the
    American people and said that he wanted to A) pull the United
    States out of the Middle East and B) make Iran part of the
    security architecture of the region, he would have encountered
    immediately a severe political backlash that would have
    undermined his whole project. And former Defense Secretary
    Panetta, former chief of the CIA Panetta said as much to the
    New York Times Magazine.
        Now, that's the need for a propaganda operation that--to
    deceive the American people. It's not just to misrepresent
    what's in the Iran deal but to misrepresent everything else
    that's around it that is the strategic goal of the President in
    the Middle East.
        I'd like to say a few words if I may about what I think
    were the--what is the anatomy of the deception, that is the
    main lines of false narrative that the war room and echo
    chamber put out. And in my prepared statement, I go into more
    detail about this. I'll just summarize here five major points.
        Number one, conjuring moderates. The echo chamber created
    the impression that Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran, was
    a moderate coming to power, representing a wave of moderation
    in Iran, a desire to fundamentally change relations between
    Iran and the West. This narrative of the moderates coming to
    power and the need to support the moderates has been the gift
    that keeps on giving to President Obama's diplomacy. It creates
    a pleasing story of a breaking down of barriers. It creates a
    moral equivalence in political terms between those who are
    critical of the deal in the United States and hardliners, the
    supposed enemies of Rouhani in Iraq.
        And, importantly, it makes--it lulls us into a false sense
    of security about all of the concessions that we have made to
    Iran, and in particular, the sunset component of the nuclear
    deal, which gives Iran effectively in 10 years a completely
    legitimate program and the ability to move--nuclear program,
    and the ability to move quickly toward a weapon. If Iran is
    moderating, if we have--if we are supporting a process of
    moderation in Iran, then allowing it to have these capabilities
    is really no danger.
        The second deception is falsifying the chronology of the
    negotiations, which began much earlier than the election of
    Rouhani. They go back to July 2012, and they were initiated by
    the United States.
        The third deception is erasing concessions from the United
    States along the lines of what Dr. Rubin just discussed.
        The fourth is hiding the regional cost. The President has
    in effect recognized Syria as an Iranian sphere of influence,
    and one of the goals of the deception of Mr. Rhodes is to
    prevent people from connecting the dots between the Syria
    policy and the Iranian nuclear policy.
        And the fifth part of the deception is blaming allies. The
    White House on background and in public is very willing to
    criticize our Sunni allies as creating sectarian extremist in
    the region. It's willing to criticize in very derogatory terms
    Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. It never criticizes the
    Iranians. You never hear a word from the White House about what
    the Iranians are doing in Syria in pursuit of the--in support
    of Assad's murder machine.
        I'll just sum up now by what I think we need to do about
    this, and I would say two points. Number one, I agree with you,
    Chairman Chaffetz, that we do not actually know what is in the
    Iran deal. We still to this day don't know, and I completely
    agree with your assessment about the activities of Secretary of
    State Kerry. In Europe last week, he was in Europe drumming up
    business for the Iranians, and the Iranians are saying that
    this is part of the deal. Is it part of the deal or is it not?
    We don't know. So I would support further investigation.
        And then secondly, I think we have to trim the size of the
    NSC. It just--I don't see how anyone who looks at this and sees
    a war room of 22 detailees from around the executive branch in
    the White House with the job of monitoring communications and
    creating a false narrative in the media is a legitimate part of
    the NSC's mission. The NSC should be a coordinating body. It
    should not be a muscular imperial body running roughshod over
    all of the executive branch.
        So I would add my voice to those who are saying that the
    NSC should be cut back severely from the 400 members it
    currently has to something more like 100.
        Thank you.
        [Prepared statement of Mr. Doran follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        I will now recognize Mr. Hannah for 5 minutes.

                        STATEMENT OF JOHN HANNAH

        Mr. Hannah. Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member Cummings,
    members of the committee, on behalf of the Foundation for
    Defense of Democracies, thank you for the invitation to testify
    on the Iran nuclear deal.
        For me as a foreign policy analyst, perhaps the most
    important revelation made in the recent New York Times profile
    of Ben Rhodes was its allegation concerning President Obama's
    overriding strategic purpose in seeking a nuclear deal with
    Iran, a purpose which until now has been largely concealed from
    the American people.
        According to the article, ``By eliminating the fuss about
    Iran's nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a
    source of structural tension between the two countries, which
    would create the space for America to disentangle itself from
    its established system of alliances with countries like Saudi
    Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and Turkey. With one bold move, the
    administration would effectively begin the process of a large-
    scale disengagement from the Middle East.''
        Now, if accurate, this is truly a stunning admission with
    very big implications. As suggested elsewhere in the article,
    it does represent nothing less than a radical shift in American
    foreign policy. According to the article, Mr. Rhodes' passion
    for the Iranian nuclear deal did not derive from any investment
    in the technical details of sanctions or centrifuges or the
    future of Iranian politics but rather ``from his own sense of
    urgency of radically reorienting American policy in the Middle
    East in order to make the prospects of any American involvement
    in the region's future wars a lot less likely.''
        Now, whether you agree or disagree with this inclination to
    step back from the leadership role that the United States has
    played in the Middle East since World War II, the troubling
    fact remains that this fundamental shift in American strategy
    has never been openly communicated to the American people. It
    has never been debated by the U.S. Congress and it has never
    been revealed to America's long-time allies in the Middle East.
        Determining whether or not this very substantive claim is
    true, that is, whether the White House is now in reality
    seeking to engineer a large-scale American disengagement from
    the Middle East is a question of vital importance to U.S.
    national interests, again, whether you agree with it or
    disagree, and it's one that I think the Congress should seek
    clarification on.
        If, in, fact the nuclear deal with Iran is as Mr. Rhodes
    suggests, the center of the arc for President Obama's efforts
    to radically transform U.S. policy, it raises a host of
    concerns. Certainly, it casts doubt on the administration's
    repeated claim that no deal was better than a bad deal. To the
    extent that the preeminent objective instead, in Mr. Rhodes'
    view, was to ``eliminate the fuss about Iran's nuclear
    program'' rather than to actually eliminate that program
    itself, one wonders whether the administration did demand or
    had a tough enough posture in negotiations as it might
    otherwise have been.
        Similar concerns, I think, exist now that the deal is in
    place and being implemented. When Congress was reviewing the
    JCPOA last summer, the administration made repeated assurances
    to the Congress that it would vigorously enforce the agreement
    while using every tool at its disposal to counter Iranian
    terrorism, its destabilizing regional activities, ballistic
    missile program, and human rights abuses.
        Since then, however, Iran's bad behavior has dramatically
    escalated. It has significantly increased its combat role in
    Syria, it's increased--or it's arrested additional U.S.
    citizens, conducted multiple ballistic missile tests, it's
    fired rockets in very close proximity to U.S. ships in the
    Persian Gulf, held 10 American sailors captive, and threatened
    to close the Straits of Hormuz.
        The U.S. response to these repeated provocations, despite
    the administration's earlier assurances, has so far ranged from
    quite tepid to nonexistent. Even more worrisome, perhaps, has
    been the reported U.S. willingness to at least contemplate
    granting Iran additional sanctions relief that it failed to
    negotiate in the JCPOA. Specifically, Iran is demanding access
    to dollarized financial transactions. This would be a huge
    unilateral concession that would greatly expand Iran's ability
    to do business internationally while legitimizing an Iranian
    banking sector that remains mired in elicit financing
    activities.
        Let me close by stressing that especially in light of the
    questions raised by the New York Times profile about what
    America's true underlying purpose is in pursuing the Iran deal,
    it's extremely important that Congress now hold the
    administration's feet to the fire when it comes to the
    commitment to combat Iran's continued aggression. At a minimum,
    Congress should do everything in its power to ensure that Iran
    receives no new sanctions relief in the absence of significant
    new Iranian concessions. And far more aggressive use should be
    made of nonnuclear sanctions to constrain Iran's expanding
    ballistic missile program and deter the Iranian Revolutionary
    Guard Corps from their destabilizing activities in Syria, Iraq,
    and Yemen.
        The bottom line is that the United States should not be
    sending Iran the message that we now place such a high premium
    on its continued adherence to the nuclear deal that it will
    have carte blanche to pursue its increasingly threatening
    policies in other areas that endanger our interests and those
    of our allies.
        Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
    testify. I know this is the place where I would normally say I
    look forward to your questions, but maybe more appropriately I
    stand by and am ready to try and answer your questions.
        [Prepared statement of Mr. Hannah follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Chaffetz. Fair enough. I think that is a fair
    summary of where we are at.
        I will now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Rhodes I wish were here. He has a unique perspective.
    He said some truly amazing and over-the-top things that were
    quoted in the New York Times. I haven't heard anything refute
    that. One of the ones that I think would concern all of us is
    this quote that he said on the fourth page of this article. He
    says--it is printed out--``I don't know anymore where I begin
    and Obama ends.'' That is a true--if you really think and let
    that settle in, that is a truly stunning statement.
        He also said some other things that I think are very
    concerning. ``All these newspapers used to have foreign
    bureaus,'' which I think he makes a good point on that. And
    then he says, ``now, they don't. They call us to explain to
    them what is happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets
    are reporting of world events from Washington. The average
    reporter we talk to is 27 years old and their only reporting
    experience consists of being around political campaigns. That
    is a sea change. They literally know nothing.''
        He went on to say--Mr. Rhodes said, ``But then there are
    these sorts of force multipliers. We have our compadres. I will
    reach out to a couple people and, you know, I wouldn't want to
    name them''--and then he goes on and--anyway, it is really
    interesting in his approach.
        That is one component, but you compile that on top of what
    you also hear former Secretary Panetta said. This is what
    Secretary Panetta said. And this is a quote from Panetta. ``And
    you know my view, talking with the President was--if I brought
    it to the point where we had evidence that they are developing
    an atomic weapon, I think the President is serious that he is
    not going to allow that to happen.'' But then Panetta stops
    according to the article, and the authors says, ``But would you
    make that same assessment now?'' And Secretary Panetta's quote
    is ``I would make the same assessment now? Probably not.''
    Probably not. So he said it once. I have repeated it twice, but
    this is of what is deep concern.
        I think it would be naive to just gloss this over and say,
    hey, we got this deal, it is in the best interest of the United
    States, it is not something that was fully brought before the
    Congress. I would hope that we would walk out with an
    understanding from the three of you as what those big
    outstanding questions are.
        But maybe somebody could shed some light on these so-called
    side deals, these things where Iran has maybe made other--do
    you have any insight, Mr. Doran, any of you, on what these so-
    called side deals might be?
        Mr. Doran. No. There's what we have uncovered, but as time
    goes on, as time goes on, we keep finding out more and more
    that wasn't in the text, and of course the Obama administration
    says there is nothing else. But the Iranians are saying that
    there is a larger deal in particular with regard to access to
    dollars and expanding their economy. And the behavior of our
    officials suggest that they are right. Our officials say that
    the Iranians are not correct, but here we have Secretary Kerry
    in Europe last week meeting with banks trying to get them to
    overlook concerns about Iran's illicit activities and to drum
    up business for Iran.
        So there's a mismatch here between what we're saying and
    what we're doing, but what we're doing actually does match
    quite closely with what the Iranians are saying, and that's
    been a characteristic of the deal from day one. The deal has
    been shaped by the red lines of the supreme leader and not by
    the red lines of the President of the United States. So our red
    lines have dropped all along the way and the Iranians have
    stayed consistent with theirs.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Mr. Rubin?
        Mr. Rubin. Very quickly, the JCPOA is almost like a
    timeshare agreement where you sign the deal and then you'll
    only find out then what the true costs are. One of the subjects
    for oversight would be with regard to changing the language
    restricting Iran's ballistic missile work. Was it a deliberate
    concession or was it the result of incompetence?
        What troubles me mostly is how we seem to be having become
    Iran's lawyer. For example, the Iranians will now complain that
    we are not enabling enough openings for their economy, and yet
    what didn't hit the Western press was last week the Iranians on
    the order of the supreme leader canceled an order, $20
    million--I'm sorry, $2 million for Chevrolets. And the answer
    was we shouldn't be doing business with the Americans. Who's
    kneecapping the Iranian economy, us or the Iranians? It's time
    to have the Iranians stop blaming other people and take
    accountability to themselves.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. My time is expired.
        I now recognize the ranking member, Mr. Cummings.
        Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Hannah, you were Dick Cheney's top national security
    advisor, is that right?
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, sir, from 2005 to 2009.
        Mr. Cummings. And your office was ground zero in the Bush
    administration's marketing campaign to sell the Iraq War to the
    American people. Is that a fair statement?
        Mr. Hannah. No, I don't think it is. We--as you said, we
    played an important role in making the first draft of Secretary
    Powell's speech to the United Nations. That was certainly true
    ----
        Mr. Cummings. Okay.
        Mr. Hannah.--but we ----
        Mr. Cummings. So you were involved in making the first
    draft, is that right?
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, that's correct.
        Mr. Cummings. Is this pretty much the draft that he
    presented to the United Nations? I mean ----
        Mr. Hannah. It ----
        Mr. Cummings. I know a first draft usually goes through
    many more drafts but ----
        Mr. Hannah. Sure. Sure. It--I thought there were some
    similarities in it. If you actually hear some of Secretary
    Powell's people tell the story now, they say my draft was
    filled with inaccurate intelligence reports, reports that
    couldn't be supported by the intelligence community, so at the
    end of the day they threw out my draft. Secretary Powell then
    spent four days with the highest levels of our intelligence
    community at Langley doing a new draft that he said was
    primarily based on the intelligence community--community's NIE.
    So I--their claim is that there were no--that my draft did not
    actually form the foundation of what he presented to the United
    Nations.
        Mr. Cummings. I am sure having heard that, I am sure you
    probably said then let me at least listen to what he did say,
    is that right? Did you read his ----
        Mr. Hannah. Oh, sure. No, I ----
        Mr. Cummings. Okay.
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, I did. Absolutely.
        Mr. Cummings. And was there any mention of weapons of mass
    destruction in your draft as compared to the final draft of
    Secretary Powell?
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, I think both of our drafts were entirely
    focused on weapons of mass destruction.
        Mr. Cummings. And what would you say was the difference
    because he seemed like he was very disappointed with the
    information that you had provided him and said that it was a
    blot on his reputation and pretty much said, you know, until
    the day he dies he is going to regret it. But I am just
    curious.
        Mr. Hannah. Just a correction, first of all, when he said
    it was a blot, I think he was talking about what he presented
    to the United Nations. I don't think he was talking about the
    draft that I presented him. It's what he did with George Tenet
    and the rest of the intelligence community that he ended up
    presenting that was obviously filled with errors. Most of it
    was wrong.
        My draft--the instruction to me when I started that draft
    was that you need to go look at all of the intelligence there
    is, including raw intelligence, which we regularly got at the
    White House, which were individual reports by individual
    intelligence sources. I did that and put it into a draft, and
    then have the intelligence community look at that draft and
    decide what pieces of intelligence could they support, which
    ones weren't they able to support. That source was not
    reliable, didn't have enough of a reliable record of reporting,
    and they would throw it out. So I wrote the draft knowing that
    large segments of it would be thrown out because the
    intelligence community just didn't have the necessary
    confidence level in that reporting.
        Mr. Cummings. Now, let me read what Secretary Powell's
    chief of staff said about your document. I take it that is the
    first draft. He said, ``Hannah was constantly flipping through
    his clipboard trying to source and verify all the statements.
    It was clear the thing was put together by cherry-picking
    everything.'' In fact, they discovered that you did not use a
    DIA report properly, you did not cite a CIA report fairly, and
    you referenced a New York Times article that quoted an
    intelligence report out of context.
        So they scrapped, as you said, your entire document. And
    the Secretary's chief of staff described it in this way. He
    said, ``Finally, I threw the paper down on the table and said
    this isn't going to cut it.'' Now, this was the chief of staff,
    right, for Secretary Powell. How could you have given him such
    a document that appears in his opinion to have been baseless
    and misleading?
        Mr. Hannah. Well, I mean, there's a long history to this.
    It was Mr. Wilkerson, Colonel Wilkerson ----
        Mr. Cummings. Yes, I ----
        Mr. Hannah.--who was his chief of staff.
        Mr. Cummings. That is correct.
        Mr. Hannah. He has a long record of--that anybody can go
    read about his views of the Iraq War and his regrets and deep
    regrets. I think we just have a different view of the draft I
    presented.
        I do acknowledge that it included an awful lot of stuff
    that I knew that came from the intelligence community that they
    would not be able to support. If they thought it wasn't used
    properly, they could use it properly if they thought it was
    useful. So we just have a basic, I think, difference of view
    about what I actually provided and what the purpose of my draft
    was. It wasn't meant to be a final draft, the final word that
    would go to the United Nations. It was meant to be a rough
    draft that the intelligence community would go through with a
    fine-tooth comb and pick out those parts that they thought were
    the--made the strongest case that in fact Saddam did have
    weapons of mass destruction.
        Mr. Cummings. But it wasn't just Mr. Wilkerson. It was also
    George Tenet who reportedly turned directly to you--and I am
    sure you will remember this--and said ``you wasted a lot of our
    time.'' Is that true, and did he say that, George Tenet?
        Mr. Hannah. He certainly didn't say it to me. He may have--
    certainly, I can easily see him saying that kind of thing, but
    he didn't say it to me.
        Mr. Cummings. All right. Thank you very much.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I now recognize the gentleman from
    Michigan, Mr. Walberg, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the panel
    for being here. We wish that there were other members of
    course.
        Mr. Doran, in your testimony you discuss the need to
    restore checks and balances and note that while Mr. Rhodes'
    behavior is scandalous, and I think propaganda is a word that
    you used, it wasn't a rogue operation but that he was carrying
    out the will of the President. Questions that I am sure my
    constituents representing them here in the people's House would
    want me to ask in reference to this is, number one, how can
    Congress take steps to prevent this President and future
    Presidents from circumventing Congress?
        Mr. Doran. I think this is part of the inherent tension in
    our government. I did say that I think that the--Mr. Rhodes is
    doing the bidding of the President. I think it's important to
    remember that. We have now numerous accounts from--mainly from
    former Defense Secretaries Panetta and Gates especially,
    showing how there's an inner core in the White House of five or
    six people who consult closely with the President about his
    views, and everybody else is pretty much left out of the
    conversation, including principals on the National Security
    Council. And Mr. Rhodes is part of that inner circle.
        The only answer I have to this--I spent a lot of time
    thinking about it. The only answer I have are the two that I
    gave you. One is over--just exercising the oversight
    responsibilities that Congress has, asking the hard questions,
    and continuing to put pressure on the executive branch to come
    clean.
        The second is, I think, cutting back the size of the NSC.
    It's simply wrong. I think anyone on both sides of the aisle
    would see that the National Security Council, created by
    statute in 1947, was created to be a coordinating body, not an
    operational arm of the government. And under President Obama,
    it has slipped into becoming an operational arm.
        And I think when you look at the war room, as described not
    by me but by Mr. Rhodes, this is an operational White House.
        Just one last point here, there's an issue here that I
    think there's--we all just need to be aware of, but there's not
    much we can do about it, and that is the collapse of the press.
    So one of the reasons why this is a threat to our checks and
    balances is because of the collapse of, I would say, certain
    informal checks on governmental power that have disappeared
    over the last decade, you know, very, very quickly because of
    the rise of the internet.
        What Ben Rhodes said in that article about foreign events
    being reported from Washington and from the White House by
    young reporters who don't know anything and don't have any
    other sources of information except what the White House is
    telling them is completely correct, and it's a danger. There's
    not much in terms of legislation that we can do about that, but
    we need to be aware of it.
        It's sort of a double danger because not only do those
    reporters not have alternative sources of information, but
    because all of the information is coming out of the White
    House, they have a special interest in maintaining good
    relations with the White House, and reporting the news stories
    as the White House wants it reported.
        Mr. Walberg. Well, let me go on from that as well, and, Mr.
    Rubin, you may want to jump in here as well. Ben Rhodes'
    assistant in the article--in his report--his comments in the
    New York Times Magazine article indicated that there were
    compadres involved in this, and some of those were in the think
    tank community as well. Who would he be referring to in a think
    tank and policy world?
        Mr. Rubin. The Ploughshares Fund.
        Mr. Walberg. The what?
        Mr. Rubin. The Ploughshares Fund has funded many of the
    elements of the so-called echo chamber, to use Ben Rhodes'
    words, supposedly neutral assessors, for example, in various
    arms control think tanks, perhaps in the Atlantic Council as
    well and elsewhere were receiving grants. Now, one can say just
    because one has received a grant from this high-level funder--
    and by the way, this funder also had provided grants to senior
    Iranian officials working in the United States as well at
    universities and so forth--just because they have funded
    doesn't necessarily mean that there's a quid pro quo, but what
    you will find is that anyone who has received Ploughshares
    funding, especially for the bulk of their grant or the bulk of
    their salary, never, not once contradicted the assessment which
    Ben Rhodes sought to put forward.
        Mr. Walberg. Thank you. I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        I will now recognize the gentlewoman from New York, Mrs.
    Maloney, for 5 minutes.
        Mrs. Maloney. Thank you.
        After a good deal of deliberation and research, I voted
    against the Iran nuclear deal. And at the time I was hoping
    very much that I was wrong, but everything that has happened
    since and the additional information that has come forward, it
    literally has convinced me that I made the right decision.
        But I have to say as a Member who took the time to
    carefully study the plan before making a decision, as I believe
    all of my colleagues did, I had absolute, complete access to
    all documents. I read every document, even classified
    documents. Every meeting was addressed in various areas. The
    administration bent over backwards to provide accurate
    information to us.
        And I must say that this was one of the most hotly debated
    issues that I have experienced since I have been in Congress,
    but both sides were deeply involved in putting forward their
    cases. There were demonstrations, there were petitions, there
    were meetings, there were conferences, there were debates. It
    was completely and totally open to everyone to learn and to
    make their own decision.
        So my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are now
    taking another opportunity to attack the administration with a
    futile fishing expedition based on a widely questioned New York
    Times profile of an advisor to President Obama. I believe it is
    quite a stretch to suggest that the White House building a
    comprehensive information campaign to support a major foreign
    policy initiative amounts to any way misleading the American
    people.
        And I find it incredibly hypocritical to invite Mr. Hannah,
    who worked for Dick Cheney and helped market the Iraq War based
    on false pretenses to come now before us as an expert witness
    on an alleged false White House narrative. I find the hypocrisy
    really beyond belief.
        And I would like to ask Mr. Hannah, do you know who Scott
    McClellan is? Yes or no.
        Mr. Hannah. Yes.
        Mrs. Maloney. Yes. Well, Scott ----
        Mr. Hannah. Yes.
        Mrs. Maloney. Other people may not know, but he was the
    White House press secretary, and he wrote a book about his
    experience. He explained how a small group of advisors called
    the White House Iraq working group helped sell the Iraq War by
    misleading the American people.
        And I am quoting from President Bush's press secretary. He
    said, ``The White House Iraq group had been set up in the
    summer of 2002 to coordinate the marketing of the war to the
    public.'' And, Mr. Hannah, wasn't Scooter Libby your boss and
    Dick Cheney's chief of staff? Weren't they part of the Iraq
    group?
        Mr. Hannah. The Vice President wasn't. I think Scooter
    Libby was. I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think you're right.
        Mrs. Maloney. Yes. Yes. Well, Scott McClellan further
    wrote, he explained exactly how you and others misled the
    American people. And he said this, ``As the campaign
    accelerated, qualifications were downplayed or dropped
    altogether. Contradictory intelligence was largely ignored or
    simply disregarded.''
        So, Mr. Hannah, why did you ignore and disregard evidence
    that contradicted your political narrative for the war?
        Mr. Hannah. Congresswoman, I would just say that, you know,
    to the extent that I got it wrong in believing that Saddam had
    weapons of mass destruction, an awful lot of people got it
    wrong. It was not a figment of the imagination ----
        Mrs. Maloney. Sir, are you saying ----
        Mr. Hannah.--of the Vice President's office.
        Mrs. Maloney.--that Mr. McClellan was wrong in the book
    when he said he misled and lied to the American people, this
    group?
        Mr. Hannah. All I can tell you is that there have been
    bipartisan commissions that have looked at how--the
    intelligence on weapons of mass destruction ----
        Mrs. Maloney. Do you think ----
        Mr. Hannah.--that came to the conclusion that the President
    of the United States did not lie about ----
        Mrs. Maloney. I am not talking about him ----
        Mr. Hannah.--evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
        Mrs. Maloney.--I am talking about McClellan. Was McClellan
    wrong? Was he misinformed? Was he lying ----
        Mr. Hannah. I may have had one ----
        Mrs. Maloney.--when he wrote we were misleading the
    American people. We downplayed any ----
        Mr. Hannah. I ----
        Mrs. Maloney.--contradictory information?
        Mr. Hannah. I--Congresswoman, I haven't read his book. All
    I can tell you is that a lot of people who know Scott very
    well--I don't know Scott at all really ----
        Mrs. Maloney. Okay. Are you saying ----
        Mr. Hannah.--have contradicted his presentation.
        Mrs. Maloney. Okay.
        Mr. Hannah. They believe he was wrong in his judgments and
    he ----
        Mrs. Maloney. Are you saying that you did include
    contradictory intelligence showing that your case was weak or
    nonexistent?
        Mr. Hannah. No. I think we were instructed to write what we
    thought was the best case for why Saddam had weapons of mass
    destruction.
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentlewoman's time is expired.
        Mrs. Maloney. No, I have 21 seconds left according to this.
        Chairman Chaffetz. No, your--that is ----
        Mrs. Maloney. So I would just like to ----
        Chairman Chaffetz. No, no, no, no, you are 27 seconds over
    time.
        Mrs. Maloney. Oh, okay.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you.
        Mrs. Maloney. All right.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I now recognize the ----
        Mrs. Maloney. Well, I would like to put my closing
    statement in the record. It is a zinger, and it is very
    hypocritical, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Chaffetz. No, no--you know, Mr. Hannah is here to
    answer questions. Mr. Rhodes is not here to answer questions.
    That is what is difficult about this hearing.
        We will go to Mr. Gosar now of Arizona. I recognize him for
    5 minutes.
        Mr. Gosar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rubin, Mr. Doran, and Mr. Hannah, thank you for your
    testimony and for providing valuable information to this
    committee, which sheds light on the deceptive manner in which
    the Obama administration sold out the American people and our
    allies across the globe with the Iran capitulation agreement.
        Even when presented with the facts like the facts each of
    you have laid out in your testimony, the administration box
    doubles down and tries to discredit anyone who disagrees with
    their false narrative, including me. When asked about Ben
    Rhodes' revelatory interview with the New York Times Magazine,
    Press Secretary Josh Earnest dodged and decided to lambaste
    several Members of Congress, including me, as liars, truly
    eliciting Alinsky's principles to their core.
        Why? Because I said that under this illegal Iran deal and
    lifting sanctions that Iran would be able to access up to $100
    billion that was previously frozen. His Treasury Secretary Jack
    Lew stated the sanctions relief would be worth about $100
    billion. The President of Iran said his country would get $100
    billion.
        Despite the fact that I said something similar in September
    of 2015, the White House is now trying to brand me as a liar in
    attempting to deflect Ben Rhodes' recent statements. The point
    is not whether it is $100 billion or $50 billion or whether it
    is all at once or over a period of time.
        The real problem is that President Obama is funding the
    world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Iran is no friend
    to the United States, to Christians, to Jews, or even Sunni
    Muslims. Iran is a rogue nation hell-bent on nuclear war in the
    Middle East.
        A responsible President who loves his country and supports
    our allies would never lift sanctions and give this murderous
    regime money, much less billions. This deal is a strain on our
    national character. Our next President we can only hope will
    terminate this nonsense and promote freedom, accountability,
    and opportunity overseas, not a regime that stones women, hangs
    homosexuals, and kills members of other religions and political
    beliefs.
        White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest suggested I show
    up to the Oversight Committee. Well, here I am. Where is Ben
    Rhodes? I guess you can run and hide.
        Now, Mr. Doran, much of the news coverage recently had
    focused on Mr. Rhodes and the lies and misinformation that he
    had spun relating to the Iran deal. However, we know that no
    one operates in a vacuum. Does Mr. Rhodes represent a rogue
    employee of the White House or does this spin campaign
    represent something more deeply about how the White House
    handled the Iran deal?
        Mr. Doran. I believe it represents the President's
    strategic vision and the President's will. He--the President is
    on record as early as 2006 saying that he wanted to improve
    relations with Iran and Syria and that he saw Iran and Syria as
    sharing core interests and stabilizing Iraq and that we should
    work with them to do that.
        I don't think he ever lost that. I think ----
        Mr. Gosar. So you would say that he actually is ultimately
    responsible for developing this frame of capitulation?
        Mr. Doran. Absolutely. And it's the--that's the key factor
    to understand why we made all of these concessions to Iran
    because we're not actually trying to stop it from getting a
    nuclear weapon. We're trying to develop a partnership with it.
        Mr. Gosar. Yes. Unfortunately, as you said, the lies and
    misrepresentation that are deeply woven deep within the Iran
    capitulation agreement are just the latest example of a culture
    of deception that has been this administration's MO since its
    inception. Let's not forget that this is the same
    administration that sold the American people out to the
    insurance companies under the guise of health care reform. The
    President's congressional minions drove a legislative garbage
    truck full of special interest giveaways through Congress and
    over Americans' pocketbooks by knowingly and willfully
    repeating the lie, ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your
    doctor.''
        This is the same administration that blatantly violated
    Federal law by engaging in unlawful lobbying in order to
    promote its Waters of the United States regulation. The
    Government Accountability Office confirmed that the executive
    branch, under the direction of EPA Administrator McCarthy,
    unleashed an illegal propaganda campaign in order to force
    WOTUS down the throats of the American people.
        Mr. Rubin, it is clear that the Obama administration had a
    covert agenda to reach a deal with Iran at any cost that was
    driven more by the optics of diplomacy and legacy than the real
    facts on the ground. What are the dangers of such a narrative-
    driven approach to policy-making?
        Mr. Rubin. When one calibrates policy to a fantasy that is
    constructed rather than to reality, the cost is often paid with
    blood. Iran has not become any less of a terror sponsor as a
    result of the JCPOA. In fact, if we take the--if we just take
    the $50 billion figure, that's 10 times the annual official
    budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
        One thing I would do, sir, productively, is take the
    ability of the State Department, take the ability to designate
    state sponsors of terrorism out of the hands of the State
    Department and put it in an independent commission so it
    doesn't become a political football.
        Mr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. And this behavior has
    become the status quo for an Obama administration that has
    blatantly disregarded the rule of law and the respect for the
    American people to enact its partisan agenda. It is a dangerous
    precedent and it needs to be stopped by Congress.
        Thank you, Chairman.
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman's time is expired.
        I will now recognize the gentlewoman from the District of
    Columbia, Ms. Norton, for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Now, we can re-litigate the Iran deal as much of the
    testimony attempted to do or we can discuss the central
    allegation that brought us to this hearing. It is of course--
    and that is what I would like to pursue, that essentially
    Republicans, my colleagues accuse Ben Rhodes of misleading the
    American people by claiming that the Obama administration began
    negotiating the deal, and the operative year is 2013 after Iran
    elected a so-called moderate president. The claim is that if
    the American people knew that the President was working towards
    the agreement before 2013, they would have rejected the deal.
        So here is how the claim is worded in the New York Times
    Magazine, that Rhodes ``shaped the story'' of the Iran deal,
    that the Iran deal began in 2013 when a moderate faction within
    the Iranian regime beat the hardliners, leading to an election
    where there was ``more openness.''
        So the author says that Mr. Rhodes claimed the story began
    in 2013. That is what brought us here, gentlemen. But the
    problem is that isn't true. The President's efforts with
    respect to Iran were widely reported from the time he became
    President, so I am going to ask that a clip from the Washington
    Post 2008 when the President became President be posted. It
    describes how the Iranian President wrote to President Obama
    after he was elected in 2008.
        Now, you are all a panel of so-called experts. I assume you
    read the Washington Post on occasion. Were you not aware of
    this 2008 report? Were any of you unaware of that 2008 report?
        Mr. Hannah. I don't remember the report exactly,
    Congresswoman, but I think you're exactly right that in fact
    everybody knew going into that election that President Obama
    had made clear that he thought he would be the one to end our
    three-decade-old war ----
        Ms. Norton. But this is about ----
        Mr. Hannah.--with the Islamic Republic.
        Ms. Norton.--negotiating the agreement itself and about
    being in touch with the Iranian regime before there was a
    regime change.
        Let's go to the Washington Times in 2009. I assume you read
    the Washington Times. It describes how President Obama sent two
    letters to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. Now, that
    is 2009. This is well before 2013. There are many reports from
    every year of the administration. This is why this hearing
    befuddles me.
        Two thousand ten from The Economist, Mr. Obama says the
    various components of his policy should not be seen in
    insolation. First, he tried to engage Iran early and directly
    not because he was naive about the regime but in order to make
    clear to the world that America was not the aggressor and he
    was willing to work with Iran if it behaved reasonably.
        Two thousand eleven from The Atlantic, ``On three occasions
    in as many years U.S. diplomats have sat down''--this is 2011--
    ``with high-level Iranian officials to discuss confidence-
    building measures as part of a six-party body negotiating
    issue.''
        Two thousand twelve--all of this is before 2013--United
    States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to
    one-on-one negotiations from Iran's nuclear program. Now, you
    are supposed to be experts. Some other experts not invited here
    have said that it is nonsense that only after regime change did
    the President begin to negotiate.
        Joe Cirincione, the president of Ploughshares Fund, called
    it utter nonsense. Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution
    agreed, and she explained the core claims of official deception
    around the Iran deal were never actually substantiated.
        Now, none of these experts, so that we could have some
    balanced picture, were called here. Unfortunately, Mr.
    Chairman, by not inviting these experts, we are getting a very
    one-sided story ----
        Chairman Chaffetz. Will the gentlewoman yield?
        Ms. Norton. I will yield to the chairman.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Democrats always, always have an
    opportunity to invite a witness to come to this hearing.
    Democrats chose not to invite a witness to this hearing. And
    the person we called from the White House, Mr. Rhodes, also
    refused to show up.
        Ms. Norton. I understand, Mr. Chairman, and the ranking
    member has already indicated that had there been time ----
        Chairman Chaffetz. I am just responding to your ----
        Ms. Norton. That had there been time, there would have been
    a Democratic witness. I thank you very much, and I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I will now recognize the gentleman from
    Ohio, Mr. Jordan, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Gentlemen, are any of you familiar with the name Jonathan
    Gruber? Mr. Doran, do you know Jonathan Gruber? Do you know
    that name?
        Mr. Doran. It rings a bell, but I can't call it up.
        Mr. Jordan. Anyone, Mr. Rubin, do you know Mr. Gruber?
        Mr. Rubin. I know the name.
        Mr. Jordan. You know the name? Do you know what he does
    for--you know, what his occupation is?
        Mr. Hannah. I think he's an economist who was enlisted to
    help with the health care reform. Yes, sir. Yes.
        Mr. Jordan. Yes, the famous guy who was--and do you know
    what title he was given when he was helping with ObamaCare and
    health care reform? Do you know what he was titled, anyone
    remember? Architect of ObamaCare. And you know, that is one
    thing, you are the architect of ObamaCare and all, but he got a
    little notoriety in the press and actually had to come and sit
    right where you guys are sitting a few years ago. Any of you
    guys know why he was brought in front of the committee and had
    to sit here? Anyone want to take a guess? Mr. Rubin?
        Mr. Rubin. Well, basically he lied about the cost of
    ObamaCare.
        Mr. Jordan. Yes. He was deceptive, right? He said things
    like this. He talked about the stupidity of the American voter.
    He talked about--this is a direct quote. He was out bragging
    after this thing is passed, ``Lack of transparency is a
    political advantage.'' That is a nice way of saying if you
    deceive people, you might get your way, right? It might help
    your case.
        So here is Jonathan Gruber, architect of ObamaCare, talking
    about deception, things like if you like your plan, you can
    keep it, like your doctor, you can keep it, premiums are going
    to go down, Web site is going to work, Web site is safe,
    emergency room--everything turned out to be false.
        And now, we hear about another person in the Obama
    administration, Mr. Rhodes. He comes along and he is given the
    title, according to the piece in the New York Times, ``the
    single most influential voice shaping American foreign
    policy.'' Wow, things are starting to sound familiar. And he
    creates a false narrative as well, talks about this echo
    chamber and deceiving the press. And his derision for the press
    is kind of like Mr. Gruber's derision for the American voter
    because he says something like--what is the line he used
    there--``they literally know nothing'' was one of the lines
    that I think Mr. Rhodes used in his piece.
        Mr. Rubin, you talked about this false choice, I think, in
    your opening statement that Mr. Rhodes set up and used this
    echo chamber of folks who ``literally know nothing'' to further
    this message to the American people, this binary choice, either
    it is the deal or it is war. That is what he set up, right?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes.
        Mr. Jordan. And the thing that strikes me, Mr. Chairman--
    and I won't take my full time here. I just wanted to make this
    point. So this isn't the first time this administration, on
    some big policy decision, has deceived the American people. But
    maybe more importantly, it is not in my judgment the first time
    Mr. Rhodes, on a big policy issue, on a big concern to the
    American people, has tried to deceive them.
        And, Mr. Rubin, you are getting ready to say something. Go
    ahead.
        Mr. Rubin. Well, I mean, the deception comes oftentimes in
    the way of cherry-picking. If we want to look at previous
    Iranian offers or acknowledgements of letters, for example,
    what's actually interesting is when Supreme Leader Khomeini, on
    the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy, a
    seizure for which no Iranian reformist or hardliner has ever
    apologized, mocked President Obama for the letters he was
    sending and said we are not going to talk to the Americans
    until they fundamentally change their position.
        And so one of the reasons why we need this transparency,
    this transparency about what you're saying, is sometime around
    2012 the Americans fundamentally changed their position but
    didn't come clean to the American people about it.
        Mr. Jordan. Yes, I thank you for that.
        Let me just finish up with this, then, just to, I think,
    make this point. Mr. Gruber deceives the American people on
    ObamaCare, along comes Mr. Rhodes on the Iranian deal, uses
    deception to create this false choice and help get this
    agreement passed. And as I said, this is not the first time Mr.
    Rhodes has done. It is not the first time the administration
    has done, more importantly, not the first time Mr. Rhodes has
    done it. I think he did it on the Benghazi issue. I think he
    did it there as well when he said in the now-famous talking
    points, which frankly became the catalyst for the formation--
    the reason the House of Representatives and the Speaker formed
    the committee when he created this false choice between--it is
    not a failure of policy; it is rooted in a video, and straight
    from the talking points.
        And so, again, the pattern with the administration, what
    appears to be a pattern with Mr. Rhodes himself, and then when
    he is given the ask to come testify doesn't even have the
    courtesy to show up.
        So, Mr. Chairman, I yield back my 4 seconds.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        I will now recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr.
    Lynch, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
    panel.
        I can't let this go. Earlier, Mr. Doran said that if only
    the President had been up front about withdrawing from the
    Middle East. I have to say that, you know, the President was
    clearly--during his campaign going back to 2007, 2008, I mean
    ad nauseam. At the time that the President took office, we had
    about 165,000 troops and 180,000 contractors in Iraq, and he
    went on and on about the fact that he was going to get those
    people out of there, that he was going to withdraw from the
    Middle East. I think he got elected based on that claim.
        But he was like Trump does with we are going to build the
    wall, we are going to make America great again, President
    Obama, during his campaign, he went on and on. He hammered away
    at that and said if I get elected, I am going to withdraw those
    troops. I am going to get--in the first 16 months--I went back
    and read it--he said in the first 16 months he is going to get
    all the combat brigades out of Iraq. So he was very much up
    front about that. He was perfectly clear on that.
        The other fiction here is that the American people were
    tricked by Ben Rhodes. And remember, we were the audience, us
    here. They were trying to get the bill, the Iran agreement
    through Congress. So we are the ones getting all the
    information. And I have to say I was never tricked by Ben
    Rhodes. And with all due respect to Ben Rhodes, in terms of the
    merits of that agreement, he was probably not as qualified as a
    lot of the other people that were coming to Congress and
    testifying before both, you know, Republican and Democratic
    caucuses.
        We had a list of experts. It is very lengthy, but I will
    just hit on a few. We had 78 nuclear nonproliferation experts,
    60 national security experts, 5 former ambassadors to Israel,
    29 Nobel Prize-winning scientists, 36 retired generals, over
    100 former U.S. ambassadors, and over 500 Iranian-Americans
    with experience both in the U.S. and Iran, 340 rabbis, 53
    Christian leaders. These scientists included physicists who
    helped design the first hydrogen bomb.
        So we had stone-cold experts on this. We were not listening
    to Ben Rhodes. And those are the people that--and I actually
    sat with one of the experts from the IAEA about what he thought
    after having been in Iran and at some of their--at ARAK, at
    Fordow, at Natanz and what they actually thought about the
    ability of this agreement to stop Iran from developing a
    nuclear weapon. So those are the people that we also listened
    to. It wasn't Ben Rhodes and, you know, some political spin.
        But I would say that if we are really trying to measure
    this agreement--and that seems what is going on here; we are
    all rehashing this agreement again--I think the best way would
    be to go to the IAEA because under the agreement they are the
    ones that we have put on the ground and asked them to do these
    inspections.
        And so I would just like to--for the record, I am going to
    ask have admitted the first two reports, January and February,
    by the IAEA, the international agency, verification for
    monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of the
    United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231. So this is an
    inspection done by the IAEA because of the agreement.
        And some of the things--I will just tell you what they
    report. I will just give you the greatest hits. They determined
    that ARAK--they went into A-R-A-K--everybody things I'm saying
    Iraq--but ARAK heavy water research reactor and they determined
    that Iran was not pursuing the construction of the existing IR-
    40 reactor.
        They had removed the existing calandria from that reactor,
    and they had rendered the calandria inoperable by filling it
    with concrete, which is part of the agreement. They had stored
    under continuous conditions--continuous agency monitoring all
    existing natural uranium pellets and fuel pursuant to the
    agreement. They modified the fuel process line at the fuel
    manufacturing plant at Isfahan so that it cannot be used for
    the fabrication of fuel. Iran was not accumulating enriched
    uranium through its enrichment research and development
    activities.
        Let's see. It goes on. I got 27 seconds left. A lot of good
    stuff in here. And these are people who have actually been in
    Iran doing the inspections. Iran at Fordow was not conducting
    any uranium enrichment, had removed all of its nuclear material
    at Fordow. This was all pursuant to the agreement.
        And I am getting to 8 seconds. Had completed the modalities
    and facility inspection arrangements to allow the agency to
    implement all the transparency measures provided in the
    agreement.
        So that is what the IAEA is exactly doing, and, you know,
    that is part of the agreement. That is what we put them for.
        The great advantage to us no matter what happens in the
    future is that up to the time that this agreement was signed we
    never had people on the ground in those facilities. We were
    always guessing about the level of progress they had made on
    their nuclear weapons program. Now, we have people on the
    ground.
        So even if they breach, we will have had the benefit of
    having people on the ground looking at those facilities, and
    for military purpose or diplomatic purposes, that is a good
    thing.
        I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman, and we will enter
    those into the record unless there is an objection.
        Mr. Lynch. Thank you.
        Chairman Chaffetz. No objection, so ordered.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I now recognize the gentleman from South
    Carolina, Mr. Gowdy.
        Mr. Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I want to thank you for not only the panel that is before
    us but the panel you tried to have before us. Not only did Ben
    Rhodes not appear and cost us an opportunity to question Mr.
    Rhodes, it cost us the opportunity and the privilege to ask
    questions of our friend and colleague Tommy Cotton. Speaking of
    constitutional crisis, hauling a United States Senator before a
    committee of Congress would really have created a
    constitutional crisis, so good thing for us Tommy was willing
    to come on his own.
        And the background contrast would have been interesting to
    me. You know, the White House is very critical of Senator
    Cotton and has been for several months now. Senator Cotton, of
    course, when he was serving tours of duty in the United States
    Army in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ben Rhodes was navigating the
    mean streets of a creative writing curriculum. And I mean that
    literally. That is not figurative. He has a master's in
    creative writing. And if you are interested in writing haikus
    and sonnets and novellas, he is probably the right guy.
        On the other hand, if you are advising the leader of the
    free world on foreign policy matters, I don't know how a haiku
    helps. But I would have enjoyed the opportunity to ask Mr.
    Rhodes how his background prepared him to sell the Iranian
    deal, but yet Tommy Cotton's background did not prepare him to
    criticize the Iranian deal. That would have been an interesting
    dichotomy for me.
        But what I really wanted to do, Mr. Chairman, was ask Mr.
    Rhodes to help me, as Gruber did in the past, understand what
    he meant by certain things. Mr. Chairman, he said ``we created
    an echo chamber.'' Does the chairman know who ``we'' is?
        Chairman Chaffetz. I do not.
        Mr. Gowdy. Well, certainly he couldn't be referring to
    other presidential advisors because he then invoked executive
    privilege and he can't be talking about what other presidential
    advisors said. So it couldn't be that, could it? I don't ----
        Chairman Chaffetz. I do not know.
        Mr. Gowdy. Okay. Well, then he said, ``Reporters call us to
    explain to them what is happening in Moscow and Cairo.'' And I
    am curious which reporters that would be. Which ones call him
    to find out what is going on in Cairo? But we can't ask him
    because he is not here.
        And I would add he has plenty of time to sit down for what
    he had hoped to be a fluff piece in the New York Times. He has
    been on television plenty of times. He had plenty of time to
    draft memos for the President, but he doesn't have time to come
    before a committee of Congress.
        And then this is what really concerns me, Mr. Chairman. In
    talking about those reporters, he said ``they literally know
    nothing.'' How does someone literally know nothing? He said
    they were 27 years old, which suggests that they probably have
    a driver's license at that point. You have to know something to
    get a driver's license. If they are 27, they would be eligible
    to vote in the Democrat primary more than likely, so you have
    to know something. So when you say they literally know nothing,
    that struck me. I wanted to ask him about that.
        Also, I think that his appearance today, had he bothered to
    come, would have created an opportunity for a little bit of
    bipartisanship, which I know our friends on the other side of
    the aisle like from time to time. It said he expressed contempt
    for the editors and reporters at the New York Times, the
    Washington Post, and The New Yorker. That might have provided
    an opportunity for some bipartisanship. It would have given us
    an opportunity to share our own frustrations. But he didn't
    come.
        Mr. Chairman, you do a great job leading this committee. It
    is up to you whether or not you assert the people's right to
    question Ben Rhodes, but this selective use of executive
    privilege on one day but it is not executive privilege on the
    next, at some point Congress is going to have to stick up for
    itself. We are going to have to decide whether or not we do
    have a right to question people. And if you have time to make
    these comments to a reporter, you ought to be able to come
    explain yourself. And if you have time at the White House to
    send a bunch of mean tweets about a guy who served two tours,
    two combat tours in Tommy Cotton and he is willing to come, but
    the creative writing expert isn't willing to come, at some
    point this body is going to have to stick up for itself.
        With that, I would yield back to the chairman.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        I will now recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr.
    Connolly, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Connolly. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And lordy, lordy, the outrage of my friend from South
    Carolina does a heart good, does a heart good.
        From my point of view, this hearing is nothing but a
    smokescreen, yet another in a long chain of attempts by my
    friends on the other side of the aisle to deny what is
    manifestly true, that the Iran nuclear agreement is working. It
    is not a panacea for all Iranian behavior, though they would
    like you to believe that, just as disarmament agreements with
    the Soviet Union, our implacable foe during the cold war, were
    also not designed to address every aspect of Soviet behavior,
    would that they could, but they are not designed to be the be-
    all and end-all to circumscribe an entire relationship. But
    they were designed and this was designed for a specific set of
    goals.
        And Lord Almighty, we had a hearing in the House Foreign
    Affairs Committee where again my friends on the other side of
    the aisle desperately wanted not to talk about compliance, but
    being the skunk at the picnic, I did. And let me see. In terms
    of compliance, we found that the agreement has reduced the
    number of centrifuges, as planned, from 19,000 to 6,104, that
    the fuel enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow saw those
    centrifuges reduced. Iran is no longer enriching uranium above
    3.67 percent, verified by the IAEA, as my friend Mr. Lynch
    indicated, and has reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium,
    as required, to no more than 300 kilograms shipped out of the
    country, verified. Centrifuge production in uranium mines and
    mills under constant surveillance and verified, and of course
    the plutonium production capability eliminated.
        I asked point blank is there any evidence of cheating
    because that is all we heard. They were going to cheat, they
    couldn't be trusted, and this was nothing but enabling behavior
    to allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state, and the
    answer was no, so far, no cheating.
        Now, my friend from South Carolina--we are friends; we are
    sometimes sparring partners--just is all exorcised about the
    fact that somebody, God knoweth why, would not accept a
    friendly invitation to come before this committee because we
    are a very hospitable environment to witnesses. And once in a
    while we deny them their Fifth Amendment rights, once in a
    while we badger them, once in a while we call them names, once
    in a while we censor them, a lot of times we interrupt them
    when we don't like their testimony, but they ought to come here
    nonetheless.
        You are lucky, Mr. Rubin. You are really lucky to be here
    today.
        Mr. Hannah, when you received an invitation from the Senate
    Intelligence Committee in 2006, did you accept that invitation?
        Mr. Hannah. I don't remember getting an invitation.
        Mr. Connolly. Well, actually, it is in the committee
    report. Did you not see that report?
        Mr. Hannah. I must ----
        Mr. Connolly. They published a report.
        Mr. Hannah.--not have.
        Mr. Connolly. What?
        Mr. Hannah. I must not have.
        Mr. Connolly. Well ----
        Mr. Hannah. I don't recall.
        Mr. Connolly.--let me help refresh your memory because they
    issued a final report, and they said that every request made to
    you for an interview was denied. And it concludes, ``These
    decisions inhibited the committee's ability to pursue
    legitimate lines of inquiry.'' Any reason why you would say no
    to the Senate Intelligence Committee when it was under
    Democratic--actually, it wasn't under Democratic control in
    2006, but you still said no. And that doesn't refresh your
    memory?
        Mr. Hannah. It doesn't refresh it, but I can tell you that
    there was obviously--especially in the office of the Vice
    President--counsel there was a very aggressive proponent of
    executive ----
        Mr. Connolly. Go ahead. Say it.
        Mr. Hannah. You say it for me.
        Mr. Connolly. Was that word coming out?
        Mr. Hannah. Executive privilege.
        Mr. Connolly. Privilege, there you go. So for a Republican
    White House, it is perfectly okay, and you had a very
    aggressive counsel saying you are not going, but here, with
    somebody who gives a profile for a magazine where he boasts
    about himself, we have got to haul him in chains before this
    committee because we are being denied access, and that is
    wrong. And you have agreed to testify about it, knowing that.
    So do you think Mr. Rhodes should be here in a way that you
    were not 10 years ago?
        Mr. Hannah. In our administration what I remember is that
    Dr. Rice, when she was in her capacity as NSC advisor, actually
    did testify. So I think there ----
        Mr. Connolly. I am talking about you, Mr. Hannah. You were
    named by the Senate Intelligence Committee by name and singled
    out for your refusal to make yourself available to that
    committee when it was doing its work. Was there less gravity to
    the issue at hand 10 years ago involving you than there is
    today involving Mr. Rhodes?
        Mr. Hannah. Issues were very grave in both cases, I think.
    I think Mr. Rhodes actually is a more influential player than I
    am ----
        Mr. Connolly. All right.
        Mr. Hannah.--and he's been willing to talk about all of
    these issues ----
        Mr. Connolly. Well ----
        Mr. Hannah.--so openly and with such contempt for so many
    people ----
        Mr. Connolly. Well ----
        Mr. Hannah.--that ----
        Mr. Connolly.--we are glad to have you here ----
        Mr. Hannah.--I think he's in a different ----
        Mr. Connolly.--today talking as well.
        Mr. Hannah.--situation.
        Mr. Connolly. I am sure my colleagues 10 years ago ----
        Mr. Hice. [Presiding] The gentleman's time is expired.
        Mr. Connolly.--would have enjoyed having you.
        One good aggressive White House counsel deserves another,
    Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
        Mr. Hice. The gentleman's time is expired.
        The chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr.
    DeSantis, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. DeSantis. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I would think that Ben Rhodes would be falling all over
    himself to come here. I mean, he seems to think he is so much
    smarter than everybody. Well, educate everybody. Tell us why
    those of us who oppose this were wrong. Show us what we are
    missing. Educate the American people. I think it would have
    been a great opportunity for him if, in, fact he is as smart
    and worldly as he says.
        And I think part of this, yes, there is deception involved,
    and any time a major policy is sold to the Congress or the
    public, that is a major, major thing. Rhodes himself said that
    the Iran deal was going to be the ObamaCare of the second term.
        And of course with ObamaCare in the first term, the
    President famously said over and over again, if you like your
    plan, you can keep it, if you like your plan, you can keep it.
    Not only was that not true, the administration knew at the time
    it would not be true, and yet they did it in order to engineer
    passage of ObamaCare.
        And then with this deal, the President was in the
    presidential debate in 2012. He said the deal is very simple
    that I will accept. They end their nuclear program. It is
    pretty straightforward, he says. And of course what we see now
    is Iran retains really a major, major nuclear program. I
    believe they are on a path to a bomb at worst once the time the
    8, the 15 years goes up.
        So there is a lot, I think, that is important about that,
    and it important to talk about it. But I also think that some
    of what we are talking about with Rhodes, for example, the idea
    that, well, Rouhani's election really changes everything
    because this guy is a moderate, never mind that he would never
    have been allowed to run by the Ayatollah if he truly wanted to
    change the nature of the regime. So you have a regime that is
    the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. You have a
    regime which, you know, people fail to mention that they were
    responsible for as many as 1,500 American deaths in Iraq. They
    were leading the Qods Force, Soleimani, they were funding these
    massive EFP bombs, which took out at least hundreds of our
    soldiers and probably as many as 1,500.
        So that is the nature of the regime. And the notion that
    was propagated, and Rhodes is honest about it, he says, look,
    this is an opening, it is a new--we have got to take this
    opportunity. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Well, it
    turns out they never believed that. They knew that this
    regime--in fact, they were negotiating with the regime before
    Rouhani had ever been elected, and so all that was kind of a
    ruse to camouflage the basic policy.
        And I think Mr. Doran hit on it. This is a policy that
    understands the radial nature of the Iranian regime,
    understands the hostile nature of the Iranian regime, and is
    doing a deal with those hardliners to effectively solidify
    those hardliners. And they think that that is the way to have a
    more peaceful world.
        And so the deception is important just for itself, but what
    it really masked is when we were going through all this--this
    is the biggest thing we have done this Congress--I thought that
    John Kerry and the President and these people were very naive
    about how they conceded the Iranian regime. It turns out they
    really weren't that naive. They knew exactly what we knew and
    they still wanted to go ahead with it. And so that is why I
    think it is very, very troubling.
        And then we are seeing that now play out with really
    gratuitous concessions such as giving Iran indirect access to
    the American dollar. That wasn't even called for by the Iran
    deal, and yet that is something that the administration is
    doing.
        And so I think that this is important. There are few--I
    don't think we have done an issue this important in the
    Congress in years and years. And so the idea that you are not
    up front with the American people is very important, but I
    think what this should allow us to do, I would like to tease
    out the implications now of this policy with somebody like Mr.
    Rhodes.
        So, Mr. Doran, what is your view? I mean, it seems like
    Rouhani as a moderate, they admit it is a ruse, so they knew
    very well the nature of the regime, and they think that
    effectively us unilaterally stepping back from having a
    confrontational posture with Iran is going to be better for the
    world security?
        Mr. Doran. I think that's right. I think the President has
    a vision of the Middle East as a kind of roundtable now. The
    security architecture is a kind of roundtable and we have all
    the stakeholders around the roundtable, and the Iranians are
    stakeholders. And the assumption is that if we start treating
    them with respect and respecting their interests that they'll
    come toward us and that they--the key assumption--I think the
    key false assumption here is that they share the same interests
    that we do, the same core interests, this defeating ISIS,
    stabilizing Iraq, and so on.
        I think particularly relevant are the views of Fred Hof at
    the Atlantic Council, who was President Obama's point man on
    Syria from 2009 to 2012. He's somebody who understands the--you
    know, there's nobody that's been closer to the Obama
    administration's policies on Syria than Fred Hof. And he has
    now come around to the view that President Obama has in effect
    recognized Syria as an Iranian sphere of interest and did so in
    order to reach the agreement with them.
        Mr. DeSantis. Well, I appreciate it. I think the upshot of
    all this, the nuclear obviously very significant, but even
    beyond that, Iran is really emerging as the dominant power in
    the region. How you can see that is good for our security is
    beyond me. And I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        I now recognize the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr.
    Cartwright, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Cartwright. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And, Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to associate
    myself with the words of Representative Lynch of Massachusetts
    and also Representative Maloney of New York. I don't think it
    is possible to overstate the amount of study that went into the
    Iran deal on both sides of the aisle, and it is with great
    regret that I see it has turned into a political football the
    way it has.
        Mr. Hannah, let me get this straight. You drew up the false
    talking points for Colin Powell when he spoke in front of the
    U.N., and you wrote in the talking points that there were
    weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that was what ended up
    in his speech. And that you are here today to question someone
    else's credibility and somebody else's professionalism. Am I
    getting that straight?
        Mr. Hannah. Not exactly. I'm not sure I'm questioning his
    professionalism. I'm questioning the tactics that he used. We
    based our intelligence on the intelligence that was there. It
    was wrong. That was a mistake. It wasn't any kind of purposeful
    desire to deceive or not give the American people what we ----
        Mr. Cartwright. And you told us earlier in your testimony
    today that you drew up that speech not knowing if it was true,
    knowing that it would be vetted by the intelligence community,
    drawing it up as a piece of salesmanship to see if anything was
    true, and if it was, it would stick. Your words were quite
    clear on that.
        And one of the parts of the salesmanship was that this idea
    that--was that the Bush administration cooked up this idea that
    there was yellowcake uranium coming from the African nation of
    Niger going to Saddam Hussein, and it was the American
    Ambassador Joe Wilson who gave the lie to that fiction. He said
    it was a bunch of nonsense. In fact, he wrote an op-ed in the
    New York Times in 2003 in July debunking the claim that
    yellowcake uranium was going to Saddam Hussein from Niger.
        But, Mr. Hannah, you were one of Dick Cheney's top national
    security advisors, you worked with Cheney, you worked with
    Scooter Libby before he was convicted. Surely you discussed
    Ambassador Wilson's op-ed with him, with Vice President Cheney,
    especially since it was contradicting one of your key talking
    points in selling the war in Iraq. Did you talk about
    Ambassador Wilson's op-ed in the New York Times with Vice
    President Cheney?
        Mr. Hannah. I did not talk to the Vice President, but we
    did talk about it within the office and within the ----
        Mr. Cartwright. Did you talk to Scooter Libby about it?
        Mr. Hannah. I'm almost sure I did, yes.
        Mr. Cartwright. All right. Well, Ambassador Wilson wrote,
    ``It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful
    that any such transaction had ever taken place.'' He directly
    contradicted information that you put out publicly. In
    response, the Bush administration retaliated against him by
    publicly outing his wife Valerie Plame, who was a CIA operative
    at the time.
        Mr. Hannah, my question for you is what was your role in
    outing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative?
        Mr. Hannah. I had no role in outing Valerie Plame as a CIA
    operative.
        Mr. Cartwright. Mr. Hannah, special counsel was appointed
    to investigate the criminal leak of classified information. It
    was Patrick Fitzgerald, special counsel. He concluded that
    there was--and I am quoting here--``concerted action by
    multiple people in the White House to discredit, punish, or
    seek revenge against Ambassador Wilson.'' Do you dispute those
    findings?
        Mr. Hannah. I haven't looked at them. I--yes, I dispute the
    way that the name of Valerie Plame reached the press. It was by
    a person who seemed to have no desire--was in the State
    Department. Deputy Secretary Armitage happened to mention her
    in a conversation with a reporter.
        Mr. Cartwright. Mr. Hannah, the Bush administration smeared
    Ambassador Wilson and his wife, ruined her career, sacrificed a
    national security asset in the CIA all because Ambassador
    Wilson had the temerity to debunk your false claims, and he
    told the truth. Your boss and Dick Cheney's chief of staff
    Scooter Libby was convicted but then President Bush commuted
    his prison time. That is correct, isn't it?
        Mr. Hannah. I don't think those are the exact--he was never
    charged with releasing the name of a covert CIA operative.
        Mr. Cartwright. The second voice and that you talked about
    outing Valerie Plame, that was Karl Rove, wasn't it?
        Mr. Hannah. I have no idea. I know Karl's name was in there
    but I had no dealings with Karl.
        Mr. Cartwright. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I now recognize the gentleman from North
    Carolina, Mr. Meadows, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rubin, let me come to you because as these decisions
    continue to get made with regards to the validity of the Iran
    deal as we would call it, decisions by Members of Congress
    hinge on very small sometimes often minute pieces of
    information where they can justify going one way or another. Do
    you believe that some of the statements by Mr. Rhodes was a
    factor at all in some of the Members of Congress casting their
    vote one way or another?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes, and I can give you examples if you would
    like.
        Mr. Meadows. Please.
        Mr. Rubin. Well, first of all, when it comes to
    verification, according to U.S. law, incumbent with the Corker-
    Cardin compromise, all agreements are supposed to be presented
    to Congress. Now, it emerges that there were secret side
    agreements with the IAEA. One of these secret side agreements
    that comes into play with regard to verification is that the
    State Department decreed that the IAEA would not need to report
    to the level it had reported under sanctions, especially with
    regard to the possible military dimensions. So to say that the
    IAEA said that verification--that Iran is complying with the
    deal, that's like bragging that someone is the valedictorian of
    the summer school class.
        Mr. Meadows. So ----
        Mr. Rubin. So it becomes a major problem. It lets them off
    the hook, and we only found out about that afterwards because
    the White House kept it secret.
        Mr. Meadows. Well, we have had sworn testimony both in a
    number of House committees and Senate committees where the
    sworn testimony by administration officials were that there are
    no and were no secret side agreements. Would you say that that
    is a credible argument under sworn testimony to make?
        Mr. Rubin. They are lying to Congress.
        Mr. Meadows. All right. So that is a pretty bold statement,
    Mr. Rubin, that they are lying to Congress. So if we go back
    and look at the tapes when they say that there was no side
    agreements in sworn testimony, do you think it is incumbent
    upon this committee to hold those particular individuals who
    gave sworn testimony in contempt of Congress?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes.
        Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Rubin.
        And let me go on a little bit further because the troubling
    aspect of this is for somehow members on the other side of the
    aisle to suggest that there is wrongdoing in previous
    administrations that would justify wrongdoing in a current
    administration.
        Is it your opinion, Mr. Rubin, that regardless of who the
    administration might be, whether it be Republican or Democrat,
    that it is incumbent upon them to be honest and straightforward
    with Congress when they are negotiating something of this type
    of magnitude?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes. National security should not be a political
    football.
        Mr. Meadows. So is it your sworn testimony here today that
    because of the talking points of Mr. Rhodes and the inaccuracy
    or, as you would characterize them, lying that took place, that
    the whole debate that transpired within Congress was based on
    faulty assumptions that had no relevance or relationship to
    truth?
        Mr. Rubin. It was almost as if instead of looking at the
    whole chessboard the White House was just directing Congress to
    look at four pieces.
        Mr. Meadows. So if we were only looking at four pieces and
    something that is so critical to national security and to the
    security of our all Israel, do you think that it was
    disingenuous to suggest that some of the talking points that
    were coming out of the Israeli Government were indeed
    characterized as being dishonest and not truthful--do you think
    an apology is owed by this administration to that government?
        Mr. Rubin. You know, this administration has a sorry record
    at this point of coddling adversaries and throwing allies under
    the bus. Perhaps apologies are due when domestic Washington
    politics got in the way of serious foreign-policy discourse.
        Mr. Meadows. I thank you, Mr. Rubin, and, Mr. Chairman, I
    yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        I will now recognize the gentleman from Vermont, Mr. Welch,
    for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Welch. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        At the heart of this is a question whether this was--the
    one faced by the President, is an Iran without nuclear weapons
    better for our national security, for the Middle East and for
    the world than an Iran with nuclear weapons? That was the
    question.
        And the engagement of Mr. Rhodes was one significant person
    among hundreds, and along with our best allies, France,
    Germany, England, and also our sometimes frenemies China and
    Russia. And the collective decision of those countries and us
    was that the Iran nuclear deal was in our collective interest.
        Now, there was fierce disagreement about that among the
    witnesses and among many of my colleagues here in Congress, but
    this was a long and complex negotiation that was ultimately
    ratified by our strongest allies. And there was a judgment that
    the Commander in Chief had to make as to whether or not this
    agreement was in the national security interest of this
    country.
        I agreed with him. I worked closely with Mr. Rhodes and
    found him to be an exceptional public servant, knowledgeable,
    and despite what you are saying, candid and direct.
        Let me just ask a couple questions here because the
    decision the President made was in contrast to decisions that a
    previous President made. Do each of you believe that the
    American people got the right information that there were
    weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, each of you, Iraq? Thank
    you.
        Mr. Hannah. No, it's shown that it was false.
        Mr. Welch. Right.
        Mr. Doran. No.
        Mr. Rubin. No, the American people got what the
    intelligence community believed.
        Mr. Welch. Who has supervisory authority over the
    intelligence community, sir, Mr. Rubin?
        Mr. Rubin. Congress.
        Mr. Welch. The President has no role?
        Mr. Rubin. The buck stops with the President, but if we're
    talking about oversight ----
        Mr. Welch. You ----
        Mr. Rubin.--that's what separation of powers is about.
        Mr. Welch. All right. So you are saying--and by the way, I
    will go along with this. Congress blew it on the Iraq
    resolution. But are you suggesting to me that there is not
    ultimate responsibility for making the decision in evaluating
    the recommendations of the intelligence community on the matter
    of sending our troops to war, of spending trillions of dollars,
    throwing the Mideast up into upheaval, and he is not the one
    who ultimately bears the responsibility for that decision?
        Mr. Rubin. The President made the decision to go to war.
    I'm not willing to put the broad instability in the Middle East
    on his shoulders.
        Mr. Welch. I was ----
        Mr. Rubin. The Middle East needs to be accountable ----
        Mr. Welch. All right.
        Mr. Rubin.--for the Middle East.
        Mr. Welch. Second thing. So we went into this war in Iraq,
    we toppled Saddam Hussein, we were promised we would make money
    on the war. That was testimony from some of the President's
    advisors. It will be over in 60 days and the troops would be
    greeted with flowers in the street. It didn't work out that
    way.
        Afghanistan, the longest war in the history of this
    country, we still have troops there. The place is a mess,
    nation-building, an arrogant policy embraced by a prior
    administration, didn't work out so great. Any of you think that
    Afghanistan is on a solid footing for democracy at the moment,
    just a yes or no if I can get that from each of you?
        Mr. Rubin. No.
        Mr. Welch. Sir?
        Mr. Doran. No.
        Mr. Hannah. No.
        Mr. Welch. Sir?
        Mr. Hannah. No.
        Mr. Welch. All right. So we have to President who says, you
    know what, this war approach isn't so great, and he had to make
    a decision and he said, look, let's try negotiations. I
    supported sanctions. Every tough sanction that we were able to
    impose on Iran I supported, as did virtually all of the
    Democrats and Republicans. You know what? The sanctions work.
    It brought Iran to the table.
        In this decision you are focusing on this fine public
    servant, Ben Rhodes, because of a newspaper article is
    something that then disregards the fact that we blew it in
    Iraq, we are blowing it in Afghanistan, and the President
    decided to pursue negotiations, got an agreement, and had the
    full support of those allies, the P5+1.
        So if there are implementation issues, let's get on it. I
    am all for that. But to sit here and to suggest with this
    history of failure when war is the option that we should have
    done that, and that is essentially what the alternative was.
    That is essentially what the alternative was. I don't buy it,
    and I don't believe the American people buy it, and we are
    picking and choosing trying to come up with some little detail
    that somebody somewhere said to suggest that we ought to
    unravel the whole thing. I disagree.
        I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman yields back.
        I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr.
    Walker, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        On September 11, 2015, CNN stated, ``The effort was one of
    the most aggressive lobbying drives ever to take shape between
    congressional Democrat leaders and the Obama White House on
    this bill H.R. 3461.'' Now, among the people who voted no were
    25 Democrats. You heard today Mrs. Carolyn Maloney acknowledged
    that. She wasn't the only one on this particular committee.
    There were others.
        My question is what did those 25 Members know that either
    the other Members did not know or sadly in some cases chose to
    ignore or even lobbied? In regards to Mr. Shapiro, we have
    heard a lot of talk today. You know, I am sure you guys may be
    dads, and it is always interesting when you confront one of
    your children and ask them if they did something wrong. The
    telltale sign or the giveaway is when they immediately
    acknowledged that another brother or sister did something
    wrong. That is what the smokescreen has been here today. You
    know, so much of the smokescreen has been about Mr. Hannah.
    Nobody wants to talk about Mr. Shapiro.
        But let me talk about the difference if I could just for a
    second. Here is a big difference between Mr. Hannah and Mr.
    Shapiro. Mr. Shapiro enjoyed running to the press sharing false
    information. Mr. Shapiro became the poster boy, almost the
    spokesperson of a flawed and horrific Iranian deal. The words
    ``anytime, anywhere'' continue to ring true as far as even to
    this day.
        So my question, gentlemen, if you would please, whether
    intentional or not, did Mr. Shapiro in your opinion mislead the
    American public with this ``anytime, anywhere,'' multiple
    times, Mr. Rubin?
        Mr. Rubin. Mr. Rhodes most certainly did. Now, the key here
    is that by lying about whether Rouhani was a moderate, he
    provided cover for the fact that the administration left Iran
    with 5,000 P-1 centrifuges and that the administration never
    had any hope, once this agreement expired, that the resulting
    Iran with an industrial-scale nuclear program would be any
    different. And I should note, sir, that that's the number of
    centrifuges which Pakistan built not a bomb but an arsenal.
        Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Rubin. And maybe one correction.
    I said Mr. Shapiro. That would be Ben Rhodes.
        Mr. Doran?
        Mr. Doran. Yes, I think he deceived the American people.
        Mr. Walker. Mr. Hannah?
        Mr. Hannah. If the article is accurate, yes, I think that
    he engaged in certain deceptions about what the administration
    was really up to and what we were facing in Iran.
        Mr. Walker. The Iran agreement lifts restrictions on arms
    sales to Iran after 5 years and after 8 removes the ban on Iran
    developing ballistic missiles potentially capable of reaching
    the United States. Question, Mr. Rubin. Can you elaborate on
    the threat the ballistic missile capability poses to the United
    States?
        Mr. Rubin. One of the problems I have with the reporting in
    the United States is people tend to pat themselves on the back
    every time there's a failed missile test. The fact of the
    matter is you learn a lot from a failed missile test and Iran
    has made clear in its public statements that it intends to
    continue with its ballistic missiles until such a time as they
    can strike anywhere, anytime.
        I should also say a major flaw in the agreement is it bans
    the arms sales for 5 years for offensive weapons but never
    defines what offensive is, which is why Iran is on a shopping
    spree in Russia and China right now.
        Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Rubin.
        Mr. Doran?
        Mr. Doran. The--one of the things that the agreement did
    basically was remove ballistic missiles--effectively remove the
    ballistic missiles from the kind of sanctions that they were
    under by the change in language that the chairman mentioned.
        If the administration had told Congress before the deal
    that the deal was going to result in an Iranian-Russian
    military alliance which was going to intervene in Syria and
    result in a rise of Iranian power around the region, I think we
    would've had a very different debate.
        Mr. Walker. Mr. Hannah, would you like to expound?
        Mr. Hannah. I would say the only thing about--on the
    ballistic missile I think everything my colleagues have said is
    right. It essentially--Iran is determined to do this, and it's
    important to note that the only really rational military use of
    these missiles is if you can put a nuclear warhead on them.
    That makes them really militarily useful.
        And the fact that Iran is so dedicated to expanding and
    building out this program, including eventually an ICBM, not
    only being able to hit all of their neighbors, including
    Israel, but eventually at some point in time being able to hit
    the United States, the fact they've had such deep cooperation
    with North Korea over the years that already has an ICBM
    capable of ranging the United States makes you believe that
    this nuclear deal is only kicking the can down the road, and
    they fully intend at a point in time when they're stronger and
    more able to stand up to sanctions and to American power to go
    ahead and, once restraints are limited, to go for a nuclear
    weapon.
        Mr. Walker. Thank you, panel. With that, I yield back, Mr.
    Chairman.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
        I will now recognize the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Clay,
    for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank the witnesses
    for being here today.
        Mr. Hannah, you worked for Dick Cheney. You actively
    participated in the preparation of Secretary Powell's infamous
    speech to the United Nations about Iraq's weapons of mass
    destruction. I find it incredibly ironic that the chairman
    invited you here to testify about false White House narratives,
    given your involvement in that debacle.
        One of the primary claims for war was that Saddam Hussein
    had so-called mobile labs that were roaming around inside Iraq
    manufacturing biological weapons. Secretary Powell showed a
    cartoon drawing of one of these mobile labs during his speech
    to the United Nations. We have a slide of it. Could someone
    please put it up on the screen?
        [Slide.]
        Mr. Clay. Oh, there it is. Those are the mobile labs. Mr.
    Hannah, who drew this picture?
        Mr. Hannah. I do not know. I assume whoever in the
    intelligence community was responsible for the graphics for his
    presentation.
        Mr. Clay. And you used this is part of your preparation--as
    part of you preparing Mr. Powell for that speech?
        Mr. Hannah. My guess is that, yes, the issue of the
    biological labs would have been in whatever I provided ----
        Mr. Clay. Yes.
        Mr. Hannah.--in the draft.
        Mr. Clay. Okay. Let me read Secretary Powell, who stated
    during his speech to the United Nations, ``one of the most
    worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file
    we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile
    production facilities used to make biological agents.'' What
    was the source of that claim, Mr. Hannah?
        Mr. Hannah. I believe the primary source was--it was a
    defector and it was human intelligence. I think it was a
    defector.
        Mr. Clay. Wasn't it a source known as ``Curveball''?
        Mr. Hannah. I believe so, yes.
        Mr. Clay. Okay. Secretary Powell highlighted this so-called
    eyewitness account in his United Nations speech. He warned that
    Iraq could use these mobile labs to produce enough biological
    weapons ``in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of
    people.'' Isn't that right?
        Mr. Hannah. Is that what he said?
        Mr. Clay. Yes.
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, if you're reading that accurately, yes.
        Mr. Clay. But we now know that that claim was false. In
    fact, Secretary Powell said his claim has ``totally blown up in
    our faces.'' Do you agree with Secretary Powell?
        Mr. Hannah. I agree that the claim was false, yes.
        Mr. Clay. Is it true that no U.S. officials ever personally
    interviewed Curveball before we used--they used that
    information?
        Mr. Hannah. I don't know that firsthand, but I think the
    CIA has said that this was controlled by a German intelligence
    service.
        Mr. Clay. Yes. And it is true that the Germans who were
    speaking with Curveball could not believe you were using this
    information publicly because he was so unreliable. Isn't that
    true?
        Mr. Hannah. That's the claim. That was never relayed to me
    by the CIA. They were talking to the CIA, I think, at that
    time. If they said that, it wasn't a claim that was relayed to
    me.
        Mr. Clay. Okay. Well, I have an article from November 20,
    2005, from the L.A. Times, and it says this: ``The senior BND
    officer who supervised Curveball's case said he was aghast when
    he watched Powell misstate Curveball's claims as a
    justification for war. 'We were shocked,' the official said.
    'Mein Gott, we had always told them it was not proven.''' Mr.
    Hannah, is that true?
        Mr. Hannah. Is it--well, I don't have any ----
        Mr. Clay. The Germans warned from the beginning that this
    information was not verified.
        Mr. Hannah. That's what historically it is reported.
    Between their communications, between their intelligence and
    the CIA, that's what the Germans have claimed.
        Mr. Clay. But it got into the Secretary's speech, into
    Secretary Powell's speech, you know? Your narrative was at best
    misleading and at worst blatantly false. As a result, thousands
    of people were killed and injured when this nation went to war
    based on those false claims. You know, do you have any remorse
    about that?
        Mr. Hannah. I have great, deep remorse about any American
    soldier that's lost, especially if it's based on information
    that we put out in good faith, that our intelligence
    communities and other intelligence communities around the world
    thought was true and thought we were acting in the best
    interest of the United States. So I do have great remorse about
    what ----
        Mr. Clay. Right, but it wasn't vetted. The information ----
        Chairman Chaffetz. The ----
        Mr. Clay.--you just threw it at the Secretary ----
        Mr. Hannah. No, that's not ----
        Mr. Clay.--and had ----
        Mr. Hannah. That's not true at all, Congressman. It's not
    accurate.
        Mr. Clay. It is true.
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman's ----
        Mr. Clay. It is absolutely ----
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman's time is expired.
        Mr. Clay.--a grave mistake.
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman's time ----
        Mr. Clay. I guess I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman yields back. And I would
    also duly note that Mr. Hannah worked for President Clinton,
    served as a senior policy advisor to Secretary of State Warren
    Christopher as well.
        So I will now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
    Hice, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        There seems to be a great deal of confusion as to the
    purpose of this hearing, which is supposed to be about this
    current administration White House narrative on the Iran
    nuclear deal. In Mr. Samuels' article, Leon Panetta stated that
    he, during his tenure as director of the CIA and Secretary of
    Defense, never saw the letters that Obama covertly sent to
    Iran's supreme leader in 2009 and 2012.
        He goes on to say that he would like to believe that Tom
    Donilon, then-national security advisor; and Hillary Clinton,
    then-Secretary of State, had a chance to work on the offer they
    presented. Mr. Doran, let me begin with you. Is there any
    information confirming that Mr. Donilon or Secretary Clinton
    worked on those letters?
        Mr. Doran. None that I know of.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. Mr. Rubin, is circumventing--let's use that
    word--of relevant department and agency heads in major foreign-
    policy decisions typical behavior for members of the National
    Security Council and other White House staffers?
        Mr. Rubin. It has become a problem that has grown with time
    dating back administrations.
        Mr. Hice. So this is common practice these days?
        Mr. Rubin. This has become all too common, yes.
        Mr. Hice. Mr. Hannah?
        Mr. Hannah. I do think something has changed in that
    regard. Just the fact that we have a deputy national security
    advisor for strategic communications whose job is both to help
    develop policy, it seems, as closest foreign-policy aide to the
    President and the guy who is selling it, I think, is worrisome.
        I have got to say that in our administration you can make--
    maybe fault us for a lot, but the fact is that people like Karl
    Rove, who was in charge of our communications, never sat in
    National Security Council meetings. There was a pretty strict
    divide between those two.
        Mr. Hice. Mr. Rubin, back to you. How much undue influence
    do you believe that these staffers have over national security
    policy?
        Mr. Rubin. As Mr. Hannah said, I believe that this
    administration has blurred a line that has existed over
    previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. Mr. Hannah, you mentioned in your testimony
    earlier that with one bold move the administration effectively
    made a radical shift in American foreign policy. Is that a
    correct assessment of your opinion?
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, it certainly is. Yes.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. The question then comes down to who
    ultimately is responsible for that shift in foreign policy.
    Would you say it is Ben Rhodes, other staffers, or the
    President himself?
        Mr. Hannah. No, the policy toward Iran and toward the
    general retrenchment for the Middle East seems clearly to be
    President Obama's. He's in charge of that policy.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. And yet there is some influencers appears
    to be in his life. Ben Rhodes, as referred to earlier, is
    recognized as the single most influential voice on foreign
    policy to the President. So what kind of role did he have in
    shaping this radical shift?
        Mr. Hannah. I don't know. And I do want to add the caveat
    that this is the shift presented by the policy, although I
    think it is consistent, as Mr. Doran has said, with the general
    thrust of the administration's policy toward Iran and toward
    the Middle East since 2008. I just don't think it's been
    presented that way. They want to remove and distance themselves
    from our closest allies in the Middle East, including Israel,
    and what they tell our allies and they tell the American people
    is that their relationship is stronger than ever and they will
    forever have Israel's back.
        And that's justified by what's presented in the article.
    And it's that contradiction that worries me so much about what
    is really going on. Are we having a full and open debate about
    what we want to do? You've got to hand it to Mr. Trump. At
    least he says I want to get out of this place. It's too
    expensive, it's too costly, our allies are too much trouble. I
    want to distance ourselves from it.
        Mr. Hice. So let me clarify what you are saying because it
    is troubling to me as well, extremely troubling that the
    American people, that Congress, that our allies, when there is
    such a radical shift of the magnitude of this type of foreign
    policy that the American people, Congress, and our allies are
    not aware of it. So the only way--do you believe the American
    people and Congress would support a shift that major had they
    known about it?
        Mr. Hannah. No. I think as Mr. Doran said--and Secretary
    Panetta is in fact quoted in the piece as saying had they done
    it, they'd have gotten the blank kicked out of them.
        Mr. Hice. Absolutely. So the only way to pull this over the
    American people's eyes and Congress and our allies is by
    spinning the truth and maybe people get on board something that
    is not indeed reality or truth.
        Mr. Hannah. That is the extremely strong suggestion of the
    article that you had to spin it ----
        Mr. Hice. But yes, no, then right down the line, would you
    agree with that assessment?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes.
        Mr. Hice. I will yield.
        Mr. Doran. Yes.
        Mr. Hice. Mr. Hannah?
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Hice. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield.
        Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman yields back.
        I now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr.
    DeSaulnier, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rubin, first, I assume you are vigorously opposed to
    the Iran agreement?
        Mr. Rubin. I'm opposed to it, yes.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. And you have been all along?
        Mr. Rubin. I thought that there could be a much stronger
    agreement and we could have made much better use of leverage to
    get a much more favorable agreement.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. But you are opposed.
        Mr. Doran?
        Mr. Doran. Yes.
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, I'd associate myself with Michael's ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. So just to be clear, for instance, former
    Secretary of State Colin Powell, he has called the verification
    regime ``vigorous in the agreement. These are remarkable
    changes.'' And so we have stopped this highway race that they
    were going down, and I think that is very, very important.
    Would any of you agree with Secretary Powell's quote in his
    view of this agreement?
        Mr. Hannah. It reminds me of the statements in support of
    the agreed framework with North Korea, which we now know did
    not merit those endorsements.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. So you wouldn't agree with it?
        Mr. Hannah. No, I would not.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. Brent Scowcroft, former advisor to
    Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush, ``To turn our back on
    this accomplishment would be an abdication of the United
    States' unique role and responsibility incurring justified
    dismay among our allies and friends.'' You would disagree with
    that quote as well, Mr. Doran? Do you have any comment?
        Mr. Doran. Yes, I disagree with it.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. Mr. Hannah, it strikes me that in your
    response to some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle's
    comments about your role with Vice President Cheney and the
    agreement or the decision to invade Iraq, it was a mistake and
    you apologized for that in your own way, but we should just
    move on from that. Is that a misrepresentation of how you view
    your actions?
        Mr. Hannah. It's somewhat more complicated than that but
    too long to explain.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. Of course.
        Mr. Hannah. But, yes, that--if the case depended on a
    weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that was false, and the
    American people didn't understand the grounds on which we were
    going to war, to take out a guy who was a horrible dictator and
    a major strategic threat to American interests, that the
    American Congress in 1998 passed a law almost unanimously
    saying--the Iraq Liberation Act saying we've got to do
    something to get rid of this guy, didn't say war necessarily
    but it says we've got a big trouble with Iraq, we need to do
    something about it.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. But it was based, wouldn't you say, on the
    assumption that there were weapons of mass destruction in these
    mobile biological labs?
        Mr. Hannah. No, in 1998 it was the Clinton administration.
    You had Secretary of Defense Cohen standing up and holding up a
    bag of sugar and saying if Saddam had this much biological
    weapons, he would kill thousands upon thousands of people that
    he represents ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. Right.
        Mr. Hannah.--a major threat to the United States.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. But that wasn't it ----
        Mr. Hannah. That was the basis ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. But that wasn't the part of the discussion
    we were having as a nation in order to commit ourselves to send
    young American to war in Iraq. It was the weapons of mass
    destruction, which you admit now was a mistake.
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, that intelligence clearly was false. A
    bipartisan commission ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. Right.
        Mr. Hannah.--looked at it and said most of that was wrong.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. So, on balance, comparing these two
    processes, whether you think it is spin or not, the
    consequences strike me as being much more significance,
    obviously, to the decision to tell people it was based--we were
    going to invade Iraq not because we didn't like Saddam Hussein,
    although that was the case as well, but that there were
    biological weapons and weapons of mass destruction versus what
    we see with the Iran nuclear deal.
        Now, you can assume as experts that this is not going to
    turn out well, but to this point they are not equal in terms of
    the negative consequences to this country and the stability of
    that peace in the Middle East. Would you say? I mean, how could
    you possibly say at this point?
        Mr. Hannah. Listen, I would say that the--that you're
    right, that war and the death of the--and injury of American
    soldiers is a terrible, terrible price to pay. We haven't seen
    a lot of Americans dying, but just take a look at the Middle
    East right now after 8 years of this administration. It's hard
    to say it's better because Americans aren't dying but half-a-
    million Syrians have died, chemical weapons are being used,
    Russian and Iranian influence ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. But that all was because of a decision that
    you were very much a part of to get the country to go to war in
    Iraq.
        Mr. Hannah. Well, you know it's much more complicated than
    that because it ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. No, it isn't.
        Mr. Hannah. It is, Congressman ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. Not from my perspective. I am not an expert
    ----
        Mr. Hannah. Okay.
        Mr. DeSaulnier.--but I have gone to funerals of
    constituents who are dead in their 20s and their teens because
    you and Vice President Cheney encouraged the invasion of Iraq.
        Mr. Hannah. It was because Iranian IEDs, Iranian EFPs that
    killed Americans, not a narrative, and that is why it's ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. How did that action stop ----
        Mr. Hannah.--so not understandable that we're letting Iraq
    off the hook.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. How did our invading Iraq stop those other
    actions? You have sat here and testified they continue to
    support terrorists in the region.
        Mr. Hannah. We didn't invade the Gaza Strip, we didn't
    invade Yemen, we didn't invade Syria, and yet we see Iran on
    the warpath all over. And what this agreement did was take the
    budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the hard
    currency available to it, and increase it by an order of
    magnitude.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. They were doing that before. That is why we
    went into Iraq is what you are saying. Yes, no?
        Mr. Hannah. No, I'm saying you are trying to ----
        Mr. DeSaulnier. You said ----
        Mr. Hannah.--blame a narrative on the fact that Iran has
    been the leading state sponsor of terrorism according to the
    U.S. Department of State since 1984, and to try to somehow
    distract from that and distract from a false--a narrative of
    false moderation is counterproductive, I would argue.
        Mr. DeSaulnier. I just have to tell you in all honesty I
    feel like I am in a replay of a sequel of Dr. Strangelove here,
    and it would be nice to have a balanced discussion about this.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I would agree with the gentleman. It
    would be nice to have a balanced discussion. That is why we
    invited Mr. Rhodes and we invited the participation of Senator
    Cotton, who is on the other end of the spectrum. But when the
    White House refuses to make them available and Democrats call
    no witnesses, we can't have that discussion. That is what a
    shame about today's hearing.
        I now recognize the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Russell,
    for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Russell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        In dealing with the Iran nuclear issue, I am saddened that
    rather than look forward to how best secure the United States
    from a real nuclear threat, we see a progressive attack on our
    entry into Iraq to cloud the issue. It is almost like the
    classic page from the Communist playbook that advises ``admit
    nothing, deny everything, and make counteraccusation.''
        I take exception to the twisted narrative that our entry
    into Iraq was based upon bad faith and false pretense. If an
    abusive neighbor attacks everyone in his neighborhood and then
    threatens them with total destruction, are we to believe, as
    progressives seem too, that we should sit idly by and not take
    action to secure ourselves from such threat?
        The truth of the matter is that Saddam had technical
    capacity to develop a bomb. In the summer of 2003 I have
    firsthand knowledge that the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry,
    along with special operations forces, they secured a Zippe
    centrifuge, which is of the highest order for refinement of
    nuclear material, and it was smuggled out of Europe. They
    obtained technical drawings and hardware from the garden of
    Saddam's nuclear physicist Dr. Mahdi Obeidi. Dr. Obeidi's
    account of Saddam's threat is well-documented in his book The
    Bomb in My Garden, an account the CIA describes as largely
    accurate and balanced.
        I remember as I served in Iraq during that time as we were
    hunting for Saddam that this would be major news as the Zippe
    centrifuge and technical drawings would come to light. Instead,
    it is largely hidden to this day.
        It is also interesting to note that senior leaders and one
    in particular who relayed to me that during a major Syrian
    flood he was directed by Saddam to move material to an eastern
    Syrian site. This was material of both a nuclear and a chemical
    nature. It is interesting that that very site was attacked
    during Operation Orchard by the Israeli Air Force, and that
    site was completely destroyed because they were making a
    nuclear reactor. Again, the silence on these issues is
    deafening.
        As one of the commanders that helped track down and capture
    Saddam Hussein, it is very emotional for me to hear Members of
    this Congress condemn our efforts, but it is not surprising.
    From day one, as we sacrificed in the field, progressives in
    this Congress condemned our efforts with progressive leaders
    even going so far as to declare that the war was lost while we
    buried our friends in the field. That steady drumbeat forced us
    to bury friends not only there but ship come home and put them
    in Section 60 of Arlington, and then we come home to watch
    politicians, many still in office, destroy what we fought for.
    They persist even today, Mr. Chairman.
        I will never regret bringing a dictator to justice, and I
    am proud to have played a part in it. History, should we even
    allow it, will judge us and our efforts in Iraq kindly. I am
    not sure the same can be said of Congress.
        Now, we turn to yet another nuclear threat with Iran. Dr.
    Obeidi, in reflecting on our security, stated that to succeed
    ``illicit nuclear programs share a common weak spot. They need
    international complicity.'' In Mr. Rhodes and this
    administration, it appears he provided and they provided all of
    it to Iran.
        Mr. Rubin, how and how early did the administration start
    talking about minimizing congressional oversight of the Iran
    deal?
        Mr. Rubin. I am not privy to the internal discussions
    within the administration, but it appears from secondhand
    sources almost from the beginning.
        Mr. Russell. I have passed the Iran Terror Financier Act,
    the only real effort to oppose the nuclear deal, which now sits
    in the Senate. And with Mr. Rhodes' exposure, the need for
    congressional oversight, there are key provisions in my measure
    and it sits in the Senate. That language even today could be
    acted upon by the Senate that would provide us key oversight on
    any decisions.
        The President acted unconstitutionally. While he is free to
    make agreements and have negotiation, he is not free to bind us
    with treaty-like obligation. Do you think that if we pass the
    key provisions out of the measure that currently sits in the
    Senate that would increase that oversight? As was noted last
    week by Politico, do you think that it would be helpful in
    deterring and at least making what we do have better?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes. And very briefly, the strongest, most
    effective actions that have been taken by Iran both under the
    Clinton administration with executive orders and under the Bush
    and Obama administrations have been the unilateral American
    sanctions rather than the watered down United Nations Security
    Council resolutions, even though the Bush administration
    achieved a number of those as well.
        Mr. Russell. Thank you, sir, and thank you, gentlemen, for
    your service and thank you for being here today.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Mr. Russell, we thank you for your
    service and your sacrifice and your time serving this country,
    and we are better for it. Thank you.
        I now recognize the gentlewoman from New Mexico, Ms. Lujan
    Grisham, for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Lujan Grisham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And thanks for the opportunity to talk about what I think
    is really important in this agreement and issue, which is
    making sure that we are holding Iran accountable, that we are
    clear about what those accountability issues and measures are,
    and not just how that is being communicated but how that is
    being verified.
        And my only disappointment in the hearing today, Mr.
    Chairman, is that we are having conversations about what-ifs
    but we are not talking to the folks--with no disrespect to the
    panel members--about really who is enforcing, who is
    accountable, and certainly for my constituents and the number
    of individuals that I spoke to with expertise in this area
    either as concerned citizens or organizations and the
    administration and people outside of the administration, that
    is my core focus.
        And in fact, as part of the hearing of this nature, I was
    more concerned and more--I would like information about the
    reductions in the uranium stockpile, the status of the
    centrifuges in Iran, the monitoring and detection measures that
    the U.S. has, and then our allies have also been doing. Does
    anyone on the panel have any specific authority or expertise on
    any of those issues because you are directly involved in that
    accountability?
        Mr. Rubin. Are we serving a government right now or am I in
    IAEA? The answer to that is no. However, we have dedicated
    years to the study of these issues and so could give
    suggestions if you would like.
        Ms. Lujan Grisham. Well, and I appreciate that. For
    example, I have spent 30 years in the health care industry, and
    I have a variety, I think, of very credible opinions, but at
    the end of the day I am not your physician so I can't talk to
    you about your specific health. And what I really think is
    important with, again, no disrespect, gentlemen--and one of the
    things that I appreciate about this hearing is that we tackle
    tough subjects. I expect that in this committee. I expect that
    of the chairman, particularly in this issue, keeping America
    safe, being clear that we will make sure that everyone is
    accountable, that we are clear about what the risks are, I
    think that those are all incredibly valuable things for us to
    be paying attention to.
        And I can tell you that my constituents back home, in
    addition to the country, expect that from me. But to know
    exactly where we are more than opining based on--again, no
    disrespect to your credentials, far better than mine on these
    specific issues directly--but again, I think, Mr. Chairman, we
    ought to be talking to the individuals who are absolutely
    responsible for assuring, verifying these issues so that we
    know exactly what we are dealing with because they are actually
    doing it.
        What can we be doing better to make sure that we are
    getting that information and that our accountability
    enforcement efforts are what they ought to be and that we have
    a way bipartisan to weigh in to reshape them productively if
    need be? Anyone?
        Mr. Doran. I totally agree with you. I agree with
    everything you have said, and I think that I would like to have
    a discussion with those people. But the administration has
    worked to obfuscate this entire--the agreement and all the
    processes around it. And I think that's one of my main messages
    here is not that I'm the expert on centrifuges or that I'm the
    expert on sanctions and so on. It's that those of us who would
    like to understand what is happening are not being given the
    information we need. We can't have an open and honest debate
    about this because we really don't have the key facts. And I
    think if you read my prepared statement, you'll see that I've
    made, I think, a pretty cogent argument to that fact.
        Ms. Lujan Grisham. Anyone else?
        Mr. Rubin. Well, what I would say is when surgery goes
    awry, oftentimes the doctors will conduct an after-action study
    about what went wrong. Likewise in the private sector,
    businessmen will practice negotiations and look at what they
    might have done better. In the U.S. military, sergeants,
    majors, and chiefs will berate soldiers from making mistakes
    not for a political ax to grind but to make them better
    soldiers and sailors.
        What the State Department has not done in the last 60 years
    is conduct an after-action report about high-profile diplomacy.
    This goes across administrations. So, yes, we can say that this
    is what the IAEA needs to be looking for, that they need not
    only to be looking at declared nuclear facilities but also
    undeclared nuclear facilities, that there has to be independent
    testing of Iran--of work being conducted on Iranian nuclear
    military sites and that there has to be extraterritoriality in
    the inspection in case Iran takes some of its lab work to North
    Korea.
        Those are all specific things which could be done, but we
    have to go broader and look at why diplomacy hasn't worked.
    Let's have the State Department be introspective. If they're
    not going to do the due diligence, the Congress should.
        Ms. Lujan Grisham. And I appreciate those points, and my
    time is up, but in response, again, without having that
    expertise in this hearing, we don't have a debate based on
    facts. And I might disagree with you about our efforts in what
    I am going to call complex and high-level diplomacy and maybe
    on some points I am not, but without having those individuals
    before this committee, we are ill-equipped to do that.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I concur with the gentlewoman. That is
    why it is so frustrating when Mr. Rhodes, who is at the center
    of this, was, as of Monday, going to appear and then suddenly
    executive privilege is claimed and they decide not to have him.
    So you are right. The Congress is kept in the dark because the
    administration won't share the information with us.
        Ms. Lujan Grisham. And, Mr. Chairman, with--and the
    chairman is very patient with me and this is not a place to
    debate that, and I appreciate the chairman more than he knows,
    and I mean that earnestly, but again, I am not sure that Mr.
    Rhodes is the right person. But we do. We need to continue to
    have an effort to get facts so that we are not speculating
    about where we are in enforcing this agreement. And that is all
    of our responsibility.
        So thank you, Mr. Chairman, for again giving me maybe the
    last word, and thank you for being patient with me today, sir.
        Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. I thank the gentlewoman.
        I now recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman,
    for 5 minutes. Microphone, please. Microphone.
        Mr. Grothman. Could we have slide 3?
        [Slide.]
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. I better read it over here. The easiest
    way for--okay. This is a quote from a New York Times article.
    ``The easiest way for the White House to shape the news, he
    explained, is from the briefing podiums, each of which has its
    own dedicated press corps. 'But then there are sort of these
    force multipliers,' he said, adding that 'We have our
    compadres. I will reach out to a couple of people and, you
    know, I wouldn't want to name them. I will say, hey, look, some
    people are spinning this narrative that this is a sign of
    American weakness.'"
        Well, since he won't name them, Mr. Doran, do you want to
    take a shot at who was he speaking of when they talk about the
    administration's compadres in the press who helped them spin
    the White House narrative and who in the press do you think he
    is kind of referring to there?
        Mr. Doran. I wouldn't want to speculate on individuals. I
    would just note that in general the major newspapers and the
    major networks have supported the line coming out of the White
    House. And one of the things that Mr. Rhodes drew our attention
    to and I think it's important to focus on is the blurring--as a
    result of the fact that newspapers and networks are reporting
    foreign news from Washington, we have this blurring now of
    opinion and news so that the line that Mr. Rhodes is putting
    out find its way into news articles and that it also finds its
    way into opinion columns at the same time, which then they had
    a kind of mutually reinforcing effect.
        But we also find at the same time that only about 13
    percent of Americans actually believe what they're hearing
    anymore, and I think we can draw our own conclusions about
    that.
        Mr. Grothman. Well, having been here for 14 months, I don't
    believe anything I read in the paper around here, but the major
    papers, do you believe like the New York Times, the Washington
    Post, would you consider those major papers you are talking
    about?
        Mr. Doran. Yes, you can see like--I'll give an example. You
    know, recently, the Saudis put to death this cleric Nimr al-
    Nimr, a Shiite. The line that you got universally in the
    newspapers, in the news articles, and in the opinion pieces and
    then on the networks was that there's a huge Saudi sectarian
    escalation which is destroying relations with Iran. All the
    things that Iran is doing around the region, flexing of its
    muscles like Dr. Rubin described, we're not hearing about. And
    I believe that that was news reported out of the White House.
        I'll just say one more thing about this, too. Because of
    the rise of the internet, we have all these nontraditional news
    sources now that people go to, and it puts enormous pressure on
    the serious reporters that are out there. I mean, I'm thinking
    of people like David Sanger and Michael Gordon of the New York
    Times. These are very serious reporters, right? But they know--
    and if they don't know it and if they're not thinking about it
    directly in their own minds, their editors know that if they
    don't--that if they take a line that is hostile to what the
    White House is saying, the White House can go to Vox or to
    BuzzFeed or somewhere else and give the story.
        So even reporters that I think we would all agree are
    extremely serious reporters are under pressure, I think, not to
    report a story that's going to harm their access to the White
    House.
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. And just so we understand, we mentioned
    the New York Times and Washington Post by name, but because
    they feed the Associated Press, just because I don't get the
    New York Times and Washington Post doesn't mean that that is
    not the article that I am getting, say, in almost any other
    major newspaper around the country, correct?
        Mr. Doran. Yes, it replicates itself immediately.
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. Now, when he talks about his compadres,
    do you have any opinion if he is talking about anybody in the
    think tank or policy world?
        Mr. Doran. Well, the two that were mentioned in the article
    were the Ploughshares Fund and NIAC, but it is not hard--you
    know, if you followed would happen on Twitter when this article
    came out, the friends of the White House and the friends of the
    echo chamber, you could identify the echo chamber by seeing how
    they pounced immediately on the article, picked out one or two
    little facts that they could criticize, and built a whole, I
    think, specious argument that the author had a political agenda
    in this. And then that narrative then was spun out of social
    media and into the mainstream media.
        Mr. Rubin. If I may say very quickly, sir, I don't know
    David Samuels, the author of the article, but to criticize him
    for not being supportive of the Iran deal illustrates the
    problem of an echo chamber because journalists saying that only
    sympathetic journalists that can cover the administration, that
    itself is a sign of a much greater problem. Huge problem.
        Mr. Grothman. Can I play video here or are we done with our
    time?
        Chairman Chaffetz. Let me go to Mr. Palmer ----
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. I want to come back. Yes.
        Chairman Chaffetz.--and then if you want to come back, we
    will come back.
        Now, we are going to recognize the gentleman from Alabama,
    Mr. Palmer.
        Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we have about
    worn this out. We have covered everything from Iran to the fact
    that I think Mr. Meadows establish very clearly that we were
    lied to by this administration, perhaps even with contempt.
        But I want to go to something else that I think is really
    at the core of what we ought to be talking about, and that is a
    key promise from the administration is that the Iran nuclear
    deal would provide the public and lawmakers with assurance that
    Iran was meeting its obligation, and Iran's ability to engage
    in proliferation would the substantially mitigated.
        I mean, we can go back to the Rhodes statement that it
    would be the strongest inspection regime that any country faces
    in the world. We could go to what the State Department posted
    on the Web site, that the International Atomic Energy Agency
    would have regular access to all of Iran's nuclear facilities,
    that they would be providing the IAEA with much greater access,
    that it would require--that they be granted access to
    investigate suspicious sites or allegations of covert
    enrichment. But that is not what has actually happened.
        I want to share with you that after the deal was
    implemented, the International Atomic Energy Agency published
    its regular report on Iran. I think it came out in February.
    And the report contained less information than the IAEA had
    regularly provided about Iran before the deal was in place. In
    fact, when asked about these gaps, IAEA Director General Amano
    said that, in fact, the deal restricted the IAEA's ability to
    report publicly about Iran's nuclear program.
        Mr. Rubin, given that, how much confidence do you have in
    this deal?
        Mr. Rubin. I have very little confidence in this deal for
    reasons that I've outlined in my written testimony. It falls
    far short of the most rigorous inspection regime ever, and the
    danger isn't just in Iran, very briefly. The danger is that it
    permanently dilutes the standard by which other potential
    proliferators are held.
        Mr. Palmer. But would you agree that General Amano's
    statement validates the concerns that you expressed about the
    deal from the very beginning?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes, I would.
        Mr. Palmer. Would you also say that, given this statement
    from the General Amano, that the exaggerated concessions that
    this administration claims that they obtained might be called
    into question as well?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes, I would.
        Mr. Palmer. You know, we have been talking about echo
    chambers, we talked about misrepresentations. I go back to the
    statement that Secretary of State Kerry made that he was the
    chief negotiator. We know that the framework of the deal was
    already in place before he really got involved, these
    statements that have been brought out in the New York Times
    Magazine article, but what we really haven't talked about is
    the fact that the deal is a fraud, and Iran could be on a path
    to a nuclear weapon.
        And here is something else that we haven't really discussed
    that I think we need to be talking about, too, is that
    according to Ben Rhodes that this deal also is part of a plan
    to abandon our friends and allies in the Middle East. Does that
    give you some concern, Mr. Rubin?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes, it does.
        Mr. Palmer. How about you, Mr. Doran?
        Mr. Doran. Absolutely.
        Mr. Palmer. How about you, Mr. Hannah?
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, very much so.
        Mr. Palmer. Do you believe that the Obama administration
    withheld information from Congress about the deal
    intentionally?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes, I do.
        Mr. Palmer. Do you believe that was in violation of the
    Corker-Cardin agreement, the law that he signed into law
    himself?
        Mr. Rubin. It absolutely was, and on top of which the
    Corker-Cardin amendment was written in such a way to prevent
    this from happening. And unfortunately, the administration
    simply broke the law.
        Mr. Palmer. I couldn't agree more. Peter Roskam, the
    gentleman from Illinois, introduced a House resolution and
    argued that very point. The House passed that resolution that
    this deal was illegal from the get-go because the Corker-Cardin
    law required that all information be provided to Congress,
    including the side agreements, and it clearly wasn't.
        I think there is one issue, really one question that we
    need to ask, and I will ask each one of you to answer this. Do
    you believe this deal has actually assured Iran a path to
    developing a nuclear weapon?
        Mr. Rubin. Yes. At the very least it leaves Iran with an
    industrial-scale nuclear program upon the expiration of the
    controls, and the administration went into this knowing that
    the Iranian regime was not moderate.
        Mr. Palmer. Mr. Doran?
        Mr. Doran. I agree with all that.
        Mr. Palmer. Mr. Hannah?
        Mr. Hannah. Yes, I agree with Michael's conclusion.
        Mr. Palmer. Mr. Chairman, I am not sure it is the
    jurisdiction of this committee to look into the ramifications
    of that possibility, but I do think that is essentially what we
    should have been talking about this entire time. And the fact
    that this administration misled Congress is one issue that I
    think we need to pursue, but I think at some point Congress
    needs to look at what our positions ought to be going forward
    in regard to Iran.
        I yield back.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I totally agree with the gentleman and
    appreciate his perspective. And he is right. That is the
    ultimate fear that we have is that Iran, not a friend of the
    United States, not a friendly partner within the world
    community, that they are even more so on a pathway to develop a
    nuclear weapon, and that is what is scary.
        We will go one more time to Mr. Grothman of Wisconsin.
        Mr. Grothman. Sure. And we will go one more time to Ben
    Rhodes--I mean, not to Ben Rhodes, to Michael Doran.
        Ben Rhodes commented on the White House's desire to avoid
    scrutiny. And I would like to look at video clip D and ask you
    a question about it.
        [Video shown.]
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. How do you feel the process
    circumvented the transparency with Congress?
        Mr. Doran. They structured the deal so that they could take
    it to the Security Council and effectively move out on it
    before Congress ever really got to look at it.
        And there's a second dimension to what we just heard that's
    disturbing. That was Ben Rhodes talking to a group of
    progressive activists and telling them what was coming down the
    line and giving them the talking points about how to support
    it. I mean, that--what you just heard was Ben Rhodes talking to
    the foot soldiers that are going to create--that are--in his
    echo chamber.
        Mr. Grothman. Tell us again what those foot soldiers are.
        Mr. Doran. I'm sorry?
        Mr. Grothman. Tell us again what you describe those foot
    soldiers ----
        Mr. Doran. Oh, those--in this case these are progressive--
    this is progressive groups. I don't know the exact--what we're
    talking--they regularly briefed dozens of progressive groups.
    I'm not talking about pseudo-experts on nuclear proliferation
    and things that that. I'm talking about just grassroots
    progressive organizations to get--to help them carry the water
    politically.
        But it's one of these blurring of the lines between rules
    that I don't think we saw in previous administrations where you
    have somebody who's in charge of communications but yet sitting
    at the table with the Secretary of Defense and sometimes
    telling the Secretary of Defense that he's wrong and then going
    out and talking to domestic political groups and telling them
    how to go militate in favor of the foreign policy of the
    administration.
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. Thank you.
        Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman. I thank you all
    for your attendance here, your participation, your expertise in
    illuminating what is a very disturbing situation.
        The committee stands adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:46 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

                                    APPENDIX

                                  ----------

                   Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                     [all]