The Senate Intelligence Committee stands in the middle of some of the most important work Congress will do this year. It also stands in the way. Not only has it failed to complete its work on investigating how the White House used intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq, it has offered only a weak response to the administration’s warrantless wiretaps. The committee’s seeming lack of direction at precisely the time intelligence is the focus of the war on terrorism and at the heart of the debate over the reach of executive powers is inexcusable.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas defended its work the other day, saying that the second phase of its report on intelligence leading to the Iraq war “has been ongoing since we began the effort shortly after the committee released its unanimous report on the Intelligence Community’s prewar assessments on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.”

The second report was expected in the fall of 2004 and was to examine, among other things, whether statements made by officials were substantiated by the intelligence. It was also to look at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, a former intelligence unit that reportedly disagreed with conclusions of the CIA.

In the March 4 edition of the National Journal, reporter Murray Waas points to important instances when the president disregarded the intelligence. In one, the president was given a one-page summary of the National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002 that stated the Energy Department and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence believed the much-disputed aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were “intended for conventional weapons.”

But despite that conclusion the president and his Cabinet continued to assert the tubes were for gas centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. It isn’t news that the White House was wrong, but it is important that the Senate investigate the facts around the president’s decision to ignore specific intelligence.

Similarly, by January 2003, reports Mr. Waas, a second classified report that included a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate stated that U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously concluded Saddam Hussein would be unlikely to attack the United States unless “ongoing military operations risked the imminent demise of his regime,” the report said. The Bush administration, through numerous speeches, press conferences and interviews, portrayed very different conditions from what its own intelligence was reporting.

The Senate committee’s capitulation on warrantless wiretapping – agreeing to have a subcommittee informed, maybe, of some National Security Agency activity and canceling a possible investigation of the wiretapping – was similarly disappointing. The full committee is supposed to have oversight responsibilities. Simply because the administration denied them that ability is no reason to surrender it in part now. Sen. Olympia Snowe, a member of the committee, said an investigation was still possible, which is better than nothing.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats have shone in the committee’s gridlock. But Congress and the nation need it to lead on difficult issues, and if a new committee membership is needed next year, both parties should consider it.