Government watch-groups including the Center for Public Integrity are criticizing a White House decision not to release financial and employment background information on members of the new committee to review intelligence failures in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

One member of the commission, William Studeman, is a former official at the CIA and the National Security Agency and is now a senior executive at the military contractor Northrop Grumman. Another commissioner, lawyer Lloyd Cutler, founded a law firm that has done work for the Carlyle Group. The chair of the commission Judge Lawrence Silberman has pledged to release his personal financial information but many critics are concerned that he is too close personally to the administration. According to the New York Times he is friends with both Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, two of the most prominent advocates for invading Iraq.