|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Hastert Blocks Vote on Intelligence Reform Bill By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) brought efforts to create a national intelligence director to a halt Saturday by blocking a vote on a compromise intelligence reform bill after two influential House members expressed their opposition to the legislation (see GSN, Nov. 12). After working for a month to resolve the differences in their separate reform bills, House and Senate negotiators Saturday morning announced they had reached a compromise agreement, according to reports. Later that day, though, Hastert refused to hold a vote on the compromise bill because of intense opposition from House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). Hunter reportedly opposed the compromise bill because of concerns that the measure could weaken the military chain of command and jeopardize commanders’ ability to receive battlefield intelligence. U.S. Defense Department officials and Pentagon supporters expressed those same concerns during congressional hearings this summer on the issue of intelligence reform (see GSN, Aug. 18). “Duncan’s concern was that the proposed reform could endanger our troops in the field who use real-time intelligence to fight the war in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hastert was quoted as saying Saturday by the New York Times. “We must make every precaution to ensure that when we reform our intelligence agencies, we do it in a way that protects our troops and those people who protect our citizens.” The two main Senate negotiators on the compromise bill — Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and top committee Democrat Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) — denied in a joint statement Saturday that the compromise measure would have hurt the military. “We reached a result that was not perfectly satisfactory to everyone but made everyone feel proud that they had done something — including to protect the war fighter,” Lieberman said. According to reports, President George W. Bush personally contacted Sensenbrenner, who opposed the bill due to a lack of provisions on illegal immigration, in an unsuccessful effort to obtain his support for a compromise measure. Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly contacted Hunter personally in an attempt to reach a compromise, but also failed. Congressional efforts to create a national intelligence director were spurred this summer by the Sept. 11 commission, which recommended that such a position be created to oversee the U.S. intelligence community. The White House supported the recommendation, and the House of Representatives and the Senate last month approved their respective bills to create the position. Lawmakers worked over the past month to resolve the differences between the two bills, with much of the debate centering on the potential new role of the defense secretary in the intelligence community. The defense secretary now controls about 80 percent of the intelligence budget; the Senate bill gave the new intelligence director more budgetary and personnel authority than foreseen in the House legislation (see GSN, Nov. 1). Under the compromise reached Saturday, the national intelligence director would have had the authority to “develop and determine” an annual intelligence budget based on proposals provided by the heads of intelligence agencies and their respective department chiefs. The new director would have had the authority to transfer no more than $150 million or 5 percent of an agency’s funding to another intelligence agency within a single fiscal year — a provision also backed by House negotiators. Senate negotiators had gone from calling for unlimited transfer authority to giving the new director the authority to transfer 10 percent of an agency’s funds within a fiscal year (see GSN, Nov. 9). The compromise bill would have given the national intelligence director the authority to “recommend” to the president nominees for CIA director, as well as the “right to concur” to recommendations for the heads of most other intelligence agencies in various departments. The new director also would have been “consulted” for recommendations to head the Defense Intelligence Agency. A national counterterrorism center would have been created by the compromise legislation, as well as a national counterproliferation center. The bill would have given the president the authority to waive the creation of the national counterproliferation center, though, if it was determined that “it does not materially improve the government’s ability to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” The White House had previously come out against the creation of a national counterproliferation center (see GSN, Oct. 20). The decision against voting on the compromise bill was met this weekend by criticism and disappointment from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. “We share a deep sense of disappointment and frustration that the Congress will not complete the important task of reforming the intelligence agencies in order to better serve and protect the American people,” Collins and Lieberman said in their statement. “I just think that Americans ought to remember the name Duncan Hunter and also Jim Sensenbrenner, because they brought the bill down, the most important national security bill in the last generation,” Senator Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said yesterday on ABC’s This Week. During an appearance yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Representative Jane Harman (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee and one of the main House negotiators, criticized the Pentagon for aiding opposition in the House. “The problem was in the House, and the problem was that some members of the House Republican majority dug in, they never wanted a bill, they never will want a bill, and it was unfortunate that Speaker Hastert couldn’t go around them and more unfortunate is that the president, as commander-in-chief … couldn't get the secretary of defense to stop his opposition, which has been ongoing for months and which emboldened some of these House folks to dig in,” Harman said. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) noted yesterday, though, that Bush this summer had signed executive orders increasing the authority of the director of central intelligence to serve as a national intelligence director until the position was created along with a national counterterrorism center. The orders, however, do not provide the new director and center with as much authority as in the House and Senate bills. Calling Saturday’s move “a remarkable turn of events,” intelligence expert Steven Aftergood said the intelligence reform bill has ended up illustrating “the very problem it was intended to solve.” “Namely, the fragmentation and turf issues that afflict U.S. intelligence,” said Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. Aftergood said that a lack of a vote made “everybody look bad,” from the opponents in the House who look like “fanatics” to the White House, which looks “impotent” by being unable bring Hunter and Sensenbrenner on board. Aftergood also said, though, that he was “sort of relieved” that the vote was not held because of his view that the Senate had compromised too much on several provisions, such as by allowing the total intelligence budget to remain classified. A provision to declassify the total intelligence budget, supported by the Sept. 11 commission, was included in the Senate intelligence reform bill, but was removed earlier this month as a compromise offer to the House negotiators (see GSN, Nov. 9). “It was turning into a monstrosity of a bill,” Aftergood said. The lack of a vote was also met with praise from James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation, who said today that there had been too political of an environment surrounding the November elections and the “lame-duck” congressional session to implement effective reform. “It’s more important to get it right than get it fast,” Carafano said. There are now plans to have House and Senate lawmakers continue to negotiate on a final bill, with an eye toward returning in early December for a vote, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said yesterday. He added that Congress would also take up the issue if necessary when it reconvenes in January. “Let’s come back in two weeks. Let’s sensibly come back and make sure we have a bill. We’ve already passed one in the Senate, one in the House, let’s put them together, and accomplish that. We’ve got to do it right. That’s what the American people deserve,” Frist said on CBS’s Face the Nation. Expressing disappointment yesterday, Bush was quoted by the New York Times as saying he would continue to be involved in the effort to reach a final bill. “When I get home, I look forward to getting it done,” Bush was quoted as saying during a press conference in Santiago, Chile, where he was attending an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. “I was disappointed that the bill didn’t pass. I thought it was going to pass up to the last minute.” Roberts said yesterday, though, that it was unlikely that the issues that derailed the compromise bill could be quickly resolved. “I just don’t see it as of Dec. 6. … We have to get a coalition to prove and to try to convince people who have very strong differences of opinion who believe that somehow the war fighter will be endangered in the middle of a war due to intelligence reform,” he said. There also appears to be little room left for further compromise on either side, according to reports, lawmakers and experts. “If the thought is that we will change the bill further, and therefore it will be more palatable to these committee chairs who oppose it, that will unglue all the careful compromises and the blood on the floor and all the metaphors you can pick that went into this, and I think you may satisfy them but then you’ll make this national director of intelligence an ineffective office. That isn’t the point,” Harman said yesterday.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
