|
House offers revamp on US spying bill { September 25 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/25/MNG5D8UT591.DTLhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/25/MNG5D8UT591.DTL
House GOP offers plan to revamp U.S. spying
Debate on changing intelligence system starts next week
- Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Washington -- House Republican leaders announced their proposed changes to the nation's intelligence system on Friday, setting the stage for a congressional debate over a shakeup to the country's spying capabilities fueled by the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations.
The outcome of the debate on Capitol Hill, which will start in full force next week during a heated presidential and congressional election campaign, is far from certain.
Several key roadblocks stand in the way:
-- Such icons of the national security establishment as former secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia have warned against creating a single cabinet-level national intelligence director in charge of the country's 15 intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
-- The Defense Department, which stands to lose much of its control over intelligence, has indicated it will fight sweeping reorganization plans, especially if they interfere with the military's grip on intelligence needed for operations.
-- The House Republican bill goes beyond the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations by proposing new powers for law enforcement. One proposal allows for secret warrants in the cases of such "lone wolf'' terror suspects as shoe bomber Richard Reid. The other would broaden the definition of providing "material support'' for terrorist groups.
The proposed House bill, which Democrats say was written without their input, stands in sharp contrast to the bill passed unanimously this week by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee under the chairwoman, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and ranking Democrat Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Their bipartisan bill doesn't include the proposals for giving more power to law enforcement and would take away more power from the Pentagon than the House proposal envisions.
"This legislation will be comprehensive, to make the government more effective in battling terrorism,'' House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., told reporters Friday, flanked by several of the GOP committee chairmen who helped draft the bill.
His staff said House committees will begin voting on the bill of almost 300 pages next week, and the full House is scheduled to take it up in the first week of October. The Senate may take up its bill this week. Eventually, the two differing bills will have to be reconciled by a conference committee on a tight timetable because Republican leaders want the bill sent to President Bush by the time they break in mid-October for the election campaign.
If they don't accomplish that, Congress could return for a post-election, lame-duck session to finish the job.
The main thrust of all the proposals, and of legislation that Bush proposed early this month, is to enact the proposals of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission, whose members have continued to lobby for their ideas even though the panel formally went out of business in August. While there is widespread agreement on creating a national intelligence director, there is considerable disagreement on what powers the new official should have, how close to the president the new intelligence czar should be, and how the post would interact with the Pentagon, which controls about three-quarters of the intelligence budget that is estimated at $40 billion a year, although the exact figure is a secret.
There is even disagreement on whether the total amount of the budget should be made public as the Sept. 11 commission proposed. The Senate sides with the commission, while the House leaders' bill doesn't. Hastert said he adamantly opposes disclosing the figure, as does Bush.
House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco blasted the Republicans for taking their time in drafting a bill and for not consulting Democrats on what she says shouldn't be a partisan issue. She suggested over the summer that Hastert call the House back into session to deal with the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations.
"How much better it would have been if we could have taken the course that the Senate did, to take action in a bipartisan manner. These are not partisan issues,'' she told reporters Thursday.
She also called the proposals for increased law enforcement powers "rather menacing.''
Republicans say those proposals grew directly out of the Sept. 11 commission's recitation of how the 19 terrorists managed to pull off the hijacking of four jetliners on one morning.
On Friday, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the criminal powers provisions are "unnecessary and divisive.''
"There's a bipartisan bill in the Senate, and they come up with a partisan bill right before the election. People see through that,'' Daly added.
In fact, there was talk in the Capitol that it might be just fine with the Republicans if they can't reach agreement with the Senate on a final bill before the election, after forcing House Democrats to vote on their bill. That way they could try to argue in the campaign that Democratic obstructionism stalled the popular Sept. 11 commission's ideas and make an issue of possible Democratic votes against the new law enforcement powers.
But before they can get that far, they and other backers of the commission's ideas will have to surmount opposition from the Pentagon and many in the foreign policy and national security establishment.
"Racing to implement reforms on an election timetable is precisely the wrong thing to do. Intelligence reform is too complex and too important to undertake at a campaign's breakneck speed," said a statement issued this week by a group that included Shultz and Kissinger as well as former Democratic Sens. Gary Hart and Bill Bradley.
Another of the commission's ideas that could spark a fight is the proposal, included in the House and Senate bills, for uniform national standards on driver's licenses to make it harder to counterfeit or alter them. The House bill also calls for uniformity for birth certificates and establishment of an electronic birth certificate registration system. Civil libertarians object to the licenses provision, saying it could be the first step toward creation of a mandatory national identification card system.
And a national ID, critics charge, could make it easier for government to intrude into privacy by tracking people's movements and activities.
E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com.
Page A - 1
|
|
