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Intelligence reform stalled by GOP foes { November 21 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Sunday, November 21, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
Intelligence reform stalled by GOP foes
By Charles Babington and Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Legislation to reshape the intelligence community collapsed yesterday as conservative House Republicans refused to embrace a compromise because they said it could reduce military control over battlefield intelligence and failed to crack down on illegal immigrants.
The impasse was a blow to President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and others who personally had asked House conservatives to accept the measure proposed by House-Senate negotiators.
It also marked a major setback to the Sept. 11 commission — whose July report triggered a drive toward overhauling intelligence operations — and to many relatives of Sept. 11 victims.
The bill would have created a director of national intelligence and a counterterrorism center, along with scores of other changes. The bill would have given the new intelligence chief authority to set priorities for the CIA and 14 other spy agencies.
Even some key Republicans said prospects appear slim for producing a compromise that the House and Senate can pass.
If a bill is not enacted by year's end, efforts would have to start anew in the 109th Congress that convenes in January.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the chief Senate GOP negotiator, said she was disappointed that Bush's support of the compromise — which he expressed via White House statements and telephone calls to a few House Republicans — wasn't enough to obtain its passage. "It's surprising," she said, "and what's so frustrating to us is that this bill has such widespread support."
Hastert said the two chief opponents to the compromise were House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. They persuaded scores of GOP colleagues to join their opposition in a sometimes-emotional closed-door meeting of House Republicans.
There, in a Capitol basement room, Hastert tried in vain to find enough votes to pass the bill without relying mainly on Democrats, a scenario too embarrassing for Republicans.
Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, the Republican chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, said he was "obviously disappointed" that the House was not given a chance to vote. "There's no question it would have passed easily," he said, because most Democrats and a good number of Republicans would have supported it.
Hunter said he opposed the bill because Senate conferees had removed a White House-drafted section ensuring that tactical or battlefield-intelligence agencies still would be directed primarily by the secretary of defense, even as they reported to the new national intelligence director.
Collins called Hunter's argument "utterly without merit," saying the real-time satellite intelligence that troops receive in combat actually would improve.
Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a House conferee on the legislation, said: "Clearly, House Republicans never really wanted this bill. ... Sadly, there are those who are so wedded to the Department of Defense that they ultimately ensured the bill's demise."
Sensenbrenner's opposition focused on immigration provisions dropped in the negotiations' final hours. Those provisions, important to many House Republicans who feel illegal immigration is out of control, would have made it easier to deport alien suspects and deny drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants, among other things. Collins said immigration questions should be handled in separate legislation.
Under the compromise, the new director of national intelligence (DNI) would set objectives and priorities for the 15 agencies in the intelligence community. The DNI would determine budgets and hold operational authority over the national intelligence program, foreign and domestic, which covers 75 percent of the about $40 billion spent annually on intelligence. The remainder would go to the Pentagon for tactical-intelligence operations.
The new national intelligence chief's powers in the compromise were somewhat greater than those now held by the director of central intelligence, who also heads the CIA. But under the legislation, the DNI would not run the CIA, nor would his deputy.
The measure would have established by law the national counterterrorism center (NCTC), making it the primary agency handling terrorism intelligence and planning strategic operations at home and abroad, to be carried out by the CIA, FBI and Pentagon personnel.
The NCTC director would have been a presidential appointee.
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
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