Guaranteed.
House ready to pass intelligence bill
Lawmakers applying final touches to legislation
Lawmakers applying final touches to legislation
Tuesday, December 7, 2004 Posted: 10:38 AM EST (1538
GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A long-delayed bill overhauling the
nation's intelligence agencies is nearing passage now that President Bush and
House Armed Services chairman Duncan Hunter have endorsed a compromise
guaranteeing battlefield commanders access to top-secret
information.
Bush has called on Congress for months to pass
legislation implementing the September 11 commission's recommendations to
protect the nation from terrorists. House GOP leaders have been holding up the
bill because of Hunter's concerns that it might interfere with the military's
ability to get vital information.
But Hunter now supports it because House-Senate
negotiators added language to ensure Defense officials would have priority in
battlefield areas over the nation's spy satellites and other intelligence
equipment.
The California congressman had worried that a new
national intelligence director, a position the legislation would create to
coordinate spy agencies, would have been able to insert himself into the chain
of command from the president to the combatant commanders.
House Republicans were meeting Tuesday to put the final
touches on the bill. Lawmakers from both parties expect the bill to pass and
said its reforms were long overdue.
"We have not in 50 years changed the intelligence
system. We've never walked away from the Cold War model," Sen. Jay Rockefeller
of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee,
said Tuesday on CBS' "The Early Show." "We now have a bill which will pass both
houses, I hope, that will change the intelligence system and head it in the
right direction."
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chief Republican
negotiator on the bill, told CBS that by creating the post of national
intelligence director, the legislation would create "a single individual who
will be responsible for coordinating our intelligence and who will be
accountable. We've lacked that in the current system."
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, had refused
to bring the bill up before Thanksgiving because of the opposition from Hunter
and House Judiciary chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin. Sensenbrenner
said he would still oppose the bill in Tuesday's GOP meeting because it does not
deal with such issues as illegal immigration and asylum changes.
Bush, in a letter to Congress, said the bill should be
passed anyway. "These omissions from the final bill should not prevent the
Congress from passing this historic legislation now," Bush said.
House Intelligence chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan,
told CNN on Tuesday that while the intelligence reorganization bill was not
perfect, it is "a good solid step in the right direction."
"If we waited on every bill in Washington to have the
complete package done we'd never get anything done," Hoekstra said. "This is a
good solid step in the right direction, addressing many of the issues that will
make America safer, but we all agree this is not the complete and total
package."
Even if some Republicans oppose the bill, supporters in
the House and Senate say they have enough votes to pass the
legislation.
"We hope that this support will provide the final
momentum necessary to take intelligence reform across the finish line," Collins
and Joseph Lieberman, D-Connecticut, the lead Senate negotiators, said Monday in
a joint statement.
The legislation also would cement into law the
existence of a national counterintelligence center to coordinate the nation's
fight against terrorism.
Bush had used his executive power to order officials to
set that center up, and it opened Monday in an undisclosed location in northern
Virginia, a government official said.
Intelligence veteran John Brennan will lead the new
counterterrorism center on an acting basis until the legislation goes into
effect, at which time the director will have to be officially nominated by the
president and confirmed by the Senate.