Los Angeles Times: GOP Aims to Add Police Powers to Intelligence Reform

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

GOP Aims to Add Police Powers to Intelligence Reform
By Mary Curtius
Times Staff Writer

8:08 PM PDT, September 24, 2004

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders introduced legislation Friday  
that grafts broadened police powers onto a plan to reform the nation's  
intelligence gathering agencies.

Like a bill passed earlier by a Senate committee, the proposal adopts  
recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission for establishing a national  
intelligence director and center for counterterrorism.

But it also calls for new police powers that would, among other things,  
set new federal standards for state driver's licenses and step up  
inspections of travelers to the United States.

Democrats and some Republicans said the additions needlessly  
politicized what had been a remarkably bipartisan effort in the Senate,  
dimming prospects that a bill would be signed into law before the  
November elections.

But the House Republican leadership said it was confident a bill would  
be on President Bush's desk before Nov. 2. They predicted that  
Democrats would find it hard to vote against reforms that, by  
centralizing authority over the government's intelligence agencies,  
would strengthen the nation's ability to defend itself against  
terrorists.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said the bill would go through  
half a dozen committees next week on its way to the House floor the  
following week.

The House bill would give an intelligence director and a  
counterterrorism center less power than the bill passed by the Senate  
Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday. In that respect, the House  
leadership more closely reflected the White House vision of the new  
director and center than did the Senate or the Sept. 11 Commission.

Under the House bill, like the Senate bill, the director would have  
supervisory authority over the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and  
the other 15 U.S. spy agencies that do not contribute directly to war  
fighting. But the director's authority would not be as broad in the  
House approach. He would have less power to set agency budgets, and he  
would be less the initiator of top agency appointments than someone who  
reacts to the choices of others.

But it is the law enforcement aspects of the 335-page House bill that  
quickly proved the most controversial.

The bill would:

-- Make it easier to deport aliens who help or join terrorist groups.

-- Give the government warrant powers to help track "lone wolf"  
terrorists unconnected to a terrorist group.

-- Set minimal federal standards for state-issued drivers' licenses and  
identity cards.

-- Increase the number of border patrol agents and immigration and  
customs agents.

-- Expand inspection by U.S. agents at foreign airports of travelers to  
the United States.

-- Establish a national database for government agencies to more easily  
share information on citizens.

Some of these measures were included in a Justice Department memo  
leaked last year and dubbed "Patriot Act II" by critics who said they  
would further erode civil liberties that were weakened by the Patriot  
Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Republicans insisted that they were only trying to respond to the bulk  
of the 41 reforms urged by the Sept. 11 Commission in its final report,  
which delivered a scathing indictment of failures of the intelligence  
community.

"Our bill is the most comprehensive effort yet introduced that deals  
with the problems uncovered by the 9/11 Commission," Hastert told  
reporters.

But Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House  
Intelligence Committee, said the bill "has complicated the process."  
Harman said she objected to the bill's effort to curb the authority of  
the national intelligence director and the counterterrorism center and  
to its immigration provisions. Beyond its proposals for intelligence  
reform, she said, the bill "has a lot of problems."

Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., who serves on the House Intelligence Committee  
and who has opposed creation of a national intelligence director, said  
he too, was unhappy with a draft he saw of the House bill Thursday.

"The bill that I saw ... I don't intend to support," LaHood said. "What  
will end up happening is we'll pass something in the House that will be  
totally different than the Senate, then have the huge train wreck that  
we always have here in trying to reconcile the two."

He said he did not believe it would be possible to reconcile the House  
and Senate versions of a bill before Congress adjourns in mid-October  
for the November elections.

Once the bill was introduced, ebullient Republicans said it would be  
hard for Democrats to oppose measures aimed at preventing future  
domestic attacks, observed John Feehrey, Hastert's spokesman.

"This clarifies the law so that you can actually get the terrorists,"  
Feehrey said. "Would any Democrat want to vote against that?"

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blasted the bill.

"Instead of acting in a bipartisan manner, the Republican leadership is  
introducing a bill, written behind closed doors, that attempts to score  
partisan points and goes far outside the recommendations of the 9/11  
Commission," she said in a statement. "Unbelievably, the Republicans  
claim to have introduced a bipartisan bill, as Senate leaders have  
done. It is simply not true."

<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na- 
intel25sep25,1,2060774,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines>

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