18 February 2002
This is the fourth part of a series on probes of intelligence agencies and the FBI.
Part 1:
http://cryptome.org/tla-probes.htm
(1974-75)
Part 2:
http://cryptome.org/tla-probes2.htm
(1976)
Part 3:
http://cryptome.org/tla-probes3.htm
(1977-79)
Flawed Intelligence: No Easy Fix (2001)
Spymasters: Monitoring the Secret War on Terror (2002)
CIA's Role in Afghan War Restores Tenet's Image on Hill (2002)
CQ Weekly, September 15, 2001, pp. 2145-2146.
Special Report Washington Responds
Lawmakers unite in resolve but differ widely on how to coordinate counterterrorism
By Chuck McCutcheon
[Photo] Committee Chairman Goss, at microphone, and his Senate counterpart, Graham, right photo, were at the center of discussions on how to aid U.S. intelligence. "Sometimes you have a hard time convincing people there is a threat" Goss said.
The worst terrorist attacks in the nation's history strengthened congressional resolve to boost S intelligence and counterterrorism, but the problems that have hampered earlier attempts to address the issue -- both interagency and congressional turf battles -- loom large.
In the wake of the assaults that levelled the World Trade Center and struck the Pentagon, killing thousands, many lawmakers were outraged and disappointed by the failure of the CIA and other agencies to foresee the attacks, despite signs that the suspected Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden, had threatened aggression against the United States.
The assaults prompted congressional calls for the CIA to recruit more spies to infiltrate terrorist "cells" and look at obtaining information from a wider range of foreign sources -- even with questionable backgrounds. The attacks also revived talk of reversing a ban on assassinations.
"We as a nation are going to have to be more aggressive in the use of human intelligence," said Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds the departments of Commerce, Justice and State.
But the biggest hurdles facing Congress still remain, specifically deciding who should be in charge of the monumental job of combating terrorism.
Several House members have introduced legislation that would create a new National Homeland Security Agency, which would work to prevent as well as respond to terrorist attacks. (Box, 9.2147)
In the Senate, members of the Judiciary and Select Intelligence committees redoubled efforts for the establishment of an office within the White House to coordinate government actions, while other lawmakers pushed for a new deputy attorney general to handle it.
Several expert panels have concluded that congressional responsibility for counterterrorism is divided among too many committees, making a coordinated review of the system's flaws and needs difficult. The House and Senate each have six committees with oversight responsibility for counterterrorism.
"I'm both encouraged there is a desire to act and a little discouraged," said Jon Kyl of Arizona, ranking Republican on the Senate judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information. "There are so many different committees with an interest in this that we could run into some turf problems."
Congress took the first steps Sept. 14 with a $40 billion supplemental spending bill (HR 2888). But some lawmakers warned that more money is not enough; rather there should be a fundamental rethinking of how to de. ter and deal with terrorism at home. (Story, p. 2128)
"This was a huge failure of our intel, ligence community," said Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa, a member of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. "I'm not sure that money would have made any difference at all."
Lawmakers who have been the loudest, and sometimes lone, voices on terrorism sought to ensure that Congress will be there for the long haul of complicated issues, such as how to centralize and coordinate the government's counter-terrorism effort.
"It's going to be a challenge to keep the sense of urgency," said William M. "Mac" Thornberry, R-Texas, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. "The tendency is to pass a supplemental ... and say, 'We've solved something.' That's not the whole solution; we've got more to do."
Assassination Ban QuestionedThe terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11 revived a delicate question that Congress and the U.S. intelligence community have wrestled with for decades: Should foreign terrorists be targeted for assassination? "We must give our government every tool at hand to combat those persons who threaten and destroy American lives and commit terrorist acts across the world," Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., said in a Sept. 12 statement. Barr is the sponsor of a bill (HR 19) introduced in January that would nullify the executive orders banning assassinations. A 1976 executive order by President Gerald R. Ford, drafted in response to reported excesses by intelligence agencies, prohibits political assassinations. (1976 Almanac, p. 300; 1981 Almanac, p. 150) President Ronald Reagan issued a subsequent order in 1981 that made U.S. policy more explicit: "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." None of Reagan's successors has changed the order, but some lawmakers argue that in the wake of the terrorist attacks, the policy now warrants serious reconsideration. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States once had the ability "to seek out and, when necessary, destroy" its adversaries. "I hope I will live to see the day when it will once again be the policy of the United States of America to go after the kind of sneaky enemies who created this morning's mayhem, Helms said Sept. 11. The Bush administration has remained largely silent on the issue. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, responding to a question Sept. 12 about overturning the ban, said, "We have not made such a reassessment. And I'll just leave it there." Before last week's attacks, lawmakers had debated whether it made sense to target Osama bin Laden, the Saudi dissident who is suspected of masterminding the attacks. At a September 1998 hearing after bin Laden made a religious declaration calling for Americans to be killed, Senate Judiciary Committee member members questioned whether the legality of the executive order applies to leaders of terrorist groups or only the heads of state. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden, Jr., D-Del., who raised the legal questions as a Judiciary Committee member, said Sept. 12 that it is "premature" to overturn the ban. Other lawmakers and terrorism experts went a step further, arguing that authorized assassinations are a misguided idea. Former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations Vincent Cannistraro said in an Aug. 30 op-ed article in The Washington Post that they would only encourage more anti-U.S. violence. "As a counterterrorist technique, assassination is not only immoral but ineffective in accomplishing its stated goal: the deterrence of terrorism," Cannistraro wrote. In the hours after the attacks, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla., said he would be open to reconsidering the ban, but after discussing the issue with L. Paul Bremer III, who chaired a recent commission terrorism, Graham later said he believes the policy should stand. The commission does not believe "the current policy was a deterrent on our ability to either gather information or to protect U.S. interests, and therefore specifically, did not recommend change in our policy," Graham said. House Intelligence Cominitt Chairman Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., said lawmakers should focus on apprehending terrorists and bringing them to trial, as in the case of ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. "I would suggest that lethality in our actions is a last resort," Goss said. -- Chuck McCutcheon |
Complacency Shattered
Prior to last week's attacks, several events had underscored the nation's vulnerability: the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, and U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Nevertheless, complacency remained. A State Department report on April 30, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," said nearly half of all terrorist incidents worldwide in 2000 were committed against U.S. citizens or property, but that the vast majority of the acts took place on foreign soil.
"Sometimes you have a hard time convincing people there is a threat" to the United States, House Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., told reporters as the Capitol was evacuated shortly after the attacks on Sept. 11. "This is not the way I would like to convince them."
The State Department report said worldwide deaths from terrorist incidents increased from 233 in 1999 to 405 in 2000. Sobering estimates from the at, tacks in New York and Washington put the death toll at more than 5,000.
In response to the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress passed an antiterrorism law in 1996 (PL 104-132), but because of opposition from conservative House Republicans, the measure did not include many of the law enforcement tools the Clinton adminisEration had sought, such as authority for federal agents to conduct multipoint wiretaps that could follow the person rather than the phone. Such issues of privacy are likely to remain difficult to resolve. (1996 Almanac, p. 5-18; privacy, p. 2152)
The other key initiative that Congress has enacted in recent years is an ambitious program in the 1996 defense authorization law (PL 104-201) that trains civilian authorities in 120 cities to respond to incidents involving chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. (1996 Almanac, p. 8-3)
Since then, the federal commitment to fighting terrorism has grown significantly, with spending rising from $6.5 billion in fiscal 1998 to more thant $11 billion in fiscal 2001. Many lawmakers have complained, however, that the effort is too disjointed, with more than 40 agencies dividing the money.
"Our current counterterrorism policy is fragmented, uncoordinated and unaccountable," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism. "As I see it, a main problem here is that we don't know who is in charge of preparing for and responding to a catastrophic attack."
President Bush announced in May that Vice President Dick Cheney would oversee an interagency effort to assure that the government response is effective. Bush also put the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in charge of coordinating federal, state and local efforts. (CQ Weekly, p. 1098)
Former President Bill Clinton had created a coordinating office on terrorism within the National Security Council in 1998. Bush issued a presidential directive in February that fine-tuned the council's structure.
Stronger Measures
Several lawmakers, however, said more sweeping change is needed. They envision a new office in the White House led by a counterrorism official who has authority for all terrorism-related spending.
"I strongly belive you need someone with budget authority in the White House to be able to coordinate among the departments," Feinstein said.
Feinstein and Kyl won Senate approval Sept 13 for an amendment to the fiscal 2002 bill funding the departments of Commerce, Justice and State (HR 2500) that would allow law enforcement officials to track phone use with the consent of a single judge, rescind restrictions on recruiting agents with "unsavory" backgrounds and assess the National Guard's capability to deter terrorist attacks. (Story, p. 2155)
Lawmakers already have created special Guard emergency response teams to assist local agencies with terrorism-related incidents. Some Guard leaders have balked at the move, fearing that it interferes with their mission of backing up the military in wars abroad.
Feinstein, Kyl and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla., met in the days after the attacks to work on separate legislation that they hope to introduce the week of Sept. 17, possibly as an amendment to the fiscal 2002 defense authorization bill (S 1155). (Defense, p. 2148)
Kyl and Feinstein said the far-reaching bill would streamline procedures for electronic surveillance and physical searches of international terrorists as well as create the White House position.
However, in a sign of the potential problems ahead for the bill, Gregg, along with Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Chairman Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C., pushed another plan for the anti-terrorism effort.
They included language in their fiscal 2002 spending bill to create a new deputy attorney general for combating domestic terrorism. The provision was included in last year's Senate bill, but dropped in conference with the House. (CQ Weekly, p. 1777)
In a letter to Cheney in July, Gregg and four GOP senators who chaired committees and subcommittees at the time said that one of the principal jobs of the new position would be to ensure that law enforcement agencies share information. Some agencies, such as the FBI and CIA, historically have been reluctant to share data.
Anti-Terrorism LegislationHR 1158: Sponsored by Rep. William M. "Mac" Thornberry, R-Texas, the bill would change the name of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Homeland Security Agency and make it the principal agency for preventing as well as responding to terrorist attacks. The Coast Guard, Custom Service and Border Patrol would be made part of the new agency. HR 525: Sponsored by Rep. Wayne T Gilchrest, R-Md., it would create a presidential council within the White House to oversee preparedness efforts. HR 1292: Sponsored by ranking House Armed Services Committee Democrat Ike Skelton of Missouri, it would direct the president to develop domestic security strategy by identifying threats and developing proposals for anti-terrorism and emergency management, and appoint a single official to be responsible for homeland security. Draft legislation expected to be introduced the week of Sept. 17 by Sens. Kyl, R-Ariz., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would establish a White House office with the task of coordinating anti-terrorism efforts and streamlining the process for surveillance and searches for international terrorists. |
Spies Wanted
The World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks are likely to lead to increases in intelligence spending in several areas, including the recruitment and hiring of more spies. For the past two years, Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet has embarked on the most vigorous recruiting campaign since the end of the Cold War.
A significant increase also is likely over the next few years for signals intelligence -- the information derived from satellites and other sources that intercept, process and analyze communications, electronic signals and telemetry.
"We need to be investing more in things like gathering information through infrared devices that allow us to know what other countries are doing with their missile testing program," Graham said. "We need to be investing in how do we protect our satellites from either a land- or space-based attack."
As lawmakers devote more attention to improving intelligence, they will be under pressure not to reveal classified details of the administration's activities.
Utah Republican Orrin G. Hatch, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that intelligence officials had intercepted communications between associates of bin Laden claiming they had struck targets in the United States.
When asked about Hatch's comments, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on CNN, "We should not be talking about intelligence methods used by the United States of America. All we do is put them at risk."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also criticized leaks of classified in, formation, calling them "wrong" and "unprofessional," although he did not refer to Hatch by name.
CQ Weekly, January 5, 2002, pp. 27-35.
One of the buzzwords salting congressional conversations of the past four months has been "humint." That is the accepted shorthand for "human intelligence," which in turn is the accepted euphemism for what people outside the Beltway know as spying with secret agents. Had our humint been better, the conventional wisdom holds, the towers of the World Trade Center would still be standing and the Pentagon would not need $925 million in repairs. The members of Congress genuinely in the know on this issue are a small group, essentially the leadership and the 36 people with appointments to the Select Intelligence committees. The top Democrats on those two panels are profiled here, mainly because they will have significant say in how long Washington holds a bipartisan view of the Bush administration's Intelligence posture. (For Nancy Pelosi, there is a second reason: When she becomes House minority whip in January, she will be the highest ranking woman in congressional history.) The Republican chairman of House Intelligence, former CIA agent Porter J. Goss, remains a pivotal force even though he may retire next year. In contrast, the two Republicans profiled here are relative newcomers to the top-tier of intelligence policy-making, having earlier cut their legislative teeth on defense, crime and farm policy.
Democrat of Florida
[Biographies of the four omitted]
A well-liked as well as pragmatic moderate, Bob Graham has brought several qualities to the chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee: a long track record of seeking consensus, a desire to fix areas he sees in need of improvement and a legendary devotion to detail.
Graham's ascension to the forefront of the spy sector was accidental. Under normal circumstances, he would not have been on the Intelligence panel at all last year, much less its leader. Under Senate rules, his eight-year tenure on the panel was to have ended in 2000. But party leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and the rest of the Democratic caucus granted Graham a waiver because the committee lost most of its Democratic members before the start of the 107th Congress. Graham took over as chairman in June, when Vermont's James M. Jeffords quit the GOP and tipped the Senate's balance of power,
Since then, Graham has put a premium on working with Republicans, particularly his panel's ranking member, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, and fellow Floridian Porter J. Goss, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Graham has joined Shelby in issuing joint news releases, and he often arranges for he and Shelby to attend classified briefings together. Graham also reshaped the fiscal 2002 intelligence authorization bill after Sept. 11 to resemble the one Goss' committee had approved. "Bob Graham and I are talking the same language," Goss said in October.
Graham also has worked closely with the White House. Unlike Shelby, who frequently went on television to lambaste President Bill Clinton's handling of national security matters, Graham has been extremely deferential to the Bush administration. He has dismissed congressional criticism of intelligence agencies' failure to warn of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington as "premature." Though he was the first senator to introduce legislation to give new Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge formal control over all federal terrorism spending, he bowed to a subsequent plea from Bush and decided to shelve the bill for the year. "The president has made what I think was a very reasonable request," Graham said. "This is like a ship that has just taken a torpedo hit; that's not the time to be reorganizing your crew."
On other legislation, Graham played a rote in shaping the comprehensive anti-terrorism bill signed into law six weeks after the attacks. He worked with Attorney General John Ashcroft to add provisions calling for broader information sharing between the FBI and CIA and establishing a national center to help translate foreign documents into English.
In the months ahead, Graham plans to continue to upgrade several areas of intelligence that he said need more money and attention over the next five years -- human spying, eavesdropping technology, data analysis and research and development. "I anticipate that with the additional emphasis that they are now receiving in some of these areas, we can move even faster than the five-year time schedule that we have set," he said in October.
Whatever Graham does on intelligence or any other issue is likely to be set down in one of the little spiral notebooks that go everywhere with him. He has saved more than 2,000 of the books, which he says is "my greatest attempt at staying disciplined." (Graham was seriously considered by Al Gore as a potential running mate last year, but some observers think the zealousness of his meticulous jottings may have hurt his chances.) The notebooks remain one of his best-known quirks, along with his decision to almost always wear a solid navy or maroon necktie dotted with his state's silhouette in white.
A quiet man, Graham can sometimes come across as curt or detached. He never has emerged as a spokesman for his party on the Sunday morning talk shows, perhaps because he hews so regularly to the center. "What I think I'm best at is bringing people together around an honorable and reasonable position," he told The Tampa Tribune. "My approach to getting things done in the Senate is that you start at the 50-yard line and you begin to build out in each direction until you get a majority. Very few things happen, get accomplished, when you start in the end zone.
Graham has coupled his interest with bridging partisan divides with a devotion to his state's most parochial concerns. Since 1974, when he was a state senator, he has logged hundreds of "work days" sampling avocations from firefighter to teacher, which says helps him stay in touch with the needs of ordinary people. The Palm Beach Post, endorsing his 1998 re-election, called the senator a gem and posed this rhetorical question: "Graham is a hard-working, level-headed grown-up. How many of those will you find in Congress?"
While he is more conservative than many Democrats, Graham is not viewed as a maverick. He is a strong supporter of environmental safeguards and programs that benefit Florida's large elderly population. He has voted to raise the minimum wage, to prohibit job discrimination against homosexuals, and to uphold Clinton's veto of a ban on a procedure its opponents call "partial birth" abortion. But he also has backed the death penalty and constitutional amendments outlawing flag burning. And while he supported banning job discrimination based on sexual orientation, he also voted to allow states to ignore same-sex marriages.
To bolster Florida's economy, Graham sought in the 106th Congress to expand trade arrangements with Caribbean nations. Reminding colleagues that he is a former governor, he tried to block Washington from receiving money from state legal settlements with the tobacco industry. With his Florida GOP colleague Sen. Connie Mack (1989-2001), he won enactment of a law to pump federal money toward restoration of the Florida Everglades, whose natural condition has been drastically changed by earlier federal government flood control projects.
Mindful of Florida's large population of elderly people, he helped lead efforts in the 106th to expand Medicare benefits to cover prescription drugs.
During the much publicized battle in 1999 and 2000 over whether 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez should remain in the United States or be returned to his father in Cuba, Graham sided with Florida's Cuban population.
Perhaps the biggest coup in the 105th for Graham, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, was to help rewrite highway legislation to steer hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Florida. He also won additional funding for military construction and anti-drug efforts in his home state. At the same time, he sought to bolster his claim of fiscal conservatism by suggesting that the Senate change its rules to make it more difficult for lawmakers to designate funding for various programs as "emergency" spending.
Graham inherited an interest in politics from his father, a wealthy dairy farmer who was a state senator in the 1930s and 1940s and an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1944. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Graham joined his father in the real estate business. His projects, including de, velopment of the new town of Miami Lakes, helped him amass a fortune. He was eased into politics by his half-brother Phil, publisher of The Washington Post. Before his suicide in 1963, Phil Graham had introduced Bob to many influential Democrats, including Lyndon B. Johnson, for whom Bob Graham worked at the 1960 Democratic National Convention.
Graham's victory in a 1966 state House campaign began his unbroken string of electoral successes. He moved up to the state Senate in 1970 and succeeded Democratic Gov. Reubin Askew in 1978. In 1986, he won the Senate campaign against Republican incumbent Paula Hawkins.
In 1992, Graham was on Clinton's final list of six contenders for vice president; reportedly, it came down to Graham and Gore. Clinton decided on Gore just in time to allow Graham to file for re-election. Eight years later, when Gore bypassed Graham, the senator was in the middle of his third term, which he had won with ease in 1998.
-- Chuck McCutcheon
Word for Word
Graham, during Senate debate Oct 25 on anti-terrotism legislation (HR 3162):
It is my hope that today as we pass this anti-terrorism legislation and as we will in future days take action on issues of resources to fight antiterrorism and changes in organizational structure, we will be making as significant a national statement about our will and determination to eliminate the scourge of global terrorism as previous generations did about other scourges that afflicted our country....
For most of America's history, we have been extremely uncomfortable with the idea of clandestine intelligence. It ran contrary to our basic spirit of national openness....
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world changed in terms of intelligence requirements. Suddenly, instead of one enemy, we had dozens of enemies. Suddenly, instead of having command of one language which made us linguistically competent, there were scores of languages we had to learn to speak.
In Afghanistan alone, there are more than a half-dozen languages with which one must have some familiarity in order to understand what is being said there. And instead of symmetrical relationships, we now have small groups of a dozen or a hundred or a thousand or so against a nation the size of the United States of America.
So our intelligence community has been challenged to respond to this new reality. This legislation is going to accelerate that response....
That is a statement of our commitment to this intelligence community; that we, the Congress, are prepared to back them up when they take some of these high-risk undertakings and that we will understand there is the risk of failure, but it Is better to risk failure than to be cowered by the unwillingness to engage in important but high-risk ventures.
______________________
Republican of Arizona
At breakfast-time Sept. 11 , Jon Kyl was sitting with two other senior members of congressional Intelligence committees in a secure room on the fourth floor of the Capitol. Their guest was Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, the head of Pakistan's intelligence service. The subject was Osama bin Laden and what Pakistan could do to help the United States capture the man it believed was responsible for the bomb. ings of two U.S. embassies in the summer of 1998.
An aide handed Kyl a note that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. The group quickly rushed to a television set to watch the worst terrorist attacks in the nation's history unfold. Later that morning, Kyl escorted the general out of the building. Two weeks later, Mahmud was removed from his post -- and Pakistan was emerging as a crucial ally as President Bush was preparing to launch the military campaign in Afghanistan, with the search for bin Laden a main objective of the new war on terrorism.
Whether based on coincidence or terrific insight, the prescience of that morning's events underscores how Kyl was uniquely positioned to play an influential role in the War Congress from the moment it began. Most prominently, he is the No. 2 Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and had spent a portion of the August recess in Pakistan. But he is also on the Finance Committee, which has a significant hand in shaping the congressional response to a looming wartime recession. He is the ranking Republican member of the judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information. And he is one of his party's pre-eminent advocates for a national missile defense system and for a robust national security position.
Kyl quickly got to work. He and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, spent much of the remainder of the year working on legislation intended to keep terrorists from entering the country. Kyl also is pushing a bill with Robert F Bennett, R-Utah, aimed at protecting the country from cyberterrorism. And, Kyl's colleagues say, he is playing an influential advisory role to fellow Republicans on defense and intelligence questions. "I rely on him a great deal, the conference relies on him a great deal," said Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.
The senator says the case for a missile shield has been enhanced by the new congressional focus on combating terrorism. "Fanatics," he says, "search for points of vulnerability to exploit, and we are vulnerable to missile attack."
When he became a senator in 1995, Kyl would have been a natural for the Armed Services Committee; during the previous eight years, he had become one of the more prominent conservative GOP voices on House Armed Services. A seat on the Senate panel was not in the cards, however, because Kyl's home-state GOP colleague John McCain was already there. Regardless, he said, "I've been able to find plenty of outlets for my interest in national security."
While developing a strongly right-tilting voting record and a reputation as a studious and approachable workhorse, Kyl kept a relatively low public profile until his second term began a year ago. But all the while, he was earning a reputation as one of the clearest voices among the Senate's ultra-conservatives. (This standing is manifest in his chairmanship for the past year of the Senate Steering Committee, a caucus of Republican conservatives.)
Someone who has taken to working behind the scenes much more readily than selling his position publicly, Kyl can frequently be seen racing through he Capitol -- often to and from top leaders' offices -- never choosing a casual stroll. He has played a key role on important GOP issues, including the reorganization of the chamber and judicial nominations, since his party lost control of the Senate. He is well-liked by his Republican colleagues.
But it is perhaps his relationship with Feinstein that is most interesting, The two have worked together in recent years on a crime victims' constitutional amendment. "His integrity is one of his best features," said Feinstein. "His word is ood." Kyl said the two simply share similar views on a number of crime issues and have always gotten along.
In 2000, the two cosponsored legislation to bolster intelligence gathering against terrorist groups and to block their fundraising efforts. As chairman of the Terrorism Subcommittee until June, Kyl argued that the growing reliance on computers and other information technology could become the most important national security issue facing the country. He cosponsored a 1998 law making it easier to prosecute so-called identity thieves who steal personal information, often with help from computers, then use it to rack up large bills charged to the victim.
It was on the Judiciary Committee at the start of the 107th Congress, however, that Kyl took on one of his most public roles yet -- as the point man for President Bush's battle to win the confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney general. Kyl and Ashcroft had forged a close friendship after both came to the Senate in 1995 and joined the judiciary Committee. (Ashcroft lost his bid for a second term in Missouri in 2000.) Ashcroft asked Kyl to serve as his spokesman to counter the anticipated barrage of criticism from liberal interest groups; Kyl took on the task with enthusiasm. During the confirmation hearings, he methodically rebutted attacks by Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., that Kyl said "had the effect of distorting Sen. Ashcroft's record."
In 1998, Kyl was the first senator to take to the floor to defend Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr after he released a report calling for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and detailing Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Kyl also was a frequent guest on news shows during the Senate trial the following year, arguing the case for removing Clinton from office. His willingness to take on the president so aggressively gave Kyl significant credibility with the House's prosecutors and helped him persuade those House members to scale back the scope of their presentation.
Once Clinton was acquitted, Kyl spent the rest of the 106th Congress generally out of the spotlight and working on a range of complex issues, often in a bipartisan role.
Kyl favors unilateral steps over negotiated agreements to neutralize emerging military threats; he laid much of the groundwork for the strong GOP opposition that delayed ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention for a time in 1997. He contended that the treaty could not be verified, was subject to cheating and would lead to industrial espionage against U.S. private-sector chemical Plants. In 1999, aided by the tactical blunders of the Clinton administration and key Democratic senators, Kyl and other conservatives were able to force a vote in which a majority of senators opposed a treaty to ban nuclear test explosions.
In the 107th, Kyl gave up a seat on Appropriations and joined two committees that, he said, would help him better serve Arizona: Finance, which has jurisdiction over Social Security and Medicare, so vital to Arizona's large retired Population; and Energy, which enables him to focus on local resources issues. One priority for Kyl is ensuring Arizona's access to electric power supplies in the face of looming energy shortages. He also wants to shepherd through Congress an agreement that would settle the disputed allocation of water from the Gila River among native Indian tribes, farmers and cities.
Raised in a political family -- his father is former Rep. John H. Kyl, R-lowa (1959-65; 1967-73) -- Kyl was a business-oriented lawyer and a former president of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce when he won the 1986 race to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Eldon Rudd (1977-87). He defeated former Rep. John Conlon, R-Ariz. (1973-77), in the primary and then took 65 percent in the fall. After three easy re-elections, Kyl was running for the Senate in 1994 even before Democrat Dennis DeConcini (1977-95) announced his retirement. He ended up winning an easier-than-expected, 14-point victory over one-term Democratic Rep. Sam Coppersmith. In 2000, the Democrats did not field a candidate.
-- Matthew Tully
Word for Word
Kyl, during Senate debate Oct 25 on anU-terrorism legislation (HR 3162):
At the outset, I want to make clear that we did not rush to pass ill-conceived legislation.
During the past two Congresses, when I chaired the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Technology and Terrorism, the subcommittee held 19 hearings on terrorism. I want to repeat that: 19.
The witnesses who appeared before the subcommittee included the then-director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, and representatives of all three of the congressionally mandated commissions on terrorism that have issued reports over the last two years. Additional hearings on terrorism were held by the full Judiciary Committee and by other committees.
Many of the provisions proposed by the attorney general, and included in the legislation we sent to the president today, mirror the recommendations of one or more of the major terrorism commissions and have already been examined by the committee of jurisdiction. In fact, some of these provisions had already been voted on and passed by the Senate in other legislation.
Indeed ... the language sent forward by the attorney general to establish nationwide trap and trace authority was included in the Hatch-Feinstein-Kyl amendment to the recently passed Commerce, Justice, State appropriabons bill....
As former chairman and now ranking Republican of the Judiciary Committee's Terrorism Subcommittee, I have long suggested, and strongly supported, many of the anfi-terrorism and immigration initiatives now being advocated by Republicans and Democrats alike.
__________________________
Republican of Georgia
Saxby Chambliss brings his usually unflappable demeanor and his business savvy as a one-time motel owner to one of the newly created power positions of the War Congress: the chairmanship of the new House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
Three days after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Chambliss was picked by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to be his point person in resolving turf battles among the nation's intelligence gathering agencies and the congressional committees that oversee the nation's fight against terrorism. The position promises to make Chambliss a more familiar face in the news at an opportune time -- as he is seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Max Cleland this fall. But it also compels Chambliss to confront a minefield of potentially volatile issues during the campaign. He already has had one rough passage; in Georgia in November he quipped that terrorism prevention would be helped were the local sheriff to "arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line."
In the longer term, one challenge will be finding a politically viable way to critique intelligence gathering in public -- a change from the Intelligence panel's traditional past emphasis on doing most work in secret. Upon the subcommittee's formal creation, Chambliss laid out a schedule of public hearings, including a meeting with state and local officials in New York, and vowed to focus on solutions rather than scapegoats for the nation's lack of preparedness. Soon after the hearings began, Chambliss began urging federal agencies and lawmakers to resolve bottlenecks in the flow of information about terrorists. "We learned early on that the FBI and CIA had a good level of cooperation. But there was a breakdown in communications with other agencies involved in intelligence gathering. It's not jealousy that keeps them from sharing information. It's an inherent practical problem," he said.
A seven-year veteran of the Armed Services Committee, Chambliss said he would try to nurture cooperation between intelligence gathering arms of the Pentagon and their counterparts at the CIA. He also urged federal officials to provide regular briefings to governors and state attorneys general. A former firefighter, Chambliss said states should make sure information on terrorism reached police and emergency workers. His panel does not plan to deliver its report on the intelligence network to Hastert until the end of this year.
For Chambliss, public hearings are one tool for defusing turf battles on Capitol Hill. "The Speaker wants to involve all committees that have jurisdiction. They are all doing a good job. But we don't want any more overlap than absolutely necessary," Chambliss said. He developed a close working relationship with the panel's ranking Democrat, Jane Harman of California, who joined him in promoting one of his priorities: increased funding for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Chambliss championed efforts by President Bush to give Tom Ridge, the head of the new Office of Homeland Security, a free hand in trying to resolve interagency squabbles over turf and money in the terrorism fight. He was among those who successfully argued in the fall that legislation to make the office a distinct federal department -- subject to Congressional oversight - should be shelved to allow Ridge to devote all his time to fighting terrorism. "If it doesn't work well, we'll revisit this," he said.
To bolster his point that the current system is unfathomably diffuse, aides to Chambliss put together a byzantine government flow chart that illustrated, to comic effect, the range of government offices that now have some hand in ensuring domestic safety.
A member of the GOP Class of 1994, Chambliss once seemed destined to focus much of his time in the 107th on farm issues. He became chairman of the Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management in 2001. In a deal he cut with Hastert in September, Chambliss was allowed to keep that chairmanship -- which will enable him to address his state's parochial concerns as the new farm bill is finalized this year -- even through the Intelligence working group on terrorism that he had headed was being elevated to the status of a subcommittee. (House GOP rules generally allow each member to hold just one gavel.)
A lawyer, Chambliss is a fiscal and social conservative who takes a pragmatic approach to the legislation vital to Georgia's economy. "I never was somebody way off on the right-hand side. My district dictates you work in a bipartisan manner on defense and farm issues," he said in 2000.
Chambliss was named to the Budget Committee in the 106th Congress, and he passed up running against Democratic Sen. Zell Miller last year with the intent of winning the committee's ch2irmanship for the 107th. He ended up finishing second in a four-person field to Jim Nussle, R-lowa. Chambliss echoes GOP calls for lean budgets, but he is not afraid to mix it up with party leaders where the interests of his district's peanut, cotton and tobacco growers are concerned. In 1995, after less than a month in the House, he took on Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who had denounced the federal peanut-support program as artificially restricting production and suggested that it be eliminated. Chambliss issued a news release calling Armey's suggestion "abominable" and later joined with four other GOP lawmakers on the Agriculture Committee in opposing the House's initial version of the 1996 farm law. The final legislation modified, but did not kill, the peanut program, and Chambliss voted for it.
On Agriculture, Chambliss also looks out for the interests of Brown and Williamson, which employs more than 2,000 workers at its tobacco plant in his district. On Armed Services, he is mindful of the needs of Robins Air Force Base, a center for aircraft maintenance in his district, and for the F-22 fighter and C-17 and C-130J cargo planes. The C-17 is built by Boeing Co. in Macon and the other two planes are built by Lockheed Martin in Marietta.
In most areas, Chambliss follows the party line. He favored granting China permanent normal trade status in 2000 and was a strong supporter of the House GOP's "Contract With America," voting for legislation linked to it 98 percent of the time in 1995. And he benefited from a push by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich to promote fellow Georgians: In the 105th and 106th, he served on the Republican Steering Committee, which makes GOP committee assignments.
Chambliss worked with lawmakers of both parties when he chaired a Budget task force on health care in 2000 that sought to reduce paperwork and Medicare fraud. He claims a bond with the Budget Committee's ranking Democrat, John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina: As a boy, Charabliss spent summers in Sumter, a town Spratt represents.
Growing up, Chambliss lived all over the South. His father was an Episcopal priest who moved the family often. Chambliss says he learned how to make friends quickly and that has helped his political career. Before his first House race, he was active in business and civic affairs in Moultrie for more than two decades, working on local development and coaching YMCA basketball and Little League baseball. (He played on the University of Georgia baseball team.)
In his first run for elective office in 1992, he lost the GOP primary, and the district re-elected Democrat J. Roy Rowland (1983-95). When Rowland retired two years later, Chambliss won handily over Democrat Craig Mathis, a lawyer and the son of former Rep. Dawson Mathis, D-Ga. (1971-81). A redrawing of the congressional map to comply with a court ruling held him to 53 Percent two years later, but he won handily in 1998 and again in 2000. His decision to run for the Senate in 2002 will allow Chambliss to avoid a campaign against a fellow Republican incumbent, Jack Kingston; their two home towns were placed in the same House district by Democrats who controlled this year's Georgia's redistricting process.
-- Alan K. Ota
Word for Word
Chambliss, during House debate Oct 5 on the fiscal 2002 intelligence authonza don bill (HR 2883):
As chairman of the [intelligence] committee's new Working Group on Terrorism and Homeland Security, and as a former firefighter, I have had a particular interest in ensuring the swift passage of this critically important bill before us today. There is much in this bill that enhances our nation's counterterrorism capabilities....
In the aftermath of the tragic terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the president came here and told us that America is at war. He mentioned the new battlefield we have now to navigate as a nation. It is a battlefield that is not clearly defined and that will often be devoid of clear targets. It Is a battlefield that stretches across the globe and involves a complex support network, false documents, Illicit financial transactions, and fanatical individuals who are willing to commit suicide to further their twisted causes, whatever they may be.
On this new battlefield, conventional weapons and conventional thinking will not be sufficient, nor will a fortress mentality ensure adequate protection for our citizens both here and abroad. We can better secure our embassies and our military bases, and we have been and should continue to do this.
But as we saw on Sept. 11, the terrorists will always search for and find that weak spot, that chink in our armor that makes us vulnerable; and in a free society, there will necessarily be weak spots.
Therefore, we need to recognize what the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has recognized for some time, and that is that intelligence rules this battlefield like never before ....
Our subcommittee ... has been working very hard, very diligently, not only on the Sept. 11 incident but on other issues involving international terrorism and homeland security, and this bill gives us more flexiblifty. I urge support for (HR] 2883.
___________________________
Democrat of California
The 107th Congress has brought a number of significant changes to Nancy Pelosils role in the House, all of them thrusting her to the forefront of the new war on terrorism. Her election as whip in October -- she will formally assume the job Jan. 15 -- will make her the second-ranking Democrat in the House and the highest ranking woman ever in the congressional leadership. That status will give her a powerful voice as her party contemplates its legislative goals and its political strategies while the War Congress heads toward its first election in November.
But at least as significant is the role she took on as the 107th Congress began, as the top Democrat on the Select Committee on Intelligence. In that position, Pelosi is one of the "gang of four" -- the chairmen and ranking minority party members of the two congressional intelligence committees -- who are supposed to be consulted, or at least informed, by the Bush administration on each important national security development. Since the Sept. 11 strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Pelosi routinely has gone to the White House two or three times a week.
During debate on the 2002 intelligence authorization bill, Pelosi pushed aggressively for the creation of an independent commission of presidential and congressional appointees to examine the CIA, the FBI and other intelligence agencies to determine how well prepared they were for the Sept. 11 attacks. Her proposal became the subject of considerable debate inside the normally cordial and bipartisan Intelligence Committee, with many GOP members blasting Pelosi's language as a "slap in the face" of the intelligence community. The provision eventually was narrowed through an amendment, adopted on the House floor, by Chairman Porter J. Goss, R-Fla. Instead of reviewing how agencies failed to anticipate the attacks, his language would direct the commission to examine how to improve intelligence sharing to prevent future acts of terrorism. Even that provision was dropped in conference negotiations at the end of the year, however, further frustrating Pelosi.
When she landed her assignment as the top Democrat on Intelligence -- upon the death in 2000 of Julian C. Dixon of California -- Pelosi had to take a leave of absence from her post as the top Democrat on the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee. During her five years in that position, Pelosi was a strong proponent of increasing U.S. aid to impoverished countries. Since the terrorist attacks, which government officials say were launched by Osama bin Laden, Pelosi has said international assistance is needed now more than ever. "Never has a commitment to democratic values and a commitment to lifting up people throughout the world been as important as it is now," she said in an interview. "It's essential for the United States to increase its commitment to foreign assistance to lift people politically and economically out of the fury of despair. Otherwise, they become easy prey to the exploitation of those who use religion for political reasons. This is part of the situation of Osama bin Laden. It has contributed to the street power of Osama bin Laden."
Along with financial assistance, Pelosi said promotion of human rights around the world is essential to American national security. "Our involvement with regimes that have repressed their own people have turned people against us," she said. "What message do we send to the poor and oppressed in the world when we ignore repression in one country for a financial reason and come down hard on another country? We have to have balance."
Such a world view has been consistently espoused by Pelosi since she atrived in the House 14 years ago. In the 106th Congress, she was a leader against the major foreign policy initiative of Democratic President Bill Clinton's final year in office, permanently normalizing the trading relationship between the United States and China. She argued vociferously that such a reward for Beijing should come only after it had made "significant progress" on its human rights record. Though unsuccessful in her fight against the trade provision, Pelosi -- whose constituents in San Francisco include thousands of Chinese-Americans -- said she took solace in the fact that she helped focus the international spotlight on China's human rights and labor practices.
As one of the most liberal House members, Pelosi has long fought losing campaigns on a range of issues, including education, abortion, health care and crime. But she perseveres, returning each year with undiminished enthusiasm for the same causes -- with particular attention to the needs of San Francisco's large homosexual population. And she wages her battles with a public combination of grace and seriousness that leaves even her foes speaking kindly of her.
Behind the scenes, however, Pelosi has shown a steely resolve and a dedication to detail in the pursuit of her goals. The biggest payoff ever for her political organizational skills was her defeat of Maryland's Steny H. Hoyer for the Democratic whip's job. One clear sign that fellow Democrats had picked the right top vote-counter was that Pelosi had predicted that she would receive 120 votes in the secret balloting; in the end she won with 118. "I'm a non-menacing progressive Democrat," she said after her victory, responding to fellow Democrats who said her liberalism could hurt the party's chances to regain the House in November 2002. She also said she believed her victory -- by breaking a longstanding congressional glass ceiling -- could enhance her party's standing with women voters, a key Democratic constituency.
Pelosi's election as whip also re-establishes a place in the top tier of the Capitol Hill leadership for California: The state holds almost one out of every eight seats in the House, 32 of which are now held by Democrats. That alone could place her on the short list of women mentioned as possible candidates for national office. In addition, she would be seen as an obvious candidate to move up the leadership ladder. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri seems likely to resign as the party floor leader before the 108th Congress begins, either to become Speaker if the Democrats win back the House next year, or to leave the leadership altogether if they have failed to do so in four straight elections.
Pelosi's political education began early: Her father, Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr., was a New Deal Democrat who represented Baltimore in the House when she was born in 1940; seven years later, he began a 12-year tenure as mayor. Her brother Thomas also served as Baltimore's mayor, from 1967-71. After moving to California and raising five children with her businessman husband, Paul, she began a deep involvement in Democratic Party fundraising and other activism. Elected state party chairman in 1981, she helped lure the party's national convention to her hometown three years later. She was finance chairwoman of the Senate Democrats' campaign committee in 1986, when the party took back the chamber after six years of GOP control.
All of this made her more familiar to national party activists than to San Francisco's electorate in 1987, when she made her first bid for elected public office by running in the special election held after the death of Democratic Rep. Sala Burton (1983-87). Pelosi was backed by much of the city and state party establishment and carried the endorsement of Burton, offered just a few days before she died. That support was crucial because the district long had been dominated by the organization loyal to Sala Burton and her late husband, Rep. Phillip Burton. Since then, Pelosi has had easy re-elections in the heavily Democratic district.
Pelosi has remained a loyal and successful fundraiser for the Democratic Party, raking in more than $3 million for Democratic candidates in the 2000 elections, in which she was credited with helping the party pick up four seats in California. Although she passed up a chance to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party now assumes that her new cachet as whip will make her a marquee fundraising attraction.
-- Karen Foerstel
Word for Word
Pelosi, dudng House debate Oct 5 on the fiscal 2002 intelligence authorization bill (HR 2883):
I have tremendous respect for the men and women who serve in our national security agencies, whether they be diplomats, military personnel, intelfigence officers, law enforcement officials or those who protect our borders and our skies. They perform with great courage and dedication under conditions which are routinely challenging and frequently dangerous, and they have had much successes combatting terrorism. They just cannot talk about their successes.
As the events of Sept. 11 demonstrate, however, more needs to be done. Determining the best steps to take to lessen the chances that last month's events could be repeated will require critical and innovative thinking. I am hopeful that the independent commission established by Section 306 of the bill will play a constructive role in that regard. ...
To be effective, our human intelligence officers need to have a better grounding in the languages and cultures of the regions where difficult targets, like terrorists, are most comfortable. A much greater emphasis needs to be placed on recruiting and maintaining a work force with diverse skills, backgrounds and ethnicity. This is an area in which the intelligence community has not been as aggressive as I would like. I hope for measurable improvement in the future with the encouragement and resources provided by the bill.
There have been suggestions in recent years that an insufficient emphasis has been placed on human intelligence. That has certainly not been true with respect to the work of this committee. ...
Human intelligence was once again the focus of our work this year and that would have been true even if the events of Sept. 11 had not occurred.
CQ Weekly, February 2, 2002, pp. 311-313.
World View Defense
Blame for Sept. 11 intelligence failure recedes, but investigations still lie ahead
By Chuck McCutcheon
[Photo: Tenet, left and Tom Ridge, the director of the Office of Homeland Security, applaud during President Bush's State of the Union address.]
An intelligence failure of unprecedented proportions would seem to dictate the quick departure of the nation's spy chief under heavy pressure from Congress.
But Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet not only has survived calls for his resignation since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he appears to have gained significant support from lawmakers.
Tenet is expected to be greeted warmly when he makes his first public appearance on Capitol Hill since the attacks at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Feb. 6, an annual session he attends to discuss threats to the United States.
Many lawmakers and intelligence experts agree that Tenet's status speaks to the relationships he developed during his nearly 10 years as a Senate aide and his ability to ingratiate himself with President Bush and other senior administration officials, despite being a Democratic holdover from the Clinton administration. Those strong ties spared him from having to scramble after the attacks to save his job.
In addition, lawmakers say the CIA's recent work in Afghanistan has redeemed the agency and helped Tenet, the director since 1997, avoid the fate of his recent predecessors, several of whom lasted less than three years on the job.
"Now is not the time to be stirring up your leadership and undermining your leadership, and George Tenet has provided leadership for two administrations now, " said House Intelligence Committee member Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.
As Tenet tightens his grip on the job, he will be poised to fight for more money for the CIA, but the nation's system of intelligence-gathering will still face congressional scrutiny. Lawmakers will focus on the CIAs performance in the war, where it played a high-profile role in addition to its usual clandestine one, sending in special paramilitary forces and flying unmanned spy planes.
"The results of the war, thus far, have impressed people about the CIA," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla. One of the things we found out was that while much of America had abandoned Afghanistan, the CIA had a presence there and had some contacts we could work with and could gather some information, which was critical."
One outgrowth of Tenet's standing is that intelligence agencies are expected to receive an as-yet-undetermined but generous slice of the additional $48 billion in defense spending that Bush has proposed for fiscal 2003.
Another result is that both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have personally lobbied Congress to limit its forthcoming investigations of the Sept. 11 attacks, which will probably tamp down criticism of Tenet's stewardship. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Bush and Cheney urged him to confine any investigation to the typically bipartisan House and Senate Intelligence committees because of concerns that a wider probe could affect the war effort.
Independent Commission?
It remains unclear whether Congress will limit its investigations to the two committees. Several influential senators still want an independent commission to study how the attacks could have been prevented. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., has scheduled a hearing on the subject for Feb. 7 and hopes soon to mark up legislation (S 1867) that he introduced with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The bill would establish a 14-member commission to examine not only possible intelligence failures but diplomatic ones. (2001 CQ Weekly, p. 3102)
"The administration's busy prosecuting the war; maybe that's why this needs to be a totally separate, nonpartisan independent group," Lieberman said in a Jan. 29 interview. "Now's a good time to start it."
Several conservatives called on Bush to fire Tenet immediately after the attacks, but only one lawmaker, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Republican, publicly echoed the criticism. Two weeks after the attacks, Shelby said the job of directing the CIA and coordinating the activities of 12 other intelligence agencies was "getting away" from Tenet.
Some intelligence experts still believe that Tenet's dismissal is warranted in order to start anew in revamping intelligence. "As much as I respect him, the fact is you need to clean house ... at the FBI and CIA, and you have to have some accountability," Steven Emerson, a terrorism analyst for The Investigative Project and a former Senate staffer, said last month.
Goss: Waiting in the Wings?When President Bush was deciding a year ago whether to retain George J. Tenet as the nation's spy chief, speculation abounded in the media and intelligence circles that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter J. Goss might become his replacement. Now that Goss, a Florida Republican, is deciding whether to stick to his 2000 promise not to seek reelection to an eighth term, the talk could begin anew, even as Tenet's job appears secure. Goss, a former CIA case officer widely respected throughout Congress and the Bush administration for his knowledge of intelligence matters, said some of his colleagues urged him after Sept. 11 to run again because of his unique expertise in dealing with terrorism issues. (2001 CQ Weekly, p. 2621) Although Goss told reporters Jan. 22 that he would announce his plans within a week, a spokeswoman said he is still thinking it over, with a decision possible the week of Feb. 4. Despite the very public guessing about his plans before Sept. 11, Goss said Jan. 22 that the administration has not talked to him about the CIA job. He said in November that he was unsure whether he wanted to oversee the agency and coor, dinate activities of the intelligence community. At the time, he said he might ask for a job in the administration if it were one that "made sense." "But I'm not sure what job because I don't think I want to get into a full-time managerial position," he said. Goss is scheduled to step as Intelligence Committee chairman after the 107th Congress. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., appointed Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., as the committee's vice chairman at the start of the session , with the expectation that Bereuter will take over the chairman's job when Goss leaves. Bereuter had forgone a bid for the Senate in the hopes of chairing the International Relations Committee, but he lost the job to Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, who was forced to relinquish his post as Judiciary Committee chairman. (2001 CQ Weekly, p. 238) -- Chuck McCutcheon |
Candid Communicator
Long before Sept. 11, Tenet was credited with effectively managing the intricate and sometimes incendiary partnership between the intelligence community and Capitol Hill. Tenet became the director of the CIA and overseer of other spy agencies and departments after serving two years as deputy director and more than four years as the staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee under Sen. David Boren, D-Okla. (1979-94). (2000 CQ Weekly, p. 139)
The blunt-spoken Tenei, 49, has been credited with communicating candidly with lawmakers, appearing regularly on Capitol Hill and fostering close relationships with lawmakers such as Graham and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter J. Goss, R-Fla.
"I try to treat Congress the way I liked to be treated" as a committee staffer, Tenet said in a January 2000 interview with Congressional Quarterly. "If you give them good news and bad news as fast as you possibly can, you're going to be OK."
Tenet also has worked to instill a greater sense of purpose in the CIA. During a January trip to the Middle East, House Intelligence Committee members Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Jane Harman, D-Calif., said they were struck by how many CIA officers credited Tenet with lifting morale since the terrorist attacks.
Some of Tenet's admirers say his success in working with lawmakers and Bush is no small feat when put into historical perspective. During the past three decades, relations between the CIA and Congress have often been tempestuous, particularly after high-profile espionage scandals such as the one involving Aldrich H. Ames, a 31-year CIA employee who pleaded guilty to spying for the Soviet Union. (1994 Almanac, P. 458)
Several experts point to what they describe as former President Bill Clinton's lack of interest in foreign policy it early in his administration as hampering the effectiveness of his spymasters.
In his recent book, "War in a Time of Peace," author David Halberstam wrote that former CIA Director R. James Woolsey would show up unannounced at White House briefings regularly conducted by a junior officer --- just so he could get an audience with Clinton.
By contrast, Tenet has met regularly with Bush at the White House, Camp David and the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Several experts said such access -- and Bush's public praise of Tenet -- have pre-empted congressional criticism.
Mark M. Lowenthal, a former House Intelligence Committee staff director, recalled a statement from onetime intelligence chief Richard Helms.
Helms "always said, 'the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) has an audience of one, and that's the president,' " said Lowenthal, who works at SRA International, a Virginia company that contracts with intelligence agencies. "As long as the DC1 has the president's confidence, there's no reason to replace the DCI."
Senate Intelligence Committee member Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., said few lawmakers ever expressed much interest in removing Tenet.
"Most of us are more concerned about the broader issues -- where do we go from here with our intelligence community?" Thompson said. Tenet "is a part of a much bigger picture."
Spend More, Spend Better
Conaress is tocusing on the details of the direction the intelligence coinmunity should take, something that will be a primary concern for the oversight committees this year. The intelligence agencies are expected to receive a significant funding increase in the fiscal 2003 budget.
Intelligence spending is classified, but it is believed to be around $30 billion annually. The current intelligence authorization bill (PL 107-108) funds activities at about 8 percent above last year's level. (2001 CQ Weekly, p. 3039)
Some experts argue that intelligence spending does not need to be increased as much as redirected toward newer methods. However, most lawmakers strongly support additional investments in hiring spies, improving sophisticated eavesdropping technology and furthering research and develpment. (2001 CQ Weekly, P. 2304)
In his State of the Union address Jan. 29, Bush promised to boost spending for intelligence collection and sharing among federal agencies as part of a "sustained strategy of homeland security" that also would center on countering bio-terrorism, emergency response, and airport and border security. (Speech text, p. 316)
"I'm very pleased with the prospects for intelligence in the '03 budget," Goss, a former CIA officer, said before the speech.
Before they look to increase the intelligence budget, the House and Senate Intelligence committees will devote much of their time to investigating why the CIA and other agencies did not warn of the attacks. The panels have been working out the details of a joint investigation that could begin as early as March and continue through "a good part of 2002," Graham said. (CQ Weekly, p. 257)
One of the sticking points in the talks has been defining the scope of the investigation. Shelby wants the probe to encompass events that occurred during the Clinton administration, such as the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military residence in Saudi Arabia. (1996 Almanac, p. 8-18)
"I think the investigation of the intelligence community and its failures should be broad and deep," Shelby said in a Jan. 29 interview. "It should, I believe, start about the time at the end of the Cold War when we cut back here and there [on intelligence spending] and the focus was different. And it should be of the whole community."
Although Graham said he wants to focus on Sept. 11, he said one potential starting point is the 1986 creation of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, which consolidated and coordinated federal anti-terrorism efforts.
"That was the first recognition that terrorism was a challenge for intelligence collection," he said. "We would then follow that through and see what we had learned and how we put that into place for our preparedness, or lack of preparedness, for Sept. 11."
The committees also have been trying to find someone to head the investigation. Congressional sources said one candidate is former CIA inspector general L. Britt Snider, but some Republicans say he is too close to Tenet.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Jan. 30 that the president supports an investigation in a manner that "doesn't unduly burden the intelligence community [in a time of war]."
Daschle, however, told reporters Jan. 29 that "we may want to build on the Intelligence committees' investigation]; we may find that's sufficient, but we're keeping our options open,"
Some lawmakers, mindful of the 10 congressional committees looking into the financial collapse of Enron Corp., said it makes sense to limit an investigation to the two Intelligence panels. Others, however, said they remain open to the idea of appointing an independent commission at some point to look into the attacks.
The House Intelligence Committee's original version of the fiscal 2002 intelligence authorization bill (HR 2883) included a provision that would have created a special commission to examine why intelligence agencies failed to foresee the attacks. Many Democrats said such a commission was necessary to prevent future assaults, but committee Republicans angrily complained that such a proposal amounted to an exercise in political finger-pointing.
"We've got a lot of work to do, and we just can't afford to interrupt the process," Gibbons said.
The provision was amended on the House floor and later removed in conference. (2001 CQ Weekly, P. 2925)
Torricelli's Approach
Thompson, who is the ranking Republican on the Governmental Affairs Committee, said he has not yet made up his mind whether to support Lieberman's legislation.
"Congress has a role here that we ought to play, but our track record has not looked that good lately," Thompson said in a Jan. 29 interview. "On the other hand, the Rumsfeld Commission [to assess the need for missile defense headed by now-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld] and commissions like that have a good track record, and that's along the lines of what Lieberman and McCain are talking about."
Democratic Sen. Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey, who is sponsoring legislation similar to McCain's, also remains eager to act. His measure (S 1837) would set up a 12-member board appointed by Congress and the president. "We've simply waited long enough for Bush to act," he said.
Torricelli said he hopes to reach agreement with Lieberman and NlcCain on combining efforts, but said he would consider offering his bill as an amendment to pending legislation if that does not occur.
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