House GOP expects vote on intelligence bill today

Jesse J. Holland

Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2004 | 11 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican-controlled House agreed today to vote to overhaul the nation's intelligence agencies now that President Bush and House Armed Services chairman Duncan Hunter have endorsed a provision guaranteeing battlefield commanders access to top-secret information.

A vote could come late today, House Intelligence chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said, after getting the approval of the majority of House Republicans at a morning meeting.

While several House Republicans still oppose the compromise version of the bill, Hoekstra is confident the legislation will win the approval of a majority of the House GOP -- a condition set by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

"We feel good about what is in the bill," Hoekstra said.

Nevada's three House members plan to vote for the legislation. Calling the bill a "strong first step," Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said he would support the bill, although he is upset it did not contain the stricter laws on immigration.

Gibbons, a member of the Intelligence and Armed Services committees, said lawmakers would push for the immigration provisions in the next Congress.

"This is an issue of national security and nothing more," Gibbons said. "The Senate just didn't want to deal with these (immigration) issues."

Gibbons has been reluctant to say how he would vote on the bill, given the concerns over the provisions on immigration and Pentagon control over the flow of intelligence data to combat commanders. He said the compromise language on the Pentagon control issue agreed to this week by House and Senate negotiators was "absolutely necessary."

Gibbons said he was proud of Hunter for "hanging tough" regarding his contention that the Pentagon be able to control spy satellites.

Bush has called on Congress for months to pass legislation implementing the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations to protect the nation from terrorists. But 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 that Defense Department 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 commanders in the field.

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 today 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."

Hastert, R-Ill., had refused to bring the bill up before Thanksgiving because of the opposition from Hunter and House Judiciary chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. Sensenbrenner said he would still oppose the bill in today'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.

Hoekstra told CNN today 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."