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Senate Negotiators Propose Keeping Intelligence Budget Classified to Move Forward on Reform Bill By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — Senate negotiators yesterday offered to drop their earlier insistence that the total intelligence budget be declassified in order to move forward a stalled effort to reach a final intelligence reform bill (see GSN, Nov. 8). Under the new Senate proposal, the total intelligence budget would remain classified. However, the planned national intelligence director would be directed to submit to Congress a report on the advisability of declassifying the intelligence budget and the total budgets of the individual intelligence agencies. The Sept. 11 commission included a proposal to declassify the total intelligence budget and the total budgets of various agencies among the intelligence reform recommendations it issued this summer as a way to help improve accountability. While the Senate last month included a budget declassification provision in its reform legislation, the measure was not included in the House bill and is opposed by the White House. In exchange for the “major compromise” of keeping the intelligence budget classified, the national intelligence director would receive “exclusive” budgetary authority over the budget for the National Intelligence Program, which consists of agencies that handle foreign intelligence, according to a joint statement released by Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins and top committee Democrat Joseph Lieberman (Conn.). Currently, the defense secretary controls about 80 percent of intelligence funding. “We believe this Senate offer accomplishes the goal that we are all striving toward — to achieve real and comprehensive intelligence reform, to give the national intelligence director strong budget authority and to ensure effective coordination among the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies,” said Collins and Lieberman, two of the main Senate negotiators. “As with any major legislation, a final agreement will require compromise by both sides,” they added. The Senate negotiators’ move away from declassifying the intelligence budget is “disappointing,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “It makes a mockery of the 9/11 commission. Why did the commission spend all that time deliberating over the issue only to be told their conclusions would jeopardize national security?” he said. The Senate proposal is intended to press efforts to reach a final intelligence reform bill, which lawmakers had previously hoped to accomplish by the Nov. 2 elections. Much of the debate has centered on what level of budgetary authority the national intelligence director should have over three intelligence agencies within the Defense Department — the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. In their statement yesterday, Collins and Lieberman noted the offer made by House negotiators last month to give the national intelligence director the authority to “determine” the intelligence budgets for the agencies in the National Intelligence Program. The House had previously proposed lesser authority for the director to formulate the agencies’ intelligence budgets. The Washington Post reported today, however, that House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), one of the House negotiators, opposed the Senate offer. Citing a committee spokesman, the Post reported that Hunter opposed the Senate proposal’s provision to provide the national intelligence director with “exclusive” budgetary authority, preferring instead that the director be required to allocate funds to intelligence agencies through the defense secretary instead of directly to the agencies. The Senate proposal is a “nonstarter,” the Post quoted committee Staff Director Harald Stavenas as saying. The Senate negotiators also proposed backing away from a provision in the Senate intelligence reform bill that would give the national intelligence director unlimited authority to transfer funds and personnel among the agencies within the National Intelligence Program. Instead, the director would have the authority to transfer up to 10 percent of an agency’s funding within a single fiscal year. The House proposal would limit the director’s transfer authority to 5 percent of an agency’s funding. “We hope that the House will embrace our offer and move forward with us to send an intelligence reform bill to the full Congress and to the president’s desk before the end of the year,” Collins and Lieberman said.
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