Congressional Record: September 25, 2002 (Senate)
Page S9350-S9353
INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2003
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
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proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 490, S. 2506,
the intelligence authorization; that the committee-reported amendments
be withdrawn; the only amendment in order to be a Graham amendment;
that the substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be
read three times, and the Intelligence Committee then be discharged
from further consideration of H.R. 4628, the House companion, and the
Senate then proceed to its consideration; that all after the enacting
clause be stricken, and the text of S. 2506, as amended, be inserted in
lieu thereof; that the bill be read the third time, passed, and the
motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that the Senate insist on
its amendment, request a conference with the House on the disagreeing
votes of the two Houses, and that the Chair be authorized to appoint
conferees on the part of the Senate without intervening action or
debate; and that S. 2506 be returned to the calendar.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, S. 2506, a bill to authorize
appropriations for the intelligence community for fiscal year 2003,
represents the first intelligence budget for the War on Terrorism--a
war where intelligence is our most effective weapon. The Congress
historically has considered the annual Intelligence Authorization bill
to be important legislation, but now it has become a matter of national
survival. Without an enhanced and effective intelligence capability
integrated into the significant capabilities of the U.S. military and
tightly linked to law enforcement and the new Department of Homeland
Security, we will continue be at the mercy of international terrorists
bent on the destruction of our society and we may suffer even more
devastating attacks.
Since the tragedy of September 11, the men and women of the U.S.
intelligence community have worked every day, nonstop to protect us
against those who would seek to do us harm. This bill represents an
important step in our effort to provide them with the necessary
resources and authorities to get the job done. In its budget request
for fiscal years 2003 through 2007, the administration proposes
significant resource increases for our national intelligence effort.
Such increases build upon substantial supplemental appropriations
approved for the intelligence community for fiscal years 2001 and 2002
after September 11.
As the community has noted in past years, the challenges confronting
the intelligence community have, for too long, received inadequate
fiscal attention. I am encouraged by the commitment of resources
proposed by the administration for fiscal year 2003 and beyond. The
intelligence community is poised to benefit from an infusion of
additional people and funding that can provide momentum for a range of
intelligence efforts against those individuals, groups, and states--to
include al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden--that threaten our security and
safety. As the intelligence community is our first line of defense, the
administration's fiscal year 2003 request for the National Foreign
Intelligence Program is a necessary first step in correcting the
deficiencies of the past.
Earlier this year, the Select Committee on Intelligence conducted a
thorough review of the administration's budget request for the National
Foreign Intelligence Program for fiscal year 2003. This review included
an extensive examination of the individual programs and agencies--such
as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance
Office--which comprise the U.S. intelligence community. Building on the
approach we took last year, our review once again focused on specific
priority areas as well as individual agencies and functions.
The committee highlighted five areas that must continue to receive
priority attention in the near term if intelligence is to fulfill its
role in our overall national security strategy and the ongoing war on
terrorism. They are: (1) revitalizing the National Security Agency; (2)
correcting deficiencies in human intelligence; (3) addressing the
imbalance between intelligence collection and analysis; (4) rebuilding
a robust research and development program; and (5) increasing the
capabilities of measurements and signatures intelligence to fulfill key
intelligence requirements. These priorities address the basic building
blocks of intelligence--capabilities that will support the War on
Terrorism as well as the multitude of other intelligence requirements.
S. 2506 authorizes additional resources for these areas.
While the additional funding for intelligence programs goes a long
way towards alleviating existing near term deficiencies, other long
term problems remain to be addressed. We face a looming crisis in our
ability to collect critical information from key platforms as a result
of unexpected failures; a major acquisition program is experiencing
significant cost overruns and schedule slippage; and, we have
inadequate funding to ensure that information collected by the next
generation of space-based sensors will be processed, exploited, and
disseminated appropriately to intelligence analysts.
Higher levels or resources, however, will not address all of the
important challenges which confront the intelligence community. The
intelligence community must overcome an aversion to risk that has crept
into the culture since the end of the cold war. The world will be a
dangerous and unstable place for foreseeable future. In order to
protect our country, we will need to deal with unsavory characters and
we will need to operate in unsafe parts of the world. The CIA has
suffered casualties in the war in Afghanistan and we must steel
ourselves to the inevitability of more loss of life. Some problems,
such as the intelligence community's current organization or its
ability to exchange information effectively and efficiently with other
government agencies, may require additional legislative actions in the
future. The bicameral investigation into the events of September 11 is
ongoing and I expect that the investigation will result in
recommendations for actions to be taken to strengthened our
intelligence community.
The bill includes legislative provisions that are important additions
to the work the Intelligence Committee did last year--both in the
fiscal year 2002 Intelligence Authorization Act and the USA-PATRIOT
Act. I will summarize a few of these provisions:
Section 304 is designed to make improvements in the information
available to the Committee each year as it prepares its budget
authorizations in the areas of counterterrorism, counterproliferation,
counternarcotics and counterintelligence. The provision requires the
administration each year to specify in its budget submission the
aggregate amount requested in each of these four critical areas.
Currently, these numbers are spread throughout the budget submission in
the requests for particular programs in individual agencies. The
committee believes that it is essential to rational decision-making in
the budget process--both for the administration and for Congress--to
have "cross-cut" budget numbers so that it is clear how much money is
being requested across the Government in these important areas.
Section 306 is a provision that supplements changes implemented under
the USA-PATRIOT Act. Under that act, foreign intelligence information
that has been collected by law enforcement agencies in the course of
criminal investigations can, and in fact must, be provided to the
Director of Central Intelligence to be included in the all-source
analytic products prepared by intelligence analysts. In other words,
these "dots" of foreign intelligence that are collected in criminal
cases, including grand jury proceedings and criminal wiretaps, now flow
to the intelligence community. The purpose of Section 306 is to clarify
that the intelligence committees of the Congress, in the conduct of
their oversight of the intelligence community, shall also have access
to that law-enforcement-derived information that has been provided to
the intelligence agencies. The intelligence committees cannot conduct
effective oversight of the intelligence agencies if there are
categories of information upon which intelligence operations and
analyses are based that is off limits of the committees.
Sections 311 and 312 follow up on provisions that were included in
the USA-PATRIOT Act and the FY02 Intelligence Authorization bill.
Congress required the Director of Central Intelligence to review and
report to the intelligence committees his recommendations of how best
to create
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two new centers: "The National Virtual Translation Center" and the
"Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center." We have finally received
those reports and Sections 311 and 312 establish those centers in law
as part of the intelligence community. We are hopeful that the very
difficult problems of translation resources in the intelligence
community and the efficient and effective tracking of terrorist
finances will be significantly enhanced by the creation of these
centers.
Section 313 is similar to S. 2459, a bill introduced by Senator
Wyden. This excellent provision addresses the problem we have all heard
so much about in the press: Is there a complete and accurate list of
known or suspected international terrorists that is derived from all-
source information available to the U.S. Government and that is
provided to all agencies whose job is to protect our borders from
penetration by terrorists? This provision requires the establishment of
a "Terrorist Identification Classification System" that will be
available to all Federal agencies, State and local governments and, as
appropriate, to foreign governments. It will solve a problem that we
have identified in our committee of the proliferation of "watch
lists" in our Government--all with different suspected terrorists
names, used by different agencies for different purposes.
Title V of the bill establishes in statute the National
Counterintelligence Executive, the "NCIX". At the urging of our
committee, the President created the NCIX in 2001 to provide the U.S.
Government in the counterintelligence area with (1) strong, policy-
driven leadership; (2) new and enhanced counterintelligence
capabilities; and (3) coherent program, strategies and cooperative
approaches. The committee's oversight of this fledging effort revealed
problems, however, that Title V is designed to remedy. By establishing
the NCIX in statute and placing it in the Executive Office of the
President, with oversight by the intelligence committees, the committee
believes that the NCIX leadership problems, resource constraints and,
overall, lack of sufficient status and visibility within the
Government, will be remedied.
Finally, Title VI of the bill establishes a National Commission for
Review of Research and Development Programs of the United States
Intelligence Community. The committee supports a strong intelligence
community R & D program. Research and Development supports virtually
all other intelligence community efforts by laying the groundwork for
the necessary modernization and innovation of intelligence
capabilities. The purpose of the Commission, to be composed of
government officials and private sector experts, is to review the
current state of research and development in the intelligence community
and, in particular, to determine if the level of resources devoted to
various efforts across the community is in line with those scientific
and technological fields judged to be of the greatest importance to the
intelligence needs of the future.
I mentioned earlier the tireless efforts of the men and women of the
intelligence community. I am privileged as chairman of the Intelligence
Committee to travel to the different agencies around Washington and to
visit various installations around the world. I am consistently
impressed with competence, professionalism and dedication of these
individuals. For years they have been unsung heroes, serving under
difficult conditions and often putting their lives on the line. They do
this not for money or glory--indeed the nature of their work means that
success goes unacknowledged--but because they love their country and
they have a profound sense of duty. We owe these people a debt of
gratitude of their sacrifices, now more than ever before.
I must mention another group of people who are critical to the
process of bringing this legislation to the floor. The staff of the
Senate Intelligence Committee has once again done a superb job
preparing this bill. The staff is led by Al Cumming the staff director
and Bill Duhnke the minority staff director. They have guided the staff
through a very difficult year including the anthrax evacuation and the
launching of the joint investigation with the House Intelligence
Committee into events related to September 11. Through all the turmoil
they kept the committee focused on our work and our oversight
responsibilities. They are assisted by Kathleen McGhee, Chief Clerk,
Bob Filippone, Deputy Staff Director, Jim Hensler, Deputy Minority
Staff Director, Vicki Divoll, General Counsel, Chris Ford, Minority
Counsel, Melvin Dubee, Budget Director, and the rest of a very talented
staff. A special thanks goes to Jim Wolfe, the committee's Security
Director for his efforts to ensure the security of our people and our
classified materials last fall and winter when the committee was forced
to work from temporary offices during the anthrax episode.
Finally and most importantly, I must acknowledge the excellent
cooperation and support of Vice Chairman Shelby. Senator Shelby has
served on the committee for almost 8 years and his experience and
commitment have been critical to the success of the committee. We have
not agreed on everything but we have agreed on the goal of giving the
American people the best intelligence organization possible and have
worked together toward that goal. I have appreciated his support and
advice.
At this time in our Nation's history, our support for the U.S.
intelligence community is vitally important. I urge support for this
bill.
Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, we have before us the Intelligence
Authorization bill for fiscal year 2003. This is a bill which we have
debated extensively in the Select Committee on Intelligence, and which
we reported out in May.
Especially during the global war against terrorism in which our
nation is currently engaged, it is important that we give the U.S.
intelligence community the support and encouragement it needs to do its
vital job--and that we hold it properly accountable for its activities
through the oversight process. This bill provides healthy measures of
support, encouragement, and accountability, and I urge my colleagues to
support it.
While we cannot discuss actual budget figures in an unclassified
setting, I can assure my colleagues that this bill provides a
significant increase in funding to the U.S. intelligence community,
money that it needs and will continue to need as we demand more and
better work from it than ever before. Even the world's sole remaining
superpower with unchallenged military supremacy cannot be everywhere,
and the war on terrorism taxes our capabilities in new and often
unprecedented ways. More than anything else, this current conflict is
an intelligence-dependent war. We need to do everything we can to
ensure that our polilcymakers and our military commanders get the best
possible intelligence support. This bill will help ensure that they do.
In addition, our bill also increases the Intelligence Community's
accountability to the elected representatives of the American people
whose job it is to ensure proper oversight of our intelligence
bureaucracy. I would like to mention just a few examples of this.
First, our bill clarifies, rationalizes, and codifies the series of
reporting requirements that form such an important part of the process
by which Congress obtains information and analyses of intelligence
community activities.
The bill also ensures that the intelligence community will be able to
continue to fulfill its reporting requirements to the intelligence
oversight committees of Congress in the wake of the changes to
information-sharing laws contained in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001.
Our bill also requires that the National Foreign Intelligence Program
budget provide specific breakdowns for annual budget aggregates
relating to counterterrorism, counterproliferation, counternarcotics,
and counterintelligence. This greater specificity, we hope, will enable
Congress better to assess intelligence community resourcing decisions
and ensure that the right priorities receive our support in years
ahead.
The two sides of our committee have not agreed on every detail of the
classified appendix that accompanies our report on this bill, but on
balance we feel that this is a piece of legislation that will provide
much-needed support for--and improve the accountability of--the United
States intelligence community.
I urge the Senate to pass this bill promptly.
The committee amendments were withdrawn.
The amendment (No. 4752), in the nature of a substitute, was agreed
to.
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(The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under "Text
of Amendments.")
The bill (H.R. 4628), as amended, was read the third time and passed.
The Presiding Officer (Mr. Dayton) appointed Mr. Graham, Mr. Levin,
Mr. Rockefeller, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Bayh, Mr.
Edwards, Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Shelby, Mr. Kyl, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Hatch, Mr.
Roberts, Mr. DeWine, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Lugar conferees on the part
of the Senate.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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