[Congressional Record: November 15, 2010 (Senate)]
[Page S7887-S7888]
INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION BILL
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, Congress has acted to improve our
Nation's intelligence community--and therefore our national security--
by passing an intelligence authorization bill and sending it to the
President.
The President's signature will enact this bill into law and will
implement several common sense solutions to problems in our large and
unwieldy intelligence community that we have recognized for years. I
believe the new Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper, is the
right leader at the right time, and this timely bill will provide him
the authorities he needs to do this job well.
The bill provides the DNI streamlined personnel management
authorities throughout the intelligence community, including the
authority to convert contractor positions to government jobs, move
personnel from one agency to another, provide annual assessments of
personnel levels for each agency, harmonize language training in
different agencies, and conduct performance evaluations of personnel
throughout the intelligence community.
It provides the DNI streamlined oversight for major acquisitions--
perhaps most critically, to provide for interoperable information
technology systems in different intelligence agencies--and strengthened
budget authorities for his management of the intelligence community.
Beyond these improved DNI authorities, which I believe will
significantly improve intelligence integration among the 16 agencies of
the intelligence community, this bill also makes three substantial
improvements in the independent oversight of intelligence. This
constructive oversight is necessary to ensure that secret intelligence
activities are legal, effective, and serve the national security
interests of the United States.
First, the bill establishes a Senate-confirmed inspector general for
the intelligence community who will have the authority to inspect any
element or activity in any intelligence agency. Inspectors general play
an important troubleshooting role in all agencies of our government,
but nowhere is this role more important than in the intelligence
community, where--unlike in government agencies whose activities are
public--problems can often escape scrutiny.
For instance, in 2004 the CIA inspector general's report on the CIA
detention and interrogation program played a significant role in
alerting the executive branch and the congressional Intelligence
Committees to significant problems with the program.
The new intelligence community inspector general that this bill
establishes will complement and supplement the important work of the
inspectors general of individual intelligence agencies.
Second, the bill provides for access by the Comptroller General and
the Government Accountability Office to information regarding
intelligence activities. This access will be similar to the GAO's
access to the Department of Defense's Special Access Programs. I
believe that this agreement between Congress and the administration on
this GAO provision bodes well for future cooperation on intelligence
issues.
On that note, the third--and, I believe, most important--improvement
this bill makes to the independent oversight of intelligence activities
pertains to congressional oversight.
Constructive congressional oversight of intelligence activities is
crucially important--both for our national security and our national
identity. We are a transparent democracy, and there is a natural
tension between transparent democracy and secret intelligence
activities.
The Congressional Select Intelligence Committees--which consist of
representatives of the American people, selected from other specific
congressional committees with jurisdiction over foreign policy, defense
and judiciary issues--are vital to resolving that tension between
democracy and secrecy.
Simply put, these committees act as a board of directors who verify
that secret executive actions serve the interests of the shareholders--
the American people.
That is why title V of the National Security Act of 1947 requires the
President to keep the congressional Intelligence Committees ``fully and
currently informed'' on all intelligence activities.
However, during the time that I was chairman and vice chairman of the
committee from 2003 through 2009, I became very concerned about the way
in which the executive branch interpreted this obligation. Rather than
briefing the full committee, the executive branch restricted briefings
about certain classified programs to the chairman and vice chairman
only.
These restrictions impeded our oversight of these programs. This is
not an academic issue; it is crucial to how our democracy makes secret
national security decisions. Without the intelligence committees'
meaningful independent review and oversight--the very reason for the
committees' existence--intelligence programs are more susceptible to
both mistakes and illegitimacy. This is the case regardless of which
party is in the White House or which party has a majority in Congress.
With this in mind, last year I offered an amendment to this
authorization bill that will establish in statute new requirements
regarding congressional notification. My intent was to strengthen the
committees' constructive oversight relationship with the executive
branch and the intelligence community.
A bipartisan majority of the committee approved my amendment. While
this provision has undergone some changes in the process of Congress's
consideration of this bill over the past year, the key elements of
these new notification requirements remain. The bill that the President
will soon sign into law requires that:
(1) the congressional Intelligence Committees and the President must
establish written procedures regarding the details of notification
processes and expectations;
(2) the President must provide the committees written notice about
intelligence activities and covert actions, including changes in covert
action findings and the legal authority under which an intelligence
activity or a covert action is or will be conducted;
(3) the President must provide written reasons for limiting access to
notifications to less than the full committee, and in such cases,
provide the full committee a general description of the covert action
in question; and
(4) the President must maintain records of all notifications,
including names of Members briefed and dates of the briefings.
I strongly believe that congressional oversight of the executive
branch's intelligence activities should not be adversarial; it should
be a true, trusted and confidential partnership aimed exclusively at
improving our Nation's collection and analysis capabilities, and
ensuring the effectiveness and legitimacy of our covert action
programs.
[[Page S7888]]
I think these new requirements for congressional notification are an
important step toward such a partnership.
These new requirements--and this authorization bill as a whole--are
the result of hard work and difficult negotiations after years of
partisan divisions on intelligence issues.
The President has not signed an authorization bill into law since
December 2004, and the last time Congress passed an intelligence
authorization bill was February 2008, when I was chairman of the
committee. Unfortunately, President George W. Bush vetoed that bill
because it banned the use of coercive interrogation methods by any
agency of our government, and the bipartisan majorities that passed the
bill were not large enough to overcome the President's veto.
After all these difficult years, the bill that we are sending to the
President today is exemplary of the bipartisan cooperation that is
absolutely necessary for our intelligence community to perform as well
as we need it to perform.
I want to commend my Intelligence Committee colleagues, particularly
Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and Vice Chairman Kit Bond and their staff,
for sticking to it and completing the difficult negotiations with the
administration and the House that brought this bill across the finish
line.
This law will make our country more secure. Let us continue to build
on this effort in the months and years to come.
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