WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a spending bill for intelligence programs despite an unexpectedly large vote against it by Democrats due to a provision they saw as too big an expansion of FBI (news - web sites) powers.The House voted 264-163 to approve the bill that authorizes spending for intelligence programs and covers the CIA, FBI and the National Security Agency among others. Sixteen Republicans were among those who voted against the legislation that had not generally been considered highly controversial.
The House vote also came against a backdrop of criticism about the performance of intelligence agencies related to Iraq, where no weapons of mass destruction have been found despite prewar assessments Baghdad had biological and chemical arms.
The amount of intelligence spending is classified and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, would say only it was slightly more than what had been requested by the White House.
Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists, who has gone to court to try to get the government to release the overall annual intelligence budget amount, said it was probably in the $35 billion to $40 billion range for fiscal 2004.
The provision in the intelligence bill that became contentious would allow the FBI to execute warrants without court approval to follow suspected terror finances through pawnshops, casinos, travel agencies and other venues not traditionally considered financial. The FBI can now take such action with traditional financial institutions like banks.
Rep. Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who approved the bill, said the votes against it were due to a misunderstanding over the FBI provision.
"They thought we were expanding the Patriot Act," Harman told Reuters.
The Patriot Act is an anti-terrorism law, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, that critics say eroded civil liberties by providing the government broad powers of search and surveillance.
'TRACKING TERRORIST MONEY'
"The intent here is to focus on tracking terrorist money," Harman said. "It modernizes the authority to track money since the terror suspects move money through casinos, pawnshops, travel agencies."
Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, said he changed his vote to no from yes after word spread the intelligence bill had buried in it an expansion of the Patriot Act. "And quite frankly no one could prove to me that it wasn't in there," he said.
Goss said during floor debate the FBI provision simply updated a definition crafted in 1978.
"This provision will allow those tracking terrorists and spies to follow the money more effectively and thereby protect the people of the United States more effectively," Goss said.
House Republicans during the debate on the bill chastised Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee for using the panel for political gain to attack the White House.
Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee have been in a standoff with no committee meetings or hearings scheduled since a Democratic staff memo became public discussing a strategy Republicans said was a bald attempt to use the Iraq intelligence inquiry as a partisan weapon against the White House.
The Senate was expected to vote on the intelligence spending bill this week.
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