[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 45 (Friday, April 2, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E504]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      INTRODUCTION OF THE INTELLIGENCE TRANSFORMATION ACT OF 2004

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JANE HARMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 1, 2004

  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, today my colleagues and I on the House 
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are initiating a call to 
action.
  The problems plaguing American intelligence are too grave, and the 
potential damage to U.S. national security, force protection in Iraq, 
Afghanistan and elsewhere, too important to justify delay.
  These problems require urgent attention from the President--who has 
the power to fix some identified problems with our intelligence now--
and from Congress, which built our Intelligence Community five decades 
ago to fight an enemy that no longer exists.
  But those of us in Congress must also do our part.
  That is why we are introducing a major legislative proposal--the 
Intelligence Transformation Act of 2004 (H.R. 4104)--a set of critical 
and urgent reforms for the Intelligence Community.
  The highlight of this proposal is the creation of a Director of 
National Intelligence (a ``DNI''), who has budgetary and statutory 
authority over the entire Intelligence Community. This is not a new 
idea. And it is not a Democratic idea. It was one of reforms 
recommended by the bipartisan, bicameral 9/11 Joint Congressional 
Inquiry.
  But our legislation does more. We are also proposing ``jointness'' in 
collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence. We believe that 
one of the major deficiencies in our Intelligence Community is the fact 
that there are fifteen intelligence agencies--operating with different 
rules, cultures, and databases--that do not work as one, integrated 
Intelligence Community.
  We also believe that our Intelligence Community must leverage the 
power of information technology to help our intelligence professionals 
share data in real-time. The United States has the best IT capabilities 
in the world, but we have scarcely touched that potential to help the 
IC do its job.
  Finally, the Act would create a new WMD Proliferation Threat 
Integration Center (PROTIC) to provide integrated tasking of collection 
and analysis on the WMD proliferation threat.
  At a time when much of Washington is fingerpointing, we hope this 
legislation today will add some light to the heat surrounding the 
subject of intelligence failures.
  We had hoped to produce a bipartisan bill--and we believe that it 
will ultimately be a bipartisan bill because it is good policy and 
because of its bipartisan parentage. We shared our legislative ideas 
with the majority on our Committee, but we did not want the legislative 
year to pass while awaiting their response.
  The terrorists and the enemies of the United States will not wait 
until after November to plot their attacks--nor will they check our 
party registration before they launch those attacks against us. We 
cannot afford to wait. This task is urgent. We must act now.

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