[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 10, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3061-H3062]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        CONGRESSIONAL REFORM OF INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY OVERSIGHT

  Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about the importance 
of our national intelligence capability and what we in Congress must do 
to improve it.
  Just a few weeks ago, the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities of 
the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Robb-
Silverman Commission, issued its report. One of the many charges 
leveled by the commission against the intelligence community, perhaps 
the most damning, is the intelligence community collects far too little 
information on many of the issues we care about most.
  As the commission also points out, without information, analysis 
turns to guesswork. The state of the affairs in our intelligence 
community is alarming, dangerous and frankly unacceptable.
  Within the span of 2 years, the United States has had two very 
obvious and public examples of intelligence failures. The September 11, 
2001 terrorist attacks, and the dead wrong conclusions reached about 
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
  The 9/11 Commission took the first step in identifying what ails the 
intelligence community, by pointing out that it's a community in name 
only. It needs centralized direction and coordination. The intelligence 
reform bill Congress enacted last year establishes a director of 
national intelligence and tries to address this problem.
  I also believe that Congress did not challenge the intelligence 
community aggressively enough before we invaded Iraq, either in the 
issue of weapons of mass destruction, or the likely aftermath of the 
invasion. We, in Congress must help the intelligence community move 
beyond the cold war mentality and focus more effectively on the 
challenges we face from the proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction, and from al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups within global 
reach.
  But, beyond fixing the intelligence community, Congress needs to get 
its own house in order. We must do a better job of oversight of the 
intelligence community. Restoring effective and constructive 
Congressional oversight should be a top bipartisan priority in the 
109th Congress. I believe there will be value in putting together a 
bicameral, bipartisan select committee like the Joint Economic 
Committee or the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy of the past, to take 
a hard look at how Congress should reform itself to better perform 
oversight of our intelligence.
  In my view, the House and the Senate need similar structures to 
handle intelligence matters, so that the budget requests, legislative 
referrals and conferences between the two bodies on authorizations and 
appropriations are handled logically and simply and without 
disconnection or disfunction.
  How would such a select committee work? Membership could be appointed 
by the leadership on both sides from committees that deal with 
intelligence matters now. The committee could garner input from various 
groups including the intelligence community, other governmental 
organizations such as CRO, CBO and GAO, and from outside groups such as 
think tanks, former Members of Congress, and experts in the field.
  Moreover, both the 9/11 Commission and the Robb-Silverman Commission 
made suggestions about how Congress should reform itself to do a better 
job with intelligence issues. These recommendations should be explored 
in depth. There are a number of fundamental questions that should be 
rethought: Which committee should have jurisdiction and oversight 
responsibilities for intelligence matters? Should there be a separate 
intelligence appropriations subcommittee? Should intelligence 
responsibility in Congress continue to be divided along programmatic 
lines, the JMIP, the TIARA, and the NIP? Should the current Select 
Committee on Intelligence be made permanent?
  Mr. Speaker, these are not partisan questions, and they should not be 
addressed in a partisan fashion. I believe that for the sake of our own 
national security we must avoid a partisan blame game. We should focus 
on how to fix the intelligence community that is still reeling from its 
public failures and struggling to digest organizational reforms that we 
have already enacted.
  At the same time, Congress must restore its own effective and 
constructive oversight over intelligence matters. I think a bicameral, 
bipartisan select committee could rise above the partisan and turf 
tensions that exist, and I urge Leader Pelosi and Speaker Hastert to 
strongly consider this option as a way to improve the system.
  In the final analysis, the intelligence community, the administration 
and the Congress must work all together to

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ensure that we can meet the intelligence challenges we face in the 
coming years. We must get this right.

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