[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 108 (Wednesday, September 6, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9066-S9068]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007--Continued
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator
from Alaska. It is late, and I understand that. I rise to address
something which is very important to me, and that is the Defense
appropriations bill that may appear to many to be insignificant
boilerplate language, when, in fact, is not that at all. Unfortunately,
the provision has an enlarged significance in
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this Congress as a result of the inexplicable and unpardonable failure
of the Senate to do something that it has never done before, and that
is to fail to pass intelligence authorizations for either fiscal year
2006 or fiscal year 2007.
Section 8086 of the Defense appropriations bill waives section 504 of
the National Security Act of 1947 until the enactment of the
Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2007. What does that
mean? Section 504 provides, with limited exceptions, that no
appropriated funds available may be obligated or expended for an
intelligence activity unless those funds were specifically authorized
by Congress; therefore, by the two Intelligence Committees.
This waiver is a standard part of the Defense appropriations bill.
Until this Congress, it has served the acceptable function of allowing
intelligence communities to begin spending money if the authorization
bill is not completed before the beginning of the fiscal year. Under
this waiver, as soon as the intelligence authorizations for any given
year are enacted, that authorization language would control.
In this Congress, however, the boilerplate language has become the
substitute for legislative authorization of intelligence activities
because the majority leader, to be honest, has refused to bring the
intelligence authorization bill to the floor for the past 2 years--for
the past 2 years.
The Senate's failure to pass this critical national security
legislation is unprecedented. Last year was the first time since the
establishment of the congressional Intelligence Committees that the
Senate failed to pass an annual authorization bill. From 1978 through
2004, the Senate had an unbroken, 27-year record of completing its work
on this critical legislation. The intelligence authorization bill has
been rightly considered, always, must-pass legislation. Regardless of
who controlled the Senate, regardless of who controlled the White
House, there was an understanding that the programs authorized by this
bill were too important to not have the input of the Congress through
the Intelligence Committees.
Unfortunately, because of an anonymous objection by a Republican
Senator, the majority leader decided to let this important national
security legislation die on the vine last year, for the first time, and
he appears intent on doing so this year again. The result of this
decision by the majority leader will be diminished authority for
intelligence agencies to do their jobs of protecting Americans. It also
will result in less effective oversight, which was essentially the 9/11
Commission's No. 1 call, and all of this at a time when the
intelligence community is undergoing the biggest restructuring in its
50-year history.
The annual intelligence authorization is the primary mechanism which
the Congress, through the Intelligence Committees, uses to provide
guidance and support to America's intelligence agencies, the heart of
our effort to protect America's national security.
At a time when our security depends so heavily on good intelligence,
when our national security has been endangered by not depending
sufficiently on good intelligence--or maybe the intelligence wasn't
good when it should have been--and we are in the midst of reforming and
modernizing our intelligence community, the Senate's failure to act on
this legislation is absolutely inexplicable to this Senator and to
virtually all the Members of the Intelligence Committees.
In reporting the resolution to establish the Intelligence Committee
in May 1976, since the first chairman on our side was the Senator from
Hawaii, Mr. Inouye, the Committee on Government Operations back then
wrote the following:
An essential part of the new committee's jurisdiction will
be authorization authority over the intelligence activities
of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence
Agency. Without this authority, the new committee would not
be assured the practical ability to monitor the activities of
these agencies.
They wrote that back then--and that is:
. . . to obtain full access to information which the
committees must have to exercise control over the budgets of
agencies in order to reduce waste and inefficiency, and to
impose changes in agency practices.
That is what they said.
The failure of the Senate to pass intelligence authorization for 2
years threatens to erode the ability of the Intelligence Committee to
carry out the mission assigned to it by the Senate. This failure has
consequences both immediate and long term. Our intelligence agencies
can continue executing the funding made available through the various
appropriations bills but without any guidance as to what they should do
from the Intelligence Committees.
I do not understand this.
The Appropriations Committee does an excellent job at providing
resources for the intelligence agencies, what they need to operate on.
But the roadmap for how the Congress expects those sources to be
executed comes from the authorization bill--which seems to no longer
exist. The sensitivity and importance of our Nation's intelligence
programs makes congressional direction essential every single year. But
the creation of an Office of the Director of National Intelligence in
2004, and the ongoing development of that office, makes the guidance
even more important now.
The fiscal year 2006 authorization bill contains 17 separate
provisions enhancing or clarifying the authority of the DNI. Those
provisions included additional authority to promote information
sharing, clarifying the DNI's role in managing human intelligence--all
of these, easy to say and difficult to do--providing flexibility in the
financing of national intelligence centers, how those centers were to
be set up, and elevating the DNI Inspector General to a statutory
position.
Those important provisions are now included in this fiscal year 2007
bill, and we should act on them as soon as possible. I do not think we
are going to, but we should.
In the longer term, the Senate's inability to debate and act on this
critical legislation will have a more lasting effect on congressional
oversight. Both the 9/11 and the Robb-Silberman commission on weapons
of mass destruction highlighted the importance of improving oversight
as a necessary component of reforming our intelligence capabilities.
Oversight.
The 9/11 Commission wrote:
Of all our recommendations, strengthening Congressional
oversight may be among the most difficult and most important.
In December 2004, the Senate took steps to strengthen the Senate
Intelligence Committee by eliminating member term limits. That had been
a long time coming. People were limited to 8 years. They just began to
get up to speed and then they were off. Now that has changed. It is at
the discretion of the majority leader and the minority leader.
We increased our staff and strengthened other procedures. But these
improvements were in a sense a hollow victory. Since enactment of the
reforms, the majority leader has emasculated the Intelligence Committee
by denying it the central tool to carry out oversight, and that is the
annual authorization bill which is called for under the law.
The majority leader's unwillingness to consider these bills is even
more puzzling because of the bipartisan effort that has gone into their
development on both sides of this House. Both the fiscal 2006 and 2007
bills passed the Intelligence Committee unanimously. Both were referred
to the Armed Services Committee where they were again approved
unanimously. Last year, the bill was also referred to the Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which suggested changes
that would have been included had we been discussing the bill along
with suggestions from the administration in a managers' amendment.
Last year's bill and this year's bill contain legislation focused on
four important areas about which I am going to talk briefly. I have
already mentioned the numerous provisions relating to the authority and
the operation of the Office of the DNI, the Director of National
Intelligence. The bill also contains additional provisions to foster
and improve information sharing and information access. Easy words,
hard to do.
Section 310 establishes a pilot program giving the Intelligence
Committee access to databases of other
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nonintelligence agencies for the purpose of collecting intelligence on
counterterrorism or weapons of mass destruction. While this bill sits
on the calendar, that information is now outside the reach of the
intelligence community.
Many of my colleagues have decried the seemingly endless stream of
leaks of classified information. I join them in denouncing the leaks of
sensitive material. The authorization bill includes provisions
strengthening the authority of the DNI and the Director of the CIA to
protect intelligence sources and methods. It also includes a provision,
authored by Senator Wyden and adopted by the committee unanimously, to
increase the penalties for the unauthorized disclosure of a covert
agent.
Finally, the authorization bill contains numerous provisions intended
to improve oversight of the intelligence community, both from within
and from the Congress itself.
Section 408 is interesting. Section 408 of the bill proposes the
establishment of a statutory inspector general for the intelligence
community. I have said that. The Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 took a
first step toward that end by authorizing the Director of National
Intelligence to appoint an inspector general within the Office of the
Director. The DNI has done that, and I applaud him for doing so. But
the bill will strengthen that position and make it more accountable to
the Congress.
Section 434 of the bill strengthens accountability further and
oversight of the technical agencies by providing that the heads of the
National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency are to be appointed by the
President with the Senate's advice and consent.
This is in the authorization bill, and if we were to pass it, this
would become effective. I think it actually comes as a surprise to many
of my colleagues that the head of an agency with as central a role in
the intelligence community as the National Security Agency is not
appointed with Senate confirmation. In fact, heads of the National
Security Agency have customarily only gone through confirmation in
connection with their military rank but not for their appointment to
the position of the Director of NSA. That is not considered.
Section 107 of the bill, sponsored in committee by Senators Levin and
Hagel, seeks to improve the timely flow of information to the
congressional Intelligence Committees. Similar language was included in
the intelligence reform legislation that passed in the Senate in 2004
but did not survive the conference. I applaud Senators Levin and Hagel
for their efforts with respect to this issue.
There are other provisions requiring specific information, including
a report on the implementation of the Detainee Treatment Act and a
separate report on the possibility of existence of clandestine
detention facilities. I am at a loss to understand what the objection
to this legislation is. Maybe somebody does not like the enhancement of
oversight. That is our job. That is why the committees were formed.
Maybe somebody doesn't want the DNI to have more authority or maybe
somebody thinks the Congress should not be getting timely access to
information about intelligence programs that are so important. But let
me remind all my colleagues that the authorization bill passed the
Intelligence Committee unanimously. If somebody has a problem with a
provision, bring up the bill, offer an amendment, debate, and vote.
That is the way the Senate works.
Amendment No. 4906
Because of the importance of getting the authorization bill enacted
and because I and all the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee
have been totally unable to make any headway on this at all now for 2
years, and because I have concluded that it will once again be ignored
by the majority leader, I send an amendment to the desk to strike
section 8086 of the pending legislation, the fiscal year 2007
Department of Defense appropriations bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Rockefeller] proposes a
amendment numbered 4906.
The amendment follows:
(Purpose: To strike the section specifically authorizing intelligence
and intelligence-related activities)
On page 206, strike lines 10 through 16.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, striking section 8086 would mean the
following: that none of the funds in this bill could be spent for
intelligence activities without an authorization bill. I do not know
how else to do it. I am reluctant to take this step because I do not
want our intelligence agencies to be caught without funding. But I see
no other way to force the Senate to bring into the consciousness, the
cerebral cortexes of the various Senators, that it is important to take
up and pass authorization bills.
This legislation is too important to be allowed to languish in
legislative limbo. I am at a loss to understand why the Senate cannot
complete action. It would be in no one's interest to not complete this,
not the Senate, not the Congress, not the intelligence community, nor
would it be in the national security interest of the United States.
Democrats are more than willing to quickly debate and pass much
needed national security legislation. Democrats know that it is
essential that we permit the men and women of the intelligence agencies
to continue their critical work on the front lines of the war in Iraq
and the war on terror.
In the meantime, to the men and women of the intelligence agencies, I
say that we stand with you. We are proud of your bravery and your
patriotism, and we thank you for your sacrifice, working in silence,
and in the shadows, against the threat that America faces.
(At the request of Mr. Rockefeller, the following statement was
ordered to be printed in the Record.)
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