White House Intervenes on Behalf of Intelligence Bill
WASHINGTON — A telephone call from President Bush and other high-level White House interventions brought House and Senate negotiators close to agreement Tuesday on legislation that would consolidate authority over the nation's spy agencies in a powerful national intelligence director.
After sending conflicting signals for weeks, the White House over the weekend took its strongest action yet to end the stalemate that began shortly after the House and the Senate passed radically different intelligence bills in early October. For the first time, Bush called a key House negotiator to urge a compromise, and the White House followed up Monday by sending senior officials to meet with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chief sponsor of the Senate bill.
"It's a full-court press," said John Feehery, press secretary for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).
"It's White House pressure, it's deadline pressure, it's a desire to get something done" that is driving Congress to finish the bill, he said.
Early Tuesday afternoon, the four chief House and Senate negotiators began a session aimed at closing a deal so that both chambers could take a final vote on the bill before the end of the lame-duck session, which Congress would like to complete by week's end. Nothing final was expected Tuesday night, however.
The proposed overhaul of the intelligence community is based on the report of the commission created by Congress to investigate the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks. The commission offered detailed recommendations for restructuring the government to better confront global terrorism -- including bringing control of the nation's 15 intelligence agencies under a national intelligence director with authority over budgets and hiring and firing top personnel.
Members of both parties vowed to work quickly to complete legislation in response to the report, and legislation moved through the House and the Senate at a breakneck pace prior to the Nov. 2 election.
But opposition from the Pentagon and its supporters -- and doubts voiced by national security experts that either bill would truly address the problems facing the intelligence community -- seemed likely to derail it.
Although negotiators said they were pleased that the legislation -- which some had written off for dead just days ago -- seemed to have been resurrected, some Senate Democrats expressed concern that the Senate was making too many concessions to the House. For the first time, the Senate's bipartisan front on its version of intelligence restructuring appeared to be cracking.
