WASHINGTON — A sweeping overhaul of the nation's intelligence apparatus, one of the chief recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, appeared headed for collapse Friday as House and Senate negotiators acknowledged they could not agree on a bill before next week's elections.
Negotiators were unable to overcome opposition from the Pentagon and its supporters to creating a powerful intelligence czar, fearing that too much authority over the budgets and personnel of the intelligence agencies would be shifted away from the secretary of Defense.
"The initial hurdle we're facing is the one that intelligence reformists have been facing for the last half-century," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). "How do you allow the Department of Defense to maintain some form of budget authority over the intelligence budget?"
The failure to rapidly reform the nation's collection of intelligence agencies demonstrated the government's difficulty in coming to grips with the fundamental problems that the terrorist attacks laid bare.
"The conferees have gone home, it seems like they are at an impasse, and I think it's tragic that we don't have legislation on the president's desk before the election," said Mary Fetchet, a member of a group of family members who lost relatives in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The group, the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, lobbied for creation of the Sept. 11 commission and has pushed Congress to adopt the panel's recommendations. Fetchet said that her group would continue to press for a bill. "I don't think we can lose hope, but it comes down to what the White House will do" to force an agreement, she said.
Nine days ago, when House and Senate negotiators opened talks to reconcile the legislation each chamber passed, they pledged to try to finish a bill before the elections.
It would take the pressure of elections, supporters of a bill said, to push through an overhaul that required shifting control of part of the intelligence budget from the Pentagon to a new entity. Currently, the Pentagon controls about 80% of the total intelligence budgets, a classified number thought to be around $40 billion per year.
The Senate bill would give a national intelligence director control over much of that budget. The House bill would have the intelligence budgets go through the Defense Department, with the national intelligence director's concurrence.
