WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to withhold funding from the nation's intelligence director over concerns that his office, which was created to streamline operations in the nation's spy community, is instead becoming bloated and bureaucratic.
At the same time, Republicans on the House panel defeated a Democratic push to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in spy agency funding until the Bush administration provided more information about a controversial domestic espionage program being conducted by the National Security Agency.
The measures were considered as part of the 2007 intelligence authorization bill, which sets the spending priorities for the nation's spy agencies.
The move to withhold funding still must be approved by the full House as well as the Senate. But it reflects rising frustration among House lawmakers with an office that was created less than two years ago to solve communication breakdowns and other problems that plagued the intelligence community leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq.
The bill would require the nation's intelligence director, John D. Negroponte, to present a detailed rationale for any additional increases to his staff or risk losing a portion of his budget. The measure was endorsed by Republicans and Democrats.
"We're concerned about some of the steps that are going on" at Negroponte's office, said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra said Negroponte needed to demonstrate that any further expansion would improve coordination among intelligence agencies, and would not amount to "putting in more lawyers and slowing down the process."
Rep. Jane Harman (DVenice), the ranking Democrat on the committee, cited similar concerns.
"We don't want more billets, more bureaucracy, more buildings," Harman said. "We want more leadership."
The action by the committee represents one of the most pointed public rebukes of Negroponte and the course he has set in assembling a staff to oversee the activities of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies.
A spokesman for Negroponte, Carl Kropf, said that the intelligence director's office had not yet seen the House bill. Kropf declined to respond to criticism that Negroponte's office was becoming bloated, except to say that "we are within the limits of the law that established" the director of national intelligence.
