A better intelligence bill

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: In Washington, the cause of reforming the U.S. intelligence community is like a ship that is taking on water and sinking in stormy seas. Its hull is weakening because someone is poking holes in it. Meanwhile, the ship is being loaded down with unnecessary baggage.
Legislative sabotage such as this is hardly unusual in political Washington, and most of the time the damage is not intolerable. This time, however, it is.
Lest this country be once again hit by a terror attack, the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks urged several changes in the way the government collects and uses intelligence. Its central recommendation was bringing the federal government's 15 intelligence-gathering agencies under the control of a single national intelligence director who would have, among other necessary powers, authority over budget and personnel matters. Lest the momentum for change be lost, the commission urged Congress to act quickly.
The commission did not, however, recommend that Congress give police and other government agencies some of the same kind of surveillance and deportation powers that are contained in the controversial USA Patriot Act.
House Republicans, however, are getting it wrong on both counts. They are sabotaging effective intelligence reform by backing a measure that would weaken the new intelligence chief and puncture his authority by scaling back his power to control the budget and hire and fire subordinates. At the same time, the GOP bill is loaded down with law enforcement provisions that have only the most tenuous relationship to intelligence reform.
Reluctant supporter
President Bush was a late and reluctant supporter of intelligence reform -- at first, he even opposed the creation of the 9-11 commission -- and there is every reason to fear House Republicans are seeking to do his bidding, either by making intelligence reform as superficial as possible or by aborting it altogether by delaying it.
There is, fortunately, a happy alternative, in the form of a Senate bill sponsored chiefly by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn. The Senate opened a debate on this bill Monday and may vote on it by the end of the week.
This measure closely tracks the 9-11 commission's recommendations -- it gives the new intelligence chief control of the budget, for example -- and it isn't weighed down by unnecessary and controversial attachments. For these reasons, the Senate bill has been endorsed by the 9-11 commission's two leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. In short, it is a cleaner bill - and a much better one.