Panel's Call for Strong Intelligence Chief Wins Crucial Ally

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/politics/17panel.html

THE COMMISSION
Panel's Call for Strong Intelligence Chief Wins Crucial Ally
By PHILIP SHENON

Published: August 17, 2004


ASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - The Sept. 11 commission's major recommendation for the creation of a powerful new national intelligence director gained momentum on Monday, with an influential Republican senator suggesting that he was willing to oppose the White House and offer legislation providing the new intelligence director with broad budgetary and personnel authority over the nation's 15 intelligence agencies.

"That person would be empowered with the authority to really lead the intelligence community," said the lawmaker, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. "These authorities include the ability to hire and fire, as well as the ability to exercise control over the budgets."

Mr. Roberts said a draft bill, written with his committee's ranking Democrat, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, would be presented to Senate colleagues this week and would be built around the recommendations of the final report of the Sept. 11 commission.

The report, which has created a whirlwind of unusual midsummer activity on Capitol Hill, documented intelligence and law-enforcement failures before the Sept. 11 attacks and called for a shake-up of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. It called for appointment of a national intelligence director to oversee all spy agencies, including those within the Defense Department.

While Senator Roberts did not say so explicitly, his description of the powers of the national intelligence director made clear that his bill would go far beyond what the White House and the Pentagon have said they are ready to accept. A spokesman for the senator, Sarah Little, said later that the bill would definitely "go beyond what the White House is talking about."<snip>