GETTING CREDIT FOR THE SUN RISING :

Panel Questions New Agency's Powers Senators Worry That Proposal Doesn't Give Department Control Over Information-Gathering (Bill Miller, June 10, 2002, Washington Post)

President Bush's plan to create a Department of Homeland Security doesn't go far enough to prevent the kind of intelligence lapses that took place before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, leaders of the Senate intelligence committee said yesterday.

Bush's proposal to merge all or parts of 22 federal agencies into a homeland security structure does not give the head of the new department control over those who gather intelligence for the FBI, CIA and other agencies, the senators said. Instead, the department will be treated as a "customer" of the various intelligence agencies and use the information it gets to analyze threats and decide how to respond, they said.

"It doesn't address . . . the intelligence problems that we have," said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the committee's ranking Republican. "The homeland security director and his office will be a consumer of intelligence. Will they make some decisions? Sure. But I understand they will not be gatherers of intelligence. That's very key."

The committee's chairman, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), said that the CIA and FBI, which are not moving into the proposed department, "don't talk very well to each other" and that

The new department is inevitably going to be given intelligence gathering capabilities, most likely taken from the FBI and CIA. By not including this in the original proposal, the administration makes the inevitable and necessary look like a huge concession and a sign of their willingness to compromise. It also enables them to fend off other Congressional changes that they don't want : "Well, look, we gave you the whole intelligence deal, but we can't yield on this." You have to admire the way they structure their proposals as negotiating vehicles, rather than as exact blueprints of what they want. The former often gets you much closer to your ideal than the latter. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 10, 2002 8:52 AM