Congressional Republicans Fail to Agree on Intelligence Reform Bill

The 9/11 Commission reported its findings months ago. The need to reform the American intelligence community has been evident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and has been painfully overdue since the fall of the World Trade Center towers. Yet, the American congress has not acted. Now that the excuse of the election is over, there was some hope that a lame-duck session could get the job done. Instead, the congressional Republicans have discovered that they are not as united as they believed.

The White House and the Senate were in agreement on creating a National Intelligence Director with budgetary control over the American intelligence community. Unfortunately, the House had some arch-conservatives who believe that the Pentagon should retain control of the 80% of the intelligence community's budget it currently has. Arguing that the chain of command would suffer and soldiers' lives would be at risk, they were prepared to vote against the president. While intellectually honest, these fellows are simply wrong. Defense analysts are, by their nature, predisposed to view raw intelligence through the lens of combat and its related disciplines. They are not likely to view it as a matter for diplomacy and negotiation.

Less worthwhile were the objections of Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who was knobbled by some of the families of the 9/11 victims into opposing the bill because it did not address illegal immigration adequately. This was a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Immigration in the US needs massive reconsideration, and the nexus of terrorism and illegal immigration merits great consideration. Perhaps, it merits its own hearings and its own debate. It is not tied to the reorganization of the budgetary arrangements for the intelligence agencies of the US.

In the end, Speaker Hastert had to end the session without a bill at all. A majority of the House and of the Senate are Republicans. The president is a Republican. And some Democrats in both houses said that they were prepared to back the president's version of the legislation. Yet there is still no bill. The 108th Congress has recessed, not formally adjourned, suggesting that the legislators may come back for one more try after Thanksgiving. It is not too late, but the incident suggests something far worse.

Anytime a political party has an overwhelming majority in the legislature and control of the executive (which in parliamentary systems are identical, but in the American system is less common) the legal opposition isn't the problem. It is the majority party's members who are the troublemakers. Keeping people on the reservation, as is it termed, is the real problem. If Mr. Bush's party has already reached this stage, his second term may be obstructed by those Republicans who want to be more royalist than the king.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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