Key Democrat Calls Spy Bill’s Mystery Program a National Security Threat

Congress’ new blueprint for U.S. intelligence spending includes a mysterious and expensive spy program that drew extraordinary criticism from leading Democrats, with one saying the highly classified project is a threat to national security.

In an unusual rebuke, Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that the spy project was “totally unjustified and very, very wasteful and dangerous to the national security.” He called the program “stunningly expensive.”

Rockefeller and three other Democratic senators -- Richard Durbin of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon -- refused to sign the congressional compromise negotiated by others in the House and Senate that provides for future U.S. intelligence activities.

The compromise noted that the four senators believed the mystery program was unnecessary and its cost unjustified and that “they believe that the funds for this item should be expended on other intelligence programs that will make a surer and greater contribution to national security.”

Each senator -- and more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials contacted by Associated Press -- declined to further describe or identify the disputed program, citing its classified nature. Thirteen other senators on the Intelligence Committee and all their counterparts in the House approved the compromise.

The Senate voted Wednesday night to send the legislation to President Bush. The bill is separate from the intelligence overhaul legislation that also won final congressional approval Wednesday.

The rare criticisms of a highly secretive project in such a public forum intrigued outside intelligence experts, who said the program was almost certainly a spy satellite system, perhaps with technology to destroy potential attackers. They cited tantalizing hints in Rockefeller’s remarks, such as the program’s enormous expense and its alleged danger to national security.

A U.S. panel in 2001 described American defense and spy satellites as frighteningly vulnerable, saying technology to launch attacks in space was widely available internationally. The study, by a commission whose members included Donald H. Rumsfeld before his appointment as Bush’s Defense secretary, concluded that the United States was “an attractive candidate for a space Pearl Harbor.”

Sending even defensive satellite weapons into orbit could start an arms race in space, warned John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, who has studied antisatellite weapons for more than three decades.