Texas Lawmaker Proposes Radical Overhaul of Intelligence Agencies

A key House Republican leader proposed divorcing the CIA’s scandal-plagued espionage service from the agency to create a new, independent clandestine spy organization that would be more directly accountable to top policy-makers.

In a sweeping proposal for overhauling the U.S. intelligence community, Rep. Larry Combest (R-Texas), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, also called for merging the National Security Agency and other secret organizations into a giant new agency. The merged agency would handle so-called “technical” intelligence--spy satellites, wiretaps and eavesdropping and the sensitive equipment used to monitor nuclear tests and missile launches by other nations.

Those tasks now are haphazardly divided among a wide range of secret agencies. Organizational problems have frequently prompted complaints from the military that it doesn’t receive intelligence information--especially from spy satellites--quickly enough to be of use in the field.

As part of his plan to reorganize the technical intelligence agencies, Combest is proposing to eliminate the National Reconnaissance Office, the secret agency that has come under fire recently for hoarding about $2 billion in funds without properly disclosing the size of its cash pool to Congress.

Combest’s proposals will form the basis for legislation he expects to introduce within the next two weeks that is likely to gain the backing of the House Republican leadership. In his reform package, Combest will call for a far more radical reorganization than did a plan released last week by a presidential commission. The panel was created in 1994 in the wake of the Aldrich H. Ames spy scandal to study the future of the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community.

Both studies, however, call for enhancing the power and influence of the CIA director.