House OKs Panel to Probe Spy Agency Failures

The House voted Thursday to create an independent commission to examine intelligence failures surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks, a move adamantly opposed by the White House and Republican leaders in Congress.

The plan was passed as an amendment to an intelligence spending bill that calls for an enormous increase in funding for the nation’s spy agencies, including the CIA and National Security Agency.

The proposal for the commission, which appears to face an uphill path in the Senate, is more limited in scope than Democrats had sought. It does not, for example, allow for an investigation of the Immigration and Naturalization Service or other non-intelligence agencies.

Even so, passage was a surprise success for Democrats in the GOP-controlled House and puts new pressure on President Bush to rethink his opposition to an independent review.

“He could and should do this when 3,000 people are killed in our homeland,” said Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), sponsor of the provision calling for the creation of an independent commission.

The bill would expand intelligence spending by about 25%, according to a senior House Democratic aide. Precise budget figures for the nation’s 13 intelligence agencies are classified, but are believed to total from $30 billion to $35 billion.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the boost in funding amounts to the largest annual percentage increase in two decades. And Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) called it “the most significant investment” in the intelligence community in years.

The so-called intelligence authorization bill, a broad spending plan for the coming fiscal year, was passed on a voice vote, meaning there was no roll call.

But while Congress is clearly in the mood to lavish money on the intelligence community, Thursday’s vote on Roemer’s amendment exposed deep divisions over how much additional scrutiny the nation’s spy agencies should face.

The amendment passed 219 to 188, with 193 Democrats and 25 Republicans voting in favor of creating a National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

The amendment was opposed by Goss and other Republicans, who argued that a separate inquiry is unnecessary when the House and Senate intelligence committees are already working on such a probe, expected to last into next year.

The White House also has resisted the idea, saying the burden of complying with another inquiry could distract intelligence officials already working overtime to track down Al Qaeda operatives around the globe and detect new terrorist plots.

Earlier this year, Vice President Dick Cheney sought an informal deal with congressional leaders, promising full administration cooperation with an inquiry but asking leaders to confine the inquiry to the congressional committees.

But supporters of an independent investigation say that few events in the nation’s history warrant more careful examination than the Sept. 11 attacks and that the matter deserves to be probed by a panel removed from the partisan politics of Capitol Hill and artificial congressional deadlines.

Lawmakers leading the Capitol Hill inquiry of Sept. 11, for example, are scheduled to finish their terms on the intelligence committees at the end of this year, putting pressure on the joint inquiry to complete its work quickly.

House Republicans were able to whittle away at the scope of the independent commission by raising procedural objections. Roemer was forced, for instance, to abandon provisions calling for the commission to examine the INS, the Customs Service and other government agencies.

Prospects for an independent commission remain uncertain in the Senate. Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have introduced a bill calling for a blue-ribbon panel to probe several government agencies in connection with Sept. 11.

A spokeswoman for Lieberman said the senator viewed Thursday’s vote in the House as an encouraging sign. “It’s much more narrow than the senator has introduced and proposed,” she said. “But it gives the bill a lot of momentum.”

But the legislation faces Republican opposition and lukewarm support from some Democrats. A Senate Democratic leadership aide said the Lieberman-McCain bill does not appear to have the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

The more narrowly focused commission approved by the House would attract even less support in the Senate, the aide said, because “it’s a review of what the intelligence committee is already reviewing.”

Roemer, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, disputed that, saying the independent commission could build on the work of congressional investigators and could tap outsiders with different areas of expertise.

The Senate is expected to take up its version of the intelligence authorization bill next week. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he knew of no plans in the Senate for an amendment calling for an independent commission.